Karthicka Suthanandan & Andrea Tang

Members At-Large in McMaster Debating Society

K: Last week, Invisible Children released a video that went viral instantaneously. The video documented personal testimonies and accounts of issues in Uganda, specifically the crimes of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The heinous nature of Kony’s crimes essentially appeals to the viewer’s emotional side, outlining the crimes of abducting innocent children from their homes and turning them into soldiers. Though Kony has terrorized Uganda for years, the Stop Kony 2012 campaign has actually brought it to youth attention. Not only inspiring hope, the campaign encourages individuals to do something about the issue and stop the tragedy from spreading.

A: It is indeed nice to see youth paying attention to things other than their so-called “first world problems;” however, what it is essentially promoting is the idea that merely joining a Facebook group or re-tweeting a video can cause real social change. It can be easily agreed upon that justice for Uganda is not even close to a simple matter. The injustices occurring in Uganda and its neighbouring countries cannot be reduced to the faults of Kony alone, nor can true justice be brought to victims through simply catching one man. If youth don’t direct their positive energy toward implementing a set of workable solutions, they may be disappointed when the justice and change they’re expecting does not occur.

K: It is important to note the aims of this video. They specifically talk about “changing the conversation of the media that influences us everyday.” Facebook and Twitter are everywhere, but even the smallest step towards social change is more purposeful that status updates about Snooki’s pregnancy. First and foremost, this video is about awareness and a first step to action. It is a good start and certainly directs the focus of the world to Kony’s crimes. Problems may not dissolve with the single arrest of Kony, but with the world paying attention, they can be changed.

A: A campaign titled “Stop Kony” promotes youth to put to justice one man involved in starting a complicated problem in Uganda. Unfortunately, even with such a start, the majority of youth that has not actually researched the complexities behind this issue believe that stopping Kony is equivalent to stopping all the problems presented in the original video made by Invisible Children, which we all know is not actually true. When the Globe and Mail interviewed some of the actual victims of the Ugandan war, they indicated two things that were needed for true justice in their country. First and foremost, government leaders need to be responsible for the victim’s suffering (as government soldiers are alleged to have committed serious crimes against civilians such as rape and murder as well). Secondly, victims of atrocities should be compensated by those responsible. This really proves that capturing Kony is only a small part of what really needs to happen.

K: Maybe the campaign needed to be simplified. If you want people to get involved and make a difference, it isn’t exactly convincing to make the goal seem impossible. By telling people they have to simply pass on a video, spread awareness and get the government involved, two benefits result. One, it reaches the ears of everyone and results in discussion like this, which gives government officials incentive to intervene, analyze the situation and find a suitable course of action. Second, if something actually happens in a situation that has been ignored, the benefits of Kony being indicted certainly outweigh the harms. Can’t partial justice be better than none?

A: There are some potential harms in simplifying a complicated situation such as this. Firstly, it is actually counterproductive to make youth believe we have all the answers. Youth are better off being taught the real complexities and truths surrounding political issues such as this. Invisible Children is trying to make the war that Kony has started known to youth, and oversimplifying it may not be the right way. The recent energy brought out in youth will be a waste, and a great opportunity will be lost if it is not directed toward a real solution. When youth see that they are not making a real difference, won’t they be discouraged? Perhaps Stop Kony is a campaign with good intentions, but is not very well thought-out.

K: I will agree that the Stop Kony campaign does not provide a comprehensive solution to the issue at hand. However, that is simply not the point. The campaign does not expect youth around the world to come up with a well-developed political strategy to end civil dispute in Central Africa. The point is to inspire awareness; how viewers choose to define their involvement is another concern. Stop Kony is a chance to truly dedicate oneself to an issue, rather than just acknowledge it and walk away. Many catastrophes reach the news and become forgotten once they are out of the headlines, becoming an “out of sight, out of mind” situation. The difference is that this video inspires action and involvement. Non-profit organizations like Free the Children show that when emotion is channelled into action in a manageable way, it makes a difference. Building schools, donating a few dollars, these things don’t make nations educated, they don’t end poverty. However, they do build on situations that need repairing, just like Invisible Children’s campaign is using the power of awareness to build involvement that did not exist otherwise.

A: The Stop Kony campaign has brought extensive awareness to the situation, and there is value in what the campaign has done thus far. However, only time can tell if this campaign will actually bring change, and what value this campaign has for the actual victims we are trying to help – the people of Uganda.

The crusade against this LRA Leader may be more complex than you think.

Ryan Mallough

Silhouette Staff

Unless you have been buried under a social media rock, you have no doubt been lambasted with notification of tweets, retweets, likes and shares of Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign video. It’s an effort to make the Ugandan warlord, and head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, famous to pressure the global community to track the man down. The video deftly highlights Kony’s evil: kidnapping children and forcing them into his army, performing grotesque mutilations on captives and numerous other human rights violations and war crimes.

Simply put, the video clearly tells us that Joseph Kony is a bad man, he’s on the run, and he must be brought to justice. The video tell us that the best way to do this is to raise awareness is by getting in touch with influential policy makers and celebrities, and by donating to Invisible Children to further their cause.

Within hours of the video’s circulation the “Monsters”, “Swifties” and “Beliebers” that dominate Twitter were so up in arms over Kony that Uganda had to move to Defcon 5; the tween demographic was prepared to invade.

Of course, had any of them stopped to consider what they had just seen and asked a few questions, they might have come across the fact that Joseph Kony is not in Uganda, but in the jungles of the Central African Republic, where he has been since 2008. They also may have found that the Ugandan Army (of questionable Human Rights record itself), along with members of the African Union are in hot pursuit of Kony, whose forces are believed to be under 200 – far fewer than the Invisible Children video implies. Those calling for Western action might have discovered that in 2010 President Obama signed an agreement with Uganda committing U.S. resources and troops to the hunt for Kony up to 2014.

More importantly, they may have come across one of the several criticisms of the Invisible Child organization, which was characterized by the group’s Director of Ideology, Jedidiah Jenkins, as “not an aid organization” but “an advocacy and awareness organization,” and questioned what the money they were donating (currently estimated at $15 million) was really going to be used for and how much help it would provide.

In general, they would have found that this is a far more complex issue than a thirty-minute YouTube clip can acknowledge; and yes, all of this information is obtainable during a ten-minute Google search – less than half the time it takes to watch the complete Kony 2012 video.

Ugandan political analyst Nicholas Sengoba called the movement “sinister,” believing that those of Invisible Children “have other motives they are not putting out in the open.”

Yet the video is being taken at face value.

Is our instant gratification-based culture at the point where we feel validated simply by sharing a message regardless of its truth? Have we become so gullible that a sinister voice and post-production effects render a message above questioning? The simple answer is both yes and no; however, underneath the Kony campaign is another factor, ever-present when taking on African hardships: “white guilt,” or perhaps more aptly phrased, “Western guilt.” The ridiculous Kiplingian notion that is the burden of the West to bring civilization to and fix all the problems of the “African sub-continent.”

After all, the man has been at it for 26 years, and what has Africa done to stop him? Surely the region has been defenceless and simply watched its children be stripped from their beds; families, villages and governments praying for the West, a hero in shining white armour to come and save them and deliver them from evil.

To paraphrase every mother ever, “where the hell do we get off thinking that?”

The sheer arrogance behind this movement is astonishing. Of all the policy makers that Kony 2012 deem influential, only two are not American (Stephen Harper and Bun-Ki Moon) and none are African. Where is the campaign to send letters to the President of Uganda, or the Pan-African Parliament? Surely those in the region are better equipped to address this crisis than America or the West is. And where are the influential African celebrities?

Even the ones who have made much of their fame in the West like Diedier Drogba (soccer player, Ivory Coast) or Akon (singer, Senegal) have a more relevant relationship to the region than the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Ryan Seacrest.

If only Rudyard Kipling could have summed it up in one 140 characters or less and thrown in a catchy hashtag.

Ugandan social critic Timothy Kalyegira has drawn some ire for calling the campaign “more like a fashion thing.” A trend, and is that not exactly what this campaign is doing? Trending?

What happens to Africa when it stops?