Kony Lingers
Most people in the West had never heard of Joseph Kony.
Head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Christian insurgent militia operating out of Uganda and elsewhere since 1987, Kony met all international definitions of a terrorist warlord. Cutting a swathe through the region, the LRA soon became notorious for mass atrocities, kidnapping, and the deployment of child soldiers – mostly to the ambivalence of the “First World.”
In March 2012, the charity Invisible Children dropped a documentary on YouTube. Directed by Californian Jason Russell with intent to make the warlord famous, KONY 2012 was expertly crafted to provoke action across the Internet. Exposing the brutal consequences of Kony’s campaign while demanding shares, retweets and easily digestible hashtags-du-jour to amplify its reach.
Framed as a “Social Experiment”, a phrase beloved of demagogues and charlatans alike, the viral video was a ploy to recruit a youth army of its own. Appealing to the burgeoning Fifth Estate of independent bloggers and online activists, SocMed’s nascent influence was exploited to “raise awareness” against the perceived complicity of traditional journalism’s Fourth Estate.
Well-meaning campaigners eagerly stood up to be counted, declaring support for the cause and holding their representatives to account. Proudly proclaiming the power and privilege of the Internet to tame a land barely connected. Denying agency to those most affected, by demanding something, anything, be done to internationally intervene against this terrible injustice.
Except Kony had been driven out of Uganda six years prior.
Although it can be argued that the video was successful in its aim, given it is literally still being discussed, such success was ultimately for the wrong reasons. It faced widespread rebuke from across Africa for focusing on the filmmakers, while reducing those actively impacted by the violence to little more than narrative props. Their suffering a stage for the morality play of the modern age.
Nigerian author Teju Cole dubbed this technocratic conclusion to Kipling’s burden the White Saviour Industrial Complex: a banality of sentiment as insincere as it is self-aggrandising.
As with most performative advocacy, the cause was never the concern. The horrors of the world an ever-churning backdrop for hysterical hubris. Pearls clutched and frenzy stoked in a praxis of pretence, coerced and consumed by the next most-terrible thing in the ceaseless cycle of clickbait.
And yet, all remain helpless. Judging one another for not caring enough, damning those who fail to perform and conform to the herd-instinct of passionate intensity. Keeping up the appearance of objective good, despite having no quantifiable impact or influence beyond the spite directed at those they deem less informed.
In every epoch of technology, the novelty of new media outpaces our capacity to reason and reflect. The printing press bore propaganda, and film empowered fascism. From grim experience, we learn to distrust the old as yesterday’s clumsy manipulation – yet the bright new stars of today are assumed to only shine true. We accept without question, and condense the complexities of the world into the feel-good scintilla of SocMed slacktivism.
Without hard, ugly, genuine action to break the inertia of online outrage; and a will to listen to and empower those most affected, merely sharing the latest injustice for clicks and likes does not serve a greater purpose.
It just desensitises everyone to the next.
A short while after the video’s release, Russell was allegedly found naked. Wandering his San Diego neighbourhood in a frenzy of his own, vandalising vehicles while fervently palpating his turgid member. He was placed under care for a psychotic break, and Invisible Children eventually handed their work over to local organisations in 2014.
Joseph Kony remains at large.
https://heathenstorm.com/2025/06/05/kony-lingers/
#DigitalManifesto #africa #fifthestate #invisiblechildren #jasonrussell #josephkony #kony2012 #praxis #slacktivism #socialmedia #technology #tejucole #uganda #whitesaviourindustrialcomplex
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