Maybe agreement was too much to ask.
The vitriol has just kept coming. From the start I thought it was clear that some of the critiques of the viral Kony 2012 video were valid, but never did I expect them to continue with such unabated intensity and even personal hatefulness (to the point of driving Jason Russell, the maker of the video, to an apparent mental breakdown). Today, another critique has been making the rounds. The article in The Atlantic by Teju Cole, “White Savior Industrial Complex,” is an exposition on a series of tweets he posted as the Kony video was gaining momentum. The tweets, reprinted in the article, critique the apparent neocolonialism and hypocrisy in the video and are reproduced below:
- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.
- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
-Teju Cole, in The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/1/
These are all standard claims that others have made, and there is some merit to them. Aid efforts from the West to the developing world have done considerable harm in the past and will certainly continue to do harm in the future, but that doesn’t mean they only do harm. After some thinking, I believe the critiques have quite simply gone too far and overlook several positive elements.
Earlier this week, my international development class met for the first time since the Kony 2012 video was posted. The topics for that class did not specifically deal with anything related to Kony, but it’s not every day that a development issue goes viral, so we took some time to discuss the matter. To kick off the discussion, my professor asked a prescient question, and one I would not have thought of myself: “How many of you had heard of Joseph Kony and the LRA before this video?” To my surprise, several classmates, maybe a third of the class, raised their hands. This is among aspiring development practitioners! These are people who want to go to Africa and help the poor, people who have already done Peace Corps, people who keep track of things like the LRA. Or so I thought.
But upon further reflection, I realized that the only reason I personally knew about the issue is because of exactly the same group that had just informed my classmates: Invisible Children. As I mentioned in my earlier post summarizing some of the arguments from the Kony 2012 debate, Invisible Children came to UGA when I was an undergrad, and they showed a video with some of the same footage as that used in the most recent incarnation to inform us all about the LRA and Joseph Kony. But if they had not come to UGA or if I had not attended the viewing, it is perfectly plausible that I would never have heard about Kony and the LRA until this recent video did the rounds. This realization, more than anything, woke me up to the reality of the discourse on development, or, more accurately, the general lack of any discourse on development among the US public. This leads to my first point on why the video has done more good than harm.
1) It’s not every day a development issue goes viral.
- I already stated this, but I think it deserves repeating. The Kony 2012 video was unbelievably successful in spreading the news about a problem that does matter. And it was an issue that few people would have ever heard about otherwise. For all its critics, the video does a tremendous job of raising awareness. True, as I myself pointed out, it does not identify the root problems, it does not propose a plausible path for remedying those problems, and it does present a simplified version of reality. But as my professor pointed out, every NGO has its niche. Invisible Children has one too – the LRA and Joseph Kony – and it has clearly shown it has one particularly strong skill as well – raising awareness using social media. This explains why so much of IC’s money goes to awareness rather than on-the-ground efforts, which, in my opinion is fine. At least they are honest. And more importantly, their funds clearly effected results, which is more than can be said for many agencies who spend 90% or more of their money on the ground. Awareness is in important piece of the puzzle and should not be attacked just because it occurs in the US.
- More than anything, Kony 2012 has shown to the world just how much attention can be brought to an issue – any issue – if social media are properly harnessed. Even if you disagree with IC’s goals or methods, you have to acknowledge that this is probably the first time any issue related to development has been so high up on the minds of so many people at once. Such efforts do not solve the problem, but knowledge must come before action. And when something is so successful in spreading the news about an issue, critiques are quick to point out possible factual issues (as is extremely evident), hopefully leading to a net gain of important information on a worthy topic. Unfortunately, in this case the critiques seem to have gone so far as to possibly reverse any gains of knowledge achieved by the video, leaving instead a sense that those who want to do good in the world might as well just stop trying. Somehow I don’t think that will help.
2) Norms governing US foreign policy will only change one step at a time.
- Cole and others claim that it is hypocritical to call for interventions like this one when US foreign policy in general does so much harm: “If Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself.” Unless I’m mistaken, what the video called for is for Americans to evaluate American foreign policy, trying to push it toward an issue that has received little attention in the US – and by the same means that Cole suggests, namely, by putting pressure on our elected officials.
- But disregarding the slight confusion in Cole’s statement, I presume his intention was to promote reevaluation of the general principles of US foreign policy, but such a goal is simply not pragmatic. The norms of US foreign policy will not change overnight just because we want them to. The way we interact with the world has been built up over centuries and strongly reinforced by the ever-present desire to view the world in the anarchic, self-help way that realists have always done. If we are ever to break free of this mindset, it will only happen with slow, small steps, and this video calls for one such step. It calls for the US to redirect effort towards something that is based quite heavily on moral obligations (even if the depiction was slightly naïve), obligations which have been recognized by the rest of the world (the ICC’s number one most-wanted person is Joseph Kony). Most foreign policy experts will tell you that from a strategic perspective, sending troops to help catch Kony was not in the US’s interests as generally conceived – something else was operating here. Could it be the beginning of a new norm in foreign policy? Could the US actually make decisions based on what it can do to help others, legitimately, not to help itself?
Many will be skeptical that such an outcome is ever possible, saying instead that the world would be better off if the US did nothing abroad at all, but I’m optimistic. I think it is possible for major powers to do good in the world, though it is very difficult. Perhaps Libya was a good example? As I’ve argued in the past, I think the US should have acted in the cases of genocide in the 20th century, but it did not. If the norms changed such that acting on behalf of others became both normal and accepted, maybe the US (and other major powers) could actually become an undisputed force for good in the world. And maybe this video is a small step in that direction. Maybe.
Filed under: International Affairs, Politics and Current Events Tagged: awareness, Invisible Children, Kony 2012, LRA, norms, Teju Cole, US Foreign Policy 
