Kony 2012: Political Activism for $30

‘Humanity’s greatest desire is to belong and connect.’ These are some of the first words that narrator Jason Russell speaks in Invisible Children’s record-breaking viral video Kony 2012. They are a reference to the capacity of technology and social media to bring us closer together by allowing us to share information. The explicit message of the film is that linking to videos, liking statuses and tweeting hashtags constitute a new form of political activism by spreading awareness of campaigns and uniting people in support.

But, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the immediate reaction to the release of Kony 2012 was not one of connection but of division. The internet was split into two camps: one enthusiastically supportive of Invisible Children’s campaign, and one critical of the calls for US military intervention, the film’s lack of context surrounding the war in Uganda and it’s portrayal of Ugandans as without power or agency.

Put another way, one camp bought (figuratively or literally) what Kony 2012 was selling, and one didn’t. Has the campaign given the former the sense of connection and belonging that Russell claims social media can provide? It’s difficult to see how because what supporters of the campaign share is a basic human reaction of shock and sadness at the footage of Jacob Acaye, a Ugandan boy abducted by Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, talking about his experience – a reaction they share with just about everyone, non-supporters included. So what else defines Kony 2012 supporters as a group? They’ve all watched and shared the video, bought $30 Action Kits or donated to Invisible Children.

Kony 2012 and Invisible Children’s various other products are consumed by a network of isolated individuals who believe they are taking part in a collective act of political protest. And, as well as employing the familiar ‘soothe some guilt, donate money’ approach used by many charities, the movie deliberately exploits this desire to belong to a movement with a common cause. ‘The fight has led me here, to this movie you’re watching, because that promise is not just about Jacob or me, it’s also about you,’ Russell claims about a promise he made to help Acaye. This direct address to the viewer establishes the illusion of a community that we can join, as do the images of thousands of young Americans running around the streets in Kony 2012 t-shirts, putting up campaign posters.

Will Invisible Children’s ‘Cover the Night’ event, planned for 20^th April, actually provide the sense of community sold by the movie by bringing the Kony 2012 campaign into the physical spaces of cities? Russell narrates:

‘This is the day when we will meet at sundown, and blanket every street in every city ‘til the sun comes up. We will be smart and we will be thorough. The rest of the world will go to bed Friday night and wake up to hundreds of thousands of posters demanding justice on every corner.’

This part of the video very carefully constructs a spectacle of activism. As a dubstep track plays in the background, we see young people sprinting through the streets, throwing flyers off buildings, unfurling huge banners and one guy staring at himself moodily in the mirror, pulling a red bandana over a black face-painted nose and mouth. These images draw on a lineage of representations of protest, from photographs of students throwing flyers from the windows of the Sorbonne during the May 1968 protests to more recent news footage of black-bloc anarchists clashing with riot police on anti-cuts marches. In short, ‘Cover the Night’ is advertised as an exciting, collective act of subversive protest.

But in order to take part you need to have bought an Action Kit or donated money to Invisible Children. What looked like collective activism is exposed as coordinated consumption. The people meeting that night to put up the posters they’ve bought may feel a sense of connection, but perhaps only in the way that, say, a Mazda driver might feel towards other attendees at a Mazda convention. Blanketing the streets with branded posters therefore seems less like a political act and more like free advertising for Invisible Children. ‘We are making Kony world news by redefining the propaganda we see all day, every day that dictates who and what we pay attention to,’ Russell says of the campaign. In reality, Kony 2012 posters are not that different to the billboards of Coke, Dior and Mercedes-Benz adverts shown in the video.

That what supporters of Kony 2012 share is that they’ve bought Invisible Children’s products and not much else says something about the larger purpose of the charity and its campaign. Grant Oyston, on his Visible Children blog, criticizes the charity’s finances, arguing that more goes towards ‘awareness programs’ (including film-making) than directly to Uganda. He also claims that a lot of what is sent to Africa is used to fund the Ugandan military, itself accused of similar human rights abuses to the LRA. And it has been pointed out that the problem with using a military assault to arrest a man notorious for abducting children and forcing them to become soldiers is that he is probably guarded by children whose lives may be put at risk.

The minimum of $15 million already raised from selling Action Kits is likely to go on making the next Invisible Children movie and funding an approach that may exacerbate a volatile situation, while failing to address many of the problems facing children in northern Uganda today, such as unemployment, prostitution and AIDS. Meanwhile, young westerners can carry on buying things to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves.