Kony 2012 is another name for baloney 101

Kony 2012 is another name for boloney 101. It’s a war-mongering scam appealing to people’s compassion & social conscience but relying on widespread ignorance of Africa, it’s people, & it’s politics. The dead giveaway is the tone of the campaign: hysterical urgency. The film maker thought he would revive a moribund film career on the backs of the people of Uganda by combining war propaganda with cinematic devices of melodrama.

Anyone who grew up in the McCarthy era is well familiar with the hysterical method since we were taught communists used mind control & put fluoride in the water to corrupt the morals of youth--at the same time as we were asked to give pennies for the “poor pagan babies of Africa”. Media uses the hysterical voice selectively so as not to wear out its value. It’s primary purpose is to whip up war fever & convince thousands of kids to enlist in the military to take out an evil, monstrous tyrant--under the guise of making the world safe for democracy. (It first struck a discordant note with me when the US was drumming up support for Israel in the 1967 war. It was so overplayed that a political naif could recognize the manipulation & sought out the truth behind the hysteria.)

Media also used the hysterical voice against women’s liberation when they baited feminists as lesbians too ugly to get a man; they used it against Black power activists, portraying them as armed & violent thugs rather than freedom fighters & they continue to use it against Black youth, portraying them as violent gang members engaged in drug dealing--using hysteria to railroad them into prison. The hysterical voice--used to sell salacious gossip in tabloid journalism & to sell war, racism, & misogyny in respectable journalism--has been given a new lease on life through the rapid-fire nature of social networking.

The Kony 2012 campaign is not about Joseph Kony & the Lord’s Resistance Army. By reliable accounts, Kony is no longer even operative in Uganda. It’s about promoting US war designs in Africa under the banner of humanitarianism. It’s about the US-NATO war in Libya, US drones bombing in Somalia, & US Marines deployed in Uganda. In short, it’s about US military intervention & occupation in Africa. And it’s about competition for Africa’s abundant natural resources being played out in the entire region of east Africa between the US, China, European, & other countries.

Why haven’t the humanitarian war-mongers--the celebrities, athletes & billionaires the film maker appeals to--ever spoken out against US wars in Iraq & Afghanistan? Why haven’t they denounced US bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia? Why have we never heard Clooney, Jolie, DeGeneres, Oprah, & this schmo, Jason Russell ever speak out about the plight of millions of Iraqi & Afghani refugees? Why do their tender hearts & indignation only beat in sync with US militarism & the Pentagon? And if US & UN concerns are humanitarian, why haven’t they been able to get food to millions of starving people all over the entire region of east Africa? Because believe me, they will have no problem moving in entire armies, or erecting air strips & military bases. Kony 2012 & Invisible Children may be a commercial bonanza in hoodies & posters but it is nothing but a war-mongering scam appealing to the best in people in order to make a handful of people rich at the expense of the people of Uganda. US out of Africa. (Photo of children of Uganda by Sue O’Connor)