By JONATHAN GURWITZ
By JONATHAN GURWITZ
New York Times News Service
Parents of teenagers have likely observed an unlikely topic of discussion on the lips — or the thumbs — of their children in recent weeks.
Across the nation, young people are talking about Joseph Kony. Kony is not a singer. He is not an actor or comedian. He is not a superstar athlete. He’s a megalomaniac, the leader of a violent cult, the Lord’s Resistance Army, which for 26 years has waged a campaign of terror across five countries in Central and Eastern Africa.
“What distinguishes Kony and the LRA in the annals of depravity,” I wrote in an editorial piece in 2005, “is the abuse of children.” At the time, UNICEF estimated the LRA had abducted more than 20,000 children, frequently dragging them away from their murdered parents and siblings. “Boys and girls, often as young as 8 and 9, are put to work as soldiers and sex slaves.”
Kony has continued to abduct, rape and murder in international obscurity. But now, thanks to a brilliant 30-minute video produced by filmmaker Jason Russell, a campaign to stop Kony and his atrocities has become a viral sensation.
Video analytics firm Visible Measures reported last week that “Kony 2012,” uploaded to YouTube on March 5, had racked up more than 112 million views, putting it past the 100 million threshold faster than any other video — faster than Lady Gaga, “Charlie Bit My Finger” or dancing cats.
“Kony 2012” is slickly produced, but it is also lethally serious. Russell tells the story of one of Kony’s victims, Jacob Acaye. In one heart-wrenching scene in which the teen describes his brother’s murder during an LRA raid on his village, Jacob expresses his desire to have his own life ended.
Russell has his detractors. “Kony 2012” doesn’t meet the same standards for depth and accuracy as an episode of PBS “Frontline.” His narrative simplifies an ugly conflict in which some of the government forces fighting against Kony and the LRA are also guilty of human rights abuses.
Charity Navigator — the independent evaluator that rates charities — gives Invisible Children, the non-profit organization behind “Kony 2012,” somewhat lower marks than similar charitable groups receive. And simply watching “Kony 2012” can easily be branded as an example of “slacktivism,” a feel-good measure that has no practical impact.
Still, the goal of “Kony 2012” is to mobilize public opinion. With the tools of social media, a well-designed marketing campaign and a lot of hard work, Russell has found a sort of Holy Grail of humanitarian activism.
And there’s good reason to believe that Russell’s advocacy leading up to “Kony 2012” has had a practical effect in Washington — in October, President Obama deployed 100 U.S. military advisers to assist African governments in the fight against the LRA and in the effort to capture or kill Kony.
The goal of Invisible Children is to make the invisible visible. In six days, 112 million views. My heart soars when I hear my children and their friends discussing, without the prompting of an adult, a long-forgotten humanitarian problem half-way around the world.
My heart sinks when I consider how many people may have been slaughtered in Rwanda for wont of YouTube and Facebook, how the victims of genocide in Darfur — about whom I have written more than 50 columns in whole or in part since 2004 — might have benefited from the creative application of someone like Russell, and how many other instances of human cruelty remain invisible to the digital eye.
The motto of “Kony 2012” is, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
The tragedy is that it didn’t arrive sooner and in more places.