Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things) [View all]

[cbayer]

I just heard the author interviewed and it was very interesting.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things



Thanks to an incredibly effective social media effort, #StopKony is trending on Twitter today. The campaign coincides with a new awareness-raising documentary by the group Invisible Children. Former FP intern Michael Wilkerson, now a freelance journalist and Ph.D. candidate at Oxford -- who has lived and reported from Uganda -- contributed this guest post on the campaign. -JK

By Michael Wilkerson:

"Joseph Kony is basically Adolf Hitler. He has an army of 30 000 mindless children who slaughter innocent people in Uganda."

Have you seen something like that fly across your Twitter or Facebook feed today? Or perhaps this?:

"#TweetToSave the Invisible Children of Uganda! #Kony2012 Make Joseph Kony Famous!!"

"Kony 2012," a video posted by advocacy group Invisible Children to raise awareness about the pernicious evil of Lord's Risistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony, has already been viewed over 8 million times on Vimeo and more than 9 million times on YouTube (and surely more by the time you read this) since its release this week.

It would be great to get rid of Kony. He and his forces have left a path of abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years. But let's get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn't been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.

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