I’ve been playing the “who’s the biggest terrorist” game for years. It’s particularly fun with Americans, and the most fun with American Christians. You can see their mind going through the options – Saddam, Osama, the Taliban? They’re not sure which one, but they know it’s one of those Arab Muslim types.
Except it’s not. This is the fun part – introducing them to Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army, and watching the realisation dawn that there are people who do bad things in the name of Christianity too, and they’re worse than the Muslims. If the world was just, the War on Terror would be fought in Central Africa, and everyone wearing a crucifix targeted by the overzealous officials at US airports.
But this game’s not going to be fun anymore. As of Tuesday morning, Joseph Kony has finally entered the consciousness (and the conscience) of the western world, thanks to a slick piece of viral marketing from the Invisible Children campaign. If you have any social media presence whatsoever you’ll know what I’m talking about: the over 4-million YouTube views of the Kony 2012 video, the “shares” on Facebook from even your most apolitical friends, the six Kony-related hashtags trending in Twitter’s worldwide Top 10. Finally, Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army have gone mainstream.
And they’ve earned it. There is some debate about the figures, so let’s keep it general, but the LRA have done some terrible things. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by their misdeeds, whether through killings, child conscription, sex slavery, rape, maiming and displacement. Al-Qaeda can only dream of this kind of influence. There’s some evil stuff going on in central Africa, and it needs to stop.
http://dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/ ... elp-anyone