Tag: Joseph Kony

The Millennial Left as a Moment in Internet History

There have been many interesting books and articles recently about the demise of the millennial left. Here are just a few. I like this material–I think we could do with some more reflection about everything that’s gone wrong over the past ten years. I do, however, think there’s something that has been under-emphasized in these stories. This something is the internet. The millennial left existed at a distinctive moment in internet history. When that moment ended, the millennial left ended with it.

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Dead Baby Interventionism

Lately I’ve been noticing a new social networking trend–the tendency for people who are passionate about a given humanitarian crisis (examples include Syria, drones in Pakistan, Kony in the Congo–surprisingly, not Mali) to post pictures of various dead, injured, or disfigured babies or children who purportedly were killed, injured, or disfigured over the course of their respective conflicts. Accompanying the pictures is usually some caption designed to engender empathy (one such example I recall was “imagine if this were your child”). This strikes me as somewhat simplistic. Not much critical thought is being given to what the responsibilities of developed states are. Instead, the entire discussion is being reduced to “children are dying, this is bad, developed states can stop bad things, developed states should stop this”. So today I’d like to think about it a little bit deeper than that.

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