Kony 2012 director Jason Russell’s fifteen minutes are almost up, so I thought I would get my thoughts on record before he is hopelessly passé.
Most commentary has focused on Joseph Kony and Jason Russell themselves. This is understandable, since Kony is a vibrant cannibal statesman and Russell is an obvious magnet for bullying.
But I want to begin with some comments on the movie. Kony 2012, which was uploaded to YouTube on March 5th, is excellent propaganda — albeit in service of a stupid aim — and Jason Russell, aged 33, is a highly talented filmmaker. (Kony 2012 is the tenth video he has made about Kony.)
Now before you object, we have to remember that this documentary is directed at Americans — at American ’tards to be precise. Thus everything smarmy, annoying, and pretentious in the video is not just Jason Russell being Jason Russell. It is there because it is carefully calculated to appeal to ’tards. And it does. Over 84 million of them, and counting — nipping at the heels of that talking dog video:
On Russell’s posters, Kony’s face appears alongside the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Hitler. Why not Stalin and Mao? Because the average American would not recognize either of them. Beyond that, the purpose of the video is, in effect, to start a war with Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, and the United States has fought wars against Bin Laden and Hitler. So it makes perfect sense.
Everything about this video is calculated to appeal to the idealism of whites. Undergirding white idealism is an element of grandiosity. The old version of white idealism — the imperialistic, crusading “white man’s burden” version — was based on frank expressions of white pride and supremacism. Whites felt entitled to improve non-whites because we looked down on them and wanted to raise them up to our level, and if that meant invading and colonizing their lands and supplanting their religions and cultures, then so be it.
The modern version of white idealism on display in Kony 2012 is premised on white guilt and self-hatred, but it is equally supremacist and grandiose, for if one is guilty of everything, then one is responsible for everything, i.e., one can do anything. Every time one pities another, one secretly congratulates oneself for being superior. Every time one blames one’s race for the world’s woes, one slyly congratulates oneself as being part of the only people who really matter, the only real agents of history. Everybody else is just along for the ride.
If whites are responsible for black crime, wars, cannibalism, corruption, and chaos, that means that blacks are not responsible. They are not agents. The all-powerful white man has somehow turned them into zombies hell-bent on self-destruction. Proclaiming oneself a Christ figure and offering to suffer for the sins of others is obviously pretentious. But declaring oneself a race of devils and doing penance for the sins one has caused others to commit is equally pretentious. And the whole game is given away when the white devils’ penance consists of invading Africa all over again.
Kony 2012 appeals to white grandiosity on all sorts of levels, not just the explicit message. Three of the more subtle ways of inflating the ego of the viewer are the ideas of exceptionalism, of being on the “cutting edge” of progress, and of “thinking globally.”
The exceptionalism of this video is ludicrous, but nothing flatters the American ’tard more deeply than the idea that he is engaged in something utterly unique and unprecedented. We are told, for instance, that today, unlike every previous generation, our actions will shape the course of history for subsequent generations. (That’s the difference between us and them.) We are told that if Americans commit troops to finding Joseph Kony, this will be the first time in American history that we have sent troops abroad on a moral crusade unrelated to calculations of national and economic interests. I kid you not.
The idea of progress is enormously flattering to the ego, for it basically offers us the opportunity to look down upon Plato and Aristotle, Dante and Goethe, Kepler and Newton, Bach and Wagner simply because we were born after them and have been raised to a higher level of civilization by the work of all our forebears. And of course, we can always raise ourselves to an even higher level than “those people” (our knuckle-dragging peers) by integrating our lives with the “cutting edge” of technology, like Facebook and Twitter. Early on in the film, Russell informs us portentously that there are more people on Facebook than there were alive on the planet 200 years ago. Later, we are also informed that Facebook and Twitter have “changed everything” by allowing “the people” to shape policy directly, bypassing the moneyed interests and establishment media. Moral superiority is only a free Facebook and Twitter account away.
The idea of “thinking globally” is underscored from the very beginning. This movie does not begin with the Big Bang, but it does start out in the solar system. Then we see our planet, a blue oasis of life in the black desert of space. We see a baby being born. All of us begin this way, Russell informs us. And all of us matter. Throughout the movie, Russell moves masterfully from the global to the particular. One graphic shows the faces, in color, of two people who know about Kony’s crimes against the backdrop of thousands of black and white images of the ignorant. As the images recede, they form a globe. Later, we see a vast sea of faces in color. That’s progress! Another graphic illustrates the thousands of victims of Joseph Kony. Then it zooms in on the face of one child, whom we have already met. It is seductive. We see the big picture. We see ourselves as the kind of people who see the big picture. Yet we never lose sight of each precious individual. That’s just the kind of people we are. We see the universe in every grain of sand.
And now that we have achieved enlightenment, we are told what to do. We need to Tweet Oprah, Ryan Seacrest, and other members of the Hollywood Brain Trust to support sending US troops to Uganda. We need to donate a few dollars to Invisible Children ($10 million were donated last year), for which we will receive an Action Kit: a box including two Kony 2012 bracelets, as well as posters, stickers, yard signs, and flyers designed to raise awareness of Kony. The bracelets have serial numbers. Enter your number into a website, and one has an account. One can geo-tag one’s posters and flyers with one’s phone and track one’s impact in real time. The goal of the campaign is to change the conversation of the culture by making Jospeh Kony famous. This campaign will culminate on April 20th, with the Cover the Night initiative, in which Russell’s followers will blanket the world with Kony propaganda. (I hope the kit contains information on how the get bailed out of jail on the morning of April 21st.) The video ends with three things the viewer can do right away, from the comfort of his own keyboard.
The reactionary in me wants to sneer and poke fun at all this, but the revolutionary in me is taking notes. Because this is the kind of work that White Nationalists should be doing. Imagine if the South Africa Project, which has done excellent work raising awareness of anti-white genocide in South Africa, were to grow into something like Russell’s Invisible Children charity, which spent nearly $9 million last year on its projects, including the Kony 2012 video. And Invisible Children is just one of many charities funneling aid into the black hole of Africa.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with thinking globally, if one really is thinking. And there’s nothing wrong with idealism, provided one has the right ideas. The problem with Invisible Children and every other pro-black charity is that they are premised on massive moral, political, and demographic delusions. Listening to Jason Russell, you would think that whites run the world and are essentially invulnerable, while Africans are an endangered species.
But the truth is that whites do not run the world. We do not even run our own countries. We are ruled by Jews who are promoting low white fertility, racial miscegenation, and race-replacement immigration by fast-breeding non-whites as a deliberate policy of anti-white genocide. As the global white population is in demographic decline, Africans cannot slaughter and eat one another fast enough to prevent their populations from doubling every few decades.
Jews, moreover, are masters at manipulating the altruism and idealism of people like Jason Russell into sacrificing white genetic interests to non-whites, although such behavior also has rather deep roots in white history and psychology. In the United States, for instance, Jews had little or no role in the abolition of slavery, but they played a large role in the Civil Rights movement, which was grafted onto the indigenous stock of abolitionism even as it was used to further Jewish ethnic interests.
As for taking sides in African civil wars: Africa is filled with savage warlords who commit horrifying atrocities. It is only natural to feel sympathy for the victims of such atrocities. But is it really logical to conclude that the victims are fundamentally morally different from their persecutors? If they were stronger, would the victims treat their persecutors with any more humanity? Would they not also rape, torture, mutilate, slaughter, and cannibalize their enemies in the grand African fashion? If this is the case, then why take sides in their conflicts? And why, of all things, bring them here and resettle them as refugees? That’s just asking for trouble.
In the specific case of Joseph Kony, sending US military advisers to Uganda de facto strengthens the existing Ugandan government of Yoweri Museveni, who also uses child soldiers and has been guilty of torture and repression since assuming office in 1986. Joseph Kony, moreover, has not been seen in Uganda since 2006, which raises the question of whether Invisible Children, like so many other charities, has long outlived its usefulness.
On March 15th, Jason Russell was picked up by police in Southern California and taken to a psychiatric ward for observation. As Jim Goad put it so cattily:
several witnesses reported seeing a naked man mincing and flitting around the street while wagging his finger like a disapproving Mick Jagger. He was reportedly screaming at passersby, pounding his fists on the pavement, interfering with traffic, and vandalizing cars. According to at least one witness, Russell was openly masturbating in the warm California sun. At press time, it remains unclear whether the alleged masturbation and car-vandalizing were separate incidents or were instead fused into one very weird act of vehicular sexual assault
But why take Goad’s word for it? See for yourself. (The naughty bits are tastefully blurred.)
Apparently, the claim of masturbation was unfounded. In the clip, Russell can be heard ranting about the devil. His wife Danica and a spokesman for Invisible Children claim that he suffered a psychotic break induced by stress, as well as malnutrition and dehydration. Russell does not live in an African refugee camp, so why was he starving and dehydrated? He does say in his Invisible Children bio that he is in training for an “Iron Man” competition, so perhaps that explains it.
Russell’s ego, however, seems to be made of weaker stuff. Apparently, he had been upset by criticism directed at his film and at him personally. Danica Russell claims that “because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal, and Jason took them very hard.” He is expected to remain hospitalized for a while. I wish him well and implore his doctors not to let him read Jim Goad’s piece, or he might never recover.
Everything about Jason Russell’s persona makes men want to corner him in the locker room and give him a wedgie. This is how Russell answered the question “Who am I?”
I am a rebel soul: dream evangelist. I am obsessed with people. I tell stories by making inspiring movies that move people’s emotions, and then I take those emotions and transform them into action. My middle name is Radical. I married my best friend. We have known each other since we were six and seven. I have a three-year-old boy named Gavin Danger & a one-year-old girl named Everley Darling. I truly believe I am the luckiest person on earth because of my family, friends and the ability to go to a dream factory every day for work.
He also says, “If Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Bono had a baby, I would be that baby.” Naturally, his favorite superhero is Peter Pan.
Russell certainly gives off a narcissistic vibe, as do most theater people. He gives himself and his son Gavin a lot of screen time in Kony 2012, which I think is effective — if a bit cloying. But I can see how people interpret it as a giant ego trip, which fits in with the underlying grandiosity of his message.
Russell is also good-looking, and he knows it, judging from his constantly changing hair styles and colors. He dresses like a metrosexual hipster. His speech is fey and sibilant, and he loves musicals. Naturally, he’s being teased as a fag, but he’s probably not gay. He’s just “modern.” Yes, he minces and prances and wags his finger like Mick Jagger. But Mick isn’t gay either. He’s just English.
Russell seems congenitally liberal and PC, but he is actually an Evangelical Christian, which produces the same ethomasochistic behavior as secular liberalism, although the operating system is slightly different. The two most un-PC — and thus probably the most honest — statements he has made is that he finds pregnant women sexy and wants to have nine more kids with his wife.
What, then, could explain Russell’s breakdown? I have a theory that actually explains his effeminate behavior as well as a lot of other things, such as his interest in Africa, his talent at making propaganda films, the choreographed crowd scenes from Kony 2012, and even his choice of April 20th (Hitler’s birthday) for the Cover the Night vandalism spree: there really is a woman trapped in Jason Russell’s body and struggling to get out, and her name is Leni Riefenstahl.
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22 comments
You are very bad. This poor idealist man has turned into a Nazi woman? Well, okay, there is hope for me yet. Do you think it was organic or mechanical? I do not think I am drunk, but I cannot stop laughing. I am going to hell for sure now.
My personal theory is spiritual possession. Leni’s ghost went to Africa to be among the Nuba, and when she encountered Russell on one of his visits . . . well, the stronger personality dominated the weaker one.
This is a very good analysis. This thing is somewhat fascinating, like a car crash maybe. It might also be a major test run or a social experiment how campaigns like this can be orchestrated in the future. I do not think that this one will have real consequences, and maybe they chose an already bygone conflict and villain precisely for that reason. But the day might come when real bullets will be used in that “Kony 2012” style way.
These fist-stretching stills are so embarrassing… just look at the faces of these puppy sheep (seems like only young people were cast for these). That reminds me of “The Wave”, the book kids in school read so that all this “shall never happen again”. And yes, the flattering factor of the video is high: it flatters idiots in following, but I guess that is what democracy is about in general.
I would hesitate to call Russel’s work “masterful”, but he certainly knows how to effectively get his point across, even a very stupid one. That makes it so easy to analyze the underlying ideology. Sometimes “Kony 2012” looks like a satire on this sort of rhetorics and propaganda, like its own self-parody, taken from the next Alex Kurtagic novel or so.
It is important that Greg points out the inherent condescence of White liberal agendas. It is one the screaming contradictions and blind spots of the left. From their pov non-white people don’t seem to have a responsibility or capability of their own. They need protection and guidance from the superior Whites that they are. All this works like Opium to give White people the illusion they are still in charge, while in fact they are losing ground every minute.
It is really amusing in a way how this sort of universalism and idealism appeals to Whites a great deal, even in a form as stupid as this. Give them a chance to play the global do-gooder, and they will follow en masse. In all their decadence they are still what they always were. Western selfhate is somewhat a reversal of the same drives that made the West great, a kind of inverse imperialism…
Thanks for your kind words.
Fantastic article. LOL, he’s certainly as pretty as Leni.
“The modern version of white idealism on display in Kony 2012 is premised on white guilt and self-hatred, but it is equally supremacist and grandiose, for if one is guilty of everything, then one is responsible for everything, i.e., one can do anything. Every time one pities another, one secretly congratulates oneself for being superior. Every time one blames one’s race for the world’s woes, one slyly congratulates oneself as being part of the only people who really matter, the only real agents of history. Everybody else is just along for the ride.”
So well said. I’ve often thought this, but was never able to articulate it as well as you did. Whites think whites are very special. The cause and the solution to all the problems of the world. God complex, anyone? Geez…God AND Devil….
I haven’t watched it and don’t plan to. When the Hollywood A-list supports it, that’s all I need to know. By definition, working toward the objective will be worthless at best and evil at worst. The picture of Kony next to bin Laden and Hitler in addition to being laughable for its stupidity is scary, scary because it is hard to believe that there millions of people will see that poster and be influenced by it.
On an related note, I occasionally read a Web site called Vigilant Citizen. The author writes about pop culture, music, Hollywood, Masonism, the Illuminati and the occult. While I don’t believe in any literal Illuminati or literal occult war, I still find the author’s columns interesting.
At any rate, the Vigilant Citizen author suggests that Kony 2012 is an experiment in creating an completely artificial, controlled and trackable mass movement. He suggests the goal is to make the unwashed masses perceive and believe they are participating in a spontaneous “bottom up” mass movement for change when the reality is that Kony 2012 they are being manipulated by people who need an excuse to send a US military presence to Africa.
http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/kony-2012-state-propaganda-for-a-new-generation/
Thanks for the reference.
5th Generation warfare maybe?
Excellent article.
Thanks
I believe the effects of LSD can explain Russell’s behavior. I’ve witnessed two people ingest too much of the drug, for whatever reason they both felt an intense need to undress; one actually started masturbating. Ultimately, on both occasions, the individuals had to be restrained until the drug waned. I’ve also heard of this happening through word-of-mouth.
It’s a bizarre sight to behold, indeed.
It is far more likely to be a case of spiritual possession.
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Mighty in blockquote:
Mighty has it right; this is PERFECT 5G warfare, with marketing skills any political campaign director would die for. This brings new levels of sophistication to political marketing, and it is just a matter of time before such is done for “White Privilege.”
Tracking bracelets! Talk about how easy it is to have a populace ADOPT tracking technology.
THIS is how cults are created.
Brilliant.
There must be much more to this organization than this man, and it would be educational to see who they are, and what their plans are for us.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
Funny, I was just thinking, how “Triumph in the Will” starts in the sky, above the clouds, just as “Kony 2012” starts in space…
Great article Greg. Thanks.
I’ve always seen liberals as the true white supremacists – they would never have the honesty (not strange, since ‘living the lie’ is an necessary condition of being ‘liberal’) to admit that, when asked just who everyone is supposed to be equal to, the true answer is, “Well, to enlightened me, of course”. Probably, because I am a white South African and ‘know’, the ultimate expression of this madness will always be the ‘forgiveness’ offered to the 4 proto-human killers of their starry-eyed liberal daughter by Amy Biehl’s parents. Heart of darkness stuff.
Well the main criticism of Koney 2012 are accusations that it is a globalist front using Koney as a bogeyman for US intervention in Uganda where huge oil deposits were found in 2010 with AFRICOM further seeking to loot Africa and cause civil strife to stop Chinese economic expansion in the continent and with the Islamist organisation in oil rich Nigeria Boko Haram.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/03/21/joseph-kony-more-africom-wars-over-oil/
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Blast-Hits-Nigeria-Police-Headquarters-123996399.html
“On Russell’s posters, Kony’s face appears alongside the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Hitler. Why not Stalin and Mao? Because the average American would not recognize either of them. Beyond that, the purpose of the video is, in effect, to start a war with Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, and the United States has fought wars against Bin Laden and Hitler. So it makes perfect sense.”.
I think the average American knows about Stalin or Mao with Stalin and Mao references constantly levelled at Obama but are seen as using internal suppression to keep their regional integrity intact while Hitler and the Nazi regime are seen as launching expansionist war of aggression based on German racial theology which leads to genocide culminating in the Holocaust or Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, etc.
Your insights are deeper than mine. I take pride in discovering patterns that most people miss, but the Russell/Riefenstahl comparison is pure gold! I comment on this and link to it here:
Oh, No! — Another Post on Kony 2012!
It strikes the viewer how ‘SWPL’ this video feels. That is to say, it is clearly meant to appeal to Whites. And despite apparently-being about Blacks, it actually has nothing to do with them.
Most reading this are probably aware of the novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ (published circa 1900). It has always been lauded as great literature, but began to be criticized by anti-White commentators in the later 20th century as ‘racist’, because — despite being set in the Congo — it has nothing to do with Blacks. The Blacks depicted, and there are many, are all props, nothing more. I don’t know if a single Black even speaks in the story. The main characters are all Whites, who use the Blacks for their own aims.
In other words, stop the presses on the next “Stuff White People Like” book. A featured entry about Jason Russell is…just dying to be written.
Greg Johnson is correct about so much in this well-crafted article. KONY is, of course, a transparent attempt to whip up of Righteous-Cause frenzy, and is certainly Progress propaganda (“a ham-handed endorsement of Facebook” to that effect).
This kind of thing is lapped up by persons of European ancestry, especially NW-European ancestry. Throughout all recorded history, this kind of idealism has indisputably been a source of much European greatness. Indeed, if you are reading these words right now, that same Righteous-Cause-ism most probably animates you — manifested differently, of course. But the water is still being drawn from the same spring.
(That is why I confess to being a little energized by the video — not for any of the reasons ostensibly-intended, but because it is a clear display of European genius, and even European spirit, as Greg Johnson suggests.)
I suppose what I mean to say is Russell is only an ‘enemy’ in that he was socialized to idolize Nonwhites, to revere Dr.King, to believe in the Holocaust, and so forth. In different conditions, Russell would use his talents for…other aims. (Think what a Jason Russell could do if he read Big-H Revisionist literature with half an open mind — though that would certainly end his career, so he might think better of it).
Yes, Russell is obviously talented and from good stock, but like most people, he is not an independent thinker. Like many evangelicals, moreover, he is only willing to swim against the culture on narrowly circumscribed religious issues, and he embraces the rest of modern America pretty much uncritically, almost by way of compensation. In a healthy society, he would be devoting his life to making documentaries on the plight of white farmers in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
I will opt for the pedestrian explanation, it went to his head. He was basking in the limelight, naked in the streets on a sunny afternoon. It is interesting, before Kony 2012, before Beatle mania, there was Nazi Germany.
The Konies just need to lower their arms a couple degrees, and that Roman salute will just right. Solid!
Brilliant, accurate, true and succinct!
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