Ron Paul?

In his article “Changing the World in the Network Society”, Castells describes the patterns that he has found in networked social movements.  Kony 2012 shows many of these in its lifespan: networked in multiple forms, becoming a movement by occupying urban space, local and global at the same time, viral, non-violent, etc. Kony 2012 was not spontaneous in origin and leaderless, which were two important factors that Castells listed and are obviously connected.

I remember when this video first came out, and I remember watching it. I was moved by its images and music, but I did not act. I sat to the side to watch it all play out. It very successfully caught the attention of the entire country, but the majority of audiences were like me. Not many people showed up to plaster the town with Kony signs, especially in comparison to crowds that protested for Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street. Some have referred to this phenomenon as “slacktivism” or “clicktivism” because people think that they can change the world by just sending some unknown non-profit money and all the problems will be fixed. That’s not how it works.

Going back to the leader problem, this video has an obvious front man and one company that paid for its creation; this created a place for scrutiny. In leaderless movements, anyone who wants to question or criticize has to speak to all of the protestors at once. Like trying to cut off the head of a school of fish; you can disperse them for a second, but then they regroup as big as before. Movements are normally focused at changing what the government or rulers are doing, because of this they have “deep, spontaneous distrust… towards any form of power delegation.” This quickly showed in the Kony 2012 campaign. People wanted to know who Jason Russell and Invisible Children were, and many, if not most, people were automatically suspicious of him. Because of this attention and scrutiny, Russell had a mental break. With this breach in image, and the lack luster showing to poster the cities overnight, the movement trickled out of public interest.

At the end of his essay Castells sums it up really well, “Influence of social movements on politics and policies is largely dependent upon their potential contribution to the pre-set agendas of political actors.” So it seems to me that people like Ron Paul are more likely to make a change than Jason Russell. Yeah, some people see Ron Paul as a joke, but he is definitely a political actor. He can bring issues into elections that would not have been their without him. While Russell’s activism dwindles into nothing, Ron Paul will be here for years and years to come. Now, I’m not saying that I’m a proponent of Ron Paul, meaning that I vote for him or want him to be president. But I do wish that more people would do similar things. The two party system is struggling, and I believe that having more independents based in various communities’ ideals could really help to change the political geography of our country.