By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Mass schoolgirl kidnapping in Nigeria — to tweet or not
to tweet? Is hashtagging one’s indignation about some outrage abroad an
exercise in moral narcissism or a worthy new way of standing up to bad guys?
The answer seems rather simple. It depends on whether you
have the power to do something about the outrage in question. If you do, as in
the case of the Obama administration watching Russia’s slow-motion
dismemberment of Ukraine, it’s simply embarrassing when the State Department
spokeswoman tweets the hashtag #UnitedForUkraine.
That is nothing but preening, a visual recapitulation of
her boss’s rhetorical fatuousness when he sternly warns that if the rape of
this U.S. friend continues, we are prepared to consider standing together with
the “international community” to decry such indecorous behavior — or some such.
When a superpower, with multiple means at its disposal,
reverts to rhetorical emptiness and hashtag activism, it has betrayed both its
impotence and its indifference. But if you’re an individual citizen without
power, if you lack access to media, drones, or special forces, then hashtagging
your solidarity with the aggrieved is a fine gesture and perhaps even more.
The mass tweet is, after all, just the cyber equivalent
of the mass petition. And people don’t sneer at petitions. Historically,
they’ve been a way for individuals, famous or anonymous, to make their views
known and, by weight of number, influence authorities who, in democratic
societies, might respond to such expressions of popular sentiment.
The hashtag campaign for the Nigerian girls — originated
in Nigeria by Nigerians — was meant to do exactly that: pressure the Nigerian
government to more seriously respond to the kidnapping. It has already had this
effect. And attention from abroad has helped magnify the pressure.
As always, however, we tend to romanticize the power of
the tweet. For a while, Twitter (like other social media) was seen as a
game-changer that would empower the masses and invert the age-old relationship
between the ruler and ruled.
This is mostly rubbish. Yes, the tweet improves upon the
mass petition because tweets contain an instant return address that allows for
mass mobilization. People can be summoned to gather together somewhere — Tahrir
Square, for example.
At which point, alas, the age-old dynamics of power take
hold. If the tyrant, brandishing guns and tanks, is cruel and determined
enough, your tweets will mean nothing. Try it at Tahrir or Tiananmen, in
Damascus or Tehran. They will shoot and torture you, then maybe even let you keep
your precious smartphone.
Michelle Obama’s tweeting #BringBackOurGirls for the
nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists poses an interesting
case of the semiofficial tweet. This was no exercise in vanity. She does advise
the man who does deploy the forces, and who in this case provided serious
concrete support — intelligence, reconnaissance, on-the-ground advisers — to
help fight the evil.
What was peculiar about her tweet, however, was its
uniqueness: It’s the first time she’s expressed herself so personally and
publicly about a foreign crisis. And she was nicely candid about the reason:
“In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters.”
The identity of the victims here — young, black, and
female — undoubtedly helps explain the worldwide reaction. Two months earlier,
Boko Haram had raided a Christian school and, after segregating the boys,
brutally murdered 59 of them. That elicited no hashtag campaign against Boko
Haram. Nor was there any through the previous years of Boko Haram depredations
— razing Christian churches, burning schools, killing infidels of all ages.
Nonetheless, selective outrage is not necessarily
hypocrisy. There are a million good causes in the world, and one cannot be
devoted to all of them. People naturally gravitate to those closest to their
heart. Thus last week’s unlikely sight: a group of congresswomen holding a news
conference demanding immediate U.S. action — including the possible use of
drones — against Boko Haram.
These were members, like Sheila Jackson Lee, not
heretofore known for hawkish anti-jihadist sentiments. No matter. People find
their own causes. Their sincerity is to be credited and their commitment
welcomed.
The American post-9/11 response to murderous jihadism has
often been characterized, not least by our own president, as both excessive and
morally suspect. There is a palpable weariness with the entire enterprise.
Good, therefore, that new constituencies for whom jihadism and imposed shariah
law ranked low among their urgent concerns should now be awakening to the
principal barbarism of our time.
Trending now (once again): anti-jihadism, a.k.a. the War
on Terror.
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