On April 20, Invisible Children will hold a worldwide rally to draw attention to murderous Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) founder Joseph Kony. The event is called “Cover the Night,” but when one looks a bit closer at the shady right wing extremists this group cavorts with, a more appropriate name might be “Invisible Agenda: Covering Up The Theocratic Nightmare.”
Before we go any further, I want to state that I agree with the ostensible goal of Invisible Children and their viral video KONY 2012, which is the incarceration or elimination of the LRA’s Kony. However, I wonder, based on their disturbing associations, if Invisible Children is truly anti-Kony or is it a propaganda campaign designed to bolster the reign of Uganda’s dictator Yoweri Museveni?
The Ugandan strongman is the point person for the American-based Fellowship (aka The Family), which is a secretive group of powerful Christian zealots who want to take over the world. This organization is largely blamed for the introduction of Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
At least two of Invisible Children’s programs have involved collaboration with The Fellowship and its members. By 2007, Invisible Children was described by both Fellowship and Invisible Children staffers as having partially merged its developing school and mentoring programs in Uganda with The Fellowship’s Ugandan educational and leadership training system, which works to raise up a cadre of elite Jesus-centered leaders who will transform their nation along “Biblical” lines – with one apparent objective being the categorical elimination of homosexuality.
Ugandan Fellowship member Paul Lukwiya, now Education Director for The Fellowship’s Ugandan leadership training schools, has supervised the programs of both groups. In Spring 2007 – little more than a year and a half after the Invisible Children nonprofit was launched – Paul Lukwiya is reported to have traveled with IC members to the United States, where he spoke before an April 28, 2007 Invisible Children Seattle rally.
We also know that Invisible Children is funded by the U.S.-based National Christian Foundation (NCF), which has also provided significant funds to fanatical groups deeply tied to the persecution of LGBT people in Uganda.
Furthermore, at a 2005 Christian conference in San Antonio, Invisible Children’s co-founder Jason Russell called his organization a “Trojan Horse” designed to infiltrate secular institutions and surreptitiously promote his group’s version of Christian fundamentalism.
When one connects the dots, there are two looming questions that Invisible Children’s leaders have yet to answer: Why are they claiming to he humanitarians yet kissing up to the Ugandan potentate and paling around with his Fellowship enablers? Is Invisible Children a group of genuine idealists or a cabal of ideologues producing propaganda to strengthen Museveni’s rule so fundamentalist Christians can continue to lord over Uganda?
Invisible Children’s ties to Museveni are unacceptable. It is like they are hanging out with Bigfoot and then pointing to the Creature from the Black Lagoon and yelling “Monster!” Well, what about the murderous and undemocratic monster you are already with?
For example, last September Ugandan police forced twenty thousand Ugandans from their homes, burning them to the ground and accidentally burning one child to death.
In some ways the attention to Kony feels like a misdirection play. In drug parlance, it is as if Museveni is the Kingpin and the cartel is The Fellowship. Except instead of drugs, Museveni is trafficking in political power and the American Evangelicals are peddling homophobic religious doctrine. In this paradigm, Kony is the violent street corner dealer who is terrorizing the neighborhood.
Yes, Kony needs to be taken off the street corner. But is it not odd that friends of the kingpin are making movies to have people focus on a thug running around the remotest areas of the bush with only 250 soldiers? To put this in perspective, there are 120,000 gang members in Los Angeles County. Sure, Kony is awful, but compared to the present day damage done at the hands of the Ugandan ruler, Kony is a mere sideshow, albeit a violent one.
To restore its waning credibility, Invisible Children should immediately cut ties with the dictator and the corrupted Fellowship. As long Invisible Children is linked to human rights violators, its claims to be humanitarian will be suspect.
I was EXTREMELY resistant to questioning IC. I tend to overlook the warts on programs that benefit kids. However, at this point I have concluded that IC is a front to prop up the anti-gay Ugandan regime. Moreover, I don’t think that Jason Russell was an innocent dupe.
Wayne has done a remarkable job in connecting the dots!
As an aside, when I first saw Russell doing an interview, I was pretty sure that he is gay. Who knows? Maybe we will get a rational explanation for his bizarre behavior recently.
off topic — this isn’t ‘news’ to us, but now we have proof:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/07/conservative-politics-low-effort-thinking_n_1410448.html?ref=mostpopular
David Hart, you did, in fact, go so far as to repeatedly defend IC in the thread following the first story TWO published about evidence against them, and went so far as to say that because better-known mainstream charities also accepted donations from hate groups that meant that it was okay for all of them to do so — when, in fact, it is not okay for any of them to do so, whether they directly collaborate with hate groups or not. I’m glad to see you’ve changed your mind about IC, anyway.
“Programs that benefit kids” not only should not be above scrutiny, they must be subjected to the greatest scrutiny of all. Good for TWO for picking up this story and running with it.
And Russell is gay in the same way Liberace was, which is to say: obviously, definitely and extremely.
@justme – I did in fact defend IC. I was wrong. I said so above and I say so now.
I failed by not properly analyzing other available evidence. Thus I was guilty of selective observation. I am extremely adroit at analyzing 990 forms and should have employed more intellectual curiosity.
And, yes, programs that assist children should be subjected to heightened scrutiny.
A few years ago, I was thinking about a project that would create a database of not-for-profit transactions. Right now we can look at a non-profit organization and see who they are giving money TO. It would be great if we could do the reverse and see the 501(c)x’s they were getting money FROM. The problem is that it is just too massive – even when isolated just to right wing religious organizations.
Excellent work! Please keep looking into these people. When I first saw the video and heard of this group so many alarms started going off in my head I though I must be paranoid – but as it comes out it turns out it’s worse than most people could imagine. This thing is working to satisfy multiple agendas simultaneously. Hope you and other mavericks doing real journalism will keep shining a light on them until they are completely exposed. We know the mainstream media is ignoring this completely.