Moral Panic versus Moral Blindness

“Moral Blindness versus Moral Panic” examines a recent moral panic over child soldiers in Uganda—evident in Kony 2012, the sensationalized viral campaign to expose and capture rebel leader Joseph Kony—alongside the targeting of children in the US for military training and recruitment. It shows how flattened and ahistorical images of African child soldiers obscure complex geopolitical realities that lead to the victimization of children and youth in African and other non-Western regions. Similar dynamics lead to the increased militarization of poor and working-class childhood in the US, which is rarely subjected to the same level of critical scrutiny.