2014-09-13

Why #AmINext isn't going anywhere (and why that's their fault)

The woman behind #AmINext thinks the campaign has staying power.
A woman spearheading a social media campaign about missing and murdered aboriginal women says she isn't worried about the initiative fading from the public consciousness like other online campaigns have done in the past.

Holly Jarrett said the campaign, in which people are asked to take a photo of themselves holding a sign that reads, "#AmINext," seeks to open up a national discussion on the issue of aboriginal women who have disappeared or been murdered.
In fairness, as anybody who noticed my #AmINext Quiz last week could attest to, it certainly will have staying power: Indians are still marrying amongst each other and still turning to turning tricks for gas sniffing money. Yes, your campaign has staying power!

Out in the real world the campaign already has no staying power. We all remember the last hashtag campaign the Red Indian started: I started #IdleNoMore off with a joke, and the best part is that the joke keeps paying divends!

Both #IdleNoMore and #AmINext try to pretend that either we don't know the cause of the social strife afflicting the Red Indian. In the case of #IdleNoMore, it's dependence on government handouts and a culture that is inherently lazy and incapable of rousing its citizens into being productive, combined with a genetic predisposition to addiction and false mythology of history given off by the usual suspects. In the case of #AmINext, it's the violent predisposition of Indians (whether cultural, societal, or genetic doesn't really matter) combined with the promises of quick riches and attention that prostitution offers women who are poor and, let's be perfectly frank about this, typically as ugly as sin.

It's certainly not politically popular to just come up with the solution like this. Undoubtedly, if you're trying to pretend that your sad little tribe is a "First Nations" (despite the fact that your nation can't raise a dime on its own and requires metric shit-tons of money from another, more successful country), and you're trying to maintain support from your own narrow-minded ethnic brethern, it's not a particularly successful strategy. You're trying to sell snake oil here, not actual solutions. As with all "social justice" campaigns, #AmINext is predicated on perpetuating the injustice versus foolishly solving it. Crying for a national inquiry (again, paid for by the country made powerful and successful when your people were moved to the sidelines and productive classes were allowed to flourish) is a good distraction, an excellent way to let everybody know that it isn't your fault what's going on (and certainly isn't theirs!), and that this plan of yours will magically solve the problem that you haven't given two licks to try and solve yourself. It keeps your fat paycheques rolling in courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer and gives you "national clout" and all that other nonsense. [as an aside, this 'national' clout again seems to be in a 'nation' that they claim they aren't part of and occasionally claim doesn't even exist. -ed]

It doesn't solve the problem, of course. As noted above, #AmINext has staying power because as long as the likes of Holly Jarrett get their way, you're going to find squaw hookers and violent Indian gangsters murdering their wives and sisters.