‘Activism’ is perhaps the most lucrative profession today. There’s a great scope of earning stellar salaries, an opportunity to wine and dine with the powers that be, and above all the platform to advertise oneself as the moral guardian of society. However, as civil society groups have mushroomed, further has ‘activism’ disassociated itself from efforts to improve the welfare of the people it claims to represent. Now, ‘activism’ is no longer about working for the masses but more about personal aggrandizement and monetary gains.
While it is true that activism in certain areas have managed to avoid the scourge of man’s lust for power, fame, and money, one area which has suffered the most is activism in the field of climate change. Things have reached a point where people are using their children for personal aggrandizement. We saw this with Greta Thunberg, a teenager with mental illness, who has been turned into a global champion for action on climate change.
Using Greta Thunberg as a tool, climate change ‘activists’ have generated a hysteria that prevents us from discussing facts about the phenomenon objective without engaging in obfuscation and exaggeration. Greta Thunberg is the hammer that is used to crush the opinions of those who scoff at the idea that the world is coming to an end in twelve years, as has been claimed by certain climate activists.
As a consequence of the brainwashing of the already psychologically unwell teenager, she has engaged in behaviour that has gained her the derision of people. She has been indoctrinated and encouraged into indulging in behaviour that deservedly received immense criticism from people across the board. It was not Greta Thunberg’s fault, it was unfortunate for her to be indoctrinated into a doomsday cult, which is precisely what climate change activism has become. The blame squarely lies on her parents and the media who attempted to shove their own opinions and that of their masters down the throat of the masses using Greta Thunberg as a convenient tool.
Closer home, we see a similar pattern of events unfolding. Licypriya Kangujam, an eight-year-old ‘child activist’, has been used as a tool by her guardians for their personal motives. It came to attention recently that the ‘achievements’ which prompted Licypriya to international fame were all fake and her father is a conman. And due to the antics of the elders surrounding her, the poor little girl was subject to a lot of criticism on social media.
The criticism came after the guardian operating the verified account that pretends to be Licypriya rejected Prime Minister Modi’s #SheInspiresUs movement because ‘she’ did not ‘want to be celebrated if PM Modi was not going to listen to her’. Naturally, a political battle erupted over the matter and a little girl, who is most probably more interested in cartoons and toys than activism, was at the centre of it all. The saddest part of it all is that this tragedy could have been entirely prevented only if the mainstream media was not littered with sociopathic clowns who are more interested in virtue-signalling than performing the damn job they are paid to do.
Journalist Chitra Ahenthem said about the entire matter, “The apathy AND the lazy mainstream media has created a situation where a minor child is now being attacked. The real questions should be directed at her guardians and the media who created her”. And we can safely say, she is goddamned correct. As early as April 2019, the IFP had investigated the matter and concluded that Licypriya’s purported achievements were fake and her father was a conman. None of the journalists bothered to pick it up or even acknowledged the news. None of them still have. They are still too busy running the news of Licypriya rejecting Narendra Modi’s initiative.
Where sensible people would have seen the exploitation of an innocent child, sociopathic clowns saw an opportunity to peddle their personal agenda. Where sensible people would have exercised a healthy dose of scepticism, sociopathic clowns saw an opportunity to invent an Indian version of Greta. Where human empathy demanded concerns for the child, sociopathic clowns prioritized the political mileage they could reap. The mainstream media certainly has a lot to answer for.
The mainstream media has endless resources at its disposal and yet, they could not see what anyone with an IQ higher than Rahul Gandhi’s could have spotted from a distance. The social media accounts of Licypriya is not run by the child. For all practical purposes, it is not even her account. The verified account of Licypriya is actually that of an adult exploiting Licypriya for his or her own devious objectives.
Needless to say, the opinions expressed by Licypriya’s Twitter account aren’t really her own. For that matter, any opinion expressed by Licypriya at eight years of age can’t really be considered her own. We don’t know anything when we are eight years old. We are all children whose greatest concern in life is whether we would be able to watch our favourite cartoons on television the next day. And expecting anything more from a child is wrong. Adults should not expect eight-year-old children to fight their battles. For the love of Gods, we supposedly live in a civilized society.
The tragedy of Licypriya is that she is entirely a media-generated sensation. No one sensible could possibly argue that we should heed to concerns of eight-year-olds on matters of public policy. Only if the media had more people capable of feeling emotions of empathy, the tragedy could have been averted. But in the world that we live in, we had ‘reputed’ media institutions treat an eight-year-old as an intellectual of great standing.
None of the sociopathic clowns stopped for a moment to wonder whether an eight-year-old ought to be advertised as an intellectual to be taken seriously on matters of public policy. Do we seriously want eight-year-olds to decide national policy? There are good reasons why children do not have the right to vote. These are the same reasons why civilized societies do not award children with the same degree of autonomy as adults. Children don’t know a great deal about anything. They are children.
Children are innocent little beings who have not yet experienced the ways of the world and are not capable of any better. It is the duty of adults, any adult, even if they aren’t family, to go out of our way to protect children. Even if it means endangering our personal well-being. Because it is our duty. And in that sacred duty, the mainstream media has thoroughly failed Licypriya.
There’s a profound saying that goes, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” But in our modern society, the esteemed opinion-makers of our era are using the corpses of children’s dreams to fertilize the trees of monetary benefit in whose shade they hope to sit. They are sending eight-year-old children to the frontlines of the war while they watch the events unfolding from a safe distance. No words could possibly encapsulate the depravity of it all.
The mainstream media ought to be embarrassed of itself. They were taken for a ride by a two-bit conman. And it happened only because the mainstream media did not bother to check Licypriya’s background as the political opinions she endorsed were in line with those of the sociopathic clowns. Licypriya’s guardians knew perfectly well what they to do in order to fool the media into helping them achieve their objectives. Climate Change is the buzzword these days and as soon as an eight-year-old was put forward to further the left’s vision of it, ‘journalists’ forgot basic skills of journalism. And before long, reports after reports were published by mainstream media outlets turning a little girl of eight into a warrior for their political project.
In a just society, the guardian who is exploiting Licypriya for ulterior motives would not have been encouraged by the mainstream media’s indulgence of the eight-year-old. In a just society, adults would have known better than to use children in their personal battles. In a just society, sociopathic clowns would not have been abundant in the mainstream media. But then, the world is not just and it has always been a cruel world.
The mainstream media, if it has an ounce of honour, would learn some lessons from the tragedy of Licypriya; a human tragedy that could have been easily averted if journalists had demonstrated even a little bit of human empathy. A tragedy that could have been easily averted if adults had been brave enough to fight their own battles. One can only hope that the mainstream media would not encourage ‘child activists’ going forward and help curb the epidemic of ‘child activism’. It is extremely unlikely but one can hope. Because at the end of the day, hope is the only thing that helps us endure this cruel world of ours.
