On December 10, 2009, I received an email with a provocative subject line—“You, Elie Wiesel , and Paris Hilton .” The message was distributed to the listserv of the Genocide Intervention Network and delivered over the signature of Executive Director Sam Bell . An unlikely threesome, the characters referenced in the email’s subject were all familiar: I, at the time an angst-ridden graduate student; Elie Wiesel , Auschwitz witness, Nobel Laureate in Literature, and anti-genocide crusader; and Paris Hilton , billionaire heiress, reality television star, and fashion icon who rose to cultural prominence for her role in a leaked sex-tape. The organization sought new supporters for a fledgling movement coalescing around the prevention of mass atrocities and genocide , to which Mr. Wiesel and Ms. Hilton recently pledged their names. The email also advertised ongoing canvassing efforts and upcoming events designed to build an educated constituent base. That evening, on the sixty-first anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the US Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted a Webcast interview with Susan Rice, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and “you” were invited to participate.
Curious as it may seem, strategic communication carries meaning. Embedded messaging profits from and reproduces prevailing resonance within the audience . Elie Wiesel ’s presence symbolizes the gravity of the crisis. His experience as a survivor of Nazi brutality and poignant translator of horror lends credibility. Paris Hilton stands in as a recognizable face bringing style and cachet to the campaign, while injecting levity and seduction. Her association signals that the issue is cool and sexy, permitting the young and uninitiated a portal to the cause. Perhaps most importantly, though, “you” are the primary subject of the communication . “You” stand equally besides Elie Wiesel and Paris Hilton in your shared desire to propel genocide prevention to the top of the foreign policy agenda. “You” represent not only individual agency, but also the multitude of “yous” who, together, will bring an end to the crime of crimes. “You, Elie Wiesel , and Paris Hilton ” is an unironic vision statement of a listless movement striving to be all things to all people. A context in which this unholy trinity can be seamlessly woven together—in which a Holocaust survivor and sex-tape debutante can occupy the same space without raising alarms—prompts critical questions about the manifestation of human rights at the intersection of global affairs and consumer society.
The bizarre juxtaposition of solemnity and stardom, the macabre and the erotic, emerges as the culmination of a legacy of human rights advocacy that fuses political demands with popular trends. Every crisis generates a celebrity solicitation, benefit telethon, or ad campaign requesting urgent donations . As routine as this relationship has become to a twenty-first-century observer, many assumptions at the foundation of this strategic approach to mass mobilization remain unquestioned. For instance, what makes Paris Hilton an acceptable ambassador for genocide prevention ? What qualifications does she possess? What resources does she offer? How does her sordid reputation affect the public assertions of the Genocide Intervention Network ?
It suffices to say that with no background in foreign policy, or expertise in the areas of conflict, mass violence, or transnational politics , she is not an obvious candidate. And more so, the vapid persona she cultivates sits in stark contrast to the severity of the problem she seeks to address. Hilton’s presence alongside a stoic and revered figure like Wiesel could reasonably damage the integrity of the campaign if audiences interpret her endorsement as a cheap attempt by the organization to entice and arouse. Situating Paris Hilton as an inspirational human rights hero presumes that the intended targets will either overlook her salacious qualities or, instead, come for the sex appeal and stay for the human suffering.
This book exposes the awkward, uneasy, and problematic convergence of consumer culture and human rights . Substantively and at their core, human rights campaigns assert controversial arguments about the importance of human dignity in the face of the arbitrary exercise of power. Protest movements for social change challenge the dominant order, advancing new normative priorities. Emancipatory struggles insist on the transformation of structures and institutions, and aspire to a future of equality and autonomy. The history of human rights is indeed a history of confrontation between forces seeking to preserve the status quo and those acting in defense of the marginalized. Revolutionaries across the ages rallied around rights claims as proclamations of their need for respect and recognition, and following the Second World War , these articulations served as the hopeful cornerstones for peace and decency. To do the work of human rights is to be somehow linked to inherently political and subversive. Human rights are not conciliatory or ambivalent assertions. Human rights norms propose an ideal world that looks dramatically different from ours and advocates call for this world to be born.
Despite this history of resistance and contestation, the Paris Hilton model is not novel or without precedent, even if it is a lascivious example. Human rights groups have commonly deployed creative strategies for expanding their reach and raising their profile. Dating back to the abolition of the slave trade and through the Free Congo Movement at the turn of the twentieth century, political pleas were conveyed by well-known figures, captured in graphic visual images, and framed using catchy slogans. Here, we can consider the participation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain, photographs of the severed limbs of Congolese at the hands of Belgian Force Publique, and the circulation of “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” stamps. Twenty-first-century human rights marketing owes a debt to nineteenth-century campaigners and tracing this lineage requires historicity while appreciating its contemporary shift. Today, elements of mass media and popular culture are integral to human rights advocacy and serve as central features of outreach, fund-raising, and movement-building efforts. The integration of mass culture into human rights practice calls into question the contentious nature of human rights claims and creates a new tradition, a new trajectory.
Human rights advocacy is no longer reserved merely for dissidents or diplomats. What was an agitated rallying cry for fairness and justice is now also a key component of the mainstream moral imagination. Particularly as embodied in the work of major transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) , human rights have become integrated as products of privileged lifestyles, accommodating rather than challenging structures of inequality. To engage in human rights advocacy today is to participate in a practice once proprietary to iconoclasts and lawyers but now subsumed within daily rituals of consumers and television audiences. The practice has in fact been incorporated into habits of average individuals in a way that makes the performance commonplace and undisruptive to everyday life. One need not invest profound commitments of time, energy, or anguish in order to take part (or feel as though one is taking part) in the protection of someone else’s human dignity .
Human rights advocacy consists in simple acts, not heroic feats. No barricades or sit-ins. No threats of bodily harm or civil disobedience. Direct action manifests itself as one-off gestures and mere signals of discontent to a distant offender. T-shirts, wristbands, bumper stickers, tweets, likes, follows, hashtags, concerts, songs , television shows, viral videos, avatars, memes, op-eds, blogs, sports, comedy, and video games. Individuals engage in these sorts of practices because they are fun and social. They are standard leisure time activities and typical expressions of personal identity: Who I am is defined by clothing I wear, activities I partake in, information I consume, and details about myself I choose to share with others. The appearance of engagement on behalf of human suffering is more important than actual engagement. Representing one’s self as concerned with the welfare of others, particularly those in a far-off land, suffices for compassion and replaces the compulsion to act with personal satisfaction and contentment. Nobody ever actually has to do anything, as long as we all look good not doing it and feel pleased once it’s not done. Performances over practices. Optics over antics.
Folding human rights into self-gratifying entertainment favors participation that serves the self, rather than the stated recipient, the global other. The tension between self-seeking and other-regarding action captures an essential dialectic of the current age: As capitalism penetrates through societies and deepens within cultures, attendant ideologies infiltrate, colonize, and reproduce modes of existence in their own image. These forces are in turn shaped by individual preferences, even those that include social consciousness and moral expression, thus producing personalized economies that bear the imprint of global capital filtered through a prism of popular sentimentality. A circumscribed belief system imposes meaning on the pursuit of pure self-interest in a supposedly value-free marketplace. When consumers interact with commerce in post-industrial neoliberal capitalism , they take part in shaping the terms. Economic exchange must feel a certain way to the consumer and must comply with a set of engrained ideals that express conscience. The personal is commercial and the commercial is personal—but neither is political, which is exactly how we like it.
Civic significance infects mass consumption , and monetary transaction propagates as political engagement . Advocacy practices channel commercial behavior in the service of human rights , leveraging awareness of suffering and injustice contextualized in the grocery store and shopping mall. Acts that wave limply in the direction of social change posit global citizens as consumers without interrupting business as usual. Fleeting, shallow expressions of ethical desire offer a major platform for advocacy groups to champion their causes while reaching individuals in a comfortable space. The mass appeal of human rights fosters a hybrid: Political demands for the rights and dignity of others articulated as inconsequential choices made in the moral marketplace.
The marriage between humanism and consumerism goes beyond its appearance in human rights advocacy . Commodities emblazoned with seals guaranteeing ethical chastity flood the shelves and aisles: fair trade, green, conflict free, and dolphin safe. Purchasing goods labeled as such does nothing to address the extraction of surplus value from labor, impending ecological collapse, or systemic roots of violence, though. In fact, these labels reinforce and retrench world-historical crimes. Consumerism actively obscures its negative effects on the world and the self . NGOs and coalitions that craft these strategies gain public traction for their issues, although thinly, making this dynamic mutually beneficial: Consumers feel better about their spending habits, and advocates skim resources for their operations. Participating in this charade requires compartmentalizing the origins of problems and any obligation to actually dispatch an appropriate solution. These modes of practice are innately apolitical and perhaps anti-political, inhibiting opportunities for deep and sustained involvement aimed at comprehensive problem solving.
Whatever critique we may want to muster, this is not a defective system. It is a feature of the design, not a bug. Indeed, this arrangement approximates the level of interest and dedication among the mass public and meets people where they are rather than challenging them to think or act otherwise. We willfully and joyfully enter into this bargain because it is fundamentally a good deal: I extend a meager hand to suffering strangers at no great cost to my own well-being and feel proud of my altruism while remaining confident in my status among the Western, Northern, intercontinental one-percent. I enjoy my secure, comfortable life and am rarely forced to confront human misery. Conscious consumption insulates and isolates consumers from the ills of the system that we so enjoy...