I agree with Nathalie Rothschild on this:
Apparently, we Westerners can’t take issues seriously unless the likes of Brad Pitt and Bono tell us to, and apparently people in Africa and elsewhere are too busy scrambling for food and swiping flies off their faces to speak up and lobby politicians. Enter do-gooding celebs, NGOs and anti-globalisation protesters to speak on behalf of the ‘voiceless’. As Bono put it at the time, ‘I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all…. They haven’t asked me to represent them. It’s cheeky but I hope they’re glad I do.’
(...)But what Make Poverty History really represented was an entrenchment of low ambitions for the developing world and of the division of the globe into Third World victims and Western saviours.
(...)While celebrities strummed their guitars and tugged at our heart strings, and while aid organisations hired top ad agencies to create clever campaigns, those at the receiving end of poverty relief programmes were being condemned to a life determined by the poor ambitions of Western decision-makers and their celebrity and NGO cheerleaders.
So John Hilary has accused Bob Geldof of arrogance, of believing that ‘he alone was responsible for creating a mass movement on global poverty’. He is right. But it’s not just Geldof, but also international aid organisations, multilateral agencies, global leaders and a melange of celebrities who together have helped perpetuate the idea that people in the developing world are beggars who can’t be choosers, that they should be happy that Westerners are helping take the edge off poverty. Together, they have made sidestepping the democratic process seem acceptable, as time and again they claim the right to speak on behalf of poor people around the world who are portrayed as victims of corrupt governments, as starving, voiceless, weaklings in need of rescue.
The main problem with celebrity activism is that just as humanitarian interventionism, it assumes in a way that is often more paternalistic than humanitarian or charitable that those who need helps are powerless, unable to help them and even to know what is good for them. Thus, in too many cases, celebrity activism becomes about the activist, her/his brand, and desire to be perceived as doing good, by helping the poor and victimized Africa. I'm not a purist and ideologist on this issue. I believe simply that humanitarianism is a good thing, but that it must not become about ego and forget that people are people and always want to have as much control over their lives as possible even when they are powerless and in need of a great amount of help. Celebrities such as Bob Geldof forget that essential fact. They are too willing to play god or rather to celebrate their own accomplishments by looking for the starlight and showing a disdainful and crippling contempt for the realities of the people and the countries they believe they are saving from hell and from their own shortcomings
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