Looking good by doing nothing: Corbyn and the slackactivist left

The Save Darfur page on Facebook was one of the most heart-warming successes of the early years of social media. Between 2007 and 2010, more than a million people joined to protest against the world’s indifference to the genocide in Darfur. Concerned and compassionate, their virtue shone forth for all their friends to see. They had every reason to protest, and still do. When I was at refugee camp in Calais a few months, I did not meet any Syrians. By contrast, Sudanese, fleeing conscription by the militias in Darfur, and Eritreans fleeing a prison state, which is becoming Africa’s North Korea, were everywhere. But Save Darfur is famous, not for its cries of protest against the world’s indifference to a crime against humanity, but for the demonstrable indifference of the supposed do-gooders, who signed up to it. As it turned out, they weren’t do-gooders, but look-gooders. They publicly announced their righteousness and then did nothing at all.