Is Zelenskyy Truly 2022’s ‘Person of the Year’?

Ever heard of Mazloum Abdi? Nope? Well, me neither. He’s an interesting bloke, though – the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who ordered an airstrike on his own house after it was captured by ISIS militants. He’s been fighting Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship for years – and he’s barely known in the West. 

If I ask you if you’ve heard of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I imagine your knowledge may be slightly better. Zelenskyy has been a crucial figurehead for the Ukrainian people following Russia’s invasion last spring, leading the resistance to the invasion, gathering support from foreign leaders and generally being an all-round good guy. 

Indeed, these efforts have not gone unnoticed, and Zelenskyy recently scooped Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ award, a particularly longstanding award (which, by the way, I have to sing to the tune of Interplanetary Criminal’s ‘Baddest of them All.’ Go on. Try it. ‘Person of the Year.’ Fun, right?). Past recipients have included Obama (twice), Stalin (twice), Richard Nixon (twice), ‘U.S. Scientists’ in 1960, ‘The Computer’ in 1982 and ‘You’ in 2006, which does make me feel slightly better about myself.

Time Person of the Year is typically awarded to the person who’s had the greatest impact on global events. Thus, 2016’s award to Donald Trump reflected his general significance rather than an endorsement of his politics. Yet this year, the organisers don’t appear to have followed their own rules. Zelensky has helped command the Ukrainian defence – although I doubt he’s been planning military strategy (political interference in tactical warfighting doesn’t tend to go well; see Churchill in the Second World War, for example). But Putin’s invasion has allowed Zelenskyy to become prominent, to attain a newsworthiness greater than that of a random leader of an ex-Soviet state (challenge: name the President of Lithuania. Yep, didn’t think so). So why has Putin not been awarded the title, as the invader of Ukraine and the raiser of British energy bills?

Zelenskyy’s award reflects something of the significance of ‘The News’ – the undefinable, unquantifiable and potentially slightly nefarious 24-hour news cycle. Zelenskyy is in the news a lot, so he becomes more likely to receive an award such as Time Person of the Year. Someone like Mazloum Abdi, who is also resisting a dictator’s army, with limited foreign support, and was even willing to blow up his own telly, is in the news less, and is thus less likely to receive such an award. Syria is admittedly further away from Western Europe than Ukraine, but that hardly renders Abdi less significant to the people of Aleppo.

Being in ‘The News’ clearly has some relevance to your significance; plenty of very significant events and/or people receive coverage because they are actually significant. But others receive said coverage because they are a nice story, or because they play into pre-established channels of popular opinion. Zelenskyy’s underdog tale of resistance to the Russian imperialist is a feel-good distraction that is nicer to focus on than the reality of Putin’s war. And Ukraine is easier to understand than Syria – there are fewer factions; it’s (broadly) a war between countries, not within one; and Ukraine just feels a bit closer to home.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not very important. I have more than a hunch that Time magazine will not care about this article – in fact, they probably welcome the controversy that ‘Person of the Year’ brings every twelve months (obviously). But it does point to the significance of the Western media in illuminating some stories – such as Zelenskyy’s leadership – above others. Zelenskyy has been an important guy. But most significant Person of the Year? I’m not sure.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons