I wonder what George Orwell would make of today's society, with its total surveillance, quarantine, curfews, lockdowns, travel bans, alienation from those around us and vaccination certificates. Would he rewrite 1984 and date it 2020-21. It is difficult to imagine just how far we have walked down the obedience path, the submissive population, waiting for our next set of instructions. All for our own good of course, in the meantime the rich have increased their wealth and power, millionaires have become billionaires. Meanwhile we the ordinary people have suffered a shackling of our freedoms and are now faced with having to pay for this corporate plundering of the public purse, which was all organised and assisted by the state. We will face closures to social facilities and services as it is pointed out the we have to get the debt mountain down, not those who benefited massively from this pandemic.
I tend to moan a lot about not enough anarchist pamphlets, serials, magazines, journals etc. on our streets, so I always like to publicise any I come across. The following is an extract from the new issue of "The Local Kids" which is free to download and distribute:
Population management is now supposedly the responsibility of everyone. Obedience to the state has been dressed up as solidarity. More surveillance is called freedom. All in the name of a return to normal life that appears as a mirage in the desert. Should we rehash for the umpteenth time a comparison to 1984? Its author might have thought that it takes a continuous and considerate effort to see what’s right in front of your nose; can we truly say that? Is it difficult to see what’s going on? Or is it that we speak different languages and will find no common understanding of life?
We could jump into the fray, unveil their lies, battle for the real meaning of words, uphold a correct perception of reality. But then we would be entering the realm of politics where we can only fight with words without radically changing the narrative. A stubbornness that can have its value to demonstrate the absurdism of society. But only by refusing to do politics can we challenge the power of this system over our lives. That also means that we cannot pretend to have solutions at hand for the crises we’re passing through. The existence of capitalism is based in the progressive destruction of the living conditions of all living beings.
The blackmail has always been the same; we should do as they say or our own survival is at stake. We’re held hostages in the name of the economy, the nation, and now public health. Our health is instrumentalised in their disgusting game of politics – the legitimisation for an expansive surveillance; tracing whom we met, where we have been, where we will go to. Expanding control to a level where it becomes normal that going to the movies necessitates carrying the right certificates and surrendering our data. Triggering the most basic of fears – the fear of death, of loss – they mobilize obedience to fulfil their dirty dreams of authority: lockdowns, curfews, border closures.
Seeing this summer which is marked by extreme weather, wildfires and floods – products of the exploitation of the planet – this will be more and more the reality of this society. There are no pragmatic proposals to be made. The wager stays the same, to refuse their game (false choices between quick and superficial fixes to real crises), to be lucid and sabotage the vicious cycle of domination.Summer 2021
Free download, PDF (A4)
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