From 1974, the first twenty years of my existence on planet earth were experienced during the apartheid era, in South Africa.1 Here, we lived in a closed society we believed to be free, and anyone who suggested otherwise was a fool who didn’t understand how the real world worked.
Everything had its official place, and anyone who tried to move something from one place to another was a rebel, a transgressor of the greatest social norms yet to scorch the earth, and, probably, a heretic. The media was run by the government, and information from the outside world was controlled like feeding time for a fish tank. We were isolated from the rest of the world, and the rest of the world wanted nothing to do with us either, unless we changed.
We lived in a bubble. A kind-of utopia that came at a tremendous cost. Because utopias only serve those who construct them, built on the shoulders of a chosen group, a collective that sees in the dark with the official light (brainwashed) about what’s true and what’s not, while the rest are censored, humiliated, dehumanized, trampled underfoot, beaten into line, and security-policed to death.
Of course, we saw some of these things happening—on the news, not in real life; no-no, we were far-removed from any of that—but it was done for safety’s sake, to protect us from evil, selfish people who wanted to destroy paradise on earth.
But Eden comes with a hefty price tag hanging from its gate, and my parents had to work their butts off so we could live a middle-class life. In the earlier days, they worked, studied at university, and brought up three kids. I’m a stuffed chicken ready for the oven if I know how they did it, but they did, as we (the kids) were shuffled along the conveyor belt of public schooling to prepare us for the glorious world of the “real job,” and freedom. This was our reality, our normality. It was how we believed the world worked… until 1994, when the bubble burst.
The chosen became what we always were—a minority collective—and most of us slid into our new roles with the smoothness of diarrhoea. Apartheid was dead, democracy won, the Rainbow Nation was born, and the world patted itself on the back for a job well done. But once the media turned elsewhere, dragging the fickle public’s attention with it, the only thing that had changed were the faces in government, while the wounds festered under a far-more acceptable coat of paint.
Because fascism hides behind many masks. In some places and times, it wears a crown and maintains multitudes in a swoon with the flick of a royal wave. In other times, it stands on a podium in military uniform and screams about some great worldview. But it also likes to wear a suit and tie. It drapes itself in religious garb and stands with saintly humility in front of millions. It dons the white lab coat of the modern priesthood, promising a perfect, gene-engineered world to all. And it wears jeans and a T-shirt while punching out computer code. It uses pretty words to paint a picture of some wonderful new world, as it crushes individuality to create a new group morale, and level of stupidity. It tears out the spirit and stomps on it while waving the banner of freedom. And it destroys anything not of itself with its faithful flocks, hurtling like lemmings towards the edge of a cliff, and a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Inciting race against race, gender against gender, transgender against nature, atheists against religion, religion against religion, evolutionists against creationists, abortionists against pro-lifers, vaxed against non-vaxed, environmentalists against farmers, progression against the environment, AI against creativity, the officialness against humans, humans against their humanity, left against right, right against left… while no one speaks of the middle.
You may have heard of it?
It’s called divide (apartheid) and then conquer.
Not so much a physical repression, although it plays its part, and to varying degrees, depending on where you live, but rather, it’s the conquering of your heart. And I’m sure that once the lemming has left the edge of a cliff and discovers itself in a free-fall to its doom, it regrets having followed anyone at all.
1 A system of racial segregation lasting from 1948 to 1994. The word “apartheid” means separateness, divide. If you want to get a better picture of what this was, and although it’s apartheid South Africa on a wild concoction of methamphetamines, crack cocaine, heroin, and tequila, producing a society of genocidal zombies, just look at Israel and the cult of Zionism.
