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In this extract from her latest book, Bamboozled, author and publisher Melinda Ferguson shares her experiences of living under Covid – and how the lockdwon affected her and her family.
Editor's note: This extract contains explicit language.
In suburbia, during the first year of South Africa’s lockdown, I’m dumbstruck as citizens form “Covid-watch groups”. Neighbours now report neighbours for taking the dog for a walk outside curfew hours. For surfing in the ocean. For walking in a park.
I’m incredulous when a car is burned because some fuckwit nosy resident is incensed that a man is feeding the homeless and “spreading the plague” in the mainly white upmarket neighbourhood of Sea Point. These are times of mass discord, uncertainty and hostility. These are dangerous days we are living in.
This sinister new trend reminds me of the bloody Stasi. In the early 1950s, a secret police service was created in the DDR, otherwise known as East Germany. Initially, the Stasi was tasked to spy on former Nazis and gather counterintelligence on Western agents. But, its powers soon seeped into keeping tabs on fellow citizens. Initially, 90 000 Stasi were employed, but those in charge soon realised that, in order to be more effective, they would need mass participation.
Eventually, one in six East Germans were on their payroll. Factories, offices, schools and apartment blocks had at least one snitch spying on their neighbours or colleagues. An atmosphere of suspicion was created on the ground. East Germans grew increasingly wary of each other, terrorised by the fear that a member of your own family could rat you out. And so a climate of paranoia was created, one that proved to be an exceptionally effective tool in creating an obedient and compliant population.
*
In 2020, social media platforms are now the new virtual battleground.
People attack, censure, castigate and revile each other for not agreeing with their chosen standpoint. I watch horrified as hard-line divisions are created among friends, lovers, families, colleagues, husbands, wives and total strangers. In angry, impulsive swipes, people delete each other from their lives.
In this new pantomime of division and “othering”, some report each other to the Facebook watchdogs. Some are banished from Facebook for “transgressions of thought”, for spreading “fake news”. Twitter and LinkedIn accounts are suspended. Entire archives belonging to “dissenters” against the accepted narrative are wiped out on YouTube.
In the early days, when memories of life before The Pandemic are still sharp and sweet, while I am still freshly disorientated by how quickly the world has bought into what I intrinsically feel is a narrative that needs to be questioned, I happen to load a post referring to us as “sheeple”.
Fuck me blind!
Virtual mob violence breaks loose. Members of my own family attack me. People I thought were friends lambast me, and when I try to explain my reasoning, the result is an allout war. Up until now, Facebook has been a place where I’ve enjoyed uncensored freedom to just be me. Now, it begins to feel as if the virtual Stasi are waiting in the wings to report me.
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I am horrified when I am called a “Trumpist”, “right wing”, a “Nazi” and a “fascist”. These words carry deep insult.
They cut into my heart, and I am incensed. I feel desperately misunderstood. I find myself second-guessing myself. I, who always had such an unguarded big mouth, now carefully deliberate before expressing myself, lest I am murdered by an onslaught of damning diatribe.
Basically, they believe that American politics, business and media are being controlled behind the scenes by a group of “Satanworshipping elites who run a child-sex ring” and “baby-eating paedophiles”. And, I am one of them?
I read more. It appears that QAnon first emerged in October 2017, when an unidentified user on 4chan, an unregulated, anonymous image-board website, uploaded a series of posts signed off as “Q”. He or she claimed to have high-level connections and “Q clearance” in US security. The first Q message ever posted claimed that Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested, which would cause massive unrest.
It never happened. These messages become known as “Q drops” or “breadcrumbs”. Q followers also apparently believe that that Supreme Dick, Donald Trump, is essentially a messiah and that Hillary eats babies in the belief that infant stem cells will energise her in her quest for power. I am gobsmacked to see that what started as a political conspiracy theory on the internet has grown into an actual political movement with millions of followers. Many of the guys who storm Capitol Hill in January 2021, after Trump loses the election, are members.
And I am accused of belonging to this group of wackos? I mean, I can’t even begin to defend myself against this bullshit … I try to find the connection. Aah, now I see it! Because I am questioning the Covid narrative, and because QAnon followers are also shouting doubts, I must be a card-carrying member.
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To my growing horror, I begin to realise that one of the many problems we are facing during this time is the total distortion of perspective through reductionism.
Melinda Ferguson is the bestselling author of her addiction trilogy Smacked, Hooked and Crashed. She is also an awardwinning publisher
