‘The world stands at a parting of the ways’ begins one of my favourite quotes. And we are at such a crossroads now. In the coming weeks and months of this corona crisis the world will be divided into those who are not prepared to discard the community spirit we have (re)discovered and will use it to build a society based on genuine social justice and those who will look to the authorities to direct them to ‘safety’ because they have been dutifully terrified into obedient servility by their mendacious masters.
I have noticed a tendency among even my fellow human rights activists at this time to lose their critical faculties in the face of virus mania which doesn’t bode well for arming themselves against what is coming. I am not saying that the virus is not real; I have a friend recently hospitalised and thankfully now recovered quoted below, but this does not justify abandonment of a reasoning mind.
People appear willing at this time to give away all of their civil liberties – and I deliberately say ‘give’ not ‘throw’ because they are falling over themselves to hand them enthusiastically to a corporate state they didn’t trust one iota just a few short weeks ago.
These people seem unaware of the lineage of civil liberties struggles in this country, especially those that are, historically, very recent, such as SOCPA 132 which took away a fundamental right from UK citizens without any but a handful of activists even noticing. Those arguing against vigilance now who do not know their own country’s history have no context into which they can place the current moves to withhold civil liberties from the populace. They see only a government doing what it must to protect them, its actions floating free from the overarching framework of consistent suppression of dissent, one under which successive governments, whether Blue or Red Tory (under Tony Blair) sought to steal the freedoms most people take for granted; those of speech, expression and assembly being the most attacked. ‘Steal’, because these are not rights we are given. They belong to us to begin with, and any authority wishing to take them from us better have a damned good argument.
It is in this mindset of supine cooperation that corona hysteria casualties will line up to be managed, disciplined and manipulated in a way the corporate state could only dream of until now. These citizens are so desperate for ‘normality’ to return they will agree to just about any oppressive measure imposed upon them which means, ironically, that things will never be as they once were. How many of our fundamental freedoms do they think will be returned to us when this is over? Yet as long as the surface of life is mitigated by a veneer of regularity and orderliness that is enough for them.
But, as Keith Mann recently wrote:
Normal has passed away…we are now in the transformation stage of our evolution. You get to decide if we evolve into something magnificent or die off due to our blind trust in the power structure.
So you must decide. Now, is the critical moment in which your own mind and conscience will influence the fate of all humanity. Sounds like a movie tagline? Well life is like a movie – one in which you can be either the director or an extra – the crowd scene nobody not even mentioned in the credits.
I once wrote in an article for The New Statesman which defended the Parliament Square protest camp Democracy Village: ‘start acting like the sovereign citizen you are and beg no more for that which is your birthright.’ Your birthright is the freedom, the agency, you have but which you are so easily convinced you must hand over to a power elite who have has proved, time and time and time again!, they cannot be entrusted to safeguard. Why would they? Basic common sense tells you this is not in their interests. Why the hell would you trust them now?
This historical moment is calling you to decide who you really are, and what kind of world you want to live in. Not just you, but your children and the generations that will follow them. Don’t betray them. The tide is in flux and we can still turn it. It’s time to connect, both locally and globally, with others who are sick of the era of corruption that has seen a tiny elite benefit from the manipulation of the masses. This corona crisis, as nefarious a manipulation as it is, is actually a fracture in the timeline, a fissure we can prise open to let through the light of a new compassionate age.
Right now, the sense of community and interconnection people are feeling is being used by the corporate media to amplify a specific message – see how well people in lockdown are behaving? Good doggies. But that deep connection we have with our fellow human beings, with all life, with earth our common home, is actually a powerful wellspring of dynamic transformative potential. It is that sense of our oneness that the elites have always been afraid of. It’s love that they fear. Love in its most profound and all embracing sense. Divide and rule has been the order of business for so very. very, long, and another paradigm is about to be imposed upon us – whom do you think that will serve? Love; Satyagraha or ‘soul -force’ will unite us. Not the wishy-washy, hippy notion of love, but the love of a Rainbow Warrior prepared to fight so that love will prevail.
How bad do things have to get before we get off our knees? It’s time to connect and it’s time to act, at this moment when we have never been so unified, when we have never felt so profoundly our common humanity. When all else is stripped away, we only have each other.
‘The world stands at a parting of the ways’ – which way will you choose?
Alison Banville is co-editor of BSNews, a human and animal rights campaigner, writer, singer and performance poet.
