OBLITERATED
...ways to control dissent....
My first SUBSTACK ARTICLE
It is 3am 22 July 2024.
If any of you, particularly those living (or have lived) in Durban between 1980 and 1995, have not yet read TELL TALE published 2005, you should make every effort to right this wrong. And if there is anyone globally, who takes any serious interest in the subculture ANYWHERE in the world, you should also, by now, have discovered this novel. It is available on lulu.com.
Tell Tale is not a ‘tell all’ in the strictest sense of the word. While it is, without a doubt autobiographical and ’true’, I could not have written that novel without the invention of the main character as a ‘fiction’, or, in more realistic terms, as somebody I could view with a certain amount of ‘dispassion’. This was done for ‘psychological’ reasons and is not an uncommon ploy in telling a story very close to one’s heart.
I was an unwanted child in a somewhat dysfunctional family - but that is all in the book.
And for those not yet aware, it is the SUBCULTURE that defines an historical period in its truest sense.
Fast forward to June 2024 and I discover that all of my ‘creative’ platforms have been OBLITERATED by ‘fb’: my fb profile, my art page, my wallets page and my blog page:
Contacting friends via whatsapp to inform them of the ‘disaster’ was disappointing to say the least. Not that they all have to care - we all have busy lives - but to NORMALISE being obliterated is disturbing.
Perhaps only an artist will understand that perception?
Perhaps I am just not ‘famous’ enough for anyone to care?
But what could they, or anyone for that matter, do about it?
This was the message:
We’ve suspended your account.
Your face book account was suspended because your Instagram account #6f6qf3aujzl doesn’t follow our rules.
You have 178 days left to appeal. Log into your linked Instagram account to appeal our decision.
Result: I cannot log into the Instagram account because it tells me the password is incorrect. Another avenue tells me that my phone number does not exist. Yet another avenue sends a code to my email…and which had to be ‘resent’ a few times, is not accepted.
I see creating a new fb account as a form of COMPLIANCE with their bully tactics so I am not going back there. I tried to delete the instagram account waaaay back as I had no use of it….but it would not let me. I hence just ignored it. I became aware, at some point, that posting to my ART PAGE meant that the post was also posted to the Instagram page. So it is a little amusing that it is the Instagram ‘violation’ that is being used for their latest blocking. Fb is absolutely useless for anything other than sharing family photographs, pets, and plants….oh and what you had for breakfast.
And all that happens is that I end up going round in circles. Enough of that game playing. Without fb I now have a lot more time on my hands so I see this as a good omen.
Hence this SUBSTACK OPTION.
BUT
In order to understand the CONTEXT of this fb decision, and my own personal response to it you have to understand the CONTEXT of my creative input into this country of my birth: South Africa.
The core issue of DISSENT and how this ramifies within a culture of ’separate development’ and with those who controlled it….and, in fact, STILL DO becomes an important starting point. As an artistic environment, South Africa is an extremely small world. As a ’control mechanism’ is easy to control all the gates. In this small world the gates are few…and hence ‘manageable‘.
One thing that happened ’by surprise’ and hence escaped the initial stages of ’nipping it in the bud’, was the burgeoning alternative scene. I was very much at the helm of that scene, spearheading the movement through a platform of ’entertainment’: the night club. But the apartheid regime were having none of it. Raiding the club on any pretext. Forcing the club to close on any pretext. Driving clients away, on any pretext. And, inevitably, there were the ’unconscious ones’ standing in the shadows to ’unwittingly’ play into those hands. The ‘alternative scene’ was labelled ‘satanic’ and its chief propagator (moi) labelled a Satanist.
Meanwhile it was me that was exposing this dark agenda!
And, given these last four years, this dark agenda has become so much more apparent. I rest my case.
I am not saying that having a fb/art/wallets/blog page is of any deep significance. But it is, or was, undeniably, a PRESENCE.
Yet, strangely, I still have this ‘presence’ on Fakebook: in 2013, Yahoo took the decision to delete my yahoo email account. ‘Coincidentally’ I happened to have incriminating email evidence of malpractice of Legal Aid. My ‘recovery’ email was also a yahoo account so I could no longer log into my Fakebook anything.
My profile, art page and wallets page are eternally frozen in cyberspace.
Yahoo informed me that I had agreed to their terms of service when signing up, that they could do anything they liked.
I cannot admin the pages.
And, inevitably, that the frozen profile will be obliterated is merely a matter of time.
BAM: fascism at its best.
You either have FREEDOM OF SPEECH (and I am NOT referring to HATE speech) or you have TYRANNY.
Those of us that think know that what defines ‘hate speech’ has become contestable, if not contemptible, considering the PALESTINIAN genocide and those that support it by any means necessary.
this was my first substack article. I have since discovered that I subsequently created a second SUBSTACK page. I am hence deleting the first and reposting it here. My apologies for the inconvenience, but such are the rigmaroles of cyberspace. ;-)