Privacy, Auricular Confession and Computer Viruses

The original business with personal secrets

The unilateral declaration of independence adopted by the slave traders and slaveholders in congress assembled, otherwise known as the American Declaration of Independence, is one of the most successful psychological warfare instruments of modern history. Alone it did not win the fight of the colonial elite against its cousins in Great Britain. However, once the British regime was forced to cut its losses after the defeat at Yorktown, this propaganda document became the source of the most powerful delusion since the inception of Christendom based on the myth of an obscure crucifixion.

This instrument, for white supremacy the equivalent of the ten commandments attributed to Moses, has formed the basis of the religion in whose thrall millions of people for whom Christianity is perhaps meaningless or trivial have been held for over a century. That is not much time seen from the entirety of human history. However, given its global proliferation, penetrating areas where even Christianity could not win, it is remarkable to say the least. The brilliance with which an ideal whose fulfillment has been denied to more than the majority of the world’s population is still preserved is an expression of the insidiousness of the system of white supremacy. As James Baldwin told Cambridge students in 1964, he was raised “rooting for the cowboys” in American Western films — until he realised that he was, in fact, one of the “Indians”.

Most of the world consists of “Indians” — it is “Indian Country” as the US Cavalry called it whether in Dakota, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

We find that we are being told to root for those whose entire social model is based on our subjugation or, if need be, extermination. Since we all learned to be “cowboys” we think that those who rule us are the Cavalry who will save us from the “Indians” — if we follow their orders and stay in the wagon train, wear our masks, keep our distance — and keep our mouths shut, only to prevent the dispersion of particulate infectious material, of course.

Let us be clear about one thing. The US Empire cannot collapse as long as its citizens at home are willing to travel throughout the world terrorising other countries. However, this capacity is rapidly being exhausted. Hence the cannon fodder at home is superfluous. At the same time if everyone is policing herself or himself for fear of infection or some other invisible fate, then there simply is less need to have troops around terrorising the world. Instead the terror can be performed more compactly with pharmaceutical teams operating in geographically quarantined territories, isolated by the collapse of international transport — except for the select.

As I have written in the past the actions implemented by the coordinated intelligence and policing forces worldwide aim at retraining masses of people to live with less work, less money and less social contact (such contact subject to constant surveillance — aka “tracing”). This is simply policing and population control without any health advantage whatsoever. Of course, there are various opinions — like other exit points on the human body — as to whether masks, gloves, and distance restrain disease proliferation. Yet this plurality of opinions is deliberately maintained because the more opinions in circulation the less chance that common sense will prevail. This is also a factor in deniability. People waste their time trying to decide which priest to believe, while their jobs disappear and their homes are confiscated.

But to come to the point, the principal objection raised to many of the incipient measures — contact tracing, health monitoring or the Gates ID2020 concept in its various forms — is that it would intrude on the privacy of individuals. However, there is no privacy in the West. Rather there is a religious belief in privacy (the individual equivalent of secrecy). Where does this belief originate? Western privacy is a reaction but actually a compliment to the Roman Catholic practice of auricular confession. The confessional defined the “private” as the scope of potential deviance from conformity to the Catholic universal doctrine which was defined as “sin” or “heresy”. Sin could be forgiven by confession to a priest. Heresy could only be punished — it was left to god to deal with the heretic once he was executed by the secular arm.

Privacy is really only the general privilege of the ruling class to conceal its wealth, methods of theft and murder, evade taxes, and prevent you from knowing how and why you can work yourself to death and still not own your home or the food on your plate. It immediately disappears — privacy that is — once you make a claim on the regime. To get a pittance for your family as an unemployed person you have to confess everything. The owners of the world can print four trillion dollars a day and no one has to answer a single question.

The “virus” is the contemporary manifestation of “sin”. We are all sinful and therefore the ridiculous number of infections reported. Many will die — that is the purpose of “sin” to rationalise the murder of our fellow human beings by priests/doctors/soldiers/police. Not to believe in the “virus” is heresy. You wondered why, since you linked your first PC to the internet, you are constantly plagued by viruses. Did it ever occur to you that the company that made the software also owns the viruses? You could dismiss this “planned obsolescence”; e.g., the fact that there are no more original spare parts for your three year old computer or car, by claiming that a new product was “progress”, another step on the stairway to heaven.

But now the producer of the most virus-laden software in the world tells you on TV that you will never be free of the virus his friends developed that can kill your grandmother or your child with cancer (from some other industrial poison).

And you are happy now. If you were a white man, you might have been created equal. If not, well, tough luck. You have a secret, not for long. If you aren’t infected yet, just check your computer…

Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. Read other articles by T.P..