On Covid and fascism

By Alizée Pichot – Cover :

The Black Panther, June 14, 1969

by the under-appreciated Emory Douglas cover. 

Last year,, on march 19^th 2020, I entered the world of covid. I was in Mexico City and ready- to go back to France with a spirit of love but really I was scared to have this fucking covid, to travel alone in that atmosphere and to leave my country of adoption, Canada, not knowing when I would be able to go back.  

This moving-country thing was changed for me because of Covid, no plans held on and Paris alone became the destination. As a gift under the tree at Christmas, covid arrived, the poisoned gift.  

For many people, the fact that many people are dying because of this disease is positive ; natural selection they say. Poor health system I answer, natural selection I think. I’m not better than anyone; nor smarter and I have opinion. Nowadays, having opinions is not a very sexy trait, especially when it comes to Covid, the masks, the dying or the planet burning. Not being able to talk freely about any subject, at the bar or in the media is the first sign of a fascist system but hey… it can’t happen twice right ?  

Bref,  

On covid, the belief that Covid is linked to the ecological crisis and helping the green world and the animal survive more is real. The belief and the facts coincide but my line has to stay focused. I want to interrogate us about how do we feel now, more than a year later ? How deeply impacting this year halfly secluded has changed us collectively and individually ?  

I am just about to take another plane real soon and I have no idea how it will feel this time, crossing the ocean, getting back to another time, another space, new and old loves, vaccine inside like another poisoned gift.  

With or without Covid really, I folloz the same predicament : follow your heart, at all costs, your gut, your past vision has no power, it is only the now that counts for the tomorrow to rise. Covid has made me a more patient person, but also a more conscious one; especially in the matter of politics as they used this virus against us, justifying liberticide laws and a regime of surveillance and order by police and technologies of facial recognition.  

Covid is also a tool for dictature.  

There are people in North America, in the States, in Mexico who are unraveling a revolution that can’t happen in France because we are too corrupted by the royalist system and the secret services trying to shut every voice they can. In France, rules are too strict, the way that the governements, one after the other have been doing the politics are everythintg any authotitarian countries do. The land of the liberated and equal brothers. Here is what I see : a country deprived from free women in power, a country without a morale or a real sense of humanity and ancestry – France, in the time of Covid has shown the world that it was lost.  

This covid thing, I feel, has closened up some people but also held together tightly families and communities. We have seen people being extremely isolated with a rising stats of suicides, psych yards patients, so many things that could not have been avoided. Just because they could not understand the world in which they were living.  

I want to write about France and Covid because it is a country that could be the symbol for hyprocrisy, particularly for people who tell the truth because either they end up dead, or exiling in another country. The way that french television – which is almost owned by the government – has broadcasted news since the beginning of the pandemic is extremely problematic : lies about the numbers of dead, about the masks, the reality in the hospitals, for the youth, no money sent and unsent, the bars and the restaurant closed, the lies, the lies, the lies about the minister who Raped, Darmanin, the position of a racist feminist Schiappa, the order of police from a drunken man, Castaner and the position of an idiot at the education, Blanquer and the intellectually corrupted health chief  Véran – I am tired of this country – its malevolence and its cruelty.  

The lies in France too are high in the world of finance. Economics in France are the textbook for socioliberal capitalism with a punch of nationalism. On TV, just France, just COVID. The wars of course, but no trace of the revolution in India, no news about the women disapearing in Canada and Mexico. No news about where is the money of Africa but news about the economic crisis in Tunisia. News about Meg and William, no news about the genocide of children by the french and english colonial troups and religious institutions occuring for the past five centuries. This is how propaganda works, you choose a subject and your making the whole of the point. No horizon, no door for exit : you’re in the matrix. This kind of media content, consumed massively drowns the minds and makes them drifts away, orientating the thought that is the one to behold, the normcore one, the 1800 euros per/month white family style.  

Have you noticed that everytime Emmanuel Macron or Trump or Trudeau came onto the screen they looked like stupid puppets ? Have you seen how they take space ?They are not people’s representative any more, they are the elite’s representative in the shape of a white man. And even Angela Merkel, I have doubts about her and I want to look into it, I want to go and seek into how women in power in conditions of crisis: Are they opening up to the new people with new ideas and solutions or are they closing up the doors…? 

Another questions arises : what happened to the migrants since covid ? How many died in the Mediterranean sea? How many died in fires or earthquakes ? How many lost entire lives to a piece of gold because their house could not host them anymore? This Covid crisis is just showing the world’s crisis. It’s just coming right up before the 4^th world war, a war I’ll tell you more about later.