The Black Dog, Interview With Skrufff
“I think they want to turn us all into numbers, and know what we are up to 24 hours a day. If you spend something, they want to know about it. If you read a book, they want to know about it. If you send an email, they want to read it.”
Chatting about the parallels between George Orwell’s 1984 and the Britain of today, Black Dog founder member Ken Downie admits he’s alarmed.
“Oh, and they have your individual fingerprints and DNA data in their files, too,” he points out. “Nobody voted for the surveillance society, as I recall. But step by step it has crept into our lives.”
Black Dog’s new album ‘Further Vexations’ is underlined by ‘a dark cynicism of the Orwellian practices being carried out by the Government, the accompanying press release explains, though fellow TBD man Martin Dust is anything but resigned.
“This surveillance society is pretty frightening and the other thing is, it won’t stop “terrorism". “They’ve learnt nothing and they treat people as if they’re stupid though as far as I can see most people are doing nothing about it,” he observes.
[…]
Skrufff: We talked about the dangers of today’s creeping surveillance society, where does it all end if no-body protests?
Black Dog [Ken]: “We will all have a person under the stairs, reminding us that we owe the government money.”
Black Dog [Martin]: “It ends with people moaning on YouTube comments pages probably, unfortunately that’s a close as some people get to forming an opinion. It’s sad times when (talent show) X Factor get more votes and more people are worried about what Jonathan Ross said. How base have we become?”
Skrufff: In George Orwell’s classic 1984, his chief protagonist Winston Smith (wrongly) put his hope in the proles: why do you think the masses can be roused? How?
Black Dog [Ken]: “The masses are being roused, by the far right, people always look for some sort of ’saviour’ when the shit hits the fan. Witness the historical rise of fascism, and the media’s current fawning obsession with America’s new president. All those hopes and fears pinned on one person is a bad thing. Winston Smith (and Julia) made the mistake of trusting other people to act, rather than using their own ability to get the fuck out of there, and escape into the countryside of Airstrip One.”
Black Dog [Martin]: “True, you can’t sit waiting for someone else to do something for you, Winston Smith had a chance to re-write the future, he failed.”
Skrufff:Why do you believe people have become so apathetic in recent years?
Black Dog [Ken]: “People are spoon fed brainwashing pap (rubbish) through their TV, 24 hours a day, and a lot of them believe it.”
Black Dog [Martin]: “The internet hasn’t really helped either, the written word is even more of a lie now, people just Google for an opinion these days, 59 million people asked Google “Who should I vote for” – I mean, FFS. (for fuck’s sake)”.
[…]
Source: TheBlackDogMa