Hisham Aidi chose a diplomatic version for fading freedom, growing populism, mental torture, perversion of truth and imprisonment- turning his Policy Brief "Covid-19 and Digital Repression in Africa" to "democratic retrenchment" and "imperial overreach". No mention of George Orwell's "Science fiction "oeuvre, of which George Parker wrote in "The Atlantic" ( July 2019°): "No novel of the past century has had more influence than George Orwell's "1984". Possibly Aidi did not detect an ...