media – Page 3 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

Of the many things we need to admit about the past four and half years under Duterte, it’s that he’s been killing it.

This government has of course also been killing people.

But that he has gotten away with it is because his propaganda machinery’s been killing it, too. How else to explain the fact that despite thousands of dead bodies, the militarization of the government, billions in unaccounted public funds, the stench of corruption growing stronger by the day, and an epic failure of a Covid-19 response, this government has stayed afloat?

We give credit where it is due, and that has to be the propaganda machinery that’s just been well-strategized, hard-at-work, uncompromising, and unstoppable.

And yes, we’re still talking about what we like to dismiss to be nothing more than troll discourse, brought on by a few high-profile propagandists and spread by troll farms, all paid for with probably taxpayers’ money. But this is not all that it’s about anymore. The 2019 elections proved how this propaganda is not something that can be dismissed, but also, neither can it be easily beaten.

In fact, going into the campaign for 2022, it’s become even more clear how this machinery is multilayered and complex, and unless we agree about what it is and how it works, then we will be delivering 2022 to Duterte-Marcos-GMA on a silver platter.

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It’s a question we ask more and more now, I think more sincerely and honestly than we ever have, of friends and family, even of Facebook contacts and acquaintances. It’s never seemed more important to ask people: how are you? As opposed to “what’s up?” or “what are you doing these days?”

Because we all know what’s up, and regardless of what we’re doing, we all know that on a very basic level, we’re all just trying to survive. The pandemic takes its toll on the best of us, and on this fifth month since a lockdown was first declared, I think the mental toll is one that’s almost paralyzing.

Almost. Because privilege teaches us that some are luckier than others—we are luckier than the majority who did not only lose jobs during the two-month lockdown, but also had their communities taken over by police power, were disenfranchised from government assistance packages, silenced by fear, and disregarded by policy. Yes, we are all victimized by the Duterte government’s lack of an efficient, sufficient, and scientific Covid-19 public health response, as we all are by its Cabinet filled with incompetent and unkind officials, but as with many (all) things, social class difference puts things in perspective.

No, this is not a treatise on gratefulness, as much as it is a promise of solidarity. (more…)

I happened upon the case of Nacho Domingo too late. It was Sunday, September 29. I asked a friend who had posted about social media responsibility and online mobs what he was talking about, and he told me to do a Twitter search for his name.

It yielded little, though the few tweets that came up were ones of mourning and condolences, a lot of regret. By later in the day more and more tweets surfaced that were turning defensive: this is about frat culture, they said. The system is to blame for his death, many others said.

The blame game on Twitter seeped through the rest of the week, with some accounts coming out with names of “people who killed Nacho,” which just continued the cycle of blaming and shaming, bullying and mob rule that brought upon us this death to begin with.

I spent the rest of that Sunday and early last week going through Twitter accounts and mining it for information. Facebook was pretty wiped clean, and there wasn’t much to see there. But Twitter, with its 140-character, shoot-from-the-hip demand — so much of what transpired remained there even as many deleted posts. The sadness grew as this process revealed what it must have been like for one person to see this unfold, and not just on Twitter and Facebook, but also, now we know, in his phone’s inbox. (more…)

At the Ibong Adorno launch of Kult 3, there was a panel discussion with different organizations on the various ways in which they have dealt with the Duterte government’s consistent and constant attacks on the people and on nation’s institutions. The issues and ways were expectedly diverse, from using platforms to engage with issues of urban poor displacement, immersion and publishing focused on marginalized sectors and workers’ and farmers’ rights, from alternative media work to organizing cultural workers towards more critical resistance work.

I was the only one who carried my name as individual, although I was tagged as someone who has maintained CurrentsPH (on Facebook) since 2017, which originally was to be a website (a beta version is still up here). But as I said in the introduction to my quick talk, it took only the first year of Duterte to realize that there is little value in talking facts and doing timelines at a time when the truth doesn’t matter and no one is spending time fleshing out issues — or even talking issues, really.

The battle in fact is one that’s about propaganda. We are faced with a well-strategized Duterte propaganda program, one that we have been unable to even make a dent on, one that we have been unable to win against, the past three years. I’ve talked about this often enough with friends and peers, and when I’m asked how to beat it, my answer is simple: first we admit we’re in over our heads.

These are strange, difficult, confusing, exhausting times, and the old tools don’t work in exactly the same way. We are weakened by this Duterte machinery, manipulated to forget bigger pictures as we are made to contend with the smaller but real attacks against us. How to move forward? One, admit our weaknesses; two, understand this propaganda strategy; so that three, we can actually figure out how to beat it.

Here, an effort at doing numbers 1 and 2. (more…)

It’s become interesting the reactions I’ve gotten for deciding to talk about George Ty’s estate controversy. Some have come in the form of links and screencaps from anonymous sources; some are asking questions about who his real wife is. But my favorite is a long-ish comment on this page telling me basically that I’m making a mountain out of molehill, that it’s all much ado about nothing, my questions about why George Ty’s declared estate is but a fraction of his P700-billion-peso net worth before he died. According to this comment, it’s all very simple: George Ty had time to transfer his estate to his different children and business interests, and therefore the declaration of but P3 billion is all possible, and legal, and above ground.

But see, here’s the thing: I’m not even asking about possibility or legality. I’m asking about why it’s even allowed. I’m asking about why it’s even being done. After all, just because something can be done, doesn’t make it right.

Here’s the other thing: telling me not to look into something just makes me want to dig deeper into exactly the same thing. And in the case of George Ty, it’s a wonder what simple Google searches yield, given what is a seeming news blackout from around February 2019 to the present. Layer this with being told this is a non-story, and so many sources sending questions and screencaps, and one cannot help but think that there really is more to this than meets the eye.

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Katrina Stuart Santiago

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Category Archive for: media

Divide, Undo, Tag: Dealing with Duterte propaganda (1)

George Ty tales: One estate, two names, five children