propaganda – Page 2 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

On repeat: I do not think misogyny and the patriarchy are those big ideas that have made this electoral race an uphill climb for VP Leni. That has no basis if one considers the kind of very feminine, very female, very woman empowerment frames that have been created for the women on the Marcos-Duterte side—from Manang Imee to Tita Irene, to Sara Duterte herself. Let me not begin about Liza Araneta, or even their female supporters like Dawn Zulueta. It has even less basis if we consider that throughout the past two years in this pandemic, it is the women in communities that have risen quickly, worked on survival and recovery efforts, taken on more than they usually do. Yes, patriarchy is here. No, it isn’t as simplistic as saying “majority of voters are patriarchal”—like that dictates the numbers we shade on our ballots.

Let’s be clear: there are many reasons why the Robredo-Pangilinan campaign has failed to capture the imagination of the 90% of voters we need to convert. No, the reasons are not as simple as so many 280-character tweets insist it is. This is not about the campaign being “feminine,” nor about the campaign being middle class.

And certainly, the solution is not to make it “more masculine.” These assertions are borne of terrible oversimplifications, i.e., that since Duterte has high-approval ratings, therefore what we need is more masculinity, more military, on VP Leni’s campaign. That fails to consider that the past four years a majority of us—and yes, that cuts across social classes—have grown tired of the militarized governance of Duterte. No, people are not tired of Duterte, but they are at the receiving end of his military and police, so emboldened by having a President who will forgive them anything. To even imagine that any campaign would benefit from being seen with military and police officials at this point, is failing to read the room. (more…)

To some extent, it is no surprise how the closer we are to the May elections, the deeper we are into our echo chambers. This is, after all, what it means when more people agree on something. After all, the number of people it takes to disbelieve Covid numbers is also the same number of people you need to debunk Presidential surveys; the number of people you need to start believing SMNI would be the same number of people you need to start championing Google trends as the basis for “real” presidential survey numbers. The more you are in a bubble of a rally, the more you believe this is it, the election can be won by this.

That we are mirroring the actions of the other side should be no surprise, but it also bears articulation.

Here, a basic lesson in gentrification. The spaces we inhabit are based on our privilege, as it is based on the lack of it. Our access to certain areas of a city dictates the same. Places within the same city, even in the same zipcode, can completely disenfranchise the poor. Emerald Avenue, Ayala Avenue, and all the “business districts” do this. This is why the same stretch of JP Rizal that ties together Cembo, Pembo, Rembo is a space as fancy as Rockwell and Powerplant mall.

This is not the time to problematize gentrification. The point is only to acknowledge that the choices made for where the big Robredo rallies are held is indicative of the audience it caters to.

And that audience is us, people who are already voting for VP Leni, who are already voting for the 1Sambayan slate, who are already in the echo chamber. We are the ones who would not think twice about going to the business districts, who would not feel out-of-place in these spaces, and might even have friends and family who live in the area. The question really is why VP Leni is spending time and energy still talking to us, the people who are already on her side? (more…)

For six years we were in over our heads. We could barely keep up with Duterte, also because we couldn’t believe how he was pretty much getting away with the murder—figuratively and literally. Our institutions were discredited real quick—from basic rights, to our Constitution, to mainstream media—just as anti-people policies were implemented one after the other, and killings and violence escalated. As this unfolded the polarization was strengthened.

On one side, those of us who championed democracy and our institutions, even as we remained divided, through to the Liberal Party refusing unity slates in 2019 and 2022, and the Robredo campaign failing to claim unity and democracy as slogan for these times. It didn’t help that the people, especially on this side of democracy, refused and were un-interested in fashioning unities we deem important—it’s easier to fall back on the existing polarizations among us after all. This helped the other side, the Duterte government and its beneficiaries the Marcos-Arroyo tandem, with its anti-people and pro-China policies, to build its own “institutions” as option for its ever growing base of followers who needed “alternatives” to the media, intellectuals, academicians, historians, writers they had so discredited. Part of fashioning lies and falsity as the other truth, is making sure it can be repeated over and over again.

This polarization is what we are watching unfold as we stand here, with 56 days to go to May 9. And as I said earlier, these are actually two very different universes battling it out for people’s votes, and it is because of this that we cannot afford to be blinded by notions of hope and the massive rally turnouts for Robredo at this point. VP Leni herself has said “Crowds do not win elections,” but I would go beyond her suggestion that people go out to talk to family and neighbors. What needs to be done is to get to those who might not even know these rallies are happening because they are not online, have no proper or efficient access to mainstream media, and are inundated with paid-for content on local radio.

At hindi ito “pagpunta sa laylayan.” Hindi ito ang hinihingi. Makipag-usap sa kapwa-mamamayan. At hindi na ito mahirap gawin. Wala kaming lugar na hinanapan ng ground volunteer na hindi handang makipagusap. And if we ask the right questions, we get the answers we need: sinong iboboto ng mga komunidad? kilala ba nila si Robredo? Then you trust that they know these communities more than we ever could, and give them the help that they need—not the help we insist on giving them. (more…)

Talking 2022 means talking about the elephant in the room that is Grace Poe.

It is clear to anyone who has a sense of how elections are won and lost, who has as starting point Duterte-Marcos’s massive propaganda machinery, who looks at surveys critically vis a vis one’s own political biases, that the only way to win this is to bring together the business sector, the middle classes, and the mass vote behind one candidate.

It was clear, since the 2019 Senatorial election results, that this would be Grace.

And no, you’re not talking to a Grace Poe fan. Search through this site and my social media accounts and you’ll see that I have had the worst opinions of her in terms of where she stands on oligarchs, at the same time that I have been impressed by how she takes the side of the transport sector and commuters in the Senate inquiries she’s led. This doesn’t make me two-faced. It makes HER a Senator, and it makes me a citizen who agrees as much as I might disagree with the people in power.

But that IS the thing isn’t it? The right to vote is tied to a sense of our responsibility to nation, not to the people we vote into positions of power. We are not their fans, or their followers; positions of power aren’t Facebook Pages or Twitter accounts. This is about citizenship and about having a sense of what nation needs at any given point, relative to the decisions that our leaders make for us, in our names, using our funds, regardless of whether we voted for them or not.

No one seems to see this anymore, and this is no surprise. Duterte propaganda has pushed even the most sane, most rational among us to turn to fanaticism and troll discourse, which is easy to fall prey to on social media, where people across Left to Liberal leanings have enjoyed deeper echo chambers. Yes, you will get leaders, from VP Leni to Makabayan talking about uniting the opposition, but none of that matters when their actors are first to engage in divisive, DDS-like behavior on public platforms.

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It seems apt that the last State of the Nation Address of the worst, most violent, most incompetent president of our lifetime happened right smack in the middle of a vicious Delta variant that State propaganda denies is spreading, 17 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and government’s failed, unscientific, anti-people response.

It also happened after almost a week of endless rains that have sunk the poorest of our communities in flood waters. Which followed a Taal Volcano eruption that meant whole communities being forced to evacuate. Two days before the SONA, there was a level six earthquake in the wee hours of the morning.

None of these warranted an appearance from this president. Then again, that might have been a good thing: after all he thinks cracking jokes in the middle of a crisis is okay, and he believes that every problem can be solved by police presence—just like he finds comfort in IATF briefings filled with retired military generals who know nothing about science or medicine, pandemic response or public health.

Propaganda lang malakas
In the five years of Duterte the only thing it has maintained, has done well, and has succeeded in is its propaganda machinery. It’s so so good that those of us on the side of democracy like to deny it exists, if not like to deny the kind of power it has. Our denial of course is part of why Duterte has stayed in power despite our anger and disgust, the movements we have fashioned. There is no winning a war we are in denial about. (more…)

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