propaganda – Page 2 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

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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