social media – Page 6 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

Let’s call it what it is: desperation.

We are being made to believe by Duterte propagandists that the inclusion of provisions specific to Leila de Lima in the US Appropriations Act for 2020 is a sham. Yes, the same one that Donald Trump signed on December 20 2019. That same one that’s got us all talking about the Magnitsky Act. Someone calls it fake news. Another calls on media to show her where exactly this provision is. So many likes and shares after, and you know this is the kind of irresponsibility that this government has lived off, whether through these purported rogue propagandists or through official agencies like the PCOO and Mocha Uson.

Now in the past two years I’ve ignored these people completely—it’s just not worth it talking to people who have drank the kool-aid. It’s always entertaining though, mostly because it can hold a drop or two of truth. This time though the lapses are so huge, that one can only see it as either a deliberate effort to misinform the Duterte base, and/or get on the good side of Duterte by pointing out that his own people are being dumb. Except that they aren’t. (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…)

Dividing critics and conquering criticism, undoing democracy in all ways possible, tagging and attacking the Left is but the first half of Duterte’s propaganda strategy. Yes, this same one that we are unable to contend with, unable to wrap our heads around, even as it is what we need to capture and figure out for us to even move forward. Here, the ERTE, to the first part’s DUT.

Escalate Attacks. As with everything Duterte propaganda does, this is not just about what’s happening discursively on social and mainstream media, but also what is happening on the ground. With the Left, it is clear and present danger: during the campaign season alone, senior citizen peace consultants were arrested on fake charges, activists sleeping on buses were shot dead, farmers and peasants were killed in their homes, youth campaigners were disappeared only to be surfaced with fake charges to their names. The killings have continued from Mindanao to Negros, across Lumad and farmer communities; workers’ picketlines have been violently dispersed; students and teachers are threatened with police presence in schools. Activist leaders are put in fictional matrices and their credibility ruined with petty issues blown out of proportion.

The crisis really is that the Duterte public know little of how the Left works, and whoever is in charge of this attack propaganda strategy has been able to hit it where it could hurt. The first step was to declare communism as a form of terrorism — as said by Duterte is so many ways — which effectively vilified even just the fact of believing in the communist ideology. “Komunista!” as a pejorative was created and massively propagated, something that we see not just on social media, but actually feel on the ground. And at a time when facts don’t matter, and proper conversations are not had, whatever responses the Left has come out with just have not worked at balancing out the negative propaganda. There is after all no discussion to be had, no proper conversation possible, when the only response is: “Komunista ka!”

It’s a conversation-ender that translates to the reckless endangerment of all critics and activists who are dismissed to be nothing more but terrorist. Sure, many of us don’t believe this propaganda. But we do not matter. This is for Duterte’s base. And as far as that base is concerned, this checks all the boxes: Tatay Digong is correct, Tatay Digong is cleaning up the Philippines, Tatay Digong will be protected at all costs. (more…)

The first time a young writer came out with a Facebook status (dated August 2) about having been taken “sexual advantage” of in a writing workshop, I shared it with a very clear statement about silence. Fresh from the CNN Life panel for the Readers and Writers Fest where we were asked what is the biggest realization we’ve had about the cultural sector, I said that it is about how much of it operates on silence. We don’t know what’s going on, how things are decided, how the systems work, and all that we ever discuss is what we see on the surface: the finished art work, the published piece, the film, the TV show, the dress. But the work that goes into that, the institutions that come into play, the oppressions that are intrinsic to that system — we are kept in the dark about these things. After all, we can be so aware of power relations and capital, and still deny what that truly means. (more…)

If there is a lesson to be learned from the outcome of the 2019 elections, it is this: the Duterte machine — guns, goons, gold, plus propaganda — is a success, by ALL counts, and it doesn’t even matter that chief propagandist Mocha didn’t get a seat in Congress.

It has succeeded because we were all oblivious to, decidedly ignoring, all the signs that this leadership would move hell and high water to get the Senate and Congress it needs to continue, Presidential ill-health and worsening poverty and discontent notwithstanding. To be clear: the election results are not a referendum on Duterte — there was enough irregularity, questions of fraud, massive vote buying to disabuse us of that (— it’s so bad Duterte himself has pretty much admitted to fraud.)

But the fact that they were able to get those Senators proclaimed despite all those irregularities, with nary-a-difficult-to-ignore public outcry, that is the referendum we should be looking at. It is also the “referendum” of the past three years. The truth is, beyond the count, we had let Duterte and his people get away with “rigging” this election, so to speak, ensuring a win, no matter how well the opposition(s) campaigned and how much money they put out (think Bam Aquino and Mar Roxas).

Talo na tayo sa eleksyong ito bago pa man tayo bumoto, bago pa man magsimulang magbilang ang COMELEC. We were losing long before campaign season, long before people even declared their intention to run. In fact, by the time we realized there was a slate we could all get behind, we had already lost. How? Let us count the ways.

(more…)

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