What is the size of a controversy? And how is a story magnified, amplified, expanded at this time when anyone at all can manufacture digital noise, generate so much content that it will make it to our newsfeeds despite our algorithmic bubbles?
The Rodrigo Duterte presidency was a grand display of how government propagandists could make mountains out of molehills, be it about the purported achievements of their beloved president, or about his declared political enemies. We now know what it takes to keep any narrative going, where content is constantly and consistently generated to feed it, to repeat what is being said, until it starts moving on its own. Case in point: the criticism against the elite, the label of dilawan, the terrorista-komunista tag, and even, the label bobotante.
This, to me, is how we know for sure that even the worst, most baseless false narratives, when un-addressed and un-dealt with, can and will fester. To the point that there is no curing it—not with the truth, and certainly not with the tools that are familiar.
The Anti-First Lady trip
Duterte propagandists have always had it in for First Lady Liza Marcos, a project that has been helped along by both Vice President Sara Duterte’s and the presidential sister and senator Imee Marcos’s pronouncements against her.
What happened at the First Lady’s US trip for the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) in March, as such, from the perspective of the Duterte propagandists, is an opportunity to hit the First Lady harder than they ever have. Never mind common sense and decency; never mind respect for a family in grief.
As early as March 11, the louder among the Duterte propagandists was already screaming at the top of her lungs about the death of someone from the First Lady’s MIFF entourage. Her unverified tsismis was aplenty: the First Lady was questioned and detained, the group of the FL was “nataranta”, they didn’t report the death until seven hours after, all of this pointing to what she insisted was an effort to cover up the death.
Part of this story was repeated by Vice President Sara Duterte in May, during the electoral campaign, where she connects this narrative about the First Lady being detained to the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC). On May 5 2025 the vice president claimed:
Noong nagkaroon ng malaking krimen sa Estados Unidos na mayroong namatay dahil sa drug overdose at kung makikita ninyo sa police report ay nandoon ang pangalan ni First Lady Liza Marcos. Noong nagkaroon ng drug overdose at mayroong namatay sa Amerika at nandoon sa loob ng kwarto si First Lady Liza Marcos at nandoon sa police report, cocaine ‘yong sinasabing nagkalat doon sa kuwarto na ‘yon, ay bigla na lang nila hinila, kindinap, dinukot si Pangulong Duterte.
This narrative that the vice president weaves is one that has been repeated by Duterte propagandists. It surfaced in response to the fact that while the first tsismis spewed was that the First Lady was detained on March 8, this was easily disproven by the First Lady’s official accounts, among many others: during the day she is seen with members of the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, and in the afternoon and evening at the MIFF 50: Konsyerto Para sa Filipino at Cerritos Center for Performing Arts in California. She would also be in Manila by March 11, turning over donations to the Girl Scouts of the Philippines.
But being disproven by facts is rarely the end for these narratives, dependent as these are on insinuations and possibilities, mostly maliciously articulated. Once the detention was disproven, it was only a matter of time before they came up with a new way to spin the narrative—because again, the goal is to keep it going. And going.