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.

And when I say it’s more complex and multilayered than we think, let’s start with something that all of us are already seeing: early campaigning. In 2019, as early as six months before elections, Marcos and Bong Go “news” proliferated on AM radio; it is no different in the present except they started 17 months before the elections. We can raise our fists against those Duterte calendars, the billboards, the car stickers and tarpaulins, we can call it k*pal all we want, but none of that matters to this absolutely shameless and brazen kind of politico. Besides, either way, it does its work by getting mainstream and social media mileage. Either way, you’ve got private homes now with tarps and calendars of Duterte, the masa wearing Marcos caps and ballers. And our side has nothing.

Now of course we’ve seen the Liberals try to do a Duterte. They’ve employed bloggers to take on the main State propagandists, using the same kind of tone and language, but none have been able to take on the kind of incessant, tireless propaganda of the other side. We’ve also seen some Liberal efforts at early campaigning, but the other side is so well-strategized that all it took was for them to build an anti-Leni signature campaign and an on-ground Sara signature campaign, to beat and effectively end the Ready for Leni project.

About as successful as the creation of dilawan as pejorative against the Liberals—though undoubtedly more dangerous—is the massive and well-funded effort to discredit the Left and sell the idea that all activists are terrorists, that any one of them have firearms in their homes, that they are all enemies of the State who, as such, deserve to be killed. And this propaganda is not just what’s online, and spewed by Duterte appointees like Lorraine Badoy. It is also on ground, in propaganda materials distributed by NTF-ELCAC, the militarized Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), the LGUs at the mercy of Duterte’s police and military.

And this propaganda is partnered with policy (think the Terror Law), as it is with process. Now it is clear for example, that there are judges who will issue warrants of arrest based solely on what the police say about an individual; and based on that warrant, the police will knock on people’s homes in the wee hours of the morning, all at the same time, purportedly to arrest them, but easily to kill them. These brazen acts against unarmed civilians are only possible with the power of propaganda, that one that insists these people are terrorists because they are activists, that one that will push the idea that they are armed and dangerous and nanlaban, and therefore all of this is legal.

No one on our side believes this propaganda to be true, but we do not matter. To Duterte’s base, who are fed this propaganda, it’s as real as the cash they’re paid to spread lies.

But this propaganda has worked within our ranks as well, with another one of its successes being the deepened divide between the Left and Liberals, something they’ve worked on since 2016, knowing full well that unity between the two parties would make for a viable and powerful opposition that those of us in the middle can get behind.

There is no bigger measure of its success than the fact that, faced with the killing of nine union and community leaders in the hands of the police, we have to see people on our side of this battle blaming the dead activists for having been killed. (And in case y’all are wondering, retweets count.)

That we cannot even get an unequivocal, inarguable agreement on something as basic as cold-blooded murder in the hands of the police, is propaganda at work. That we cannot even stop ourselves, take pause, before we tweet something; that we cannot even think in terms of bigger pictures and what is urgently needed at this point in time, is just painful.

Because another proof of Duterte’s propaganda success: we don’t even see it at work anymore. We actually think we serve critical thinking, we serve nation, we serve the most vulnerable in society, by insisting that now is the time to talk about the Left working with Duterte in 2016-2017, that now is the time to dream of a Liberal win in 2022. In reality, both serve no one at this point but Duterte himself. Feeding the divisiveness is exactly what he lives off; these disparate issues that keep us from focusing on the realities that should surround a conversation about 2022, will deliver that election to him on a silver platter. 

And what is that reality? It’s that one that’s been staring us in the face the past four years: Duterte’s killing it. And the only way we even have a chance of winning 2022 is if we go back to basics: understand the enemy, battle with propaganda, set aside difference, unite on common issues, and get our shit together. Our lives depend on it. ***