If there’s anything that one has consistently been reminded about throughout 2023, it is that we still do not know how to deal with the propaganda landscape that the Duterte leadership had established for six years, and which, regardless of the Dutertes’s “lesser” position politically, is the game we are all stuck playing.
I speak of 2023 because in 2022, we were all just in a post-election haze, regardless of where we were / are on the political spectrum. If you were on the side of Marcos-Duterte, you were just on a high, doing the parties, enjoying the perks that come with having campaigned for the winner. If you were on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan, then you would fall under either of two groups: the ones who disengaged completely from politics and governance, maybe in disgust, probably as a by-product of despair; or the ones who tried to keep the anger going by carrying on as if nothing had changed — after all, a Duterte is still in power, and Duterte himself seemed to have set the stage for a Marcos win.
Presidential sister Imee has said it in so many words: President Duterte had eradicated their enemies.
But also, and this seems important to realize for all of us, Duterte had set the stage for this present, where the opposition, at best, has completely lost its footing, regardless of where we are on that spectrum that spans the Liberals and the Left.
At worst, we have been driving blind since the campaign for the 2022 elections — maybe even since the Senatorial campaign of 2019. To an extent, it seems like we’ve been content in the delusion that righteousness, with a dollop of troll army, is all that we need to battle it out in this landscape. We believe that because we are “right” then that will win us this battle.
But maybe we have to admit that being “right” doesn’t quite mean the same thing anymore.
It isn’t just about the relativity of algorithms — after all that just makes us believe that these battles are primarily only online, and that just isn’t true. Neither does it do us any good to insist that this is simply the fault of social media platforms that have transformed us into zombies — propaganda is perpetuated by people with their own agency and subjectivity. The masses make choices, and they have specific individual voices.
And so when we talk about what’s right, what we are faced with is a diverse population of people who think differently about what’s right. It could be the propaganda that they believe in versus the facts that we hold dear. It could be the context in which they receive the information versus how we dispense of the same.
The propaganda against VP Sara Duterte and her confidential funds is a critical moment for the opposition. But between mainstream media and opposition social media, what it ended up fueling was the propaganda that VP Sara was being attacked, re-formulating her into victim. Siya pa ang kinuyog, siya ang inaapi.
This should be familiar to all of us: during her father’s presidential run, so much of the unity that was fostered among his followers had to do with the insistence that there was a concerted effort to unseat him. The Protect Duterte narrative was born then, as it has been reignited in the present as Protect VP Sara. Talk of impeaching her just further galvanized unity behind this propaganda line, regardless of whether it has basis or not.
What is there for us to do then? It seems that first we need to realize how our own communications strategies might really only be deepening the political divides instead of forging unities through issues that affect all of us. We need to admit that we are in over our heads where propaganda is concerned, because we have been outdone for most of Duterte’s six years, and we continue to be outdone two years into this Marcos-Duterte leadership.
So maybe in 2024, we start admitting that the landscape is not one we know anymore. The game’s rules have completely changed, and we are not the ones dictating how the game can be played at this point — no matter our notions of right and wrong. As with many things, Duterte changed the landscape of political propaganda, and it’s not just about creating content or hiring propagandists; it is, more than anything, about content, as it is about form, and platform.
The sooner we start thinking in those terms, the better we can do battle.