Tag Archives: Duterte propaganda

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The propaganda war: Lessons from the ABS-CBN closure

It’s been a year since the ABS-CBN leadership decided to sign off. This was probably it’s only power move throughout the four years that Duterte had vilified them every chance he got, even when he had Gina Lopez as DENR Secretary, and even when ABS had paid up whatever it owed in taxes, and returned the cash the President insisted they owed him for an advertisement that didn’t air during the 2016 presidential campaign. And yes, this was an important power move, considering that all of us were witness to how its main commentators tried their hardest to bite their tongues on live free radio, and how news coverage was less about delivering the news as it was also about making sure not to step on too many toes.

To be fair, this wasn’t just the state of ABS-CBN news and public affairs under Duterte, as it is the state of mainstream media that has the widest coverage across social classes. In a country where a majority are not reading anything written in English, and a majority of those online are on free data, it should be pretty clear by now that for all the hashtags we can get to trend, and all the “unities” we think we’re doing here, we are in an echo chamber like no other. And no, we’re not winning anything in these echo chambers.

Just like we couldn’t win the battle to keep ABS-CBN on air.

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Duterte’s killing it #Talk2022

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.

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Driven to exhaustion: Privilege and possibility #2020

There are many things we might have in common, living where we do, under the leadership that we have, in a 2020 riddled by crises. Here where it wasn’t (isn’t) just the pandemic, as it was a Taal Volcano eruption early in January 2020, government’s refusal to ban Chinese mainlanders from entering the Philippines despite the threat of Covid-19 spread in February, the longest lockdown/quarantines in the world from March 2020 to the present, strong typhoons and massive flooding in the last two months of the year.

It is easy to think this is all a matter of being Filipino, but it seems important to highlight how this is also a matter of social class. Of course one is mindful about using the term “middle class,” tenuous and unstable as that category is, especially given the pandemic. To my mind though, the category suffices to define this particular privilege that is important to acknowledge, as it is important to address. Because we are often told to check our privilege, which also inevitably silences us: the majority after all, have it worse.

But why invalidate this particular experience of the middle class? Why be silenced by the notion of privilege, when while we are not the majority who are poor, neither are we at the opposite end of this deepening wealth gap? We are not the 5% who are oligarchs and old rich, for whom half-a-million beach trips and vacations is part of this new normal. Neither are we influencers and celebrities who are selling a new normal of spending thousands on Covid-19 tests just to go on a beach trip, or to party with friends. (more…)

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Duterte winning: The VFA, timing, divide & conquer

I’ve written before (and often) about the Duterte strategies that have kept him and this government afloat. When I did so, he was still awake most of the time, and not disappearing on us in times of tragedy, there was no major public health concern like COVID19, no volcanos exploding, no communities losing their homes and livelihood while the President slept.

We are undoubtedly in worse times now, and yet we still don’t get it.

Proof of that pudding? When Duterte declared the cancellation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). And what did we see? The members of the Left, supporting Duterte on this declaration, asserting that it is “just and necessary”, and the Liberal stalwarts putting it into question by highlighting this government’s pivot to China. On social media the rhetoric is vicious, where the discussion is limited to “tuta ng Kano” o “tuta ni Duterte”; where anyone who even so much as refuses to stand with Duterte on his VFA declaration is seen as a US-ally, or as an enabler of US Imperialism.

Probably the worst example of how terrible things are is Walden Bello attacking retired Justice Antonio Carpio for being on “the wrong side on the VFA issue.” But one must ask: is the Duterte side, the right side to be on?

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Desperation: Cracks in Duterte propaganda

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…)