Tag Archives: Duterte propagandists

komentaryo

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…)

komentaryo

Mocha, diplomacy, and the reckless endangerment of our OFWs

When on April 25 the Kuwait News Agency broke the news that the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry had announced that Philippine Ambassador Renato Villa was being declared persona-non-grata, and was being told to leave the country in a week, it was not clear to me what it was about. What was clear to me though was that there was reason for such a strong statement coming from the Kuwaiti government.

See, days before, I had combed through Presidential Communications’ Asec for Social Media Mocha Uson’s official Facebook page, after realizing that she was in fact in Kuwait covering the interwoven events happening there: the final batch of repatriated OFWs availing of the amnesty program of the Kuwaiti government, the state of OFWs in embassy shelters, and the rescue of OFWs (this is what she herself says in a live video dated April 19).

Watching her videos, listening to how she was speaking to government officials and OFWs, revealed what we all know to be Mocha’s basic lack of sense about the proper behaviour of government officials, but especially so during this highly sensitive situation. Suffice it to say that her kind of “coverage” would have been enough to do us in with the Kuwaiti government, especially given diplomatic relations vis a vis our overseas migrant workers. If anything, I thought Mocha was reason enough for the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry to demand that the Philippines do this whole task of diplomacy better.  (more…)

komentaryo

Protest culture VS troll discourse

When otherwise intelligent individuals become trolls, putting down the protests that have been happening from Luneta to the People Power Monument, Manila to Quezon City, and across the county, I tell anyone who asks me about these put-downs: well, we must be doing something right, yeah?

Because imagine the amount of time these people waste. They have to look for photos that will prove what they want to say about a rally they did not attend. They cull from the hundreds of photos of the rally, the ones that will prove what they want to say: these kids know not what they’re doing, Mocha apologizes. Duterte devotees are suddenly dependent on mainstream media which they’ve lambasted all this time, using it as source for who was at the rally, and what happened there.

Imagine the identity crisis these trolls go through: shifting from being pro-Duterte to being pro-Marcos and back, wondering how exactly those who are pro-Duterte could be anti-Duterte-alliance-with-the-Marcoses, and just unable to grapple with the fact that the discourse of pro- and anti- does not capture at all what is a more complex task of learning and engagement, within and outside these protests (more…)