A couple of days before Christmas, on probably the only time I’ve driven down the stretch of EDSA-Northbound since the March 2020 lockdown, I saw huge tarpaulins hanging on flyovers and walkways obviously released by the Duterte government. In small font on top of the tarp, it said Communist Party of the Philippines and at center it crossed out the number 52. Both of these are secondary to the declaration, in larger font, for us to “Disown and Junk Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” (Itakwil at Ibasura Marxismo-Leninismo-Maoismo).

I remember pointing it out to my younger sestra—a former student—riding with me in the car, to which she cheekily replied: “Ha? How do we takwil class inequality and struggle?” or something to that effect.

It was then that it became clear to me that while this government will insist it is only after “the communists” and “the Left,” it is in fact lying through its teeth. What it fears is not the insurgency or the number of people who might decide to go to the mountains and join the armed struggle. Its real fear is that as more of us see how incompetent and violent this Duterte government is, we might start thinking differently about governance and politics, focused as we become on class inequality, injustice, and rights violations, and the kind of systemic corruption in government that has brought us to this point of crises.

Free thought, the kind that is critical, that is radical, that insists on looking at root causes, that demands that issues be discussed, that insists on information based on facts and data, is what a government like Duterte’s would fear. There is no bigger proof of this than the cancellation of the ABS-CBN franchise—the biggest act of censorship this government has committed thus far. As there is no more important example of how afraid they are of dissent and critique, and of ideology in general from liberation theology to feminism, than the railroading, passage, and implementation of the Anti-Terror Law.

On the surface, we think the ABS-CBN franchise cancellation is more about clamping down on freedom of the press and right to information, and the ATL is about activists and activism. In reality, alongside with threats and vitriol we are wont to get on social media from paid trolls and propagandists, this is all but part of the task that is to clamp down on our freedom to think.

To some extent, this government’s moves are expected: after all, when you’re kept afloat by propaganda that incites hate, sows fear, and is based primarily on disinformation and falsity, you will want to shut down anyone who even so much as asks the right questions. And you will want to scare those who just might start speaking up.

But also, four years in, this is telling. Government seems to have realized that discrediting the Liberals and vilifying the Left are just not enough. And neither is it enough that they had scared big business into silence; and had successfully pushed mainstream media towards self-censorship, even before the ABS-CBN closure.

It’s not enough that they had built a climate of fear, and not as an abstract concept that those of us who are politically-engaged on social media feel; but as a reality on the ground, in communities now run by a militarized Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), that has emboldened barangay and police officials to operate like hoodlums, treating towns and sitios as their very own kingdoms that they can serve on a silver platter to Duterte’s men. Realize that as we speak, and the past four years, people are randomly picked up in front of their homes with no warrants, and then detained with no clear reason, other than maybe having pissed off a barangay or police official.

These are the places where even at the height of the lockdown in March 2020, nanays were afraid to accept food and assistance from outsiders, lest their barangay captains hear of it and question why they were getting any help at all. When you know of these spaces, you would also know that as surveys are done here, it’s practically done under duress.

But this is not enough for this government. Because this middle class that’s online, those of us who are privileged enough to live outside of these communities operating on fear and hunger, we have yet to be turned into the “good citizens” that government wants, who will do only what Duterte says, who will refuse to be critical, who will sacrifice rights and freedoms for notions of public good, peace, and order—or for some good ol’ cash.

This government cannot imagine who we are, but it can imagine what we can become. On the one hand it can hope that we just simply cower in fear and decide to be apathetic. On the other, it knows that we can be the loose cannons that can destroy its well-strategized, otherwise successful propaganda.

This battle for thought, our thoughts, is really about government’s fear of a citizenry that is growing angrier by the day, that is wanting to find ways to respond to the chaos of nation, and the incompetence and violence of this leadership. It’s a fear that’s borne of the people Duterte and his people cannot simply peg to Left and Liberal. The latter two their propaganda has beaten black and blue the past four years. But anyone who doesn’t fall under those two categories—that’s the unknowable they cannot control. That is the unknowable they want to scare into submission.

That unknowable is us. Now if we only realize we hold such power. ***