Here’s the thing about Toni Gonzaga: she is a symptom as she is the condition itself, a very critical condition of lies, falsity, and disinformation at a time when murderers are condoned and the corrupt are shameless, when the plunder of resources has been normalized, as has the violation of basic rights, at a time when algorithms run our social media lives which, given this pandemic, is pretty much the life that we live.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: this is ALL on her. She—as with other content creators, celebrities, influencers, you and me who do social media—is making decisions about what content to put out into the world, and SHE is solely responsible for those decisions. There is no one else she can blame for what is put on her accounts and her channels, there is no network to hide behind, no producer or manager to point a finger at.

At this point, we are seeing these personalities for who and what they are. And as Toni said: she’s got nothing to hide. And to some extent she’s never hidden that she is a Marcos loyalist—she’s just more shameless now, right on the month of Martial Law commemoration, in utter disregard for the thousands killed, the thousands more who live with its trauma, and the millions plundered by the Marcoses that all of us have suffered for.

Maybe this is the pandemic effect on her: I got nothing to hide, I got nothing to prove. Here, see me as a Marcos loyalist! I don’t give a flying f*ck. You only live once.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she knows, she has seen, how she will not be held accountable.

Yes, we will raise our fists, and we will deliver statements, we will write essays like this one. But the next soundbite from Duterte, the next controversy, the next content creator will do something, and she will be forgotten. No one’s keeping track, no one’s making a list.

No celebrity has been held accountable for campaigning for Duterte in 2016, no celebrity is being made to pay in any way for having condoned him the past six years. Just like the drug war that failed at getting “the big fish,” cancel culture hasn’t done much to get any big fish either—not these celebrities with millions on their algorithms, not any of Duterte’s government officials, and not Duterte himself.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she thinks that she is being “objective” by having everyone on her platform, both on the side of Duterte and Marcos, and on the side of VP Leni. She is wrong. Having these people on her platform do not make them equal; it provides a bigger platform for those who have already spent the people’s money on early campaigning—if not campaigning the past six years. Or, in the case of the Marcoses, the past 20 years since they returned after being kicked out by the people at EDSA 1986.

And we let people like her do this. We let people like her get away with this. Because early in the Duterte presidency, we didn’t know how to handle a Mocha Uson, spreading vitriol, spewing malice, living off making insinuations against anyone at all and getting away with it. So many of us on the democracy side said: she has the freedom to say these things, this is a democracy. Then Duterte clamped down on media entities, silenced critics, and closed down ABSCBN, while the Mochas multiplied exponentially, and the lies and hate and vitriol took over our discourse.

And here we are: imagining that the right response to this is to implore Toni Gonzaga to provide space for Martial Law victims. A pointless exercise, when one considers the kind of cash spent by the Marcoses on historical revisionism, and the kind of cash we have not spent on telling factual, data-based history better.

This is the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she must have seen this unfold the past six years, and now knows that in the end, if Bongbong wins 2022, she will be on the side of the government, and will have bragging rights for being part of the Marcos propaganda team. She will be no different from Mocha, doing what she did for Duterte and landing government positions for herself; it will be no different from any other Duterte propagandist that has made a killing in the time of hate, violence, incompetence, and corruption, while thousands die.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she actually believes that our opinions of her actions have nothing to do with her. She actually believes that this is just about pleasing people, and that she doesn’t have to please us.

She couldn’t be more wrong. None of us need to be pleased with her actions. She just needs to get it right. She just needs to take responsibility, not for our opinions of her, but for her own decisions that impinge on our basic rights to truth, and facts, and history.

This is about her decision to use her platform for a person who has made a living, has built his wealth, on the back of the Filipino people. This is about using her platform to allow a person to continue to revise history, to change what is true and factual about the Martial Law years and the Marcos dictatorship. This is about her decision to paint a picture of “humanity” out of a dictator, a man under whose leadership the Philippines’ resources and wealth were plundered, under whose tyranny thousands were tortured and killed, under whose cronyism corruption and abuse by oligarchs were condoned.

Lest it’s not clear: Martial Law history is written, it exists, it is alive. Its victims have spoken, have delivered testimonials, are all over the internet. Our parents lived through Martial Law and were witness to its repression of rights and corruption. The courts have decided on Imelda Marcos’s guilt, and on the right of Martial Law victims to reparation. The plunder of our resources, the expensive schools, the extravagant parties, the lifestyles of the rich, famous Marcoses—including Bongbong—are all well-documented. These ARE FACTS.

This is the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she doesn’t care. Because this is her, claiming credibility, insisting she has proven herself already and can now do what she wants. She forgets that she is part of nation. That her citizenship—the kind of citizen that she is—is dependent on this one nation that has cradled her, allowed her to earn her millions, and gives her this audience she earns from. That comes with the responsibility not to spread lies, at the very least.

This is the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she is the monster we ourselves created because we do not know what to do with celebrities who are using their platforms to peddle lies, falsity, and hate, who are complicit in the revision of history, who are part and parcel of the violence and corruption that ails our government and kills our people, during Marcos’s regime, and certainly during Duterte’s.

This is the thing with dictators and tyrants, plunderers and corrupt politicians: they subsist on people like Toni Gonzaga. Who have no sense of nation, no sense of citizenship, and no sense of what it means to be Filipino, to care enough about it to want that its stories be told correctly and factually, especially the most difficult ones that are about people being killed by dictators, our resources being plundered by tyrants.

Right here is someone who believes that these things do not matter, and worse, that it shouldn’t matter to her fans either.

This is the thing with Toni Gonzaga. She is no different from Bongbong Marcos. ***