If anyone wants an answer as to why Duterte supporters will not be dissuaded through arguments and evidence, you only need to look at how people continue to carry the president’s campaign paraphernalia: you see ballers on wrists and stickers on jeeps, and some people even wear DU30 shirts. It’s obvious that many people identify with Duterte. It is difficult to undermine or displace one’s identification with a personality. In contrast, those who do not identify with any particular politician are either lukewarm, undecided, or indifferent when it comes to policies. It is because people strongly identify with Duterte that they are willing to get behind him when it comes to the war on drugs and the death penalty.
If it’s hard to imagine this
point, let’s use an example from fandom. When it comes to pop stars
like Justin Bieber, if often seems that the singer matters more than
the music. Moreover, his fans are often willing to defend him even
when he commits any kind of wrongdoing. To go back to Duterte, we see
how it’s not exactly because people want Oplan Tokhang
and the death penalty that they believe in the president. Rather,
it’s the other way around. For many, it’s his unorthodox
personality and bravado against conventions of how a president is
supposed to act that first made people gravitate towards him.
As for his faults, you would
probably remember all of his gaffes: from the rape joke during hispresidential campaign up
to his constant swearing,
even against the leaders of foreign nations. As the philosopher
Slavoj Žižek claims with regards to Donald Trump, one identifies
with a leader precisely because of their faults: one would
rather identify with someone whom one believes is as flawed as one
is. The same goes with the personalities around his orbit. I am
almost certain that no amount of scoffing at Mocha Uson or Manny
Pacquiao will lead people to cease following them or the president
they support. Instead, it will only consolidate their foothold in the
psyches of the people and reinforce the class dimension of these
conflicts. (As Jodi Dean writes of the situation in America,
the liberals who voted for Hillary Clinton often neglect class a
marker of identity. It’s probably safe to say the same about
liberals in the Philippines.) To go back, Duterte supporters are
probably thinking: if continuing to follow Mocha, Manny, or Duterte
will continue to piss off smug liberal rich kids, so be it. In short,
this straightforward and often condescending approach that many
Duterte opponents take will only fan the flames further.
There is also an element of
romance in this antipathy. In James Joyce’s “Araby,"
the protagonist takes delight in imagining that he is defending his
love from the crassness of Dublin. To go back to Duterte, many
Duterte supporters are probably excited by the idea of defending
their beloved leader “through a throng of foes,” to quote Joyce.
Their perceived enemies include not only opposition politicians like
Trillanes and De Lima but also anti-Duterte netizens.
Changing one’s mind about the
war on drugs or on the death penalty is not a simple matter, then, of
reason (“The death penalty doesn’t decrease the crime rate”) or
empathy (“Look at how many children have been orphaned by Oplan
Tokhang!”). To compromise one’s belief on these matters is to
also compromise one’s identification with the leader, which then
turns into the anxiety of losing one’s identity. Therein lies one
of the successes of the Duterte administration: it has not only taken
over state apparatuses, but also the very consciousness and sense of
self of the people. It’s worth quoting the philosopher Jodi
Dean’s reading of sociologists Jennifer Silva and Carrie Lane:
Mistrusting institutions, many people today believe that they can only rely on themselves. Their sense of dignity and self-worth comes from being self-sufficient. Skeptical of experts, they speak from their own experience, drawing legitimacy from the identity that makes them who they are. The more they have to combat, to overcome, the more valuable their identity. Solidarity feels like a demand to sacrifice one’s own best thing, yet again, and for nothing.
For his supporters, Duterte’s
politics must seem like a mix of the new and the old. On the one
hand, especially among the youth, this is probably the first time
that they have ever been politicized this way. Some adults who
used to complain about the youth’s apathy to politics are faced
with the traumatic realization of their desires (as Žižek would
often phrase in his work): they got what they wanted, but the youth
have rallied behind a leader who sanctions mass killings and even
behind a late dictator.
This mobilization is the
negative image of what we see in America. Unencumbered by the smears
against socialism during the Cold War and confronted with a
precarious economic position, many young Americans were galvanized by new Left movements such as Occupy and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
If in the West many were mobilized to a progressive cause, here, the
youth moved towards the forces of reaction which masquerade
themselves as something new. I am not indulging in “colonial
mentality.” All this only signals the failure of the Philippine
Left to capture the imagination of youth who were disaffected by the
previous administration and who have a deep conviction that something
is gravely wrong with the country. Furthermore, the case of the
Philippines has more in common with what has been happening in the
West than we would first suspect.
We are also seeing the rise of the Right in European countries
like Sweden, France, and Britain. It’s not difficult to imagine
that, like in the Philippines, many who move in this direction are
young.
This leads us to the residual
elements in Duterte’s politics. As we can see in someone like Mr.Riyoh,
Duterte supporters also tend to be Marcos apologists. Another piece
of evidence which proves this is how pro-Duterte groups mobilized
counter-protests during the rallies against the Marcos Burial and
during the most recent anniversary of the EDSA Revolution. For the
youth, while this kind of political involvement is new to them, its
goals are more or less old. In everyday conversation, many Marcos
apologists often praise how people were “disciplined” under
Martial Law. If Trump wants to “make America great again,” many
of his supporters want the Philippines to be safe and orderly
“again.” In realizing this, they wouldn’t flinch at the use of
violent methods similar to those of the late dictator.
On Facebook (at least),
opposition to Duterte often goes hand in hand with support (either
implicit or direct) for the Liberal Party: Leni Robredo is a
grassroots moderate who has been denied executive power; the legal
offensive against Leila de Lima is an affront against democracy;
former president Aquino looks like a better leader to some compared
to his successor. I know that many of the friends I have on Facebook
support liberals to one degree or another. But in the vein of my idol
Žižek, I will have to provoke you even more: I strongly
believe that rallying behind the Liberal Party is not the
right way to get out of this predicament.
Let us return once more to the
issue of identity. I contend that the Liberal Party does not stand
for an alternative identity but instead a non-identity.
Firstly, the ideological maneuver of liberals is to present their
stances as being natural rather than being particular to a certain
class and political group: “That’s just the right thing to do”
or “That’s just how it’s supposed to be” (a phrase used to
justify everything from the exploitation under the free market up to
violent dispersals). Secondly, I don’t think people had ever staked
their selfhood on P-Noy the way that many Duterte supporters do with
the current president. It’s pertinent to remind ourselves what the
former president stood for and that was mostly the economy: the
economy above everything else. In the face of opposition, his usual
response would be to tout the high GDP rate during his term.
As a rule, “capitalist” rarely sticks as a marker for identity.
Even wealthy celebrities and elites rarely identify themselves with
their property. Instead, they manufacture images of themselves as
being “simple” (wearing modest clothes rather than branded items
or maybe wearing a plain white t-shirt worth P5000) or
“family-oriented” (whatever they do—whether star in a movie or
overwork and underpay millions—they do it for their family). In
contrast, many Filipinos remain nationalistic and as such the main
paradigm for political identity in the Philippines is still
nationalism. They see Duterte as a patriot and supporting him as
being patriotic.
Moreover, it is this "economy
first" approach that has precisely caused the erosion of civil
society to begin with. In America, it was under Obama (who is a
liberal) that banks which ruined the finances of millions of
Americans were only slapped on the wrist and bailed out, even though
they were the ones that caused the economic mess. In the Philippines,
we have to remember that as a Third World country, many of the
companies drawn to us found the cheapness of labor appealing. In our
neoliberal economy, it is in the interest of both local and foreign
capitalists to underpay and overwork. By letting us get overworked,
what would be the tasks of many workers would be assigned to a few,
so many are rendered “redundant” and lose their jobs. You might
also know a friend or two who had quit their job because they
were “drained” at work. Furthermore, work is often precarious:
contractual or even uncertain. You’re probably unsure as to whether
you’ll receive benefits, get regularized, or even keep your job.
This rarely acknowledged exploitation is what I prefer to point to
rather than the statistic about crime tripling under the Aquinoadministration.
This is the context for the high
GDP rate and the worsening of the drug trade in the Philippines.
While the wealthy only become wealthier, many are either exploited or
excluded outright from the formal economy, leading them to
underground trades. One of the favorite economic buzzwords liberals
love is an “inclusive economy.” The contradiction here is that
systemic exclusion is inherent in the economic structure that has
been in place during and before the Aquino administration. This
is one reality that Liberal Party supporters have to thoroughly come
to grips with. As many have probably already said, we wouldn’t have
Duterte if not for Aquino.
By now, any P-Noy supporter
reading this would first think, “Isn’t the Aquino legacy a fount
for political identification?” First, it is evident that many
Filipinos have become disillusioned with both the Aquino legacy and
the EDSA Revolution, as best shown by how Bongbong Marcos came veryclose to winning the vice presidential election.
Those who do not oppose the Aquino legacy and EDSA at least want us
to “move on:” both from Martial Law and the mass movement
that toppled it. Secondly, it is likelier that citizens have bad
tastes in their mouths when EDSA is mentioned because of how the son
of Cory and Ninoy “instrumentalized” (to use a term from Adorno
and Horkheimer) its memory. One only need to remember how P-Noy
excessively invoked it from nearly all of his SONAs up to PopeFrancis’s visit to Malacañang.
If we compare Aquino and Duterte
in this regard, we thus have two presidents who have violated
unwritten rules of discourse with the former overly using (or even
abusing) the memory of his parents and the latter cussing at
politicians and journalists. Duterte supporters tolerate and even
applaud the latter because they see it as the president defending the
interests of the nation, whereas in the former, it is obvious that it
is only done solely for Aquino’s benefit.
To return to nationalist
rhetoric: what is appealing about the “America First” and
“Philippines First” narratives that go against these ideologies
is their simplicity. As scholar Mike German comments about the Trumpcampaign,
what is appealing (and dangerous) about it is its simplicity:
America is in the mess it is now because of immigrants. He continues:
you don’t need to delve into economics, politics, or history in
order to understand this explanation. To change this a bit to
apply it to our situation: the story that drug dealers and users are
ruining the country is an infinitely more accessible story than
something abstract like the GDP.
In light of all of this,
card-carrying liberals or ordinary people who oppose Duterte
cannot continue the way they’re going now. The middle- and
upper-class protesters have to “check their privilege” (to
borrow a phrase which was often used in 2016). Many Duterte
supporters, especially those who hail from the lower-classes, are
proletarians: not only, as Žižek would have it, in the traditional
sense that they have to work in order to survive, but also that they
are deprived of their very substance.
In other words, for many of them, they have nothing else but
their identity. Displacing or undermining their identity and not
replacing it with anything else leaves them with close to nothing. In
contrast, many from the middle-class who oppose Duterte
supporters have a decent education, a more or less stable
economic standing (although admittedly many from this class also have
precarious employment), and their own beliefs that they adhere to
without relying on any political figure in power. Again, there is a
class dimension to these confrontations that is either disavowed or
not dealt with sufficiently.
To clarify, I am not justifying
support for Duterte or saying that we should stop opposing him
altogether. Of course I agree that he must be resisted. At stake are
the lives of drug users who deserve a chance at redemption and
of those orphaned with the deaths of their parents. Duterte resisters
must be confronted with how much they truly want what they desire. Do
they really want the bloodshed to stop? Or do they only secretly want
to thumb their noses at the ignorant masses and uphold the image of
the politicians they like?
The only way forward then is to
present something totally different. In many Western countries,
we see not only the emergence of the Right but also of new
progressive movements: not the old socialist or social democratic
parties but new grassroots anti-capitalist initiatives pushing
for more welfare (for example: free education and healthcare,
better transportation systems) and the prioritization of labor over
capital (the majority of workers and their families living
comfortably is more important than profit for a privileged few). We
have Podemos in Spain and the rise of Labour Party outsider Jeremy
Corbyn in Britain. An Al Jazeera article reports that after the Bernie Sanders campaign, more Americans starting joiningdemocratic socialist organizations,
partly because they were also disaffected by the Democratic Party,
the American counterpart to the Liberal Party in the Philippines.
If we are to offer the people a
new political identity, we can’t stick to the Diehard Duterete
Supporters or “go back” to the “Yellows.” We need to show
people that they can want something else which entails equality,
freedom, and justice for all—even for drug users who can be
rehabilitated. As Bernie Sanders had probably said many times
during his campaign: why not socialism?
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