Erase and rewind

MOCHA Uson’s blog ran a survey last week asking if People Power I is a product of “fake news”. As expected, 84% of her followers voted yes. The Filipino people voted 100% that Mocha Uson is an idiot, pa-drama and all.

UST is even considering taking back the degree Mocha earned in college. May back subject pala siya in history. (This line may be fake news.)

Another pro-government blogger Thinking Pinoy, meanwhile, challenged netizens if Marcos ever ordered to shoot non-political farmers? As if the bullets during Martial Law were powered with Iron Man’s tech to identify if the farmer is pro-Marcos or pro-NPA.

Seriously, these two propagandists need a fact-check. No, they need a slap in the face. Actually, all Duterte followers who follow these two need a reality check too.

Too much time on Facebook have made us forget our histories. And we need instead to face the real faces of Martial Law survivors, marginalized farmers, urban poor workers, Lumads and Moro people, and activists who have lost their freedoms or their lives fighting for their rights.

In fact, these marginalized sectors continue to feel the loss of freedoms, notwithstanding the promise of change in this administration. One can see how Mindanao is battered still by poverty, war, and the impact of Martial Law in Mindanao.

You may wonder why there is this fixation on being angry on the Aquinos, and paint them as a fake legacy of oligarchs and landlords. This is only partly true, that the previous president failed to carry on with the legacy of freedom. But that is not the whole truth of history. The anti-Marcos’ struggles and movements was participated by many sectors, from church, lawyers to academe and urban poor. As mentioned in my previous column, Davao also contributed much to defend freedoms, even the president’s mother was one of the leaders of Davao’s “Yellow Friday Movement”.

This government and its propaganda machine is bent on trying to erase the opposition and other critics. One must take note that these social media propagandists like Mocha and Thinking Pinoy have also been photographed together with the Marcoses. This is perhaps the motive, to make the opponents of the Marcos look back so that they can reclaim their old glory.

While it is true that the previous presidency failed with its daang matuwid and nostalgia, this present government is still not the alternative to the past regimes, what with its attacks on civil liberties, freedom of expression and revisions of history, it is more like a repeat of the days of disquiet in the past.

There is a saying that those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. And with the likes of Mocha leading the flock, we are going backwards.

(tyvelez@gmail.com)