Narratives of the Duterte Diehard Supporters (when it is not known as the Davao Death Squad) entered a new phase of predictability.
The template of apologetics became clearer when Rodrigo Duterte began his incarceration in The Hague. Because the DDS world fell apart by much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the loss of their narrative master, the dynamics changed.
The seventeen Filipinos who were detained by the State of Qatar this previous March had been freed by the Qatari government, the charges against them dismissed. The news was relayed to President Marcos Jr. by the Qatari ambassador to Manila Ahmed Saad Nasser Abdullah Al-Homidi. The diplomatic dialogues preceding this development were played by the Department of Migrant Workers with the Qatari government.
The interesting part of this incident followed news of their arrest. By then, migrant Filipinos had been massing outside the Scheveningen detention facility in the Netherlands especially when Sara Duterte would show up almost daily and give silly impromptu statements. As DDS on social media would gobble up her vacuous statements, there was also a uniform response DDS netizens would give whenever news of the Qatar arrests was brought up: the arrest was fake news.
Media manipulation by DDS is no longer shocking after eight years of Dutertismo. What is incredible is how DDS still attempt to overturn reality into fantasy. First of all, news of the arrest was certainly verifiable on international mainstream media. DDS persistence to insist that the arrest was fake news was understandably damage control.
Duterte’s arrest and incarceration was a major blow to the DDS. News that gave further impact had to be cushioned. And the arrest in Qatar was one convenient avenue to soften the impact.
And then the social media posts took a fast turn in twisting the narrative. Not only was the Qatar arrests fake news in the limited mind of the DDS, the seventeen Filipinos were arrested not because of violating Qatar’s draconian laws on illegal assembly – they were arrested because they had no identifications cards. I had lost track of how many Duterte apologists had said that on a private page dedicated to the Duterte case at the International Criminal Court.
Notice the manipulation of the plot: how could seventeen Filipinos be arrested altogether because of a random misdemeanor that they had no ID cards? Were they arrested individually and then rounded up incidentally together in one police station in Doha? DDS do not say. They just repeated the same line: it is fake news to say that the Filipinos were arrested because they were all in one public mass demonstration protesting the Duterte arrest.
In such situation, what can ordinary readers do to verify the truth? One certainly does not go to blogs and vlogs, especially if these are politically slanted to the Dutertes. The easiest way is to go to mainstream media. Yet even that approach is not palatable to the DDS, after Mocha Uson in Malacañang had once called media as “presstitutes.” That “bayaran” (paid) tag is a favorite line of DDS. Vera Files has been called Pera Files.
But what about international media? For example, one of the first to report news of the arrest was the Jerusalem Post. It is Middle Eastern based. The JPost had interviewed sources at the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs who confirmed the news:
“Sixteen Filipino workers were arrested by Qatari authorities as of Monday, after being accused of holding an unlawful political gathering in the Gulf nation known for its crackdown on political freedom of expression. According to sources, the workers took part in an event protesting the arrest warrant issued against former leader Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague on the backdrop of the latter’s ‘war on drugs.”
When DDS do damage control, they become nitpickers, in an attempt to demolish veracity. Why do some news sources say seventeen and some sixteen? DFA Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega soon clarified the discrepancy. Twenty Filipinos were arrested; three minors were released; one adult was released but continue to be charged. The DFA also issued the clarification on its Facebook page.
As early as March 13, the Philippine Embassy in Qatar had issued an advisory to its nationals to observe Qatari laws on “mass demonstrations and gatherings to express political views or air grievances.” The embassy urged Filipinos in Doha to respect local laws and customs on mass gatherings. The advisory was never about IDs.
When DDS do damage control, they mire themselves deeper into shit for using the means of misinformation. The Qatar arrest was real; they were arrested when they held a protest rally against the Duterte incarceration; they were not arrested for not having IDs.
DDS insistence shows us why they are a danger to our democratic values: they do not care about lying. Lying is the beginning of corruption.
Before, all it took was for Rodrigo Duterte to state a lie and everyone else follows the lie as gospel truth. A convenient example these Dutch days: the drug addicts were killed because they had killed and raped thousands of Filipinos (with no statistics to show simply because there were none). Another: if you are against Duterte you are an adik. Now that Duterte is silenced inside his comfortable prison life, all his DDS followers bring him to life by parroting his lines.
The DDS have become clones of his grandiose narcissism and congenital lying, a minority that is noisy, yet a minority nevertheless. They may not be a danger to immediate destabilization; they are a danger to truth telling. Kill the truth and the nation dies.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
