First of two parts
“Is it the truth?”
Many years ago, I wrote a column for a local newspaper in Cebu City. One column I wrote was entitled: “My memories of Martial Law are semi-happy ones.”
I want to read the first paragraph of that old column because it reminds me of a place and time in Cebu:
“I was in second grade, walking to Cebu Normal School with my mother. We reached the corner of P. Del Rosario and Jones Avenue. We were crossing P. del Rosario, near the Sto. Rosario Church, when my mother stopped. She stopped because she had seen the writing on the wall—literally, across the street. Scrawled in large, rough and bloody-red letters on the wall of what was then the Boy Scouts compound was this unfinished sentence: “Marcos fascist imperialist pupp...” Whatever anti-Marcos, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist sentiments the person who painted those words could have stirred in my eight-year old mind were never stirred that day because they were immediately overcome by something more important to my Grade 2 curiosity: what had the vandal meant to write—”puppy” or “puppet”?
I remember the place in this paragraph because that corner used to have a small concrete marker that bore a plaque. The plaque had the words: “The Four Way Test.” I know you know what those four tests are. So, let me begin by asking you to think about this question: would Ferdinand Marcos Jr. even pass that first test: “Is it the truth?”
ROTARIANS AND DICTATORS
In 1938, a German writer who fled to the United States as a refugee issued a warning to the world. Let me quote from an article about him from Jacobin magazine:
“The German writer then issued a list of challenges in 1938 that would sound familiar to our ears today.” Among those challenges: “the threat of propaganda as ‘an instrument of cynical contempt for humanity,’ “the “denial and violation of truth in favor of power,” and the way in which fascist dictatorships erect corrupt and ‘pseudo’ versions of social ideals.”
That German writer was Thomas Mann. He was a 1929 Nobel Prize winner in literature. He was a social democrat. He was also a member of the Rotary Club of Munich in Germany. But just two months after Hitler took office, they expelled him in 1933 along with several other members who were Jews or seen as opposing Hitler. Mann fled to the US and publicly opposed the Nazis there. After World War II, another German, a philosopher named Karl Jaspers wrote a book that has become a foundational reference in the field of transitional justice. The book is called “The Question of German Guilt” and it asks whether all Germans bear a collective guilt for what the Nazis did including those who stood by when they could have prevented some atrocities.
Thomas Mann understood Karl Jaspers. After all, many ordinary Germans, including for example the Rotarians who expelled Mann and Jewish members from their clubs, made it possible for Hitler to commit the escalating atrocities he subsequently committed.
MARCOS AND UNITY
Hitler invoked German ‘unity’ as justification for what he was about to do. In 1938, on the eve of World War II, Hitler said: “The unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual.” Decades later, a similar message was declared by another fascist leader. He said: “We shall be a nation with one purpose, no matter how differently individuals express themselves.” If that sounded ominous to those who heard it, they were justified in their fears. This was Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in his 13th State of the Nation Address (Sona) in 1978. He didn’t just talk about ‘unity.’ He ORDERED unity: “We shall be a nation with one purpose,” he said. He wasn’t asking you or your parents and grandparents in 1978 whether you or they wanted “unity.”
Hitler also came up with a motto for his idea of German unity: “Blood and soil.” Hitler’s motto summarized the Nazi excuse for genocide and war. Marcos would not be outdone. He issued his own presidential decree requiring everyone to adopt his idea of unity. He also had a motto.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS?
In his 1978 Sona, Marcos said, and I quote: “’Isang bansa, isang diwa’ shall henceforth be our national motto and by virtue of a presidential decree I have signed, it will now be incorporated in the great seal of the Republic.” But he wasn’t satisfied with that. He ordered in the same 1978 Sona that ’Isang bansa, isang diwa’ “shall be made known to every Filipino AS THE SLOGAN OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL as it is of the Nation.”
Wa siya mabuang? Imagine that: every Filipino was now required to adopt that slogan as his own. So, when you hear Marcos Jr. constantly repeat the word ‘unity’ as if it were the answer to every question he is asked, it isn’t original nor about unity at all: it is just a meaningless recycling of his father’s old fascist slogan. (To be continued)
(Speech delivered at the 21st General Membership Meeting, Rotary Club Cebu Fuente, February 28, 2022)