Like a warm bullet in my head:
How I was silenced by right speech fundamentalists in the Philippines
By Sass Rogando SasotI am a Duterte supporter. This declaration exposes me to a barrage of insults from the Filipino disente society. I’ve been labelled a cuckoo, fascist, a Nazi, a Dutertard, an idiot, a fanatic, a blind follower, an apologist, and a High Priestess of the Cult of Duterte. Even benign tags have been weaponized against me, such as “just a student in The Hague” and “Mocha Uson with a diploma.” My Facebook Page has been ridiculed as the “slums of Facebook.” A professor in a true-blue elite university in Quezon City even stripped me of my nationality, uprooting me from my origin. He called me a “European Dutertian.” Its purpose is to discredit my participation in the political affairs of the Philippines, akin to how Michael Ignatieff’s US residency was successfully used against him by his opponents when he ran as Prime Minister of Canada in 2011. Their rationale is that since I’m educated, they cannot understand why I’m supporting the monster they call Duterte. For them, there’s no ethical standpoint that could justify my support; if there is, they dismiss any explanation as mere apologetics for Duterte. They simply refuse to understand. Period.
Angie,
Thanks for sharing. I hope this “scholar in exile” will catalize the real revolutionary change in our cultural environment to topple the oligarch and the purse using the government all the legal means to keep the marginalized people liberated from the :right speech” to “freedom of speech. The necessary tool to awaken and liberate our impoverished country to econonomic freedom from the tyranny of “Westernized freedom of democracy” as propagaed in the controlled media.