Scourge June 21, 2006

I SAW the BBC documentary “History of World War II,” a magnificent 25-disc work, some months ago, and found its first three parts in particular, entitled “The Nazis: A Warning from History” not just completely fascinating but completely relevant to our times. Of course, nothing can ever compare with the evil that was Hitler or Nazism, which caused the wholesale slaughter of peoples, all the more chilling for its sheer cold-bloodedness. Nothing can compare with it, but you can find parallels with its methodology at least in Ferdinand Marcos’s declared martial law and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s undeclared one.

Nowhere is the parallel more patent than in the use of scapegoats to justify the regime or indeed advance its cause. Almost inexplicably from the 20-20 vision of hindsight, Hitler managed to drive home the contention to a tired and cynical German public that the Jews and communists were actually conniving to bring down the whole world.

He was, of course, aided in this respect by the brilliantly demented Joseph Goebbels, his minister of propaganda, who unleashed the “Big Lie” theory of information, which said that the bigger the lie, the more likely it was going to be believed. To the end of his days, Hilter maintained that the Jews were behind the communist threat, financing it and even espousing it. A batty notion, but history is full of batty notions and people, which and who produce not very batty consequences.

Marcos, of course, was the original proponent of the “Left-Right” conspiracy in this country, which he advanced to justify martial law. The Left was the communists, whom he depicted as near to overrunning the country in 1972 and was at least fomenting anarchy and strife. The Right was the “oligarchy,” given a face in particular by the Lopezes (Eugenio Lopez Sr. obliged unwittingly by holding his 40th wedding anniversary with much opulence, according to news reports, champagne flowing like fountains and some guests lighting cigars with peso bills), who were funding the communists to prevent Marcos from working his reforms. A batty notion from hindsight, but one too with murderous consequences.

Comes now Arroyo with her own Left-Right conspiracy, which she first articulated when she issued Presidential Proclamation 1017. It is a virtual rehash of the martial law justification and little wonder because PP 1017 was meant to be that. The idea was amplified by the government propaganda machine -- shades of Goebbels and Marcos’ Greg Cendaña -- particularly in the form of the so-called documentary “Sagot sa Kataksilan: 1017,” which conjured a conspiracy by communists and rightist military officers, aided by the rich, notably the Cojuangcos who stood to have Hacienda Luisita land-reformed. The lie hasn’t sold well, ironically because it still retained a small grain of truth to it, so the Arroyo regime has gone whole hog and unleashed the Big Lie with the hope it would produce better results.

That Big Lie is that the communists are today’s scourge of the land and must be wiped out posthaste.
People have been asking me of late why Arroyo seems to have the hots for the Reds when they seem largely marginal to today’s equation. The reason is simple: She needs a scapegoat, just as Marcos did. And well before them, the way their role model, Hitler, did.

When Marcos trotted out the Reds as a scapegoat, he at least had a few things going for him. Though the Reds were not responsible for the bombings in Greater Manila (as it was called then) -- he was, just as Arroyo probably is, by way of Norberto Gonzales -- they had at least become a force to reckon with. And though they were not strong enough to overrun the country at the time, they had at least the potential to do so in time, their numbers swelling like a flood by the day.

None of that is there today. What has laid the communist movement low, as I’ve always contended, is not the military defeats they have suffered over time, it is the ideological and moral debacles they have suffered along the way. The potential of the movement to grow has been halted since the late 1990s by the Fall of the Wall, a modern metaphor for Humpty Dumpty, whose own fall precluded reconstitution, and the revelation of the “killing fields,” both of which dulled the sheen it radiated in the past. If the movement continues to exist today, it is simply because of the hunger and misery of the poor. It is no longer the capacity of the movement to inspire the youth that swells its ranks, it is its capacity to give succor, if not hope, to the desperate.

As Gen. Raymundo Jarque asked in the past and as the Magdalo officers are asking in the present, where is the sense in shooting down people whose only crime is to want to fend off the ravages of poverty and oppression?
The sense, as far as Arroyo is concerned, is survival. Hitler at least fanatically loathed the Jews and believed till the end of his days they had to be obliterated from the face of the earth as a matter of necessity. The current attempt to wreak a minor holocaust upon the Reds merely reeks of cynicism -- like Mt. Everest, they just happen to be there. The public can be counted on not to mind their slaughter. The expected result of all this being to divert attention from the illegitimacy of Arroyo’s rule.

Arroyo has already tried to show that the scourge of this country is the political system, which can be solved by Charter change, and that hasn’t sold. She has already tried to show that the scourge of this country is the Senate, which can be solved by abolishing it, and that hasn’t sold. Now she is trying to show that the scourge of this country is the Reds, which can be solved by exterminating them. That too won’t sell, even if it will leave a mountain of corpses along the way. For a simple reason:

The public knows who the real scourge of this country is.

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