One only needs to enter the Shoe Museum in the Marikina district, in the east of the greater Manila region, to grasp, in a few pairs of shoes, the major historical reversal that has been taking place in the Philippines in recent years.
This is where more than a hundred shoes, bought during the time of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship by his wife, Imelda, are now on display. In slightly faded glazed furniture, nicely sorted by color.
They are also accompanied by some period photos and a series of fashionable clothes worn by the dictator and his illustrious wife when the Marcos family first took power. It was in 1965, 57 years before the official entry into office, exactly one year ago on June 30, of their son, Ferdinand Marcos son, known as Bongbong, as the new president of the country.
“Many people around the world come to visit this museum, assures Sally Manuel, manager of the place met a few weeks ago in Manila. Imelda Marcos was a great lady who did a lot for the shoe industry here in the 1970s and 1980s.”
From indignation to a new interpretation, this is the path that the 3000 pairs of Imelda’s shoes seem to have taken – a small part of which is exhibited in Marikina – seized by the State in 1986, the day after the exile of the couple and their children in Hawaii, in the wake of the Yellow Revolution. At the time, we remember, their discovery had above all aroused the ire of the Filipino people by exposing a splendor and a sickly calceophilia, contrasting with the general poverty of the country. There were shoes from top European designers worth several hundred dollars that could, in a single pair, feed an entire family of Filipinos for more than 200 days.
But all that is now part of a forgotten past, in a country where the Marcos and their allies have managed the feat of rewriting history to better rehabilitate their name. And they are now doing it in a new framework where their power no longer needs an army, a secret police and open repression to impose itself. Manipulation through disinformation allowing them to achieve the same result, while laying the framework for a new form of dictatorship, undoubtedly more insidious than the previous one.
“The Marcos no longer need to kill people to gain respect,” drops Ellen Tordesillas, president of Vera Files, an independent online media outlet critical of Marcos Jr. and the disinformation campaigns that accompanied his accession to power. They now have very effective and easy-to-use tools to manipulate and control people’s minds: social networks. »
She adds: “With the Marcos, the Philippines is confronted with the parable of the frog in boiling water. This is what is happening to us right now. Marcos son imposes a regime, no doubt just as authoritarian as that of his father, gradually, with more elegance, calm, one lie at a time. And that’s what’s scary. Because people don’t realize anything and, worse, they even seem to like it. »
Disinformation Regime
This rehabilitation of the Marcos was only a matter of time, comments Maria Diosa Labiste, professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines and above all a member of the Tsek.ph project, which has aimed for several years to counter misinformation through careful fact-checking.
“If Marcos Jr. won the 2022 presidential election, it’s because of the Duterte years [son prédécesseur], she said, sitting in a busy cafe in the university district of Quezon City. This period allowed the establishment of winning conditions for Bongbong by imposing a regime of misinformation, lies, manipulation of facts, deceptions and historical distortions which he took advantage of by further amplifying these networks”, and this, in a sometimes perceptible hypocrisy.
A few days ago, the new Head of State indeed posed as a destroyer of disinformation, at the opening of the 14e International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC) in Manila by arguing that “fake news” has no place in a “modern society” and by launching a government media literacy campaign to counter disinformation.
However, a coalition of fact-checkers, of which Tsek.ph is a member, has established that in 2022, 92% of the news emanating from the Marcos Jr. camp during his electoral campaign was fake news or disinformation, mainly aimed at magnify his family, to impose a new legacy written in contradiction with the facts and to denigrate the oppositions. This group of analysts also considered that Bongbong was the main beneficiary of this media ecosystem based on the manipulation of facts.
“He succeeded in making people forget his father’s disastrous results and transform the period of his dictatorship into glorious years of which we should be nostalgic,” says Maria Diosa Labiste. And it works, because the experience of authoritarianism and censorship in the Philippines during this period still and always maintains today a feeling of fear and submission in society that the elites know how to take advantage of. »
“Like Duterte, Marcos Jr. campaigned using squads of online trolls, supporters and influencers who helped normalize his lies and propaganda,” she adds. And it becomes easier for citizens to believe in it, given the massive and sometimes convincing nature of this propaganda. »
Make believe and convince
Last May, during the visit of the ex-dictator’s son to the White House, these networks promoted a photo of President Joe Biden crying with emotion, according to the legend, in contact with the new president from the Philippines. It was actually a hijacked snapshot of Biden, captured at a US military memorial ceremony, unrelated to Bongbong’s visit.
“It is the power of fantasy and imagination that reigns and which now maintains an astonishing nostalgia for authoritarianism, sums up sociologist Jayeel Cornelio from his office at the Ateneo de Manila University. The Marcos make fiction that people buy without questioning it. People come to believe that life was better before 1986, when the dictatorship was around,” or that Marcos’ election will raise the living standards of the poor, even though poverty has remained constant in this country since 1986, and this, despite the promises of politicians to overcome it.
A manipulation facilitated by a non-existent regulatory framework around social networks that nothing and no one obliges to fight this disinformation and its spread, “contrary to what is done in other countries”, deplores Maria Diosa Labiste. “In the Philippines, it’s up to fact-checkers to debunk fake news. And social networks come out winners at all levels by benefiting as much from the traffic generated by the spread of fakes as from the traffic induced by those who seek to counter them. We are on a dead end. »
This climate is hardly conducive to resistance and the promotion of truth, laments Lisa Ito-Tapang, a member of the organization Concerned Artists of the Philippines, who sees the country recovering a little no longer the path of authoritarianism and dictatorship, in an almost general indifference. “With these new communication tools, there is no longer any need to adopt martial laws or to name the dictatorship. The mechanisms for the control of bodies and minds have become more pernicious. Today, it is the citizens themselves who lock themselves in their cages, without realizing what they are doing. That’s the problem and that’s what complicates things for the opposition as well. »
“Democracy has already changed here,” adds Jayeel Cornelio. We are no longer in a liberal democracy where the principles of responsibility, rights and freedom are respected. For many Filipinos, manipulated by the elites, some rights are now disposable or negligible. And the right to the truth, to make collective decisions informed by the facts, is part of it, among other things.
In the Marikina district, Sally Manuel, seated at the entrance to the Shoe Museum, stays away from such debates, preferring instead to share anecdotes confirming the value of her establishment where, on this May morning , visitors are rather rare. “On weekends, there are more people,” she says. This week, a tourist from Thailand came by. She was close to tears seeing Imelda’s shoes and she told me it was a childhood dream to be there. »
Unfortunately, this information could not be verified.
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.