A certain Joel Pablo Salud recently launched into yet another one of those Martial Law Crybabyist treatises on the chi chi platform Medium. His piece “Marcos, Derrida, and a priest who should know better than to side with executioners”, is essentially a temper tantrum over a tweet issued by Fr. Ranhilio Aquino…
Aquino’s tweet had caused a stir in the Martial Law Crybaby community and got the undergarments of a who’s who of “thought leaders” twisted over the matter.
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Salud presumably swoops in to save their day. He goes into a sort of irrelevant academic-style build-up towards the point he aims to make, his readers would later find out, which is essentially to debunk Aquino’s assertion. As such, the only part of his blurb where he makes some semblance of a point can be found about 20 paragraphs into it here…
Those who speak the loudest in their condemnation of Marcos HAVE experienced the atrocities of martial law. It is a blatant lie to say otherwise. The loudest of all rants and criticisms against the Marcoses come from survivors of Marcos’ holocaust. That generation, myself included, is still alive today.
Look past the easy emotional space this quaint rant plays to in the author’s tone-deaf use of words like “holocaust” (the author owes victims of real holocausts an apology there, I believe) and regard the tired argument it makes — that being a “victim” of those alleged “Martial Law atrocities” by itself is a foundation for the Martial Law Crybabyism he and his ilk would like Filipinos to remain emotionally bound to in perpetuity. Salud conveniently glosses over the reasons certain people had been targeted in any crackdown that may have happened during “the Martial Law era”. For that matter, he selectively leaves out the fact that such crackdowns were the whole point of martial laws in general to begin with. Indeed, Salud is being fundamentally dishonest by being so selective in his arguments.
Firstly, Martial Law in and by itself is not a crime. The Constitution continues to allow its legal implementation.
Second, mere circumstantial evidence links alleged atrocities and abuse committed by police and military personnel to Martial Law itself. Such atrocities and abuse occur whether Martial Law is in effect or not. And if such atrocities are perpetrated while Martial Law happens to be in effect, proving they were done because Martial Law was in effect is impossible. You can prove who committed said atrocities. But proving these people acted because of Martial Law is a futile exercise.
Third, whereas victims of terrorism are generally innocent people who have nothing to do with its perpetrators, no such generalisation could be made about alleged victims of Martial Law. Victims of terrorism are random. Alleged “victims” of Martial Law, on the other hand, are likely to have been involved in something that made them persons of interest to begin with.
Even then, Manila Times columnist Bobi Tiglao actually was there and attests to a common denominator that puts Martial Law “victims” into a defineable non-random set…
There were indisputably human rights violations during Martial Law, even the most despicable ones. Many of my close friends were killed by the military or the constabulary in their mid-twenties. However, I would blame Communist chief Jose Ma. Sison for many of those deaths because he deployed those men who were barely out of their teens to foment unrest and revolt in the countryside, telling them that the masses had been roused to revolution because of Martial Law. They were very poorly armed, and were killed not even by the military but by police and militias who thought they were bandits.
Historical facts are one thing. Historians’ individual narratives spun around these facts are another. Aquino’s original point was that certain narratives have been used by certain partisan camps not as a reference for an ongoing debate on these facts but as means to emotionally-blackmail Filipinos to further their dishonest political and “revolutionary” agendas. Filipinos have lost trust in a narrative that had been perverted to political ends. The behaviours on display in the manner with which partisans demonise anyone who dares challenge such belief systems are evidence that people like Salud and his ilk are not out for honest conversation and are more interested in silencing dissent.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Tsk tsk, the crybabies still want to make it look like Marcos and martial are the main causes of the Philippines’ downfall, when it is in fact culture that did. Marcos and martial law are long gone, so why is the Philippines still at a low level? They don’t get it… or they are deliberately misleading people with their narrative.
All I can see is that the downfall of the Philippines happened after 1986. TBH, it brought not just a dysfunctional system of government but also a dysfunctional culture. People are also clueless about how EDSA 1 inflicted much damage to our national psyche.
There were NO “Holocaust” during the Martial Law years….if there were any; we can arrest the two people who are still alive, and were the administrators of Marcos Martial Law : Former Secretary of Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile; and Former Philippine Constabulary Chief, Fidel Ramos.
We can haul these two “criminals” to any court in the country; and let them pay for their “crimes” during the Marcos Martial Law years…they are still alive…
If Fidel Ramos, was a “despicable criminal”, during the Marcos Martial Law. Why is it that he was even elected as President ? Same as Juan Ponce Enrile, who was elected many times as Senator. If they would had, tortured people; murdered people in a “holocaust”…then, they must pay for their crimes. Marcos is long dead …we cannot jail , or execute a dead person.
Marcos Martial Law is being used by the , YellowTards; the commies; the Aquino Cojuangco political axis and other political opposition opportunists; as a “Bogeyman” and Political Tool; to frighten people and voters; so that people will elect them and they will be always be in power.
This is the reason they have all the, monuments of Cory Aquino and Ninoy Aquino, in every public places. The names of Ninoy Aquino and Cory Aquino, are in buildings, international airports, and public edifices. Their nasty faces are in our currency. There is a National Day for them…The EDSA Shrine and monument are there, to commemorate their false heroism , against Marcos Martial Law…
Martial Law crimes were exaggerated and fake…the Falsehood was spread by the Aquino Cojuangco political axis and their cahoots, just to stay in power. The only ones who suffered during Martial law were: the commies; the political opportunists and the subversives….
The opposition does not have any political platforms and plans, to improve our lives and improve our country. So, they frighten us with the Martial Law “Bogeyman”, to “force themselves “, to us, to get elected, and be in power. These people are : thieves; scammers and con people… Our trust is already lost on them; so they use FEAR and FALSEHOOD.
Let us put Marcos Martial Law issue into the “inodoro”, like we put their “otso diretso” candidates into the “inodoro” in the last election !
I will go the same way. If the Nazis and their Holocaust had Nuremberg what did Martial Law have? Like any yellow initiated project the answer is : nothing of substance. If there was one, Mother Lily would have made a movie about it like there was a Judgment at Nuremberg. Yellows can’t even illustrate how they provided justice but love to trumpet the “crime”
If there really was a Holocaust, where is the sacred site that Leni and company can desecrate with their vain, KSP photo opp. Like they did here https://www.getrealphilippines.com/2018/04/what-is-it-about-leni-lobredo-being-jovial-in-the-context-of-death/
In the same vein as pointed out above by HT on the architects of Martial Law, being Enrile and Ramos, we have another personality in the person of Mr. Cesar Virata as Martial Law period economic manager.
It was through this troika of Enrile, Ramos and Virata that Marcos ruled as strongman during Martial Law.
According to a 2016 article of Mr. Roberto Tiglao:
“Virata was to economic management during martial law what Ramos was to the regime’s police apparatus, and Enrile to the armed forces and his legal infrastructure.”
Ironically for many Martial Law Cry Babies, the University of the Philippines, being the bastion of their anti-Marcos sentiment, has renamed its College of Business Administration as the “Cesar E.A. Virata School of Business”. It’s said to be the only building or institution in the country’s premier educational institution ever to be named after a living person.
This prompted the author to question: “If the Marcos economy (during Martial Law) was so bad, why is his economic tsar Virata so respected?”
The Yellow and Red Cults has tirelessly blamed Marcos solely for martial law but they seem afraid to mention the role of Ramos, Enrile and Virata in that crucial period of our history.
“Virata is an excellent representative, as corporate executives are, of the capitalist ruling class” and “to hide Virata’s role during martial law is to hide the crucial role of the ruling class and its oligarchs in the country’s 13-year authoritarian rule.”
I don’t think anybody is invalidating his experience . There must be a way to confirm the claims aside from the highly propagated anti-Marcos narrative. The way the article was written is not to inform. Somebody might just deconstruct his simplistic notions.
@Sakitsabangs:
If you have witnesses and evidences, of the “Holocaust”, during Marcos Martial law years…
We have to file, cases against the two perpetrators : Former Philippine Constabulary Chief, Fidel Ramos; and Former Secretary of Defense< Juan Ponce Enrile…on any legitimate court in country…
The charges will be multiple murders and crimes against humanity…bring back also the Death Penalty; so that we can hang these despicable criminals, if they are found guilty…
We have also to file cases, against the crooks who stole and plundered our National Treasury, and committed despicable crimes, during the Aquino era….Aquino and Roxas, can be charge with plunders, and are eligible for the death penalty…
Do it, Dude, otherwise, you are just "barking at the wrong tree " !
I saw something on Twitter about a 15 year old who died during the Martial law years for “writing an anti-Marcos book” but I call it BS because they’re going to push the same old tired narrative of “all who have died during Martial law are all innocent” when the atrocities and human rights violations happened on both sides. Good thing I never fell into the “appeal to the emotions” nonsense.
I can see there is something wrong: that ‘Holocaust’ line alone tells me that these Martial law crybabies, especially the noisiest of them. proven to be narrowed-minded, oversensitive, childish, immature, and petty. Since it’s a tainted surname, they want to put Marcos on the same level as Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, when Marcos’ numbers are just estimate 70, 000 while the number of deaths during the rule of the dictators that I’ve mentioned are in the millions.
Dictatorship was the zeitgeist of the time, and Marcos looked like a kindergarten in terms of brutality and plunder compared to the dictators of China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, South Korea, and Indonesia. 30 years of writing half truths in history.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised if these experts in reverse-euphemism label Duterte’s drug war a genocide.