Rewriting History.

Imagine ousting a dictator 36 years ago. Under which, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed. He suspended habeas corpus, distinguished the press, and political opponents disappeared. Billions of dollars were stolen from the Philippines and went straight into his pockets, the greatest robbery performed by a government. Two million Filipinos stood up and pushed him out of power.

That dictator's son, Bongbong Marcos, was just elected as the new president of the Philippines. Not by just a hair, but with 59% of the vote. The runner-up, the current vice president, a human rights lawyer, economist, and mother of three, only received 28%.

As one commentator put it delicately - How the fuck did Marcos win?

The Golden Age.

Prosperity for all, we promise. But only a privileged few achieve it, and, to make the pain obvious, parade their comforts and advantages before the eyes of an impoverished many [...] We are in crisis. You know that the government treasury is empty. Only by severed self‑denial will there be hope for recovery within the next year [...] I, therefore, first call upon the public servants for self-sacrifice. Long have we depended upon the people. In every crisis, we call upon our citizens to bear the burden of sacrifice. Now, let the people depend upon us. The economic viability of the government and the nation requires immediate retrenchment. Accordingly, we must install without any delay a policy of rigorous fiscal restraint.
- Ferdinand Marcos 1965 Inauguration speech

In sharp contrast to his sentiment of financial restraint, Marcos began larger-than-life construction projects, funded by foreign loans, which would end up triggering debt crises for the country. The scale of these infrastructure projects varied from government guest houses made purely of coconut trees, to a twenty-million dollar bridge built as a personal gift for his wife. These grandiose creations, meant to show progress and power, ironically ended up sending the Philippines into a downwards financial spiral. Included in this cast was the Manila Film Center, a project with deadlines so tight, that the work required 4,000 workers to take shifts filling a 24/7 schedule. Normal timelines were cut down for sections like the grand lobby from 6 weeks to 72 hours. Due to the pressure, the scaffolding collapsed, burying 169 workers in quick dry cement. Marcos quickly created a media blackout to prevent any news from exiting. The construction continued at the behest of the First Lady, building on top of the workers who were buried to reach her deadlines. The image of the bodies buried under the creation of Marcos' regime would later serve as a metaphor for the obfuscation of human rights violations, papered over by elegant displays, and new narratives.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund show that most of Marcos' infrastructure projects were funded by loans that raised the country's foreign deficit by 7800% from when he entered into office, until his departure. At the end of his reign, the average skilled and unskilled labor wages had fallen 68% and 74% respectively.

As president, Marcos' official income had been only $13,500 a year. However, at the end of Ferdinand Marcos' regime, the estimated amount that he and his family had plundered, landed in the range of $5 billion – $10 billion, hidden in places like offshore accounts, foreign properties, and an extensive art collection. The amount taken was so outrageous, that the Guinness Book of World Records designated Marcos' rule as The Greatest robbery of a Government. Sources investigated to have been contributors to Marcos' wealth included: the creation of monopolies and putting them under crony control, direct raiding of the public treasury, kickbacks from public work contracts, and diverted foreign aid.

Ferdinand Marcos' grandson describes the outlook of his grandfather on careers, specifically involving himself in politics, could lead to money, a view contrasting with that of a politician being a public servant:

"[My father] was a little bit of a nerd as a kid, so he was--you know, he wanted to do physics, math, biology, but my grandfather [Ferdinand Marcos] was like, "There's no money in that, so switch to politics" - Sandro Marcos, Son of Bongbong Marcos.

In an era where presidents were allowed by law to only rule for a total of 8 years, Ferdinand Marcos ruled for two decades as the President of the Philippines. Nearing the end of his 2nd term, Marcos extended his stay in power by declaring martial law and placing the Philippines under military control, citing social unrest and a communist threat. Historians continue to suspect that Marcos perpetrated bombings blamed on communists as a pretext for his declaration of martial law, with the CIA privately stating that Marcos was responsible for at least one of the bombings. The media was shut down in an effort to control the narrative. Over four hundred media outlets were silenced during martial law. Marcos immediately set about arresting political opponents, journalists, and other prominent critics. Once imprisoned, they faced torture, rape, degradation, waterboarding, burning, and electrocution. 35,000 counts of torture have been documented so far. One account details her arrest as having been made to lie down between two beds with her head on one bed and feet on the other, leaving her body hanging in the air until she fell. Next, she was burned by wax candles and sexually molested. Over 3 thousand others were killed, 77 were disappeared, and a total of 70 thousand were incarcerated under the dictatorship.

Marcos' dictatorship continued for 14 years until 1986, when the combination of Senator Benigno Aquino's assassination, fraudulent elections, and unrest from economic collapse came to form the People Power Revolution. 2 million protestors took to Metro Manila's streets to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos, forcing him and his family to flee to the United States, and achieving a regime change without violence.

CBS anchorman Bob Simon reported: "We Americans like to think we taught the Filipinos democracy. Well, tonight they are teaching the world."

Tsismis.

Our biggest…enemy was already dominant even before the campaign period because decades had been spent working on this. The machinery capable of spreading hate and lies is formidable. It stole the truth, so it also stole our history and our future. Disinformation is one of our biggest enemies. For now, perhaps the machinery of lies rules. But it is up to us how long it would prevail. It is up to us to say whether the fight is over or if it is only just beginning.
- Leni Robredo, Former Filipino Vice President

After martial law, it seems unthinkable that anyone from Marcos' family could re-enter politics. The Marcos family returned to the Philippines less than fifteen years later after their exile. They re-engaged in local politics, and ultimately ended up back in national politics. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. aka Bongbong Marcos decided to run for the presidency while watching Ant-Man. He didn't participate in any debates, nor have any strong platform to run on other than the message of unity, yet he won in a landslide election. Some say he won due to the political dynasties supporting him, as he had aligned himself in the election with the outgoing president's daughter. Others point to the perceived shortcomings of his opponent: starting a campaign too late and alienating voters over alleged self-righteousness. However, the overwhelmingly consistent cited reason as to why Bongbong Marcus was able to win was because of disinformation. The intentional rewriting of the Marcos family history made it appeasing, even appetizing, to the Filipino public.

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information spread regardless of intent. Within it liesdisinformation - false information disseminated with an intent to deceive and mislead people. Disinformation is often orchestrated, funded, and planned by professionals. It can drown out legitimate public voices in favor of paid voices that want to manipulate public opinion. Disinformation disseminated ranged from Ferdinand Marcos being the one who introduced Tilapia to the Philippines in the 1950s, to ones attacking family members of Bongbong's opponents in the 2022 election. Most importantly, found within that cloud of lies was a body of narratives that changed the devastating history of martial law under the Marcos regime, repainting it as a golden age for the Philippines.

The messaging came from various origins, popping up and down like moles, making it difficult for fact-checkers to whack each one. In the lead-up to the 2022 Presidential elections, fact-checkers commonly ran into narratives that the Philippines was a great nation and economic superpower during the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Furthermore, it was claimed that the Marcos family would bring back unimaginable wealth to the Philippines if they were to be reinstalled into the presidency. Through networks of Facebook pages, YouTube Vloggers, Twitter personalities, TikTok videos, and cinema, these false claims propagated like virtual wildfire. Jonathan Ong, the author of the report “Architects of Networked Disinformation”, said Marcos' victory this year “could not have happened without social media, the repository of Marcos' myth-making and folklore”. 70% of Filipino adults believe disinformation is a serious issue in the country and 51% find it difficult to spot false news according to a Social Weather Station survey taken months before the election.

Measuring the exact delta in voting results for the 2022 Philippines Presidential election that came directly from disinformation remains difficult. The amount spent on disinformation does not easily turn up in reports of election spending. To measure its impact, we need to turn to an approximation of the impact: the measured amount of disinformation, who that information benefits, and the number of people who believe it to be true.

Fact-checking organization Tsek.ph found that the most viewed claim was “No Marcos critic was arrested during martial law”. It racked up 95,842 interactions and 187 million views, across postings in 194 Facebook groups. Additionally, the claim that Marcos brought the Philippines into the modern world was posted across 2,177 groups. Leading up to the election, Tsek.ph has found that 92% of fact checks about Marcos were false or misleading information in his favor. Yet 96% of disinformation regarding his opposition, Leni Robredo, negatively targeted her.

Disinformation in the Philippines' political system is not new. The previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, employed an army of internet trolls to amplify his message over social media. A study titled, “Troops, trolls and troublemakers: A global inventory of organized social media manipulation,” claims that Duterte's team of 400 to 500 cyber troops posted nationalistic and pro-government comments and interacted with online dissidents. After winning, Duterte both hoisted vloggers who had spread his messaging into political positions, and continued spreading propaganda using these networks throughout his presidency in order to gain support of his policies. Partway through his presidency, Meta removed 200 pages, groups and accounts all in a network organized by Duterte's social media manager, citing coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Outside of social media, disinformation was institutionalized in Filipino cinema was the brainchild of Imee Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos' eldest daughter, serving as the film's primary consultant, seeing the film as a way to propagate her narrative of the family's final 72 hours in the Presidential palace before being ousted. Debuting a few weeks after the election, it broke $11 million in its first month. Ticket attendants when asked their opinions on the movie, coyly responded with, "It's about politics, sir."

The film narrative weaves in the themes that the Marcoses were “victims” of the 1986 People Power revolution and their return to the Malacañang presidential palace is long overdue. In the film itself, Ferdinand Marcos' youngest daughter sheds a tear as she pronounces that her father did nothing wrong, insisting that he was not a bad guy. “Not every government is perfect,” she assures him as he sits, contemplating his leave. The peaceful protestors are made to look animalistic, carrying torches and rabid expressions as they enter the courtyard to oust Marcos. The Marcos family is presented as having a calm voice and being the reason the protests were nonviolent. After the film's release, the actress portraying the youngest daughter defended the film saying “History is like tsismis (gossip). It is filtered and additionally, so, we don't know what is the real history. The idea is there, but there are biases.” However, if history truly is gossip and fact holds no weight, then martial law can be considered hearsay. Philippine historian Ambeth Ocampo, who has published several books on the subject quickly corrected the young actress, “Don't confuse history and tsismis. History may have bias but it is based on fact, not opinion. Real history is about truth, not lies, not fiction.”

Hammers.

If we believe the flow of disinformation threatens democracy, what should be done?

Currently, there are a few major areas: artifact creation (concrete), fact checking (hammers), and policy (rails).

Concrete facts means crystallizing the artifacts that tell the truth of the past. For many Filipino youth that never experienced martial law firsthand, they must be given an opportunity to see what life had been like, relying on reputable primary sources. An example lies in the work done by the Bantayog museum. Initially started as a museum to serve as a monument to the martyrs under martial law, they have become a stronghold in preserving historical artifacts from the Marcos dictatorship. Under looming threat of the Marcos family back in the presidency, they have begun quickly digitalizing documents and first hand accounts of the time period. A tour guide at the museum noted the pressing need to safe keep their data, “There are police that hang around during our events, but they aren't here for our safety.”

Hammers. Fact-checking organizations like Tsek.ph can better serve as an effective line of defense against disinformation spread if provided with modern digital tools and access to necessary technology platform information. Currently, many of these organizations rely on manual effort to surface content that needs to be fact-checked. To speed up the surfacing process, technology companies should double down on partnering with fact-checking organizations to provide them with access to disinformation identified by machine learning models or by their community members. With a wider picture of disinformation spread, the manual effort spent by these organizations to fact-check would be spent in the correct areas. Effort done by the fact-checkers flows back to the technology platforms in a mutually beneficial flow of information.

Rails. Policy needs to be in place to control the spread of disinformation. First, policies should be implemented regarding election spending transparency, making it more difficult for election money to fund the dissemination of disinformation through internet troll networks. Additionally, policies should guide technology platforms that facilitate the flow of information to crack down on coordinated inauthentic behavior, adequately label bot accounts regardless of legitimacy, and implement tools that allow citizens to more easily distinguish the provenance of information. Major technology organizations have drawn a fairly tight circle in what they implement regarding disinformation on their platforms, trying to balance along the beam of profit and improving democracies. We must urge them through the avenues available to us to not treat facts and lies equally.

Finally, policies should be put in place to incentive the education of citizens in their digital literacy, as this will continue helping individuals sort through fact and fiction. Though this final policy area is important, it should not be used as a replacement for the push against technology platforms in the tools they should be providing. Full responsibility of disinformation should not rely on individuals, especially as disinformation evolves to escape human judgement.

Onwards.

The goal of influence operations is to cave it in from the inside which is to make you distrust everything. Because if you don't trust anything or anyone, number one, you can't act. Number two, you can't have civic engagement. Then number three: the voice with the loudest megaphone, the person in power, the government in power, gains greater power because they have formal authority. So all around the world, what we've seen is the birth of these digital authoritarians who have used this well. They come bottom up, using exponential lies, and then they use the power that they have been given through elections & they come top down to cave in democracy from within.
- Maria Ressa, Filipino journalist and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate

The Philippines will now deal with the effects of a Marcos back in power. Entities like the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), meant to try to recover looted funds from the Marcos family, still try to recover amounts of $6 billion USD from the family, now exist under Bongbong Marcos in an insecure state.

The Marcos' return to the presidency serves as a playbook for authoritarian regimes in other countries to try to leverage the message spreading power of technology to create their own narratives, wiping past atrocities away. However, opponents of these regimes should not be wasting time discouraged by results. They should be looking to the Philippines in trying to understand the ways they can work to dampen the harming effects of disinformation in their democracies, finding ways to shape technology platforms introduced into their political system to serve its citizens best.

Further Recommendations

• The Kingmaker - 2019 entertaining and well executed documentary about the political career of Imelda Marcos - the wife of Ferdinand Marcos Sr, with a focus on the Marcos family's efforts to rehabilitate the family's image and to return to political power.
• List of Victims of Martial Law - Official list of Martial Law 1972-1986 era victims, including the place of incident of the violation against them, as resolved by the Human Rights Victims' Claims Board (HRVCB), an independent and quasi-judicial body created by R. A. 10368.
• Martial Law Data - Graphs examining the data from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s to determine credibility claims of Golden Age in the Philippines.
• 2018 Architects of Networked Disinformation - Examining Troll Networks and Fake news productions in Philippines.
• Internet Platforms Combating Disinformation/Misinformation - Overview of internet platforms (Google, Twitter, FB etc.) policies regarding disinformation.
• Controlling the Spread of Misinformation - Overview from the APA of looking at misinformation from a pathologist perspective.
• International Fact-Checking Network Fact Checking Principles - Transparency around fact checking organizations - funding transparency, methodology transparency, non partisan checking.