【by Michael D. Pante, June 2025】
The capacity of social media platforms, through their algorithms, to amplify one’s political beliefs and shut out competing discourses has been weaponized by political despotism in order to coopt the very essence of electoral democracy; thus, decoupling the two entails, for one, a massive campaign to popularize historically grounded information to eliminate these so-called echo chambers. Online fact-checking is the default mode of such a campaign; however, we must also challenge that notion by critiquing the liberal-democratic discourse behind factchecking and foregrounding on-the-ground strategies that can strengthen anti-authoritarian movements.
Although the Marcoses’ connection with historical distortion has received much attention in recent years, the reality is that they have been engaged in these kinds of activities for decades now. Marcos Sr. himself already engaged in the manufacture of such fallacies: the Iginuhit sa Tadhana movie, his fake war-medals, the infamous Tadhana project, the so-called Tasaday discovery, his fetish in presenting himself as a scholarly-author (Reyes 2018), and many more. Mythmaking is also very much the nature of his edifice complex (cf. Lico 2003) even if the structures such as the CPP are not examples of historical distortion per se.
After the EDSA People’s Power revolution that led to the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the most blatant examples of pro-Marcos propaganda have been associated with social media. Accounts in YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and many more are entangled in a complex ecology directed by so-called “architects of networked disinformation” (Ong and Cabañes 2018). The pro-Marcos fallacies they circulated were initially found in obscure websites but were soon brought together and coordinated in time for Marcos Jr.’s candidacy for the vice presidency in 2016. Although Marcos Jr. did not win, his strong finish as a second placer was a tell-tale sign of the efficacy of the disinformation campaign. More importantly, because the president who was elected that year, Rodrigo Duterte, was a product of a social media-savvy campaign and a supporter of the Marcoses, the six years that followed gave the Marcoses the perfect incubation period to launch Marcos Jr.’s candidacy to reclaim Malacañang in 2022.
What are these fallacies? The falsehoods that circulated due to this networked disinformation encompass a wide range of social media posts and online videos. They also feed on the nostalgia of many Filipinos for the so-called peaceful and simple life during the 1970s (Talamayan 2021). In Francisco Jayme Guiang’s (2022) analysis, they represent a variant of fascist governance, which needs to be challenged to preserve democracy.
However, one must also include in the discussion the failings of liberal democracy that enabled disinformation to gain ground. Mainstream theories of disinformation stress how such examples of propaganda were manifestations of the illiberal nature of the architects, their propaganda, and the “end consumers.” Yet, many among those consuming pro-Marcos propaganda are also victims of decades-long systemic oppression and structural poverty under the country’s liberal-democratic post-1986 order.
The question now is what can academics do to combat these attacks against historical truth and the very discipline itself? In the Philippines, historians and scholars from other disciplines have organized themselves to address this problem at the height of the electoral campaign period leading up to the 2022 national elections. In the process, they formed Akademya at Bayan Kontra Disimpormasyon at Dayaan (ABKD).
AKBD has received positive feedback from progressive groups and people’s organizations. They appreciate the content created by the group not just because of its reliability and shareability but also because of the way it can be used to forward politics. One can also consider as positive feedback the high degree of online traffic generated by the posts. The fact that people on social media like and share the content already signifies the positive impact that the group has in terms of creating a buzz about topics related to historical revisionism and disinformation. Perhaps the only negative feedback received by ABKD came in the form of a comment made by a speaker during one of its webinars. The comment revolved around the idea of the limitations of factchecking as a sociopolitical endeavor. Although ABKD managed to break through its “echo chamber” and penetrate social media users that are not part of its usual “social network,” the said speaker remarked that the way its content is presented (its language, look, sources, etc.) already made ABKD difficult to be accepted by the “other camp” as an authority on matters about history and disinformation.
In light of the comments of the webinar speaker mentioned above, one way to improve the reach of ABKD is to strengthen its community engagement. By and large, ABKD’s activities remain online in nature; to address the problem of “acceptability” is to go directly to the people who are not yet within the group’s immediate social network. Because the group is composed of educators, it may choose to focus on working with fellow teachers for its community engagement. It is no secret that even among teachers at the basic education level, there is a strong tendency among them to propagate the false claims that glorify martial law and the late dictator.
The question of fact checking being effective needs to be qualified. If the question is whether fact checking can convince readers to disabuse themselves of the falsehoods they have learned online, then it’s hard to answer yes. Due to the rampant spread of disinformation and the money being spent to sustain the systems that support it, it would really take more than just a simple FB post to change the minds of those who have already been led to believe in the falsehoods of this machinery. However, if we reformulate the question and connect it with other forms of combatting disinformation, then one could take on a more optimistic tone. Fact checking is an important basic step, but it can never be the sole solution to a systemic issue. It takes dedicated community organizing, non-online propaganda work, coupled with political work with the masses, allies, fellow orgs, to address the problem in its totality.
Another crucial “offline” aspect of ABKD’s efforts is collaborating with like-minded groups. It has collaborated with historians (e.g., Tanggol Kasaysayan), media groups (e.g., Rappler) and various peoples’ organizations (e.g., Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, Alliance of Concerned Teachers). These efforts allow ABKD’s members to do things beyond fact checking and be immersed in community organizing efforts and political actions. Doing so brings them at the forefront of campaigns in the parliamentary of the streets. Examples include the campaign to uphold (or legislate) the accords of UP and PUP with the DND, the reinclusion of Philippine History as a separate subject in Junior High School as a response to historical distortion, among others.
AUTHOR
Michael D. Pante is Associate Professor of History, and the Editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Email: [email protected]
REFERENCES
Guiang, Francisco Jayme. 2022. “Postwar Fascist Revival, Fascist Propaganda, and Marcosian Propaganda: The Role of Disinformation, Mythmaking, and Historical Distortions in Public Deception.” Martial Law @50: Alaala at Kasaysayan ng Pagbabalikwas. IBON Foundation, Inc., 344-373.
Lico, Gerald. 2003. Edifice Complex: Power, Myth, and Marcos State Architecture. Quezon City, RP: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Ong, Jonathan Corpus, and Jason Vincent Cabanes. 2018. Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines. Leeds, UK: University of Leeds.
Reyes, Miguel Paolo. 2018. “Producing Ferdinand E, Marcos, the Scholarly Author.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 66 (2), 173-21.
Talamayan, Fernan. 2021. “The Politics of Nostalgia and the Marcos Golden Age in the Philippines.” Asia Review (December).