"The backlash was loud and immediate."
The directive of National Youth Commission Chairperson Ronald Gian Carlo L. Cardema for youth leaders and other young people to inform on leftist scholars is alarmingly similar to Gestapo tactics using informants.
Calls for his resignation ensued after he requested President Rodrigo Roa Duterte to issue an Executive Order to “remove the government scholarships of all anti-government scholars.”
In a statement posted on Feb. 19, Cardema emphasized “specifically those students who are allied with the leftist CPP-NPA-NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front).”
What’s gone under the radar and is very disturbing about Cardema’s statement is his call to officials of the Sangguniang Kabataan, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, Citizen Army Training, and other “nationalistic” youth to inform on scholars allegedly linked to the CPP-NPA-NDF.
He wrote: “I am directing all pro-government youth leaders of our country, the Sangguniang Kabataan [SK] Officials in the barangays, municipalities, cities, & provinces and all the ROTC Officers, CAT Officers, fellow nationalistic student leaders & youth org leaders in schools & communities, to report to the National Youth Commission all government scholars who are known in your area as anti-government youth leaders allied with the leftist CPP-NPA-NDF. It is the duty of every Filipino Youth to become our hope, in strengthening our nation, & to fight those who are trying to crush our Republic.”
Consider the words ‘directing,’ ‘report,’ ‘leftist,’ ‘fight,’ ‘crush.’ Cardema is taking a leaf from Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, who said the essence of fascist governance is to focus on the idea of the exception—by calling the present moment exceptional and transforming that exception into a state of emergency, as Timothy Snyder explained in ‘On Tyranny’ (2017).
By tagging leftist students as persons to be feared, to be informed upon, to be crushed, Cardema seems to be manufacturing a situation where presumably he steps in and save the day.
Cardema is also ‘directing’ young people to become informants. During the Third Reich, the Gestapo had a network of 150,000 informants who reported to them any anti-Nazi sentiments. Similarly, the Philippines had the reviled makapili of World War II, who wore bayongs over their heads when testifying against their neighbors. The word is now synonymous with ‘traitor’ and ‘collaborator.’
As Snyder wrote, “Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power… [It’s] the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.”
The backlash against Cardema was loud and immediate. He received criticism not only from an indignant public but from government agencies, students’ groups, and politicians. The Commission on Human Rights stressed that freedom of speech, of expression, and to petition the government to redress grievances are guaranteed by the Constitution. Senator Francis Escudero called Cardema “sycophantic and obsequious” and urged the President to fire him for being “ignorant of the Constitution.”
The NYC chairman said he would neither resign nor apologize, and instead backpedaled on his statement, saying he meant scholars who are NPA members.
This assertion goes against the letter of what was written in his statement, which he said came about in support of Duterte’s remark about protestors last February 2018. Cardema quotes the president as having said, “I will take government scholarships from those leftist groups and I will give it to the lumads [indigenous groups].”
Even the Palace which Cardema was presumably trying to impress washed its hands of him. Perhaps pointing out the difficulty of proving students’ connections with the left, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said, “We are a government of laws, not of speculations. If that’s only a suspicion, that’s not allowed.”
Cardema said in a 2006 interview with Bulatlat that since he was a child, he wanted nothing more than to be a military officer. He certainly displays a fascination with fascism, an attraction to Nazi trappings and systems that is obvious with the Duterte Youth organization he founded in 2016 to support Duterte during the election.
The group’s members sometimes wear quasi-military uniforms reminiscent of Mussolini’s ‘Blackshirts’ and Hitler’s ‘Brownshirts,’ paramilitary groups. Cardema sometimes sports a red armband, significance unknown—another accessory worn by the Nazi military.
The semiotics here are obvious, though Cardema shrugged off criticisms that his organization was patterned after the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend) saying all countries have ‘youth’ and that it is not forbidden to use the word in this manner.
Given his neo-fascist-militaristic predilection, Cardema should not lead the NYC. As a private person he can play at being a Nazi, but not while a civil servant bound to uphold the Constitution and the country’s laws, and one with access to a government agency’s resources.
To ‘direct’ young people to ‘report’ leftist scholars to the NYC is to corrupt the youth and is contrary to that agency’s mission to “promote sustainable developmental policies and programs for and with the Filipino youth.” ***
Tyranny starts when we stop being vigilant and take our rights and freedoms for granted. FB and Twitter: @DrJennyO
