Hot & Spicy
By Artchil B. Fernandez
Kill, kill, kill. This is an enshrined policy of the Du30 administration. Upon assuming the presidency, Du30 immediately launched a bloody and gory war against illegal drugs. Official figures placed the number of Filipinos slaughtered in the brutal “war on drugs” between 5,526 to 6,700, while human rights groups estimated that as high as 27,000 were killed in the vicious campaign.
Next to suspected drug pushers/addicts, the Du30 administration targeted activists and members of progressive groups, red-tagging and calling them “enemies” of the state. At least 318 human rights and labor activists, as well as progressive individuals, were slain under Du30’s murderous rule and the killings continue unabated with the latest assassination of John Heredia, a member of NUJP and Ambon. Extra-judicial killings have become the trademark of the Du30 administration.
Killings had been normalized by the Du30 administration and permeate almost all sectors of society. The Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) recorded 61 lawyers were killed under the Du30 administration exceeding the number of lawyers murdered in a 44-year period from Marcos to Noynoy Aquino regimes which is 49. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), on the other hand, recorded that 19 journalists were slain since Du30 was sworn in.
Built on the piles of thousands of dead bodies, the Du30 administration had been labeled or called fascist. Is the Du30 administration a fascist regime, similar to Hitler’s Third Reich and Il Duce’s totalitarian dictatorship? Didn’t Du30 at the outset of his rule compare his “war on drugs” with Hitler’s Holocaust in effect making him a fascist wannabe?
Michael Mann’s perspective on fascism expounded in his seminal work Fascists is a helpful lens to unpack the above questions.
Mann considers fascism as the dark side of modernity. He defines it as “the pursuit of transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism.” There are three main elements of fascism according to Mann: organic nationalism, radical statism and paramilitarism.
Fascism Mann argues “was essentially a product of post–World War I conditions in Europe.” It arose due to coming to power of authoritarian rightists after the Great War combined with the economic, ideological, military and political crises in Europe at that time. Fascists seized power particularly in Italy and Germany by taking advantage of the weakness of dual-states characterized by the conflict between elected legislature and nonelected executive.
Authoritarian rightist regimes dominated half of post-World War I Europe (center, east and south) and Mann categorized them into semi-authoritarian, semi-reactionary authoritarian, corporatist, and fascist. Semi-authoritarian regimes were dual-states, the “mildest and most conservative” while semi-reactionary authoritarian regimes “overthrew or emasculated the legislature,” ended the dual-state and advocated organic nationalism. Corporatist regimes increased statism, mobilized organic nationalism and practiced top-down statism.
Fascist regimes on the other hand were the most extreme among the authoritarian regimes, “reversing the flow of power by adding to corporatism a ‘bottom-up’ mass movement centered on paramilitarism and electoralism, while also increasing coercive powers from the top.”Only fascist regimes among the authoritarian regimes had a bottom-up mass movement while the three others only practiced top-down statism.
The Du30 administration does not fit into any of Mann’s categories of authoritarian regimes. It is neither a semi-authoritarian, nor a semi-reactionary authoritarian, nor a corporatist nor a fascist regime. Mann’s elements of fascism are also missing in the Du30 administration.
Definitely, Du30 is no organic nationalist. He is a puppet of China who sold his country for thirty pieces of silver. Fascists are extreme nationalists who expanded their country’s territories through conquest instead of giving them up.
Fascists are radical statists who used the state to drastically alter society. They utilize and mobilize state power to tackle society’s social, economic and political crises. Du30, on the other hand, uses the state to advance his personal interest, satisfy his personal pique, assuage his hurt feelings and persecute his perceived enemies. He has no desire to address social ills and even refused to fulfill a simple campaign promise – end labor contractualization.
Paramilitarism is conspicuously absent in the Du30 regime. Hitler had his Brownshirts (SA) and SS (Schutzstaffel) and Mussolini his Blackshirts. Du30’s DDS and paid trolls are not paramilitary units. Aside from paramilitarism, fascists have a bottom-up mass movement which the Du30 administration sorely lacks.
Based on Mann’s concept of fascism, the Du30 administration does not fit the mold; in short, it is not fascist. While all fascist regimes are authoritarian, not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. If it is not fascist what kind of political animal is it?
The Du30 administration resembles Max Weber’s sultanistic regime where institutions of the state such as the bureaucracy, the military, Congress and judiciary “are purely instruments of the master” he explained. “The essential reality in a sultanistic regime is that all individuals, groups and institutions are permanently subject to the unpredictable and despotic intervention of the sultan,” according to Linz and Stephan. Aris Trandis defines sultanism as “a type of autocratic regime in which political power is concentrated in the hands of the ruler and is unbound by political and legal rules.”
Du30 is not a fascist, he is merely a plain sadistic thug.
