I’ve come to a point where I fear that one Jose Rizal statement: “Kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan.” However, this fear does not come from believing that the youth is not capable of being that little glimmer of hope for the future. Rather, the fear comes from the iron claws’ questionable system of stripping off knowledge and truth—and the youth has to survive and live with this.
On March 22, two independent bookshops in Manila, Popular Bookstore and Solidaridad Bookshop were vandalized with the words “NPA” and “terorista.” These bookstores were known for catering to the progressive and political literature that other bookstores do not offer. De La Salle University (DLSU) history professor Jose Victor Torres even described Popular as a bookstore with a hidden instruction “tingin sa kaliwa, tingin sa kanan bago pumasok” due to military surveillance during the Martial Law era.
When Adarna House offered a 20-percent discount on their #NeverAgain Marcos atrocity-themed book bundle sale on May 11, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) Director-General Alex Paul Monteagudo accused the publishing house of “subtly radicalizing Filipino children against our government.” Moreover, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy stated that Adarna House is filled with communist members.
The NTF-Elcac has also advanced its movement by expunging “subversive” books and reading materials from state university libraries and online platforms.
The new administration hasn’t even started, yet the vandalizing, red-tagging, and withdrawal of progressive political books now serve as attacks not only on the people who offer the truth about our country’s history but also on those who want to learn and accept this truth. If this is already happening now, would the public libraries be also vandalized and red-tagged soon? Would the readers step back from these bookstores in fear of being labeled as terrorist members? Would the Marcos administration revise the history on their own terms just like what they did on social media during the electoral campaign?
Just like the English fantasy writer Neil Gaiman tweeted upon the red-tagging against Adarna House, all of these instances are “Not good.”
This is one of the examples of history repeating itself from when labeled “un-German” books were burned by the Nazis in 1933. If a tyrant wants to achieve more power and control over the oppressed, censorship is the key and that is what’s happening again today. If we don’t do anything then we will once again witness the fall of humanity.
As citizens who know the country’s dark past battle with disinformation and history revisionism, it has been everyone’s responsibility to keep their eyes open. The Adarna House’s #NeverAgain book bundle received support among Filipinos who condemn the attempt to ban books against the government’s wrongdoings. Freely-accessed google drives filled with movies, e-books, and Marcosian articles are circulating the internet. This is also the time to support our historians and archivists in hopes of defending and preserving the victim’s narratives.
As a youth frolicking both in the physical and cyberspace, perhaps this is the chance that Rizal was pertaining to. The chance to look back upon the past to learn and apply what we could in the present. The chance to preserve history. The chance to become defenders of truth. Will you become a part of it?
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