Beyond the social media bubble

Recently, I was involved in a project that gathered the narratives of people who use drugs in the urban poor. In one Zoom meeting, the senior anthropologist of our team told us about a striking observation from a similar work. “It’s easy for us to see that every single tokhang victim can be traced back to Duterte himself,” she said. “But ordinary people in the communities don’t always share this view. They can be angry at the police who violated their homes, or the masked assailant who killed their loved ones, but again and again I was told ‘it’s not Duterte’s fault,’ or, ‘we can’t blame the President for everything that’s happening in the country.’”

I was reminded of this anecdote yet again on the morning of Dec. 21, roughly 12 hours after the deaths of Sonya and Frank Anthony Gregorio in the hands of Tarlac police officer Jonel Nuezca. That’s really all you need to know about the crime: A Filipino policeman murdered two defenseless Filipino citizens in broad daylight.

As video footage of the incident went viral, social media was in uproar, the online furor nowhere more deafening than on Twitter. And it was so easy to believe that the unending deluge of tweets condemning the murders, demanding accountability across all levels of government and the police force, meant the entire nation was actually angry that day — that in every pocket of this archipelago, people were united in a state of rage, horror, and disbelief. It was easy to forget, no matter how many times this has been said, that the virtual world is but a bubble — and in the case of the Philippines, hardly anything like the “real” world.

Which begs the question: What do you do after posting that carefully worded series of tweets that gets shared by tens of thousands, or after typing the final period to that kilometric Facebook essay replete with academic references? What’s next after you like and share that tweet or post or on-point meme?

The thing to understand about impunity in the police force is that it’s not, to use the term Mr. Duterte’s minions have desperately clung to in describing Nuezca’s act of murder, “isolated.” What I mean is, it’s not only in the police and government where a culture of impunity thrives unchecked.

Seeing people call out the so-called “good cops” for staying silent, I couldn’t help wondering: Where were these people when shit closer to their respective homes hit the proverbial fan? Because when doctors choose to stay silent over Health Secretary Francisco Duque III’s weak-kneed handling of the pandemic, and when those working in private institutions simply watch as these institutions attempt to pass the burden of COVID-19 to public hospitals, that is also impunity. When writers choose to stay silent while a National Artist for Literature and a national writing workshop blatantly support the government’s drug war, that is also impunity. And when lawyers and political scientists choose to stay silent as their former professors and current colleagues abet the running of this country to the ground, that is also impunity.

Obviously, not all doctors, and writers, and lawyers, etcetera.

Allow me, then, to further extend the Wieselian thought (the original being that “silence only helps the oppressor”): When all we do is make noise online, and only on matters that are beyond our own backyards, we are actually barely helping. I am not saying there is no point in voicing out our anger. I am saying we need to carry that anger into the real world. I am saying we need to walk the (virtual) talk.

There is a world beyond social media, its thought-provoking discourses and clout-chasing influencers. It may contain your neighbor who is proudly “apolitical.” Your sibling who is a “timeline cleanser.” Your parents’ business partner who still supports Mr. Duterte because “he is good for business.” Your lawyer friend who views the law as words on a page, and not something that should have moral and ethical guideposts. Hundred of thousands of people who don’t even use Twitter, and probably haven’t seen, or heard, or seen and heard what Nuezca did on Dec. 20.

Amid this pandemic, which has worked so well to government’s advantage in that it has become easier than ever to suppress organized action and stamp out dissent through covert operations, disrupting the fragile comforts of our polite and decent circles is maybe the best that we can do to bring the “discourse” outside of our virtual echo chambers. This, too, will never be enough. But it can be a start.

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Vincen Gregory Yu is a physician, fictionist, poet, and theater critic from Iloilo City.