Some people believe Jose Rizal is divine and immortal. They say Rizal has no permanent address and commutes between Mt. Arayat, Mt. Banahaw, and Mt. Makiling. Some Rizalistas also believe in the intimate connection between Rizal and Ferdinand Marcos, as both brown-skinned (kayumanggi, not moreno) saviors of the Philippines.
Rizalistas came to mind when I received requests to fact-check a fantastic post on YouTube entitled “Ang Dalawang Bayaning Pilipino na Nag-ingat ng Kayamanan ng Buong Mundo: Barclays Account Story” (The two Filipino heroes who stewarded the wealth of the whole world: Barclays Account Story).
I felt bad adding to the existing 404,470 views of this ridiculous YouTube video, and so got even by raising the “thumbs down” dislikes to 574 against the 14,000 likes. The Filipino Future YT account boasts some 241,000 subscribers, who are fed with pro-Marcos, pro-BBM (Bongbong Marcos) fake news.
A former newspaper editor informed me that like Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranding itself as KFC to delete the bad word “fried,” Cambridge Analytica dissociated Ferdinand Marcos Jr. from his dictator father by rebranding him as “BBM.” Furthermore, all-caps BBM supposedly has an “angas” factor.
Compared to other slick BBM videos online, the production quality of the “Barclays Account Story” video is poor. But the fact that 400,000 people clicked on it, watched it till the bitter end, and liked and shared it means we are in a mess. This only shows how our schools have failed to teach critical thinking skills.
Translated from the original Filipino, the storyline goes: “Rizal did not die in Bagumbayan. According to a post in World Viewer on May 8, 2016, Rizal lived to 113 years of age. After studying ophthalmology in Germany, he operated on kings and emperors. He stayed for some years in Vienna with Emperor Franz Josef of Habsburg-Lorraine and in Tokyo with the Tenno.”
Rizal visited Vienna only once, on May 20-24, 1887. There he spent the night with a woman, giving rise to the urban legend that Rizal is the father of Adolf Hitler, another story long debunked. Rizal was in Japan from Feb. 28 to April 13, 1888 and had no contact with the Emperor or Tenno. We know of Vienna from the diary of Rizal’s traveling companion, Maximo Viola, and of Tokyo from Rizal’s own diary.
The video continues: “Jose P. Rizal (JPR) worked in the Vatican under the name Jose Antonio Dias de la Paz (JAD) and was named Nuncio to different parts of the world because he could speak ten languages.” A Papal Nuncio, the video says, is an “Ambassador of Goodwill of the Vatican.” There are photographs presented of JPR and JAD—but JAD’s photo is in fact that of Gregorio Aglipay!
More: “After World War I (1918) when kings and emperors needed someone to entrust their hidden wealth with, they chose Rizal aka JAD, making him the most important and secretive person of the 20th century. This gargantuan wealth was uncovered after World War II (1945) with a secret deposit of 400,000 metric tons of gold.
“In 1949 this gold was deposited with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (actually Central Bank of the Philippines when it was founded), with 217,000 metric tons of gold deposited in other banks around the world under the name Tiburcio Villamor Marcos with secret account number TVM-LSM-666.
“Four hundred thousand tons of gold were placed in a 50-year time deposit with five years to terminate claims of former owners. US President Harry S. Truman, his successor Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse Tung, Tschu Enlai (sic), and Generalissimo Franco signed a secret agreement on Aug. 11, 1950 with JPR-JAD as Trust Depositor and Ferdinand E. Marcos as legal counsel for TVM-LSM-666. Control of this wealth is under the Bank of International Settlements, Basel Switzerland that is the secret, de facto, Central Bank of all the Central Banks in the world and controls the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England, IMF, WB and ECB. JPR-JAD then placed TVM-LSM-666 into a Barclays London trust account under the name Jose Bautista Cruzen…”
Sorry, I couldn’t watch till the end even if I wanted to. The gist is that Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. is the legitimate owner of the entire Philippines through the deed of assignment from Rizal. Second, Marcos Sr. did not need to steal from the government because he controlled 400,000 metric tons of gold. But if BBM now controls this wealth, why run for president of the Philippines?
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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu