Can we really “move on”?
Last week from August 21, the 35th anniversary of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, and onwards there were quite a number of stories in the main and social media recalling the event, the aftermath and the person of Ninoy Aquino. Among them was an item about Imee Marcos saying that people should just move on from these stories as it is history and the millennials have moved on. She and her allies are trying to change the story to a family feud between the Aquinos and the Marcoses, instead of a revolt of the people against the Marcoses and the excesses of martial law at that time. These drew a lot of flak from the main and social media, that the Marcoses should own up their guilt, returned the plundered wealth, and apologize to the Filipino people before we can move on.
In the last few years, there seems to be a planned, deliberate, and well-funded attempt to change the narrative of the Marcos years. It is perceptible in the main media, but more so in social media with the advent of cheaper trolls and easy access to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. The young people who were born after martial law and the People Power Revolution, who have no memories of these events are easy targets of these revisionist propaganda, that the Marcos years were the best years for the country and that Marcos was a war hero. The paid trolls in the social media and some media personalities that have benefited from the Marcos regime are pushing this agenda.
The problems with this revisionist campaign are; there are just too many documented stories in books, magazines, newspapers, and electronic media of the excesses of the Marcoses and martial law that can be easily accessed to get the real stories. The promoters of these alternative versions lack genuine conviction of their version as they are doing it for a fee and as a job, while those opposing and countering this propaganda are victims, relatives of victims who had experienced atrocities during those years. They lived and believe in their stories and their cause.
So far, this revisionist strategy has been counterproductive as it has generated more damaging information and stories about the Marcoses and martial law, reliving the events and making them more dramatic and informative in this age of advanced information and communication technologies, to more people in a wider geographic area in the Philippines and in the world. ICT makes a good story better and a bad story worse eventually.
Can we really “move on”? Moving on really refers more to a romantic relationship rather than other relationships. It is more about a failed love affair or engagement where one or both of the parties are unable to move on with their life or to another romantic relationship, because they are still hung up on the previous relationship. It has a preponderance of tender moments and affection, and more of the good times than bad times. The Marcos years are about hatred, persecution, corruption, torture and death. Of bad times and hopelessness, so it will be difficult to move on for many people.
We are the sum and product of our experiences and memories. We move on and continue with our lives but we never forget our experiences and memories, because to do so would deny us who we are. We put them aside to ease the burden of living, but we can recall and relive them especially if there are people telling us that our memories never happened.
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