"I'm going to kill all of you. But I'm also probably going to die tomorrow." Vicente Rafael on Duterte and authoritarian nihilism

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On May 9, the Philippines will elect a new President. For those interested in autocracy, it is a dramatic situation. The current illiberal president, Rodrigo Duterte, is not standing for re-election, but his daughter, Sara Duterte, is on the ticket with Bongbong Marcos, the son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Once a country has an experience with strongman rule, the leader can haunt a nation for decades.

To better understand Duterte --a violent man who engaged in extrajudicial killings-- and the stakes of this election, I talked with Vicente L. Rafael, who is Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author, most recently, of The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (2022), and Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation (2016). Our conversation took place on March 5, 2022, and has been edited for clarity and flow.

Courtesy of Vicente Rafael

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (RBG): Why do people support these violent fraudsters? In your book you talk about how the culture of fear that Duterte disseminated was actually part of his charm. Many don’t understand why these extreme figures have such devoted followings.

Vicente Rafael (VR): In the case of the Philippines, there's a long tradition of authoritarian leaders. And people tend to think that strong male leaders are the best way to deal with the uncertainties of life. Someone like Duterte who comes in and promises to not just solve the crime problem, but basically wipe out criminals, drug dealers and drug users, can be popular.  

Although of course this violence doesn't solve the problem, but it creates a sense of false security. People feel, well, someone's in charge, so I don't have to worry. It's very common to hear people say, oh, my neighborhood is really safer these days. And when you ask them, what do you think about all these people who got killed? I mean, many of them are your neighbors. And they would say, well, they were warned. They didn't want to stop dealing or using, so they got what they deserved.

RBG: This is one way that autocrats are different than democratic leaders. Duterte came on my radar when he started talking, as a candidate, about the violence that he would perpetrate if he won the election. And in the US we had Trump warning as a candidate that he could shoot someone and not lose any followers.

VR: Duterte's political style was really developed and honed while he was Mayor of Davao. He used threats, he hired thugs, like former rebels, and turned his police force into vigilantes. He himself liked to play vigilante. He would get on his motorcycle or borrow a taxi cab and roam around at night. As he said, he was looking for trouble he could fix.

So there was this sense that he was a hands-on mayor who didn't hesitate to do what was needed without having to go through the bureaucracy or the judicial system. And that was the basis of his popularity. People were afraid, but also impressed that he actually went and did these things. When he became president, he basically nationalized these local practices.

RBG: Your book discusses Duterte's brand of machismo. I'm happy to see that because I feel that we don't take masculinity seriously enough as a tool of authoritarian rule. You capture the complex masculinity of Duterte, and his blend of fragility and brutality.

VR: Duterte talks unabashedly about sexuality, he makes these obscene vulgar jokes about rape, about women. But when you look more closely at his use of misogyny and machismo, you see they are part of complex storytelling devices. He's a great storyteller, his way of using the vernacular is really quite amazing. It's one of the ways he connects to people.  

As an example, he might say, oh, gee, they raped the women. And it was so beautiful and I should have been first. I was the mayor. And instead I was sort of left out of the whole thing. People crack up because it's really about how his authority was obviated. And they can even sympathize with him.

RBG: It's beyond awful, but it's effective in terms of him building community and legitimating misogyny and sexual assault.

VR: Another example is a story he used to tell on the campaign trail about being sexually abused by an American Jesuit while he was going to confession. I think he connects with people who might have experienced the same thing. And yet he relates this painful trauma in a humorous fashion, saying, well, I still came out on top. I was abused, but I survived to tell this story.

Duterte also expresses vulnerability when he talks about dying, about how fragile his body is. So he says, I'm going to kill all of you. But he also says, I'm probably going to die tomorrow.

RBG: This sounds nihilistic. Many strongmen have a nihilistic streak.

VR: Yes, there's a really close relationship between authoritarianism and nihilism. It's this idea that well, I don't mind risking the lives of my soldiers and my citizens, because we're all going to die anyway. Someone's going to assassinate me sooner or later. Someone's going to launch a coup against me sooner later. So I'm just going to go all in now.

RBG: That's great context for Duterte stepping aside from the presidency. How does someone like that fade into the sunset?

VR: Well, physically he's very tired. I think that's part of the reason he wants to step down and retire. Yet he's got this legacy. His mode of governing and the practices he engaged in will continue. His daughter Sara will be there (even though they don't get along), and if Marcos junior becomes president, he will be surrounded by a lot of Duterte allies and cronies.

Duterte's also empowered the police to an enormous degree. It's really the police that run the show. In the Philippines, unlike in the United States, police are nationalized. So it's really the office of the president that controls the appointment of the chief of police and so forth.

In addition, in the Philippines Congress designates intelligence funds, a massive amount of money, and no one knows what it's used for, it's never accounted for. So the economic power, the political power, and of course the military power of the police will continue.

RBG: Isn't there also some nostalgia for the Marcos era?

VR: Yes, and it comes out of a decade of propaganda, a lot of it on YouTube, about how wonderful martial law was, and how the son will continue what the father did --the attraction of continuity. People who support Duterte will support Marcos Jr. because Sara's there. In fact, Marcos Jr. himself doesn't have much of a platform. He always says I'm going to unify the country. Whatever that means.

RBG: Ah, the strongman slogan for one hundred years, still going strong!