When ‘thinkers’ endorse the unthinkable

“Just do what Singapore does to keep that country drug free. Death to all caught with drugs.”

These are the words of National Artist F. Sionil Jose.

Clearly it’s an endorsement of the very thing we loathe the most about this administration: extrajudicial killings.

But did Sionil Jose really mean EJKs? Would he have meant a return to capital punishment as a legal remedy to the scourge of illegal drugs?

If so, it begs the question: what makes a return to capital punishment any more pivotal when set side by side to the ongoing assassinations and murders?

Nothing.

If anything, it’s a pivot towards the weaponization of law, of the mistaken idea that power is always right, and of legality as official business, never once taking into account that not all things legal are proper, moral, or beneficial to human life and human integrity.

Besides, a return to capital punishment is to be blindsided by an idea of justice that is nearer to vendetta than a fair hearing of the accused.

After four years and close to 30,000 dead in a bogus drug war ripped of its due process, Duterte can only claim failure after failure after failure as regards the trafficking of illegal drugs and corruption.

He is inutile, in his own words.

Impunity running amuck is proof undeniable of the State’s regression from being a government of the people to being a criminal gang of one sick old tulisan.

Why a National Artist, supposedly a living symbol of the freedom, beauty, and life celebrated in works of art, would endorse death to an administration already choking on its own bloodlust, may not be such a mystery after all.

Some say it’s old age, others dementia. And there are some who grant the possibility that, perhaps, he has been corrupted by the system.

There is likewise the possibility that he was never anything but a believer in fascism from the start. Or, perchance, even a coward.

What do I think?

Intellectuals siding with tyranny is not new. There was Martin Heidegger who served in the Nazi Party. There was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who some say influenced Maximilien Robespierre on the necessity of inflicting terror at the height of the French Revolution. Many more come to mind.

In fact, it was the intellectuals of the 19th century who gave birth to fascism as an ideology. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini had anything to do with its formation as a political theory.

My readings had led to these names: political theorists Theodor Fritsch, Paul Anton de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn; philosophers Geovanni Gentile, Gustave Le Bon, Friedrich Nietzsche; even journalists Gabriele D’Annunzio, Guido Von List and Édouard Drumont, among others.

The list is long and rather disturbing. Auguste-Maurice Barrès, French writer and political figure, proposed to resolve ‘civilization’s decadence’ with hatred and violence as “energizing remedies”. French philosopher Georges Sorel was no different.

Julius Langbehn, the German romantic art historian and philosopher, was said to have espoused, “Equality is death, hierarchy is life”. Joseph de Maistre, who, ironically, was called a French “moralist,” lambasted the Enlightenment for destroying religious traditionalism and praised the executioner as “protector of the social hierarchy”.

John Weiss, an American historian, said of 19-century thinkers Paul Anton de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn, “The two most influential and popular intellectuals of late nineteenth century Germany were indistinguishable from Nazi ideologists.”

Intellectuals siding with fascists were nothing but mainstream reading in Europe during the 19th century. Let’s not even delve into the modern-day fascist donning not the military uniform but the corporate power suits.

So, again, what do I think?

First off, I fear that the endorsement of Sionil Jose will only pave the way for more killings. It’s so moot and academic it’s actually scary. It’s as if the 27,000 murdered under Duterte’s bogus drug war (Amnesty International estimates) aren’t enough that it needed a boost coming from a “giant” of Philippine literature.

His initial dismissal of the shutdown of ABS-CBN was eventually used by Duterte’s minions to justify the network’s closure. His recent endorsement of extrajudicial killings, borne by the illustrious title of National Artist, will be no different.

His approval of China and Singapore as models of law enforcement, as one esteemed journalist said, “breaks all the notions of civil liberties”. His mention of China is almost treasonous in light of the latter’s criminal misbehavior within the West Philippine Sea.

Why he felt such an approval to be worth mentioning is anybody’s guess.

There’s also this little proviso: the title of National Artist is bestowed specifically by the Office of the President. It comes with a number of perks.

More than the title and gold-plated insignia, which in and by themselves carry a lot of weight in the formation and acceptance of public opinion, to be called National Artist entitles the bearer to the following:

(1) Life insurance policy coverage; (2) a place of honor at state functions; (3) a state funeral fully subsidized by government (P500,000) and burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani; (4) minimum lifetime monthly stipend of P30,000-P50,000 (don’t know the latest figure); (5) minimum tax-free cash award of P200,000; and (6) hospital and health benefits amounting to no more than P750,000.

Would such perks be the reason for Jose’s kid-glove treatment of government atrocities? Why he refuses to cross the line of duty to dissent?

We’ll probably never know.

One thing is certain, though: to be stripped of these entitlements could prove devastating to any National Artist. It does not, however, excuse siding with executioners if only to placate Duterte’s hostility towards his critics.

Let me say that again: It does not, however, excuse siding with executioners.

So, Joel, what do you think? Is Jose corrupt? Suffering from dementia? In the grip of old age? Was he a fascist from the start?

Let’s just say that if I go by Walter Benjamin’s words, “The destructive character has no interest in being understood” (Reflections, 1978), then I have no need to understand them either. Why even bother wasting one’s time on characters devoid of character?

What I do know is this: I can understand men of letters having feet of clay. What I cannot accept are men of letters proud to smear their hands with blood.

What drove him to play footsie with, and endorse the actions of, oppressors matter little to me.

It is clear he has crossed the line. That puts me at loggerheads with the man I once called a friend.

So be it.

As for those who proposed to burn the books written by Jose, I have only this to say: how quickly you transform to the very fascists you say you hate.

You can either ignore them, or read them the way other people indulge their baser selves in a sleepy traipse across the Yellow Pages. Book burning reeks of Nazism, for crying out fucking loud.

Your idea of freedom is much too laughable to even bear the name.