The paradox of neutrality

By Atty. Anfred P. Panes

With a social media platform reaching millions of subscribers, some of whom intellectually accede to the idealism which the content creator ascribes to, the neutrality card will never compensate for the bitter chapters of the past – a past where the life and liberty of the people were at the mercy of a tyrant.

The objective truth of the Martial Law regime cast a dark shadow over the very lives of the those who have been subjected to unlawful and inhumane treatment by a dictator. There is no room for neutrality when faced with arbitrary and systematic oppression of the people. It cannot be compensated by a multitude of infrastructure established using funds which, to this day, is paid using the sovereign debt allocation of several succeeding administrations.

It is not just about the powerful stories of people to tell.  If such is the case, the narrative of Martial Law can just as easily be distorted by mere social media influence.  The grand politics  and dark truth of the Martial Law regime is best told by the grassroots of such history – by the collective consciousness of the social reality of the past.  Allowing such narrative to be conveyed and down-played by any person who can virtually sway the public opinion may bring the course to the trap of historical revisionism.  In layman’s term, it is a means to which a historical record to which the people understood as a collective memory is being interpreted differently by accounting new facts in the present that might, in a way, distort the reality of what really happened in the past.

Historical revisionism is far more dangerous when it is being instrumentalized by the protagonist of the atrocious past.  As what we can observe, what could be considered as legitimate dissenters, are now being reduced to mere bashers, political critics and falsely dichotomized commenters as we see it more apt to consider those people as such in the virtual platform but not really being vigilant of the content being discussed.  This way, there is already a deviation of the core issue that needs to be addressed.

Perhaps the repercussions of the interview were not foreseen by the naive host, or although foreseen, was discounted to be one that people will see as entertainment, or for the sake of content.  However, the people Never Forget.  The people will always remember how their life and their family had been arbitrarily threatened and killed by the military state apparatus.  Or better yet, let this be a lesson to content creators to be circumspect of the topics they discuss in social media.

Neutrality is not a plausible defense when the collective memory of the past is distorted.  Neutrality is bereft in a highly politicized topic transmitted through social media to which the people of different intellectual wavelengths can access and engage.  One can only imagine it.  This is one of the reasons why it is better to take this matter in academic milieu to engage the topic in the array of intellectual discourses: divided yet academic; debated yet unrevised.

In the words of Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz camp survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner who was an eloquent witness for slaughter of millions of Jewish people during the World War II: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

The author is the founding partner of A.Panes Law and Professorial Lecturer of the USA College of Law