Philippines Bloodbath: Madmen and their stories

8/9/2019 Philippines Bloodbath: Madmen and their stories

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Philippines Bloodbath:

Madmen & Their Stories

This article also appears on www.22cplus.blogspot.com

Be careful what stories you tell, because after a time, they will start to tell

you. The dominant narratives in our individual lives, and in our societies

tend to be self-perpetuating. They become deeply ingrained in the psyche of

the person or the collective. They thus operate largely unconsciously. They become beliefs.

As Simon Buckland reminded me of (http://simonbuc-

theblogoflove.blogspot.com/) recently when we were talking about getting

rejected as writers, there was a certain woman in the UK who plastered her

Marcus T. Anthony (PhD)

Email: mindfutures at gmail dot com

http://www.22cplus.blogspot.com/

http://simonbuc-theblogoflove.blogspot.com/


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zYV4qdtsB7o/THi934_k_7I/AAAAAAAAAe0/m8eaWpFXBMU/s1600/gunman+2.jpg






walls full of rejection slips. Obviously she was using the slips as a

motivation, as rejection can be disheartening. In such a situation there is

the danger that the story of rejection becomes the informing narrative of

one’s life. Apparently, she never did get published.

If you examine your dreams, you will note that there are recurring stories

that run through them. Many of these narratives are to do with restrictive

beliefs which in turn stem from the pain and hurt which we have suffered in

our lives, and (as I believe) in past lives. There are also dominant narratives

which run through humanity in general, which stem from genetic memory,

or the carryover from latent consciousness fields which have developed

through the passing of history.

Here are some of the most common narrative themes that appear in

cultures and nations throughout the world (each has a positive expression

too, but I will not go into that here).

Theme The plotsDanger!

Xenophobia

Lack

Victim

Possession.

Blame

Revenge

Hopelessness

Save me.

Guilt

Specialness

They are coming to get us. It is not safe. We are doomed. The

end is nigh.

The foreigners are evil, dirty, racist. You can’t trust them. Kill

the outsiders.

There isn’t enough to go round. We are going to starve.

Oh woe is us! Look what they have done to us! We’ve been

robbed! Why do we always get picked on! We are the

downtrodden.

You are mine. I’ve got you. You will never be free.

Colonisation.

It’s all their fault.

You’ve got to pay! Kill the infidels! You have got to suffer, justlike you made us suffer.

The world is a terrible place. All is lost. There’s no way out.

There is nothing we can do.

Help! You are my savior. I can’t do it on my own.

I’m/we’re bad. We’ve got to do penance, suffer for our sins.



We are wicked. Let’s beat ourselves.

We are the master race. We are chosen by God. We are

morally/culturally/socially/intellectually superior.

Because these themes run through the human psyche, policymakers in any given society have to be careful not to play on them too much. These stories

can also be reinforced through the media, social networks, and through

education.

When children sing the national anthem, they are learning a story. If the

story says “We are young and free”, such as with the Australian national

anthem, it is relatively harmless. If the lyrics implore the people to build a

great wall against the enemy (as the Chinese national anthem does), the

dangers are obvious. Here’s an English translation of the Chinese anthem.

March of the Volunteers

Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!

With our flesh and blood, let us build our new Great Wall!

The Chinese nation faces its greatest danger.

From each one the urgent call for action comes forth.

Arise! Arise! Arise!Millions with but one heart,

Braving the enemy's fire.

March on!

Braving the enemy's fire.

March on! March on! On!

Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves;

With our very flesh and bloodLet us build our new Great Wall!

The peoples of China are in the most critical time,

Everybody must roar his defiance.

Arise! Arise! Arise!

Millions of hearts with one mind,



Brave the enemy's gunfire,

March on!

Brave the enemy's gunfire,

March on!

March on!March on, on!

The story is about uniting in the face of evil outsiders who are threatening

to destroy us. It tells of a world which is quite literally full of “danger”.

The story of being bullied, abused and humiliated runs right through the

central narrative of Chinese history. Historically this is factual, as China hasoften been invaded and colonised, most recently by the western powers in

the 19th century. When violence broke out in Tibet and the far-western

province of Xinjiang in the last couple of years, one of the first things the

government did was to claim that “hostile anti-China” forces from abroad

were involved. This is a clear and systematic policy of the Chinese

authorities when faced with internal dissent: to blame outsiders.

There is nothing wrong with telling the story of persecution and tragedy,

but when the idea of being victimised becomes the central motif of a

cultural narrative, the victim story becomes a worldview.

As with individual people, it is when buttons get pushed that the neurotic

belief structures of cultures surface. Just this week there was a tragic

incident in Manilla, the Philippines, when a busload of Hong Kong tourists

was high jacked by a furious ex police officer, Rolando Mendoza, incensed

that he had been laid off on corruption charges. Tragically, the Philippines

special task force in charge of dealing with the situation, bungled theoperation in utterly incompetent fashion. Eight of the Hong Kong tourists

were killed in the ensuing carnage.

No doubt Ronaldo Mendoza had his won "story" to tell . But that is not

what I want to write about here.



Understandably, people in Hong Kong and China were deeply saddened

and furious at the incident. This is only to be expected given the great

tragedy of events. But what I’d like to discuss here is the way that the

cultural narrative of “China” created unnecessary hostility amongst somesegments of Hong Kong and Chinese society. This was seen most clearly on

internet sites, and in some of the slogans carried by protesters outside the

Philippines embassy in Hong Kong. At least two Philippine maids in HK

have been fired over the incident. Tomorrow (Sunday, protestors are going

to march through Hong Kong, beginning and ending at places where

thousands of Philippino maids gather each Sunday (their day off). This does

seem like a deliberate provocation. Other locations could have been chosen.

Tomorrow will be a real test of Hong Kong’s maturity.

After the event, I was interested to check out the mainland Chinese

reaction, so I went to one English language site, the China Daily

newspaper’s discussion forum. The internet is the perfect way to ascertain

the cultural narratives of peoples, as we are far more likely to speak our

deepest, darkest thoughts as an anonymous poster on a web site, than we

would in person. The net gives voice to the shadow.

Sure enough a prolonged “thread” on the topic sprang up immediately on

the forum, reaching 12 pages in just a few days. And before you read any

further, be warned that some of the quotes from the site are rather foul-

mouthed. I suspect some posters probably now need to have their "F" and

"C" keys replaced, such has been the physical assault upon them.

Secondly, it should be acknowledged that the internet is a haven for

disaffected and socially inept individuals, and permits a free voice forsociopaths to vent their hatred out onto the world. In this sense, the

following should not be seen as typical of Chinese reactions to recent

events. These are extreme views, but ones which reflect deeper social

narratives. There are many Hong Kong and Chinese people who have

responded responsibly, and these have included Hong Kong's CEO, Donald



Zhang, and even Jackie Chan who proclaimed "Hong Kongers do not hate."

The original post on the forum began with a Chinese netizen expressing

outrage and grief, and demanding to know why Chinese people round the

world are always persecuted wherever they go (victim: why do we alwaysget picked on?). Several other posters joined in. Then there was an

allegation that the Philippine government had not bothered to help the

Hong Kongers because they thought that Chinese lives were not worth

saving. This was quickly followed by allegations of a conspiracy by the

Philippine government to target Chinese people. Racist epithets were

thrown in. Philippinos are primitive, the country is “stone age”. Other

posters said the Philippines should be bombed immediately.

Then a foreigner (an expat westerner living in China) joined in and said

that there was no evidence that the attack was specifically targeted against

Chinese people. The poster was told to “fuck off, and get out of China”

(xenophobia). Other western posters joined in and expressed some

sympathy for the tragedy, but agreed that there was no evidence of a

conspiracy against China. Some pointed out that the Philippines is a violent

and sometimes unsafe country, and that other recent massacres in the

Philippines have featured far higher death tolls, including one in 2009

when 47 Philippinos were killed. These attempts to contextlise the tragedy

were received with further abuse. Here’s a few I have taken from the site.

“Hanjian” means “Chinese traitor.

• (responding to a query about Chinese ethnicity) They are 1000 timesmore Chinese than your prostitute HanJian wife!

Where is she? How many gweilos' (white foreigners’) lives is shegoing to make complete today? You are judging who is real Chinese or

not according to the criteria of your prostitute HanJian wife and youare completely wrong!

A non-HanJian woman would have smother your monkey life outlong ago!Go to hell with your HanJian wife as soon as possible!



• (responding to those saying the attack wasn’t targeting Chinese inparticular) Those of you who deny this, you're just as racist as these

wicked racist Filipinos!

• I have learned more about the gweilos (white foreigners) since Iseriously came to this forum less than two months ago. In real life,they are almost always all smiles and friendly. But one of them might

be the Sneaky Snakey or maybe the German Monkey, etc. I am tryingto figure out who they are.

•

Chinese lives are not that important to these Stone Age people(Philippinos).

• Eight now confirmed dead. Why? Why? These people are alwaystargetting at us Chinese?? This is not the first time. There have beenmany other cases of Chinese being kidnapped or taken hostage andkilled even when ransoms are paid !! Why? Why hate the Chinese somuch. What bad things have the Chinese done to these poeple? Not

just the Philippines but also Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam & otherKKK (Klu Klux Klan) countries, Chinese are treated with so muchhatred. Why?

• (to a non-Chinese poster with a Chinese wife) Your Chinese wife is aHanjian prostitute. Her cunt smells like a can of rotting fish.

• (responding to a estern poster citing the dangers of Manila) You arepolitically correct wanker.



• Go back to Thailand and fuck more 7 year olds, you White Anglopervert.

• Look at what these disgusting barbarian foreigners are doing to ourChinese people. We must rid our country of them!

Most of the non-Chinese posters were actually quite measured in their

responses, although some responded by calling the Chinese posters “racist”

themselves, and one gave as good as he got.

Remember, this is China’s official English language newspaper and web

site, and it is moderated by a team employed by the Chinese government.

This means that that these kinds of projections at foreigners are implicitly

tolerated by the government. The problems on the site goes back many

years, and it has long been dominated by hyper-nationalists and self

proclaimed “Chinese patriots”. Many foreigners in China suspect that many

of these aggressive Chinese posters are actually part of the China Daily

forum moderating team itself.

However, it has to be pointed out that some of the posts by Chinese people were later deleted, resulting in some Chinese posters screaming that the

moderating team had been infiltrated by “filthy foreigners”. For example:

• Oh oh, my posts are restricted by racist laowai (foreign) moderatorsagain!

It is easy enough to see how the dominant narrative is that of the victim. We are being suppressed. The world is against us. The outsiders are evil!

They are coming to get us. We must purify ourselves and eliminate them!

Here is the key point. Take away the dirty language and insults, and what

you have is basically a paraphrase of the Chinese national anthem and its



dominant narrative. The Chinese posters are simply regurgitating the

contents of their history books, their media, their “story.”

The story of the oppressed victim has been perpetrated by the authorities in

China as an attempt to unify a vast and diverse nation via the lowestcommon denominator: anger and fear of the outsider. The dangers are

obvious, and the half-crazed writings on the internet reveal just how deeply

this has possessed the psyches of some people in China. There is now a

boiling couldren of hate and blame sitting just below the surface, at least in

some of the population. The story of the victim is so powerful that the

posters are completely incapable of introspection, of seeing that they have

become the (verbal0 abusers. The irony is best embodied by the poster

screaming that white people are evil and that Chinese women who marry foreigners are prostitutes and traitors – while accusing them of being racist.

Fortunately this victim story is not the only narrative that runs through

Chinese culture and history. Another story is that of “the harmonious

society”, which has also been used, more responsibly, as an attempt to unify

the nation. The harmonious society is an old Confucian concept, where

society exists in unity with Heaven and nature. Each class of the social

system sits within a very hierarchic social structure, accepting its place in

the scheme of things. The collective takes precedence over the wants of the

individual. We can only hope this is the story that eventfully prevails.

Unfortunately, human beings love the victim story. We like it because it is

an easy cop out. As victims we can simply blame and hate the other. Being a

victim permits us to forgo the requirement of emotional and moral self-

discipline. The victims’ society is a brick-throwers paradise. The Chinese

“patriots” on the internet are not the only ones guilty of succumbing to its

primitive, animalistic call. All over the world, in countless countries andamongst innumerable ethnic groups, we see similar stories told over and

over again.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not denying hurt, suffering and injustice. The

anger reaction is wired into our physiology. But when injustice and tragedy



strike, it is what we do with our anger that determines whether our futures

will be heaven-like, or hell-like.

Injustices do occur, and they occur often. But in the end, if there is going to

be anything like a harmonious society within and beyond China, we all haveto assume the necessary discipline of spiritual maturity. We have to grow

up. There is a price to pay for “civilisation”. We have to reclaim the angry

child within us, and teach it to a new story. We have to grow up.

The internet would be a good place to start. If we can be disciplined in what

we write as an anonymous web surfer (because every bit of blame and hate

is destructive), then we will surely have the moral decency to do likewise in

our everyday lives.

Marcus T. Anthony



* * *

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