Philippine news media apply slave mentality when reporting on America

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This article by a scholar from the University of Sydney named Adele Webb (“He may have insulted Obama, but Duterte held up a long-hidden looking glass to the US”)—is going viral and is an absolute must-read. Forward it to all your friends.

I just want to add one bit of detail. In the article, Webb cites a quote from an essay written in 1901 by Mark Twain (yes, the same Mark Twain who wrote Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer). Twain strongly opposed America’s decision to colonize the Philippines. He wrote:

“There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land.”

The line “one that sets the captive free” refers to America’s decision to abolish slavery in the mid 1860s.

The line “one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him” refers to America’s decision to colonize the Philippines instead of letting it go free after the Filipinos already won independence from Spain.

Twain was basically equating America’s colonization of the Filipinos with America’s enslavement of the black people.

Growing up, we never learned about these things because our history books were written by American colonial officials. We should be grateful that Duterte’s rants have brought out these long-hidden truths, so we Filipinos will know our real history, not the version fed to us by foreigners.

Do you notice how the yellow media are unusually quiet about the Bud Dajo massacre and the atrocities of the Philippine-American war that President Duterte has been talking about? Normally, the yellow media have a full stable of “analysts” to comment and parse every word that comes out of Duterte’s mouth. But now, when it comes to this most crucial subject that deserves thorough discussion, they are silent.

It seems the yellow media still have the mentality of slaves in awe of their colonial master. Yet they like to keep telling us they are the defenders of our democracy.

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