Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are continuing our series on non violent action by taking a look at the Philippine revolution. We're specifically looking at the revolution known as the people power revolution from 1986, which deposed the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. We'll lay out a brief history of the regime and revolution, then make a few observations from that. Let's go ahead and dive in.

Marcos gained authoritarian power in the early nineteen seventies when he put The Philippines under martial law. Now Marcos' excuse for putting the the country under martial law was that a new communist party had formed and he needed to institute martial law to prevent communism from coming to power and from spreading. And now sadly, as we saw in our Iran episode, this is an excuse that The United States was all too happy to accept. Now, The US at this point had killed and sacrificed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives on the excuse of stopping communism's potential of spreading. Now, whether it was staging coups or supporting rebels in South America, going to war in Korea or Vietnam, or whether it was facilitating a coup in Iran against a democratically elected official, the destruction of democracy in support of murderous tyranny by propping up the dictator, the Shah, all to preemptively strike what might have been a weak democratic state susceptible to Russia and communism.

And then, of course, there's our engagement in Afghanistan where we were terrorists against Russia, at least by our definition because Soleimani did the same thing just in Iraq against us and he was called a terrorist. So, The US has no qualms with dictators using communism as an excuse to upend democracy to kill or to torture. What Marcos did was perfectly legitimate by our game plan standards anyway. And in fact, when Marcos was eventually deposed in 1986, where did he go? Where did he find shelter?

Well, he found shelter with The United States of course, as his good friends, and avid anti communist, the Reagan's were in the White House and, you know, he contacted them and they put him up in Hawaii. And so, I think he spent the rest of his days living out in Hawaii, but he was at least there for some bit of time. You know, what a hard life, right? After being responsible for propping yourself up as a dictator, shutting down democracy, enacting 3,300 known extrajudicial killings, that's just what we know, 35,000 documented tortures, 77 disappearances, and 70,000 incarcerations, you spend out the rest of your living out the rest of your days in Hawaii, spending the billions of dollars, yes, B with a billions with a B billions of dollars that you stole from your fellow countrymen, your countrymen and women who lived on $2 a day or less on average. Now, remember growing up and hearing my dad talk about Imelda Marcos, which is kind of random to me like why why this lady from The Philippines.

But for whatever reason, in my dad's head, this the story of Imelda Marcos, which is Ferdinand Marcos' wife. But she had a when they were deposed and they went in, they discovered that she had, I guess, like 3,000 pairs of super expensive shoes like, you know, Jimmy Choo's and all that kind of stuff. That's the only expensive shoe I know, so that's the only one I named. But, yeah, she had 3,000 pairs of expensive shoes, like ridiculously expensive shoes like diamond crusted whatever. I mean, stole billions from the government, from the people.

So they obviously had no problem exploiting their subjects. And you know, wherever you see somebody exploiting somebody financially, chances are you're gonna find that they're exploiting them in other ways too. And that was the case with the Marcoses of course because while they stole billions in their their ten or so years as dictators, they also killed quite a number of opposition leaders and and stifled democracy with with physical force, torture, all that kind of stuff. So Marcos' reign was not just a reign of financial exploitation, but it was a reign of of physical violence and terror too. But Marcos' luck eventually ran out as his assassination of a beloved opposition leader stirred the people to protest.

When protests and international outcry grew too strong, Marcos ended up agreeing to an election. Now, I'm sure you can probably predict where this is going because whenever dictators have elections, generally it doesn't work out to be a fair election. And of course, the election that Marcos put into place was rigged very badly, like so, so obviously rigged. But the Filipinos were kind of prepared for that, they knew that it wasn't going be a fair election and they weren't having any of it. Bolstered by the Catholic Church, which encourages me here, it's always nice to see the Church on the right side of things, which doesn't happen at a lot of times in a lot of places, at least in modern history it seems especially.

But the Church actually played a big role in The Philippines, and there were nuns who came out and did non violence. There was a cardinal, a bishop, whatever he was, but this guy known as Cardinal Sin, you know, his last name was Sin, so that's that's really funny to me, Cardinal Sin. But he he was a big part of the of the resistance and encouraging people and and rallying people. So while the Filipino citizens were kind of, you know, upset, at the same time, there was a military coup that that sort of started to happen where this portion of the military broke off and they were going to rebel against the main the mainstream military. And they were trying to do it covertly but the coup was discovered by Marcos.

Well, Cardinal Sin found out that Marcos discovered this coup and Marcos was going to destroy this small rebel contingent. And so he called the Filipino army to come against the rebels and overnight, like within twelve hours, Cardinal Sin, I think he got on TV and stuff, but he got the Filipino people and he said, Hey look, these rebels are going to be slaughtered. And so all of a sudden, by the morning, you've got a million citizens that have come out and surrounded the rebels to prevent them from being slaughtered and would block kind of the Filipino main army. And sometimes they would actually get up on the Filipino army tanks and give them like cigarettes and candies and things and and kind of try to convert them and say, Hey, come over come over to our side, like, don't don't kill your brethren. By the end of it, they estimate that about 90% of the army had switched over to the rebel side because they just they saw these masses of people and they're like, I'm not gonna just slaughter unarmed people and and slaughter my own countrymen.

They saw that the the tide of power had shifted even though these citizens were unarmed and could have easily been slaughtered. Power isn't just physical violence and domineering power. The army recognized what was probably latent in many of them as their families suffered under the Marcos regime and they recognized that finally we can come out, we have the numbers to call for change. And so once that tide started to shift, it was, the growth was exponential. And of course, when 90% of your army changes sides, it's no longer a small rebel contingent, but it's kind of the will of the people.

So Marcos saw his days numbered and he fled the country with leaving Corazon Aquino in charge. She was the person who kind of inherited power and she it was her husband who was murdered a few years before who was kind of the guy who's challenging Marcos. So it was kind of fitting that she was able to take over as president because her husband probably would have been elected president were he not murdered. And it's also cool that she was a woman, that the Filipinos would would install a woman. Now in 02/2001, there was another People Power Revolution, part two.

This one centered centered around corruption charges against the president for stealing money, not for the same reasons that Marco was ousted really because Marcos was using all sorts of violence and stuff on top of stealing money. The then president Estrada was usurped by vice president Arroyo and now Arroyo eventually pardoned Estrada. She ended up having corruption charges against her, but then was pardoned by the courts as well. Now both Arroyo and Estrada ended up continuing on in politics at lower levels and there haven't really been any major revolutions since. Now there are a few things that I want to pull out of the people power revolution, both parts one and two.

First, I want you to notice how important women were. Nuns got out there and the army wouldn't shoot them. The new president that they installed was a woman. I mean, women were super influential in making it all happen. You had you had men in the rebel army who were essentially saved by crowds of of citizens who were composed of more women than they were men.

That's amazing. And we've talked over and over and over again about the asset of those who are normally viewed outside of the power structure in terms of of acting efficiency, you know, when you think of armies and fighting. But non violent revolutions are a numbers game. I guess violent revolutions are too, but when you can incorporate women and children, that significantly increases your chances of success incorporating those who are powerless under other movements, and that's what non violent movements do so well. Second, it's nice to see the church come around in The Philippines here and be on the side of justice and to see them in a positive light rather than propping up injustice.

You do see this in recent history particularly with the Catholic Church here as well in some South American countries, see the Catholic Church doing some pretty big things. They've had some significantly positive influences and there have been some Catholic priests who've been assassinated because of their attempts to encourage the poor and help them and call for social change. Number three, in this movement, you can see that momentum is huge. When Marcos called for an election, that showed weakness and the people were prepared to use that event to turn things around. So even though they knew it was going to be rigged, they were prepared for that being rigged and they weren't going to lose the momentum and just be like, Oh, I guess we lost, right?

It was a momentum builder when he just when he chose to finally have an election, that was weakness. So when small seeds are planted, like a rigged election or a small group of rebels in the army, it's vital to use that momentum and to not let it die. Nonviolent movements like lots of things in life, other movements, you know, sports games, momentum is huge and you have to capitalize on it. I think a fourth thing that we can see here which is kind of common sense but nevertheless important to draw out is that persistence is huge. So while Aquino died, it would have been really easy for his family to be scared away from participating in government.

But in large part, because of Corazon Aquino's persistence and courage, she was able to use that tragedy in the platform she already had to dig a deeper hole for Marcos. It took years, but it eventually happened. Number five, it wasn't just internal influences but also outside influences that contributed to the the fall of Marcos. This is why the press is so important as well as as international sentiment. You know, the book Why Civil Resistance Work recognizes that external influence isn't always the greatest thing to garner because it tends to be fickle and it can kill a movement if it's subsequently withdrawn.

But if a group can capitalize on international sentiment when the pressure is on, it can be extremely helpful. It's just that the eyes of the world shift with great frequency so the window in which to capitalize on international pressure and momentum can be kind of short. If it's not used, it can sabotage campaigns. So you have to be really careful about it but in the case of The Philippines that was actually pretty helpful for outside influence to put pressure on Marcos. And for a sixth point, one of the depressing takeaways from from the story is how resilient politicians are.

Marcos lived out his days as far as I know in Hawaii, and Estrada and Arroyo are still in politics to this day as far as I'm aware despite their, you know, their corruption in the February, early '2 thousands. How do these people get away with stealing billions and have zero real consequences? How do people keep voting for those who are corrupt? If a whole populace was behind ousting the president, how can they not have the wherewithal then to create a functioning system freer from corruption or to elect better officials? It's just, it's just mind boggling to me and I think this is a question that we're probably gonna have to come back to more and more in these stories but also in our lives.

How do we keep getting the politicians that we do and how do the politicians that are corrupt keep moving forward and staying in politics and not having consequences come against them? We'll probably touch on this whenever we get around to having our season on government. You just think that after all that we've learned, we'd be able to create a much better system, but we just don't seem to be able to do it. Corruption seems inevitable, and it seems like it's a powerful thing that's going to stick around. It's nice to be able to get these glimpses of good overthrowing evil power, but it seems to only do so as we see in The Philippines for for a short time, and then corruption returns.

Now that corruption, that returned isn't as bad as the Marcos corruption but usually wherever you find one sort of corruption, it leads to other types. So even though we're seeing financial corruption in the Philippine government, chances are that is extending to physical problems, physical violence. And if it's not now, it one day will if it isn't curbed. Well, that's all for now. So peace, Because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.