the purge
I’ve got to admit I did quite enjoy the film, The Purge, as it was an intriguing extension/end-game to an imaginary, increasingly polarised society – both violent & religious in equal measure – and highlighted how accepting, or at least acquiescent, a whole society can be. But it was a film, it was fiction and it would never actually happen. Would it? Think again. It’s happening right here, right now. Think Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Chairman Mao and now think Rodrigo Duterte, newly elected President of the Philippines.
Not the shy & retiring type, Duterte has a shockingly succinct way of dealing with the crystal meth epidemic that has hit the country of late: the widespread state-sponsored slaughter of addicts, dealers, pushers and financiers. Advising the wider population to “do it yourself if you have a gun” the last three months alone have witnessed over 3,600 people being killed and woe betide any international leader who dares to criticise. Barack Obama has been called a “son of a whore” and told to “go to hell”; the EU informed that we’d “better choose purgatory as hell is all filled up”; the UN instructed to “f*ck-off” following their threat to formally investigate recent events and warned that the country will undoubtedly withdraw from the body, tout suite.
In a return to the formal death squads of former president, Ferdinand Marcos, Duterte has, under the codename ‘Operation Double Barrel’, given free rein to all police (and by implication the many vigilantes who believe they’ve been instructed to follow suit) and promised to grant an amnesty to any officer found ‘on the wrong side of the law’. Consequently, an officer explained to The Guardian “We are not bad individuals. We are here as angels, like St Michael and St Gabriel, to get these bad souls back to heaven and cleanse them.” Apparently, there are ten ‘special ops’ teams of sixteen policemen and they operate to specific lists, targets and practices where, once formally identified, suspects are shot on the spot with no witnesses. Bodies are then taped up with a cardboard sign explaining the reason – drug lord, pusher, user etc.
Needless to say, these corpses, referred to as ‘salvaged’, are never investigated and the masking tape & cardboard sign is all the proof of guilt that is ever needed. The potential opportunity for operating with gay-abandon with regards to settling old-scores, resentments or arguments, with anyone that’s ‘crossed’ you, is not lost on any of us. It’s certainly not lost on President Duterte who can look into the recent past and see one pardoned successor who plundered $80m, and another re-elected to Congress whilst under house arrest for an involvement with the massacre of 58 political opponents. Getting away with murder has never been more metaphorically and literally apt. The Purge IV: Rodrigo’s Revenge.
