Still part of the commemoration of the 50th year of the First Quarter Storm (FQS) of 1970, Ugatlahi Artists Collective designed posters that depict today’s people’s struggles against today’s regime of fascism that is reminiscent of Martial Law in dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.’s time.
The same ‘Hitler, Dikatador, Tuta’ chant was appended to the current tyrant’s last name, as did the streets rang with these chants during the big protest rallies against corruption and fascism during FQS.
Another design was a visual two-dimensional play on the group’s ‘Rody’s Cube’ effigy burned in the September 21 Martial Law commemoration protest in 2017. A wooden grave stick marker with the word ‘pasista’ [fascist] written on it was used to demonstrate the similarity between three strongmen of their time – Duterte, Marcos and Hitler.
The word ‘fascist’ is used for the head or members of an organization or party or a fascist state or rule if in power – a form of authoritarian ultranationalism which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.
World War I had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines or having any form of involvement in the military during the war, breaking down the distinction between civilians and combatants. This has also allowed states to an unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.
Fascist parties prominently known are the groups of Benito Mussolini in Italy, copied by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
A goal of fascism is the creation of a “nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire.” In history, fascism is welcomed by rich landlords and big businesses who feared an uprising by farmers, sharecroppers and labor unions. A major element of fascist ideology is to promote the right of a supposedly superior people to dominate, while purging society of supposedly inferior race or elements of society.
After World War II, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist and the word is only used pejoratively or as an insult, if not loosely to also mean a ‘bully.’ However, the history of fascism accounted for millions of lives taken, genocides, and not mere bullying.
And now, in the context of the Philippines, it is often used by activists as a pejorative for a (government top) leader who uses the machinery and resources of the government against its own people for an end that the leader deems more important than the civil liberties or human rights of the people. The means include trampling upon the rights of the people.
Perhaps, something like a war on drugs with 27,000 kills? Or the imposition of an anti-terrorism bill that would be effectively used against the people (even only for believing in an ideology like Marxism, or belonging to an organization that the government would target and proscribe as terrorist or supporting someone who believes in those beliefs) and not only (more rarely) to violent extremists who kidnap, kill, bomb for influence for money?
UGATLahi Artist Collective is an organization of artists, art enthusiasts and critics with a common goal of creatively expressing visual resistance to the existing oppressive social order. The group was established in 1999.
Copies of posters can be bought at the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Fine Arts, Artists’ Circle tambayan. Those interested may also contact @UGATLAHI on Facebook.
