The longer Putin stayed in power, the more Russian people came to associate him with an image of a brutal lover, or rather a brutal husband of Russia, the alpha male who would kill a whale, hunt a tiger, or soar into the sky with a flock of birds for his wife, but would not hesitate to beat some sense into her whenever needed. This image of a macho husband was in perfect sync with the movement to restore the old Russia’s values that had been destroyed after the revolution of 1917, to reestablish the power of the Russian Orthodox Church, and create conditions for the general revival of Russian patriarchal traditions. In January of 2017, domestic violence laws were changed to make the punishment for offending husbands less severe. Before, a husband who repeatedly beat his wife would be sentenced to several years in jail. Now all he will get is a fine, which will probably hurt the family more than him, making the wives reluctant to report any violence whatsoever. It looks like it is only a matter of time before Domostroy, the infamous sixteenth century set of domestic rules, will be resurrected, along with the required tyrannical domination by a husband.
There is an old saying that is still uncomfortably popular in Russia: “He doesn’t love you if he doesn’t beat you.” Which means that the only reason the husband wouldn’t beat his wife is that he doesn’t care about her. And it’s obvious that beatings are done for the wife’s own good. The saying suggests that the beatings are not just acceptable, but desirable, a symbol of marital attention and love. And this is precisely the type of husband that Russia got in the person of Putin. He does horrible things that often badly hurt Russian citizens, but the Russian population is okay with that. He is tough but sexy, he is full of care and love. Because, you know, he doesn’t love you if he doesn’t beat you. Here is how this logic works. The West applies sanctions against Russia. Putin’s response is to apply his own sanctions that say “fuck you” to the West but actually hurt Russian citizens. The ban on foreign adoptions of Russian orphans is just one example. The ban on Western food import that is about to be followed by the ban on Western medications is another. The West is humiliated, the Russian pride is preserved. And so what if the Russian people would not have access to their medications and Russian orphans would have to rot in the badly managed state institutions?
He doesn’t love you if he doesn’t beat you.
The Russian opposition expresses discontent. Putin’s government response is to violently suppress peaceful demonstrations and throw people into prisons, some of them seemingly at random. It’s okay. He doesn’t love you if he doesn’t beat you.
Terrorists seize buildings, like the Moscow theater in 2002 or Beslan elementary school in 2004, and take hostages. Putin refuses to negotiate. He orders the attacks by the Russian armed forces, killing more than half of the hostages in the process (including small children). Two hundred and four hostages died in Moscow. Three hundred thirty-four died in Beslan, one hundred eighty-six of them children.
The deaths don’t really matter, because Putin has shown to the world that the Russians are too tough to negotiate with terrorists. He doesn’t love you unless he beats you.
In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea, which started an unofficial war with Ukraine, Russia’s closest and historically most trusted neighbor. Many more Russian lives were lost. But the general population rejoiced—Putin managed to flip the West and regain some of the formerly Russian territories. It’s uplifting, it’s invigorating, it’s sexy to have a leader who is making your country “great again.”
So sexy it hurts. Really hurts badly.
DUTERTE
Nada in the Heart of Bluster
Ninotchka Rosca
AFTER THE 2016 Philippine presidential elections, Rodrigo Roa Duterte who emerged victorious was praised for having run a “perfect social media campaign”—seemingly a shrewd campaign tactic in a country where fifty-eight percent of the population is active on social media.[1] Examined dispassionately, however, this tactic was both inevitable and necessary, to create an “irreality,” to transform into an icon of “change” a candidate whose only salient accomplishment was to maintain himself and his family in power for thirty years in a city ranked first in the number of murder cases.[2]
That “enhanced” digital narrative had all the elements of a telenovela—from thug-life rap imagery, mayhem, scatology, to a motley array of characters that was moved from the social margins to center stage: a soft-porn star, trans and queer people, dismally failed lawyers, and some cronies and members of the defunct Marcos dictatorship, left-wingers turned rightwing. These “sold” his iconography: a clenched fist, reminiscent of left militancy, but angled so that it was a full-frontal blow to the face of the beholder; Duterte himself cradling various over-sized guns and dubbed “The Punisher.” Sound bites from Duterte both shocked and titillated, the equation of power and lust being one enduring machismo fantasy. He was also adept at using the “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” dance (or his handlers were), now admitting to having killed at least three people, now saying he’d never killed anyone; now threatening to slap his opponents, now lapsing into silence when they responded to his challenge. He showed his contempt (or non-knowledge) for critical issues facing the country, joking he would take a jet ski and plant the Philippine flag on the contested Spratly Islands—a non-stand which effectively sidelined one pivotal foreign policy issue. He was quick to use people’s complaints without acknowledging his own participation in creating such problems, decrying, for instance, the loss of Muslim and indigenous land in Mindanao, despite the reality that the city he presided over for thirty years was a settler city, his own family having moved there from the Visayas, where his father had been a mayor in a round-robin system of power place-holding maintained by their relatives, the warlord Duranos. His bellows against such ills and on behalf of the afflicted were accompanied by the persistent claim that he had turned the city of Davao into the “safest” and most progressive city on earth—a lie unleashed by his trolls and picked up by media.
His fiercest opponent nowadays, Senator Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes, pinpointed this as the foundation of the supposed Duterte ability to bring change. The senator was upset that few challenged such an outright lie, enabling Duterte’s campaign to build the mythology that safety and progress needed a strongman who could face down the criminal, the oligarchs, and, of course, the imperialists. Senator Trillanes himself had been intrigued by the man and had approached Duterte for a possible team-up at the start of the campaign. The senator’s party had decided he should run for the vice-presidency, and he needed a presidential candidate to endorse. “I thought we would discuss policies,” he said, “but all he did was talk about people he had killed.” Not one to engage in a machismo slam dance, Trillanes and his party chose to endorse Senator Grace Poe—too precipitous a decision, as it would turn out, since that same afternoon, Mar Roxas, the standard bearer of the Liberal Party, which was in power, came knocking. “It was a few hours late,” he said, “and, truly, Leni Robredo, who was not even in the list of names being considered, was fated to be the vice-president.” Asked what he thought was the singular problem with the regime of Duterte, Senator Trillanes did not hesitate, “There is no core vision. There is nothing there to anchor policies—nothing at all.” He added, “Except to secure and maintain power for himself. He has seen how vulnerable former presidents can be.” The last two presidents of the Republic ended up in jail.[3]
2
“Murder Rate Highest in Davao City—PNP,” citing Philippine National Police statistics,
3
Taped interview with Senator Antonio Trillanes, by author, New York City, July 20, 2017.