0:03

This is The Political Scene, and I'm David

0:05

Remnick.

0:09

These are very hard times for democracy

0:12

and for democracies all over the world. If

0:15

you look around the globe, you'll find

0:17

plenty of evidence for that. But

0:19

of the many authoritarian rulers who

0:22

rose to power in recent years, perhaps

0:24

none embraced violence as

0:27

gleefully as Rodrigo Duterte

0:30

of the Philippines. Like Donald

0:32

Trump, Duterte liked to joke about

0:34

hurting people. Except he wasn't

0:36

really joking. Duterte said he would execute

0:38

criminals without an arrest or

0:41

a trial. And if someone was suspected

0:43

of being a drug dealer or even a drug

0:45

user, he would have them executed

0:48

right on the street. The first such

0:50

killings happened within a day of

0:52

his inauguration. Officially,

0:54

the Philippines says that about 6,000 people

0:57

were killed under Duterte's regime. But

1:00

the number is almost certainly higher.

1:03

Maybe most horrifying of all, this was done

1:05

by a leader who won an election

1:07

in 2016 on the

1:09

promise of murder.

1:12

To believe in Rodrigo Duterte,

1:15

you had to believe he was a killer. Or

1:17

that he was joking when he said he was

1:20

a killer. You had to believe

1:22

in the specter of a narco state, or

1:24

you had to believe he was only playing to the crowd.

1:27

You had to believe drug addiction is criminal,

1:30

that drug addicts are not human, and

1:32

that their massacre can be considered acceptable

1:35

public policy.

1:37

Patricia Evangelista documented the violence

1:40

for the news site Rappler in the Philippines.

1:43

You had to believe the intended dead

1:46

would be drug lords and rapists

1:48

only. And

1:50

not your cousins who go off into Laguasan

1:53

marsh to pick up their baggies of meth. You

1:55

had to believe there would be a warning

1:58

before the gunshots ring out.

2:01

To believe in Rodrigo Duterte,

2:04

you had to believe he was just. You

2:06

had to believe he was honest. You had to

2:08

believe he was untainted by the oligarchy

2:11

and beholden to no one. You had

2:13

to believe he was your father. You had to

2:15

believe he was your savior. You had

2:17

to believe he loved you. Because

2:20

you love him enough to carry

2:22

his name. Evangelista

2:26

was based until recently in Manila

2:28

and she's just published the remarkable book

2:30

Some People Need Killing, which to my mind

2:33

is an astonishing chronicle of a reign

2:35

of terror and it's put Evangelista herself

2:39

in enormous danger.

2:41

Let's start

2:42

with you. You were a staff

2:45

writer at a newspaper in the Philippines

2:47

that has a reputation

2:49

for, I would say, intense independence

2:53

and rare independence. Tell me how

2:55

your career started.

2:57

Well,

2:58

I've been a trauma journalist for

3:00

more than a decade. It

3:02

means I go to places where people

3:05

die. So I pack

3:07

my bags, I interview

3:09

the survivors, I file my stories,

3:12

and then I go home to wait for the next

3:15

catastrophe. I don't wait

3:17

very long. And

3:19

for most of the time I spent as an

3:21

investigative reporter for Rappler, I

3:23

did the same for them. And in 2016,

3:27

a man named Rodrigo Duterte

3:30

ran for the presidency of the Philippines.

3:33

And he ran on a platform of death

3:36

and that's not an exaggeration. He

3:38

promised that the fish would feed fat

3:41

on the corpses of criminals. He

3:43

said morticians would grow rich with

3:46

the deluge of dead. He

3:48

said that if your neighbor's child

3:51

is an addict, kill them yourselves.

3:54

It would be a kindness to their parents.

3:57

Duterte won.

3:58

What was the context in the world?

3:59

which he was running for office in 2016. There's

4:03

not a country I can think of without

4:06

a drug addiction problem, without

4:08

a drug trafficking problem to go along with it.

4:11

What was he running against and why?

4:13

Well,

4:16

when he ran, things

4:18

were generally stable, so

4:21

to speak. But what

4:23

was necessary was to create a specter

4:26

that he could run against. The

4:28

Philippines has a drug problem,

4:31

as most countries do, but

4:34

comparative studies will demonstrate

4:36

that we have less than half the

4:38

global average. But

4:40

that wasn't the picture Duterte painted.

4:44

What he painted was a picture of

4:46

drug dealers leaving the country in shambles,

4:49

that every drug addict was

4:53

schizophrenic, hallucinatory,

4:56

will rape your mother and

4:58

butcher your father. And if he can't find

5:01

a child to rape, he'll rape a

5:03

goat. And he said, if you don't believe

5:05

him, if you don't believe how terrible they

5:07

are, he will give you the drugs himself, feed

5:10

it to your children, and watch them become

5:12

monsters.

5:13

Now, he was elected in 2016. Not

5:16

a good year for democracy. Not quite. Would

5:18

you compare Duterte to Donald Trump, or

5:20

would you?

5:22

Well, certainly they make

5:24

promises. But there are charismatic

5:27

men all over the world who will

5:29

make promises, who will say outrageous things,

5:32

and people will laugh, and they will draw crowds.

5:36

And sometimes it's funny. Then

5:38

they say more terrible things, kill the

5:41

drug addicts.

5:41

It could never be a crime

5:44

to say that I will kill you if

5:46

you destroy my country. But it's a

5:48

very legitimate statement. And

5:50

people

5:51

will find maybe that's a little acceptable

5:53

because they make my life terrible.

5:56

And then later they'll say kill the activists, and

5:58

then kill the journalists, and kill the people, whoever

6:01

it is. So are

6:04

they similar men? Certainly

6:07

in that they

6:09

like the outrageous and they like the

6:11

applause and certainly they know how

6:13

to entertain a crowd. Perhaps

6:16

one of the differences is that Duterte

6:18

keeps his promise. Not all

6:20

of them. He didn't end drugs in the Philippines

6:22

or criminality or corruption, but

6:25

he said kill them all and

6:28

people died.

6:29

Kill them all. He said, this is a quote,

6:31

kill them all and it resounds through your book

6:34

like a ghostly chorus. You

6:37

use the phrase drug pusher in the book, but this also

6:39

includes a number of people including drug

6:43

users. Yes.

6:43

In Filipino, Duterte

6:46

calls them durugistas, meaning

6:48

drug dealers, drug users, junkies,

6:52

anything essentially. He calls

6:54

them when you're into drugs.

6:57

So it can be any sort of association.

6:59

Sometimes he even refers to people who wants

7:01

to protect individuals who are castigated

7:04

for using drugs.

7:05

Now tell me about Rappler,

7:07

the publication you were writing

7:09

for. Maria Ressa is the famous

7:12

editor of it, co-winner of the Nobel Prize.

7:14

It's been on this show, did extraordinary

7:17

work. Tell me about how you

7:19

started working on the

7:22

Duterte regime's

7:24

brutality, what your day to day life

7:27

was like and what kind of danger

7:29

you were in day to day.

7:32

What was good about working for Rappler was

7:34

that there was no editor who said step

7:36

back. It's dangerous. Maria

7:41

was something like a lightning rod. When

7:44

the government was angry, they

7:46

directed the anger at her. Those

7:49

of us on the field had the freedom to cover

7:51

what we needed to cover. We

7:53

were small staffed.

7:56

We had very few resources. We had two cars.

7:58

Two cars.

7:59

How many people on the staff?

8:01

For reporters

8:04

less than 20 tiny

8:04

tiny and To

8:08

your question why I started or how I

8:10

started covering

8:11

the drug war a

8:13

lot of us saw it coming Early

8:15

on I was doing analysis for Rappler

8:18

looking at the narratives that the presidential candidates

8:21

were were using to sell themselves

8:24

and There was a story

8:26

the final story I wrote before the election.

8:28

It was called the rapture of Rodrigo Duterte

8:32

and I thought I went terribly purple on

8:34

that piece like the final line was

8:37

the streets will run red if Rodrigo

8:40

Duterte is elected and I regretted that

8:42

line because I thought it was too dramatic

8:45

Mm-hmm, and then I was standing by the side of

8:47

her road and there was a body on the ground And

8:49

I stepped over the gutter and the blood

8:51

ran red over my boots and

8:54

then I I understood The

8:56

only way I could survive that on a daily basis

8:59

was that at the height of the drug war when

9:01

there were corpses every night Was

9:04

on the streets of Manila

9:05

on the streets of Manila and then

9:07

the night shift at night a group of very talented

9:09

Photographers and writers

9:10

from from everywhere

9:12

we would go body to body crime

9:15

scene to crime scene And at

9:17

the height of the killings when there were so

9:19

many I would ask the same questions

9:21

every night Was it a body dump? Was

9:24

it a salvaging? Was it a buy bus?

9:26

Was it a drive by? Was

9:29

the

9:30

police reporting essentially was the killer

9:32

a cop or a vigilante where the hands

9:34

bound? Was the head wrapped

9:36

in tape was the body stuffed in a bag? Was

9:39

there a gun on the ground that sort of thing

9:41

and then you learn to develop

9:44

a better checklist? So you don't miss anything

9:47

and then and this is the new thing You

9:50

learn to stand still And

9:52

listen for the screaming That's

9:55

when you find out who the family is and

9:57

then you go up to them. You apologize

10:00

You keep your voice low. You

10:02

ask simple questions. What was his

10:04

name? When did you last see him? How did

10:06

you know he was gone? Mostly

10:10

what I asked was, tell me a story. Tell me your story. And

10:13

then tell me what happened next. And

10:18

the methodology was important to

10:20

me because it kept me on the

10:22

scene in my mind. And I would test it every time.

10:24

If I could

10:26

close my eyes. And

10:30

see the room or the highway or

10:32

the alley in 360 degrees. Know where the bullet came in. How

10:35

the light pitched through the window if there

10:37

was a window. Know that the bikini briefs were

10:39

red and white polka dots. Then

10:42

it meant I could go home. And I

10:44

could live it in my head. So

10:47

I could tell the story again.

10:50

What's the effect on you

10:54

to do this night after night after

10:56

night?

11:02

I knew this question was coming. I still don't

11:04

have an answer. Usually

11:06

the question people ask is

11:09

how do you survive it? And I have

11:11

a pretty good answer for that. It's

11:14

caffeine, nicotine, and

11:16

alcohol. But that's

11:18

the throwaway line. Yeah, that's the glib

11:19

version. That's the glib version. Right.

11:21

The not so glib version

11:24

is that it is very hard

11:26

to

11:30

keep my universe in place.

11:34

In that I

11:36

appear to be a functioning

11:38

member of society. In

11:41

that when I was filing

11:43

stories I was delivering

11:46

the word count. And I could lie perfectly

11:48

well when I couldn't.

11:52

But you pay for it. You pay for what

11:54

you do. And I think the best

11:56

explanation was something some

11:59

work responded to. before that you're

12:01

not a camera in that you

12:03

take all of this in. I take

12:06

all of this in and I

12:08

live with it every day. Every story,

12:10

every interview I never published lives

12:13

in my head. They play back

12:15

at three in the morning and

12:17

then every phone

12:20

call from an unknown number I think

12:23

someone's going to tell me someone's dead

12:26

and it's because of something I wrote. And

12:29

you can't explain

12:34

why the nightmares play out the way they

12:36

do and you can't explain

12:39

why sometimes you just sit there

12:42

and then your brain goes in a loop and

12:44

the loop doesn't stop.

12:46

So

12:47

to get that book out I'm hoping

12:50

the loop may stop a little bit.

12:51

You think

12:53

the writing of it may

12:55

in some way end your nightly nightmares

12:59

and purge them?

12:59

No. I

13:02

made a mistake. I thought if

13:04

I took a break from the night reporting and

13:06

wrote a book maybe that was

13:08

a safer place for my head.

13:10

Or it may have just clarified the stories.

13:12

It clarified the stories and

13:15

maybe it was good because I didn't intend

13:17

to write this book in first person. This

13:19

was meant to be a reportorial book,

13:22

third person. Here are the dead.

13:24

Here is what happened. Here is who's responsible.

13:27

But I understood

13:29

through the process I had to take accountability.

13:33

That all this whole dramatic I

13:35

am an objective

13:38

reporter. I write in the third person.

13:42

That's not a moral high ground. That's

13:44

a failure of nerve because

13:47

I can tell you the worst of all of this.

13:51

It's that I go to cover a story

13:54

and there's your

13:56

blood in the ground. And there's all

13:58

of that and I'm used to that. It's

14:01

the aftermath of going to

14:03

Starbucks and getting a cappuccino because

14:06

I can go to Starbucks and get

14:08

a cappuccino. And I

14:10

know two blocks down some family

14:13

can't even afford the coffin

14:15

to bury the kid. But

14:18

you have to divide your brain because

14:21

if you help one family it means you

14:23

bought the story. And

14:26

I feel like I'm making moral judgments

14:28

every step of the way. And if I stray

14:31

out of the way just one bit, I

14:33

won't have control. And

14:37

this is why I'm terribly inarticulate about

14:39

all of this. I try not to

14:41

think about it. And I hang on by

14:44

my fingertips.

14:46

Pat, you

14:47

wrote these stories again and again

14:49

and again, as did your colleagues. And

14:51

yet the drug war, to use

14:54

Duterte's phrase

14:56

for it, this kind of murderous, extra-legal,

15:01

ongoing assault was popular.

15:06

Yes. Describe the popularity of it and why.

15:09

What Rodrigo Duterte did was

15:12

he told a story.

15:14

And he started with language.

15:18

And I know we spoke of this earlier in that

15:21

I promise not to deploy

15:23

profanity during your interview.

15:26

And I find it very odd to

15:29

sit in a polite setting, expected

15:32

to be polite. Don't be. Speaking

15:34

about a man who decided

15:36

to break language. Yeah.

15:38

So you can go to hell. Mr.

15:40

Obama, you can go to hell. You

15:45

better choose Purgatory.

15:47

A large part of the fact-checking of the

15:49

book is to discover the nuances

15:51

of when he said put down ina in

15:54

Filipino. Did he mean motherfucker

15:56

or son of a bitch? So he

15:58

might...

15:59

national broadcast, major speeches.

16:02

This is a national broadcast and generally, regardless

16:05

of which culture you're from, a public

16:08

figure, a politician, a head of state is

16:11

not expected

16:13

to deploy profanity in public

16:15

speeches. And he said, fuck that.

16:17

So he said Barack Obama was a son

16:19

of a bitch. He said the pope was a son

16:22

of a bitch. Many people, many institutions

16:24

were sons of bitches. The European Union,

16:26

the United States, journalists,

16:29

the United Nations, activists, drug

16:31

dealers, everyone.

16:32

And he, like Donald Trump, discovered

16:34

that had enormous connective appeal.

16:36

Precisely. And he said many things

16:39

that other presidents never said before.

16:41

He said he would kill 100,000 criminals when he's elected.

16:46

He said he wanted to rape

16:48

an Australian missionary, except

16:51

he couldn't because he was dead by the

16:53

time he showed up.

16:54

And he said, I believe he wanted to be the first one

16:56

there.

16:56

Yes. He said journalists

16:59

are legitimate targets of assassination. He

17:01

said he killed cops, he killed kidnappers,

17:04

he killed... He

17:04

himself. He personalized it. He

17:07

used that language. And then he would

17:09

say, sometimes I only killed three.

17:11

Or 300.

17:12

Or a thousand. It

17:14

doesn't matter. Because listen

17:16

to the language. I killed.

17:19

I shot. I saved. I ordered.

17:22

I. I,

17:24

Rodrigo Duterte. So

17:26

it's that sort of mythology that

17:28

exploded. Rodrigo

17:30

Duterte, the one who will save us all.

17:33

OK, so what did you learn about

17:36

your fellow Philippine citizens?

17:39

What did you learn about your own country that you

17:41

didn't know before? We ask ourselves

17:44

this. Where Donald Trump is concerned.

17:47

It wasn't that Donald Trump came in and it was a conservative

17:49

beating a liberal. No. It

17:52

was something else. And we learned

17:54

things about the state of the country, the division

17:57

of the country, what people feel, what

17:59

they're reacting.

17:59

to

18:01

and not all of it's pretty. Mm-hmm.

18:04

I learned that

18:06

inasmuch as Duterte made himself

18:08

the every man, it meant

18:11

every man could be Duterte if they

18:13

wanted. Duterte may have provided

18:15

the language. He provided the vernacular.

18:18

He provided the narrative. But

18:20

we wanted it too. We decided

18:23

some people didn't deserve to live.

18:25

What effect has this had on the country

18:28

as a whole? To write these stories and

18:30

what effect did this have on the populace?

18:35

I hesitate to use the word trauma

18:38

because I'm told this is a word that is overused

18:40

in general. But we're a traumatized

18:43

nation. And the trouble

18:45

is in the aftermath, after six years

18:47

of Duterte, we elected the son

18:49

of another dictator. And

18:52

we elected Duterte's daughter. So

18:54

it's the dictator's son with the punisher's

18:56

daughter. Bong Bong.

18:58

Bong Bong Marcus. And there's

19:01

no accountability there. There's no reckoning.

19:04

So if you don't know there are wounds,

19:07

you can't fix things. So there are many

19:09

children and many generations of people

19:12

who will continue to believe that

19:14

some people, because of some failure

19:16

of virtue or some sickness

19:19

or some whatever any politician

19:22

say, some people did not deserve to live.

19:23

Now, how long

19:25

has it been since you left the Philippines?

19:28

Give or take a few months. It

19:32

was recommended that

19:35

it was in my best interest.

19:36

What does that mean?

19:37

It means we

19:40

don't know the risk of having

19:42

released this book.

19:44

And do you think you'll go back?

19:46

Yes, absolutely. When

19:48

I'll go back, it's not certain, but I have

19:51

to go back in that it's

19:53

not a moral

19:55

patriotism or anything.

19:58

That's my home.

19:59

And the story is ongoing. It's

20:02

not over. People are still dying on the streets.

20:05

Journalists have been shot in Manila. And

20:09

there are many other stories that have to be

20:11

told about my country. I

20:13

am a field reporter.

20:16

That's where I belong. And

20:18

I'm also formerly Catholic.

20:21

I own the guilt. How can

20:23

I sit in New York when the

20:25

people whose stories I told, who took their

20:27

risk to tell me their stories, are sitting

20:30

in shanties across the country and might

20:33

be at risk because of things they told me?

20:36

In the book you describe yourself as a citizen of a nation I cannot

20:38

recognize as my own. Do

20:41

you still feel that way?

20:44

Yes.

20:45

But

20:47

in a more nuanced fashion. In

20:49

that I am Filipino. I

20:52

take accountability for the choices we made. We

20:55

voted for Duterte. I may not have. But

20:57

that's under my watch as well. But

21:00

I refuse to believe this is the only

21:02

possibility for my country.

21:06

I don't think this is the only future

21:09

possible for us. Do I believe

21:11

that journalism is the way forward? I

21:14

don't know. Because I have

21:17

learned after many years to negotiate

21:19

my expectations as a journalist. If

21:21

I believed my story saved lives or

21:24

changed things,

21:26

I would have stopped working. I

21:28

wouldn't have been able to get up in the morning.

21:31

Now all I believe is my job is to

21:33

keep a record.

21:35

And that's it.

21:36

And if someday that record is necessary,

21:38

then it's out there.

21:39

You don't think your stories change anything?

21:42

No. No.

21:45

Maybe I don't know. I

21:48

hope

21:49

if nothing else. Because if journalism

21:52

doesn't save the world and it doesn't, we

21:54

both know that. But

21:57

I would like to have honored

21:59

the... people who risked their lives to

22:01

tell their stories. They didn't have

22:04

to talk to me and they did. They

22:06

are living examples of what happens

22:09

when autocrats and dictators

22:12

rise and we let them.

22:15

Patricia Evangelista, thank you so much.

22:19

Thank you.

22:23

Patricia Evangelista's new book is called Some

22:25

People Need Killing.

22:30

Thank you.