Marcos Lies is a compilation of essays on various lies that the Marcoses have either concocted or have done nothing to correct, lies that aided them in pursuit of power and plunder. This book shows how the lies were crafted and who enabled the Marcoses to foster their falsity on their targeted audience or those who knew the truth but have chosen to be silent. Each chapter gives details on how institutions and individuals were corrupted by the Marcoses to ensure that the lies they have made would not easily unravel. If corruption fails, the Marcoses of the martial law years have no qualms in resorting to censorship and the silencing of contrary and critical voices. During the martial law years, the Marcoses had at their disposal the whole state apparatus for propaganda, ensuring that a Marcos lie would not only remain valorized and unchallenged but that it would be repeated in all mediums and avenues used for the dissemination of state information. Their lies were then documented. To prove the lies, the authors have relied on documentary sources, much of which remains untapped, ranging from recently digitized records to the mountain of government-funded Marcos apologia. Many of these underutilized sources have been digitized and are freely available online. Without access to university resources during the pandemic, the authors relied on these online archives for news articles, diplomatic cables, transcript of congressional investigations, and various fragments of data that when put together offer a clear view of the truth that the Marcoses have either hidden or twisted. A disproportionate amount of recent studies have focused more on the utilization of deception to help the Marcoses reclaim Malacanang than on their deceptiveness during the rule of Marcos Sr. This is also, unavoidably, among the concerns of this book. But in the writing of the articles comprising this volume, after being similarly animated by the fact-checking ethos of those in the media, the authors’ tendency has been to ask, “How far does this lie go? And for whom was the lie made?”
Diktadura, the website of the UP TWSC Marcos Regime Research program, complements the book Marcos Lies and the program’s other printed output. Books are cultural artifacts, and websites are their more public, more interactive counterpart; producing books and setting up websites to further knowledge, to combat propaganda and misinformation, are decidedly cultural acts that demonstrate a community’s or a nation’s fidelity to truth and creative ways truth-telling relies on. Diktadura is a trove of the program’s outputs since 2013, including the digital versions of the program’s print publications, published primary sources, and multimedia assets (such as those originally released via the social media platform Did a Marcos Lie Today?), as well as external links to a wealth of publicly accessible matrials that the public may use in their attempts at truth-telling regarding the Marcos regime. The website highlights material that have been online for years but remain underutilized, including transcripts of interviews with technocrats of the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. regime, which are in the custody of the UP TWSC. The website also includes a section gathering and curating media fact checks related to the Marcos administrations and the Marcoses, giving media practitioners and the general public a means to easily determine what Marcos-related disinformation has been fact-checked and how often they have been addressed.