While many words and hours have been spent breathlessly speculating about whether Trump is ‘literally Hitler’, a murderous dictator has quietly risen to power in a democratic country, made comparisons between himself and Hitler… and in the process he’s proved exactly why libertarianism matters.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be given power… any power, anywhere. A man with so little regard for the lives of others can’t even be trusted with a deep fryer to give people ‘fries with that’, much less be the President (soon-to-be dictator) of a relatively wealthy country.

Duterte claims to have personally murdered drug dealers without trial or due process. In a speech he said:

In Davao I used to do it [kill] personally. Just to show to the guys [police] that if I can do it why can’t you,” he said. “And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”

Then in the storm of publicity that followed he confirmed to the BBC:

I killed about three of them… I don’t know how many bullets from my gun went inside their bodies. It happened and I cannot lie about it.

And he’s encouraged Police and vigilantes to follow his lead, with the death toll believed to be over 6,000 and climbing by about 250 people per week:

Since President Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30, there have been 6,095people killed in the war on drugs (as of December 14), according to a police report cited by the Manila-based news website Rappler.

That’s an average of 1,015 people killed a month.

Of the total death toll, 2,102 were killed in police operations, while 3,993 were killed by unknown suspects.

For an interactive map, to give you some idea of the scale of the horror, see here.

And he’s just as ‘nice’ in person too, quoted as saying of the 1989 rape and murder of 36-year-old Australian Missionary Jacqueline Hamill:

I was angry she was raped, that was one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first [to rape her]. What a waste.

If you can look at the victim of a prison pack rape and murder and think you ‘should have been first’, then you’re well into full-blown sociopath / psychopath territory.

And that’s exactly what Duterte is. A sociopathic wannabe dictator with a police force and military at his beck and call.

And if comparing someone to Hitler is an instant argument-loser under Godwin’s Law, what does it mean when someone mentions Hitler in comparison to themselves?

Hitler massacred 3 million Jews [sic, it was actually twice that number – Topher]… there’s 3 million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.

Click that ‘Hitler’ link to see a bunch more gobsmacking things Duterte has said. He’s a contender for the loony bin, not the Presidency.

However despite these ‘flaws’, many reports have claimed that Duterte enjoys 75% + popularity among Philippinos, and that he’s much loved for taking a ‘hardline stance’ on the drug issue.

They’re quick to defend the president as being “misunderstood” or having his remarks “taken out of context” by Western media. You’ll get responses like “He’s doing the right thing” and “They probably deserve it” if you condemn his open calls for murder. His fiercest supporters will yell “bias” and “media corruption” at even the slightest criticism, while at the same time sharing stories in support for the president from bogus news sources.

But how popular is he really? How many of the people responding to opinion polls are saying what they really think, and how many are saying what will keep them safe?

local Pinoy expat Katy (who refused to give her last name to this reporter for fear of retaliation) remarked that she could not criticize him on the internet or in the media for fear of harassment. There are very likely many more like her who feel the same.

A few of my Australian – Philippino friends are definitely in the later camp. They’ll tell you verbally, privately, that Duterte is a psychopath and once he’s finished killing the drug addicts he’s just going to find a new group to murder and a new ‘crisis’ to solve… but they say nothing at all online, and if they lived in the Philippines and were polled they would either say nothing or lie.

Well Duterte is leveraging the fear of his enemies and the compliance of the media to consolidate his grip on power. We could very well be watching the rise of a new genocidal dictator right before our very eyes, and whilst some elements in the media have been calling him out, we’ve barely heard a peep in comparison to the hyperventilating we heard about the rise of ‘Hitler – Trump’. Here’s Duterte’s next move:

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to impose martial law on the country if he deems it necessary to continue his administration’s violent crackdown against illegal drugs.

“I have to protect the Filipino people. It is my duty. And I tell you now, if I have to declare martial law, I will declare it,” Duterte said, in a speech before a group businessmen in his hometown of Davao on Saturday night.

“I don’t care about the Supreme Court. No one can stop me,” he said. “The right to preserve one’s life and my nation … transcends everything else, even the limitations.”

[emphasis added – Topher]

That is terrifying, and a classic step on the path from democracy to dictatorship. He’s a murdering sociopath who is tightening his grip on power and kills with the approval of his own conscience.

As C.S.Lewis put it:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven [not in Duterte’s case, clearly] yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

[Emphasis added – Topher]

Duterte makes the case for libertarianism perfectly. This is what happens when we allow too much power to concentrate into government, and into any one office (the President in this case) for too long. Sooner or later a sociopath gets into that office, and then things go south, fast.

And what will the people of the Philippines do about it? Anything? My money is on ‘nothing’. In between the fear, the misguided popularity (there are people who really love the idea of murdering drug dealers, criminals, or any ‘others’ that they don’t feel associated with) and the idolizing of government (a world-wide phenomenon), I don’t expect anyone is going to stand in Duterte’s way anytime soon.

How high will the death toll be when he is replaced or dies? (Perhaps from taking too many of the painkilling drugs he’s addicted to… Prince was killed by an accidental overdose of Fentanyl, so you never know! Oh, and can anyone say ‘hypocrite’?) There’s no knowing. Duterte himself seems to think that 3 million dead ‘drug addicts’ would be just fine. For the time being, the killing will continue for as long as Duterte can justify it, and as per the C.S.Lewis quote above, he can ‘justify it’ forever.

This is a teaching moment. A chance to show the skeptics and the statists of both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, the true dangers of centralised power. And don’t let them get away with saying ‘it can’t happen here’, it’s just happened in a relatively wealthy and westernized country, this isn’t the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. It can happen anywhere where people allow it.

And that means it can happen here.

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