Kabataang Makabayan calls on all patriotic youth to resist the PNP’s renewed attempts at curtailing the masses’ democracy and freedom of speech through social media surveillance, and predictably, psywar.

Under the pretense of enforcing quarantine regulations, the PNP announced that it will be monitoring activity on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to spot potential violators. It is peak irony for the PNP to claim that social media monitoring will merely be their tool to penalize caught lockdown offenders when it is through social media that high-ranking fascists like Metro Manila chief Debold Sinas and PNP chief Archie Gamboa were exposed breaking their own rules but managed to get away scott-free through outright denial and power play.

Indubitably, this is but another desperate measure to try to control the youth and masses as it grows ever more restless with the negligence and apathy the Duterte administration is brazenly exhibiting.

This comes not long after a series of attacks on youth and mass leaders all over the country — raging from blatant and ceaseless red-tagging accusations by government and military officials, to actual threats and murders of activists and human rights workers.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Duterte regime has tried desperately to isolate the youth and students from the wider masses who are dying everyday — either by being gunned down by state forces, or by succumbing to hunger and poverty — by forcing the lot of them to embrace the digital space as its only reality. Still, despite the government’s vain efforts, the militant and patriotic youth refused to be bullied by fascist lapdogs. Instead, they decisively faced the threat of state backlash and integrated with the masses and organized even more of the youth and students.

Now, with amplifying demands for the Duterte administration’s accountability for the crisis the country is experiencing, and defeaning clamor from the youth and masses, Duterte’s paid goons are moving to the digital space to try to crack down on the growing number of government dissenters and critics.

It is without a doubt that the PNP will use this new “project” to hand-pick more youth leaders to harass and red-tag, while attempting to scare or threaten the rest.

In the face of intensifying attacks by an ever-decaying regime, Kabataang Makabayan stands with all patriotic youth. The youth must now, more than ever, resolutely oppose Duterte’s tyrant tricks and expose its utter uselessness and gross criminality!