The Energizer Bunny of Nobel Laureates
Last May, when it became clear that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would ascend to the presidency of the Philippines, Maria Ressa, the Nobel laureate (and Atlantic contributing writer) who has become legendary in her fight for freedom of the press and democracy, was despondent. “This is how it ends, I said to myself that evening,” Ressa wrote in her book How to Stand Up to a Dictator. “You can’t have integrity of elections if you don’t have integrity of facts. Facts lost. History lost. Marcos won.”
Marcos’s win represented a decisive victory for authoritarianism in the Philippines. The new president is the son and namesake of the dictator and kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. His victory also represented a direct threat to Ressa. Marcos’s supporters are among those who, like his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, have targeted and
