The spectacle is no longer merely political. It is psychological.

Over the past months, Filipinos have witnessed a disturbing sequence of public performances from personalities orbiting the Duterte political universe: screaming tirades, violent fantasies, open threats, paranoid rhetoric, and theatrical displays of grievance presented not as shameful aberrations but as badges of tribal loyalty. What increasingly emerges is not simply a populist movement under stress, but something more troubling — the behavioral architecture of a political cult.

One viral clip showed a vice mayor from Isabela shouting with near-apocalyptic rage while calling for rebellion and confrontation, behavior so incendiary that authorities later pursued complaints related to inciting sedition. [Vice Mayor ng Isabela, nahaharap sa reklamong inciting to sedition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3G1w9djpg&utm_source=chatgpt.com) ([YouTube][1])

Another stream of online videos shows self-described Duterte loyalists cursing critics, fantasizing about violence against opponents, and wishing death upon fellow Filipinos who oppose the Duterte family. The tone is not merely partisan anger. It is moral absolutism: the division of society into the pure and the damned, the loyal and the traitorous.

Then came the surreal Senate episode involving Imee Marcos, who reportedly presented what critics described as propaganda-style audiovisual material before the chamber itself — a performance many observers denounced as deeply unparliamentary and corrosive to institutional dignity. ([Reddit][2])

And towering above all these episodes remains the extraordinary public conduct of Sara Duterte herself. In one notorious video, the vice president publicly cursed, raged against political enemies, and declared that she had supposedly arranged for assassins to target President Bongbong Marcos, the First Lady, and Speaker Martin Romualdez if harm befell her. Her allies insist these were jokes, hyperbole, or exercises in free speech. But democracies do not survive by normalizing death fantasies from senior state officials.

Nor was that the endpoint. Davao Mayor Sebastian Duterte later escalated the rhetoric further by publicly fantasizing about decapitating the president — language that would provoke national outrage in any functioning democratic culture, yet was instead rationalized by supporters as authenticity, passion, or “tapang.”

The temptation is to dismiss all this as vulgar Filipino political theater. That would be a mistake.

Political science, sociology, and social psychology offer another framework: cultic behavior.

A cult is not merely a strange religious sect. Scholars generally define cultic movements as highly cohesive groups organized around charismatic authority, emotional absolutism, moral polarization, and intense in-group loyalty that discourages independent judgment (Lalich 2004; Singer 2003). Cults demand emotional surrender to the leader. They construct enemies everywhere. They reward conformity and punish dissent. Most importantly, they normalize behaviors that would otherwise appear irrational, abusive, or socially pathological.

The Duterte political ecosystem increasingly exhibits precisely these characteristics.

In her landmark studies of Duterte populism, Nicole Curato argued that Duterte’s movement thrived through emotional identification, grievance politics, and the cultivation of “strongman intimacy” between leader and follower (Curato 2017). Duterteism was never merely about policy. It was about emotional belonging. Supporters did not simply agree with Duterte; they experienced him as a paternal redeemer whose aggression symbolized authenticity in the face of elite hypocrisy.

That emotional architecture matters.

The academic study the user referenced from the Journal of Social and Political Psychology demonstrates how authoritarian-populist communities often produce intense identity fusion between followers and political leaders, leading supporters to rationalize aggression and anti-democratic conduct as morally justified defense of the group. [Journal of Social and Political Psychology study](https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/5213/5213.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Another thesis examining cultic political behavior notes that cult structures frequently emerge through charismatic central authority, apocalyptic or persecutory narratives, emotional dependency, suppression of criticism, and the framing of outsiders as existential enemies. [Cult behavior study](https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/361/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Observe the Duterte clique through this lens and the pattern becomes difficult to ignore.

Critics are not merely disagreed with; they are demonized.

Opponents are not political rivals; they are enemies of the nation.

Institutions are not respected; they are useful only when serving the family.

Violence is not condemned; it is aestheticized.

Profanity becomes authenticity.

Threats become courage.

Cruelty becomes strength.

Even more revealing is the Duterte network’s long proximity to religious figures such as Apollo Quiboloy, whose own organization has often been described by critics and former members as possessing highly centralized and psychologically coercive dynamics. The fusion of political populism with quasi-religious devotion appears to have supplied Duterteism with a sophisticated emotional toolkit: loyalty rituals, persecution narratives, messianic framing, and the moral sanctification of the leader.

This is not accidental. Political cults often borrow heavily from religious psychology because religious absolutism trains followers to suspend skepticism in favor of emotional obedience.

Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV has repeatedly described Duterte loyalism as cult-like in its refusal to accept evidence or institutional accountability. Labor lawyer Luke Espiritu has similarly characterized sections of Duterte support as a dangerous authoritarian cult of personality. Congressman Leila de Lima and other anti-Duterte lawmakers have likewise warned that blind emotional loyalty has displaced democratic reasoning within the movement.

What makes cultic politics especially dangerous is not merely fanaticism. Democracies survive because citizens retain the ability to distinguish leader from nation, disagreement from treason, criticism from betrayal. Cults erase those distinctions.

That is precisely why the impeachment debate surrounding Sara Duterte cannot simply be reduced to “free speech.” Free speech protects dissent. It does not immunize public officials from accountability for violent rhetoric, institutional sabotage, or the normalization of political terror. When state leaders casually invoke assassination, decapitation, or fantasies of vengeance, they do not merely express emotion. They model behavior for millions.

And millions are watching.

The deeper tragedy is that Duterteism once marketed itself as realism — a rebellion against elite hypocrisy. Yet cultic politics always ends the same way: emotional intoxication replacing rational citizenship.

The Philippines now confronts a hard truth. What began as populism has metastasized into something darker: a movement in which emotional loyalty increasingly outweighs democratic restraint, rage substitutes for governance, and followers are conditioned to interpret every criticism of the leader as an attack on themselves.

That is not democratic participation.

That is cult behavior wearing the costume of politics.

Caveat:

By the way, one or two may liken these behaviors to MAGA, the Make America Great Again movement in America. MAGA is more like the American version of Fascism disguised as right-wing fanaticism. It may have evolved as a movement for Trump yet, MAGA has been around even prior to Trump. MAGA is a direct rebuke of American society, emphasizing on the concept of state decay.

The Duterte case is different—it was created entirely to shield the Duterte family and their cohorts from the accountability fallout they themselves created while managing the administration. The fear that successive probes might expose the utter corruption, depredation and idiocracy of the former dispensation forces this clique to resort to extreme measures—risking even the ontological security of our Nation just to achieve their utterly and highly personal interests.

This Duterte elite clique is using the people, and those prominent ones at that, to shield itself from claims or demands for accountability. In hopes of sustaining the popularity established during the incumbency years, the people behind Duterte, whether unwittingly or wittingly, used psychological tactics to convince people to stay within the sociological ambit of Duterte.

 Their inability to institutionalize Duterte-ism has led to the development of a political cult with the Hague-imprisoned former president as the center or hero of this Duterte universe.

This must be stopped at all costs by all Patriotic elements of Philippine society.

References:

Curato, Nicole. 2017. *Flirting with Authoritarian Fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the New Terms of Philippine Populism.* Journal of Contemporary Asia 47(1): 142–153.

Lalich, Janja. 2004. *Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults.* Berkeley: University of California Press.

Singer, Margaret Thaler. 2003. *Cults in Our Midst.* San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[Journal of Social and Political Psychology study](https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/5213/5213.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[Cult behavior study](https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/361/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[Vice Mayor ng Isabela, nahaharap sa reklamong inciting to sedition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3G1w9djpg&utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[Reddit discussion on Imee Marcos Senate video presentation](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChikaPH/comments/1tn2eo7/imee_marcos_presented_a_propaganda_video_at_the/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3G1w9djpg&utm_source=chatgpt.com “Vice Mayor ng Isabela, nahaharap sa reklamong inciting to …”

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChikaPH/comments/1tn2eo7/imee_marcos_presented_a_propaganda_video_at_the/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Imee Marcos presented a propaganda video at the senate …”