‘Tsinator’’

Vogueish “tsinator,” sometimes “tsinador,” is actually tied to the refusal of the dangerous Chinese-instigated narcotic of “normalization.”

Popping up in commentariat circles last week, “tsinator” is a coined portmanteau word, from “tsina (China)” and “senator,” meaning essentially China-sympathizing senators.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for coining it. But political gadfly Ronaldo Llamas — who irritates Senator Robinhood Padilla no end — is credited for first circulating the viral catcall against nine mostly pro-Duterte senators who didn’t sign a senate resolution rebuking Chinese diplomats for verbal attacks on Philippine officials.

But while majority-block senators didn’t specifically call out the nine senators as “tsinators,” both Senate President Tito Sotto and Senator Ping Lacson were sufficiently irritated to come down hard on them.

“When you read between the lines, some of the statements are really favoring China. I cannot blame the public if they think that way about them,” Sotto remarked.

Lacson, meanwhile, was more forthcoming, saying, “If they are silent when Filipinos are bullied, but speak up when China is slighted, then they are pro-China.”

If the nine senators seemingly wore their sympathies on their sleeves, they were nonetheless coy about their motives, with some dismissing charges that they were China’s fellow travelers or lackeys.

Largely unnoticed, however, was the fact that whatever they were saying — which they anchored by invoking freedom of expression — actually made them willing accomplices to China’s current sustained and disciplined “public opinion warfare.”

Such a type of cognitive propaganda warfare is largely driven by China’s strategic authoritarian project of “habituation.” A tricky, malicious strategy with no other intent than making naked neo-imperialist bullying and aggression appear “normal.”

To have a sense of this weighty “habituation” scheme, quickly perceive it as making sure that any future exposure of Chinese aggressiveness or bullying in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) becomes barely there at all, as nothing to worry about.

In other words, hegemonic China desires that Filipinos now learn not to acknowledge that they aren’t victims of a daylight robbery of their own seas and that China’s illegal claims and fictive nine-dash line are “normal.”

And, if China’s illegal claims start to feel normal, what feels normal is often mistaken as legitimate.

As such, by making Filipinos shrug their shoulders at the high-seas illegal occupation of Filipino sovereign seas “normalizes” China asserts control over the WPS without her even firing a shot.

The same ‘habituation” procedure also drives China’s routine false portrayal that lawful Philippine operations and responses to China’s illegal presence are deliberate attempts to stir up trouble. It is the exact opposite, in fact.

Filipinos also admonishing Filipino officials doing their jobs to exercise restraint despite pronounced verbal assaults from Chinese diplomats is in the same vein as tacitly approving China’s normalizing abuse.

Anyway, getting people to accept these incredible accounts that Philippine sovereignty is dispensable are lesser manifestation of the principle that might is right, of the strongest exempting themselves when convenient.

Which now brings us to the need that falsehoods and efforts to confuse must be exposed continuously and effectively countered, especially amid a well-oiled pro-China social media troll machinery amplifying Chinese positions and interests.

Vigilant watchfulness, in effect, is still the best form of resistance against China’s neo-imperialist designs as it unquestionably obstructs any “normalization” project.

And, in service of such watchfulness which carries the Filipino’s proclivity for humor and irony, perhaps we should even coin more “tsinators” epithets to get the point across.