The National Democratic Mass Organization (NDMO) Student Activists’ Experiences of Political Intolerance in Manila City

The Philippines has recently earned low index scores in civil and political liberties. The rise of populism and contentious issues have polarized the body politic. These have been visible particularly for the National Democratic Mass Organizations (NDMOs). Political intolerance as a part of polarization and illiberal values thus becomes a challenge to the quality of democracy. The paper seeks to understand how political intolerance is experienced by NDMO student activists, how it is navigated to communicate political agenda, how democracy is interpreted vis-a-vis their experiences, and how political intolerance could be addressed according to the participants. This endeavor is guided by Holmes’ marketplace of ideas theory, Kusaka’s moral politics, and Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy. Through interviews under interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), political intolerance is understood to have been experienced in varying intensities and environments. It is also embedded in power relations. Labelling, attacks of character, and repression that evoke psychological and social difficulties to participants appear throughout the themes. In communicating their advocacies, the activists persisted in reaching out to the intolerant masses as core to their agenda. Furthermore, they see democracy to be not truly democratic. Potential interventions raised include fostering education as well as open and constructive discourse in schools and the family.