The weird support I've seen online for Duterte is unnerving. Even from people criticising him, I routinely read things like "oh well the problem is that they aren't getting a fair trial". No, the problem is that he wants to kill 3 million people for a crime that absolutely does not deserve such a punishment. In fact, much of the time what they're being killed for should not be a crime at all. Sure, dealing heroin to 15yr olds is a pretty terrible thing to do and should be very illegal. Not so illegal that you should be killed for it though. As for drug addicts, they should be in a rehabilitation centre, not in a cell waiting to be lined up against a wall and shot. Duterte apparently does not even just want to stop at drug addicts. It seems it can be anyone who has touched an illegal drug who can be served death as justice.
I find it ironic that he compared himself to Hitler, given that Hitler was a heavy drug user himself. I found it disturbing that what the Anti-Defamation League's Todd Gutnick found most reprehensible about Duterte's comments was the fact he made a comparison between his victims to holocaust victims, saying "The comparison of drug users and dealers to Holocaust victims is inappropriate and deeply offensive". Is it not the fact that Duterte wants to kill 3 million people that's most offensive here? Why shouldn't drug users and dealers be comparable to holocaust victims in this context? Holocaust victims did not deserve death, and nor do drug users or dealers. Furthermore, is it not safe to assume that many of these people have been driven to drug abuse due to their poor quality of life, or driven to dealing drugs because of poverty?
I understand the Philippines has a serious problem with drug addiction. But this problem is clearly due to broader social problems. Poverty, lack of opportunity; social problems can all cause an epidemic of drug addiction. Drug addiction is a symptom of a problem. Duterte is being incredibly lazy by not addressing the problems with his society that drive people to drug addiction (the Philippines has as serious a problem with poverty as Haiti). I doubt many people would look at the favelas in Rio de Janeiro and say the best medicine for it was slaughtering anyone who takes or sells drugs. Clearly the best medicine for Rio de Janeiro is trying to narrow the terribly wide disparity between the rich and the poor. Clearly Brazil has huge problems with corruption, and poverty largely as a result of the corruption. Poverty is also a massive problem in the Philippines, as is corruption. I don't see how anyone can look at impoverished communities in the Philippines and think that drug abuse is the problem and not a surface symptom of the poverty itself, poverty which is largely caused by the same thing that it's almost always caused by; government corruption.