Over the past week or two, the US-Marcos regime has mounted a frenzied media and social media campaign to intimidate and threaten the Filipino youth, who, more and more are growing disenchanted amid deep and widespread social ills, and are being drawn to question the rotten ruling system and seek radical and revolutionary ways to end corruption, injustice and abuses by those in power.
This campaign to intimidate and threaten the Filipino youth is part of Marcos’ arsenal of fascist tactics to maintain his grip on power and preserve the ruling system, by suppressing the youth’s and people’s aspirations for change.
This blatant assault against the youth is spearheaded by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the NTF-Elcac, and their mercenary hacks behind the Marcos government’s propaganda machinery. They have mobilized funds to activate and coordinate their social media troll army to drown out posts critical of the Marcos government in a deluge of spam comments, and throw their weight around to push their narrative in the press and public discourse.
The Marcos psyops campaign heightened after a student researcher from the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, 22-year old Jerlyn Rose Doydora, died on January 1 in Abra de Ilog, Mindoro Occidental, amid relentless aerial bombing and strafing by the AFP, following an armed encounter. Another youth, 24-year old Chantal Anicoche, was taken into custody by the fascist soldiers, and illegally detained for a week, before being surfaced amid public outcry. Three Mangyan children were reportedly killed in the aerial bombing which was carried out in the proximity of mountain communities.
These are just the latest of the grave abuses being committed by Marcos’ armed forces in Mindoro and in other parts of the country. In its desperation to cover up their fascist crimes, the AFP imposed an information blackout on Abra de Ilog, using brazen state terrorism and martial law tactics. These include the use of the old Marcosian trick of bussing in civilians to stage “rallies,” to obstruct, intimidate and suppress the efforts of various democratic organizations and human rights groups seeking to conduct an independent fact-finding investigation into the incidents. The fascist regime wants to make it appear that people approve of the military’s control of their communities, or that they support the planned mining operations and “renewable energy” projects of big business operations that will drive them away from their land.
The death of Jerlyn and the illegal military incarceration of Chantal has put to spotlight how growing numbers of young intellectuals today have become disillusioned with the reactionary government’s lies and deception, and critical of its policies. This has become particularly conspicuous over the past few months as thousands of young people walked out of their university campuses and joined street marches in outrage over cases of large-scale corruption.
They have lent their voices to the Filipino peoples’ clamor for justice. While Marcos, his fellow bureaucrat capitalists and their big bourgeois comprador accomplices amass hundreds of billions of pesos from rigged government contracts, majority of the Filipino people toil day in and day out to survive increasingly intolerable social and economic conditions.
The burgeoning youth rebellion is bound to grow. Like many young people around the globe, the Filipino Gen-Zs are breaking out of their digital shells and establishing real world networks with their fellow youth, as well as with the broad masses of the people. Amid corruption, injustice and abuse of power, many young intellectuals are adopting a socially critical mindset and have become acutely aware of the gross social ills plaguing the country, of the iniquitous ownership and distribution of the country’s resources, and the oppressive conditions suffered by the masses of toiling people under the minority ruling classes who hold economic and political power.
They are critically aware how workers wages are being kept low despite the rise in the cost of living, how millions are idled by the lack of jobs and forced to eke out a living as contractual, outsourced, gig or platform workers, how peasants suffer from landlessness, dispossession and militarization, how fisherfolk are deprived of their fishing grounds by big capitalist trawlers, how jeepney drivers are being dislocated by corporate takeover of their routes and franchises, and how all other oppressed classes suffer from myriad other forms of injustices. They youth themselves suffer from these conditions. Millions are denied their right to education. The small percentage who make it to universities suffer repression and face the bleak prospects of decent employment. Under the priorities of the Marcos fascist regime, the only certain prospect is to join the police, military or paramilitary forces, to serve as spies, foot soldiers or cannon fodder against their fellow oppressed people.
Fueled by heightening imperialist hegemonism in all parts of the world, and US military intervention in the Philippines, rising numbers of young Filipinos are breaking free from the colonial mindset—imposed on every Filipino since childhood—and embrace patriotism in its stead. They are growing indignant over the imperialist US support for the genocide against Palestine and its military aggression against the sovereign state of Venezuela. They are enraged especially by barefaced US military intervention in the Philippines and armed provocations in Asia, dragging the country to the possibility of war which serves US strategic geopolitical, falsely portrayed as “defense of Philippine freedom.”
They are finding themselves reconnected with the country’s history as a colony and semicolony of foreign imperial powers, who plundered and condemned the country to a permanent state of economic backwardness and dependence. The Filipino people’s aspiration for genuine national freedom and social justice burns steadily in their hearts. More and more young Filipinos are united with the broad masses in the fervent desire to change the course of the country’s history, in the resistance to end the reign of corruption, abuse, injustice and foreign domination, and determination to usher in a new era of sovereignty, progress and modernity.
The Filipino people and youth have witnessed in past weeks how Marcos is using the whole range of state power to preserve the system of corruption and abuse, even amid the people’s uproar. Some lower-tier thieves have been scapegoated and turned to sacrificial lambs, even as high-ranking bureaucrat capitalists continue to rake in in billions of pesos in kickbacks, pork barrel and other forms of corruption.
Many young intellectuals have become keenly aware of the limits of their social and political power to change society. They seek to build solidarity with the millions of workers, peasants, the semi-proletariat in both cities and countryside, the fisherfolk, the indigenous people and other oppressed and exploited classes who comprise the majority of the people.
The Marcos fascist regime, especially its armed forces, holds the socially critical youth in complete contempt and a threat to their rule. They malign young intellectuals as “victims of ideological grooming,” as if they are mindless sheep. To deflect blame for their crimes, they have gone to the extent of intimidating the parents of victims of state terrorism, coercing them to depict their own children as lacking the agency for independent and critical thought, or the ability to commit themselves to something greater than themselves–the people’s cause for genuine freedom and democracy.
The Filipino people and their young intellectuals will have none of fascist intimidation and threats. History has shown that attempts to suppress the intellectuals have succeeded only in further stimulating their critical and inquisitive minds. There is bound to emerge a strong current of young students, teachers, academics, scientists and other intellectuals flowing to urban poor and rural communities to investigate, see for themselves the concrete problems of the people, and learn from the masses the crucial importance of getting organized and waging collective struggle as a way of fighting for their interests.
Not a few academics, researchers, journalists, students, scientists, even lower officials of the government agencies have visited units of the New People’s Army to gain a deeper understanding of revolutionary views, and the reasons that compel ordinary people to wage armed revolution. Many continue to be drawn to the path of resistance not because of some scheme of “deception” and “manipulation,” rather because the revolutionary ideas promoted by the CPP and NPA reflect the people’s desire for national freedom and democracy. The people and the youth will embrace only those ideas that express their hopes and aspirations. Many from the current generation of young Filipinos see the revolution as the only path towards attaining the people’s aspirations for a free and prosperous future, and have committed themselves to face all the hardship and sacrifices to march along this difficult road.
More and more people see Marcos, along with the AFP, the PNP, NTF-Elcac and other repressive agencies, as the epitome of government corruption, injustice, abuse and subservience to foreign powers. As in the past, it is the oppression and intolerable conditions under Marcos that rouse the people to join the NPA and wage revolution. Indeed by negative example, Marcos has virtually become the number one recruiter of the New People’s Army.
We call on the Filipino youth to continue sharpening their scientific minds and reject attempts to stifle their critical thinking. Deepen your understanding of the country’s history and the current concrete conditions of the broad masses of the people under semicolonial and semifeudal system. Study and learn from the masses, and determine for yourself, the profound necessity of waging the people’s democratic revolution.
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