IMO, the movement has been utterly broken since the big split they had in the early 90s. They're treading water in the rural areas of the country, and don't really have a presence in urban areas which are half the population. I think they're stuck in the past basically, unable to move forward, and the Philippine state is slowly overtaking them. They are in no position to win a war that's been going on for 50 years now (same with the Naxals in India). If the Philippine department of the interior is to be believed, their task force of getting people to quit via cash payments, job training, and housing assistance has resulted in thousands of CPP (and NDF more broadly) supporters quitting the group. If you look at the conflict timeline throughout the 2010s, it's basically there's a few incidents a year (some of which are very questionable to me, like running protection rackets under the guise of "revolutionary taxes" against local farmers or taking bribes from companies that do exploit local people, or killing government social workers in rural areas. Like how can you expect to be supported if you exploit people alongside the government and mining companies for instance) or there's a big spate of activity for a couple months when the ceasefire breaks down for a bit before it's re-established, and no growth. They don't actually pose a threat to the national government.
In reality, their goal from year to year is more about last long enough to start figuring out how to pressure the government more, and recruit enough to keep existing. As the situation grows worse, it results in some really bad internal practices, like the armed wing, the NPA has executed new recruits (who are often students wooed by NPA recruiters from their schools) who try to leave after getting disillusioned before. Another issue is that different NPA subgroups and other NDF orgs are pretty much independent of each other, some really do try and help, but others don't. I know anecdotes where someone was approached by one group asking for like school supplies to distribute, then the next month they had a different one show up demanding laptops and threatening violence if protection money was not paid.
It's not a pretty picture, and it's why some of their most high profile leaders quit over the years. You can't be a progressive revolutionary force if the only way you survive is by counter revolutionary activity.
This is some great critique. It seems the individual cells need to be placed under stronger party ideological control to reduce the grift and bad takes. It is hard to differentiate a protection racket from a taxation scheme, but I wonder how much of that is western propaganda.
As someone watching from the West, I though the NPA was growing in size in recent years, certainly around 2010 there was dropping membership. I'd also heard positive things about their increasing territory control.
I don't even like cpp but God damn that's amazing they took the time to dunk on the op or insanity that is top.
What's not to like about them?
IMO, the movement has been utterly broken since the big split they had in the early 90s. They're treading water in the rural areas of the country, and don't really have a presence in urban areas which are half the population. I think they're stuck in the past basically, unable to move forward, and the Philippine state is slowly overtaking them. They are in no position to win a war that's been going on for 50 years now (same with the Naxals in India). If the Philippine department of the interior is to be believed, their task force of getting people to quit via cash payments, job training, and housing assistance has resulted in thousands of CPP (and NDF more broadly) supporters quitting the group. If you look at the conflict timeline throughout the 2010s, it's basically there's a few incidents a year (some of which are very questionable to me, like running protection rackets under the guise of "revolutionary taxes" against local farmers or taking bribes from companies that do exploit local people, or killing government social workers in rural areas. Like how can you expect to be supported if you exploit people alongside the government and mining companies for instance) or there's a big spate of activity for a couple months when the ceasefire breaks down for a bit before it's re-established, and no growth. They don't actually pose a threat to the national government.
In reality, their goal from year to year is more about last long enough to start figuring out how to pressure the government more, and recruit enough to keep existing. As the situation grows worse, it results in some really bad internal practices, like the armed wing, the NPA has executed new recruits (who are often students wooed by NPA recruiters from their schools) who try to leave after getting disillusioned before. Another issue is that different NPA subgroups and other NDF orgs are pretty much independent of each other, some really do try and help, but others don't. I know anecdotes where someone was approached by one group asking for like school supplies to distribute, then the next month they had a different one show up demanding laptops and threatening violence if protection money was not paid.
It's not a pretty picture, and it's why some of their most high profile leaders quit over the years. You can't be a progressive revolutionary force if the only way you survive is by counter revolutionary activity.
This is some great critique. It seems the individual cells need to be placed under stronger party ideological control to reduce the grift and bad takes. It is hard to differentiate a protection racket from a taxation scheme, but I wonder how much of that is western propaganda.
As someone watching from the West, I though the NPA was growing in size in recent years, certainly around 2010 there was dropping membership. I'd also heard positive things about their increasing territory control.