I know quite a bit, but there's a reason for the lack of radical history online despite English being somewhat widely spoken, and having a thriving internet culture. Being a leftist is considered quite un-Filipino despite how syncretic their culture is (though there are many religious leftists there), the university and high school system is not equipped for critical social sciences, there's a general optimism towards America even more than Americans themselves but the always online younger generation are starting to get around to the fact that it's a shithole country.
Lots of Catholic universities which means some of the big name universities will teach from a continental-philosophy perspective which will also include tons of Marx. Red Baiting is at an all-time high right now probably, and saying "women's rights" can probably get you red-baited. There's a lot of socialist potential in the Philippines and a lot of Filipinos will agree that their landlord economy in the province is awful, but they don't want to ever call themselves socialist or even touch the word. Since it's quite obvious that America and China, combined with South Korean and Japanese soft culture there being pretty dominant, it doesn't take a genius to know that it is a warzone for soft power among powerful neighbors , there is also rising sinophobia in the Philippines even amongst the Duterte supporters, and Duterte wants good relations with China. The sinophobia is also tied with anti-communism.
Despite the country being staunchly way more anti-communist than the USA, partly in part thanks to the USA, and because it's being outsourced from the USA to the global south, it's not a shock to see that talking heads on Philippine news channels talk about Slavoj Zizek in articles and sometimes on tv. Communism does have independence movements in mind and the Filipino hegemon is tolerable towards them in a very complicated way.
Here are some facts and historical figures from the past, some details ill give you are googlable but you need to dig harder for reasons i stated before:
...I haven't listened to the revleft radio podcast, but I assume that they covered most bases, so here's some historical figures and events that will give the Philippine revolutionaries some context.
Andres Bonifacio - https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/bonifacio.html
He's a liberal figure, but widely respected among the left, right, up and down. The image leftists have of him is that he was the main fire of the revolution, a poor guy from Tondo (which is now one of the poorest places in the Philippines) who was discriminated by the rich revolutionary illustrados, and even killed by one of the illustrados. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilustrado
Jose Rizal - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Rizal
Another lib revolutionary, and the leftist oral history is from my understanding is that he was used by Americans much like MLK JR was used by Americans to use peace as a weapon to oppress. Rizal was kind of vague about Philippine independence, he's also a rich mestizo illustrado so of course he's going to be lauded as Philippines' national hero.
Hukbalahap - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukbalahap
Anti-japanese guerilla movement with M-L tendencies which featured beauty queen turned commander...
Kumander Liwayway - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumander_Liwayway . Philippines wasn't sexist before the Spaniards and Americans came. Women were also commanders and soldiers throughout the islands. She was a beauty queen turned guerilla commander.
Maita Gomez - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maita_Gomez Another beauty queen who pretty much said "fuck this" to her bourgie life and went to the mountains with the rebels. Had involvement in anti-Marcos (Marcos was supported by the USA but this doesn't get spoken of much) movements too. Wikipedia says she co-founded Gabriella, but I do not know if this is the same Gabriella political party.
While many in the west see beauty contests as sexist parading of women, and many Filipinos see this too (I've heard around the leftist Filipino grapevine they have a leftist beauty pagent in some universities which are probably both ironic and sincere in nature), you have to see how pre-colonial non-sexist traditions merged with Spanish Madona/Whore complexes to create these interesting liberation figures.
Gabriela Party - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Women%27s_Party I vaguely remember Gabriella activists or politicians holding their nose in front of Duterte as he made sexist comments right before he was going to give some green light to a womens issue.
Gabriela Silang - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Silang anti-spanish warrior, and Philippine revolutionary. The leftist Gabriela Party is named after her.
Criticisms of the NPA - Struggle session time? https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/29/lett-s29.html Here are some criticisms of the NPA from a trotskyist. Also, do note that it's not uncommon to see books and documentaries critical of the NPA on Filipino TV from time to time, and you can most certainly find books on it too in the book stores. Lots of prefaces indicate that one should not throw the baby out with the bath water for the Filipino leftist project because of this and that their criticism of the NPA will be used as a way to destroy any liberation project. Of course, people ignore that and use it to bash any leftist project regardless of a well written preface.
Ok, so what's with all the revolutionary beauty queens and feminists you ask? It's pretty relevant to today's Filipino struggle. Just a few days ago, a flight attendant (many of who were/are beauty pageant participants) was raped and murdered:
The cops are red-baiting even the most relatively milquetoast demands of Filipino people and as many of you know, the drug war is just a war on poor people. The cops just closed the case and the Filipino people are just furious over police incompetence. Corona virus laws made protests hard and so all these Filipinos are complaining online to protest from another angle.
Just 2 months before, a General red-baited a beauty queen and celebrities for teaming up with Gabriela. They weren't calling for a Marxist struggle session, and I would not be surprised if some of them even cared for revolution. They were just talking about women's rights in general, language which is compatible with most western liberal democracies and all of a sudden they were communists. Check this out here: https://www.rappler.com/nation/parlade-warns-liza-soberano-supporting-gabriela-youth
Lastly, there is a perception in the Philippines that America and other western countries are progressive while Philippines is backwards. The perception is obviously in paternalistic America, but do know that Philippines is probably the best place to be a woman in Asia (not that big of an accomplishment, since the bar is low worldwide), and women do assert themselves for power there that would not be articulated as feminist there. Pre-colonial times had much more power for women and there are anecdotes from women who immigrate to the West that they find horribly sexist when they come to America.
I know quite a bit, but there's a reason for the lack of radical history online despite English being somewhat widely spoken, and having a thriving internet culture. Being a leftist is considered quite un-Filipino despite how syncretic their culture is (though there are many religious leftists there), the university and high school system is not equipped for critical social sciences, there's a general optimism towards America even more than Americans themselves but the always online younger generation are starting to get around to the fact that it's a shithole country.
Lots of Catholic universities which means some of the big name universities will teach from a continental-philosophy perspective which will also include tons of Marx. Red Baiting is at an all-time high right now probably, and saying "women's rights" can probably get you red-baited. There's a lot of socialist potential in the Philippines and a lot of Filipinos will agree that their landlord economy in the province is awful, but they don't want to ever call themselves socialist or even touch the word. Since it's quite obvious that America and China, combined with South Korean and Japanese soft culture there being pretty dominant, it doesn't take a genius to know that it is a warzone for soft power among powerful neighbors , there is also rising sinophobia in the Philippines even amongst the Duterte supporters, and Duterte wants good relations with China. The sinophobia is also tied with anti-communism.
Despite the country being staunchly way more anti-communist than the USA, partly in part thanks to the USA, and because it's being outsourced from the USA to the global south, it's not a shock to see that talking heads on Philippine news channels talk about Slavoj Zizek in articles and sometimes on tv. Communism does have independence movements in mind and the Filipino hegemon is tolerable towards them in a very complicated way.
Here are some facts and historical figures from the past, some details ill give you are googlable but you need to dig harder for reasons i stated before:
...I haven't listened to the revleft radio podcast, but I assume that they covered most bases, so here's some historical figures and events that will give the Philippine revolutionaries some context.
Andres Bonifacio - https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/bonifacio.html He's a liberal figure, but widely respected among the left, right, up and down. The image leftists have of him is that he was the main fire of the revolution, a poor guy from Tondo (which is now one of the poorest places in the Philippines) who was discriminated by the rich revolutionary illustrados, and even killed by one of the illustrados. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilustrado
Jose Rizal - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Rizal Another lib revolutionary, and the leftist oral history is from my understanding is that he was used by Americans much like MLK JR was used by Americans to use peace as a weapon to oppress. Rizal was kind of vague about Philippine independence, he's also a rich mestizo illustrado so of course he's going to be lauded as Philippines' national hero.
Hukbalahap - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukbalahap Anti-japanese guerilla movement with M-L tendencies which featured beauty queen turned commander...
Kumander Liwayway - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumander_Liwayway . Philippines wasn't sexist before the Spaniards and Americans came. Women were also commanders and soldiers throughout the islands. She was a beauty queen turned guerilla commander.
Maita Gomez - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maita_Gomez Another beauty queen who pretty much said "fuck this" to her bourgie life and went to the mountains with the rebels. Had involvement in anti-Marcos (Marcos was supported by the USA but this doesn't get spoken of much) movements too. Wikipedia says she co-founded Gabriella, but I do not know if this is the same Gabriella political party.
While many in the west see beauty contests as sexist parading of women, and many Filipinos see this too (I've heard around the leftist Filipino grapevine they have a leftist beauty pagent in some universities which are probably both ironic and sincere in nature), you have to see how pre-colonial non-sexist traditions merged with Spanish Madona/Whore complexes to create these interesting liberation figures.
Gabriela Party - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Women%27s_Party I vaguely remember Gabriella activists or politicians holding their nose in front of Duterte as he made sexist comments right before he was going to give some green light to a womens issue.
Gabriela Silang - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Silang anti-spanish warrior, and Philippine revolutionary. The leftist Gabriela Party is named after her.
Criticisms of the NPA - Struggle session time? https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/29/lett-s29.html Here are some criticisms of the NPA from a trotskyist. Also, do note that it's not uncommon to see books and documentaries critical of the NPA on Filipino TV from time to time, and you can most certainly find books on it too in the book stores. Lots of prefaces indicate that one should not throw the baby out with the bath water for the Filipino leftist project because of this and that their criticism of the NPA will be used as a way to destroy any liberation project. Of course, people ignore that and use it to bash any leftist project regardless of a well written preface.
Ok, so what's with all the revolutionary beauty queens and feminists you ask? It's pretty relevant to today's Filipino struggle. Just a few days ago, a flight attendant (many of who were/are beauty pageant participants) was raped and murdered:
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1379707/flight-attendants-rape-killing-pnp-says-its-case-closed-because-suspects-identified
The cops are red-baiting even the most relatively milquetoast demands of Filipino people and as many of you know, the drug war is just a war on poor people. The cops just closed the case and the Filipino people are just furious over police incompetence. Corona virus laws made protests hard and so all these Filipinos are complaining online to protest from another angle.
Just 2 months before, a General red-baited a beauty queen and celebrities for teaming up with Gabriela. They weren't calling for a Marxist struggle session, and I would not be surprised if some of them even cared for revolution. They were just talking about women's rights in general, language which is compatible with most western liberal democracies and all of a sudden they were communists. Check this out here: https://www.rappler.com/nation/parlade-warns-liza-soberano-supporting-gabriela-youth
Lastly, there is a perception in the Philippines that America and other western countries are progressive while Philippines is backwards. The perception is obviously in paternalistic America, but do know that Philippines is probably the best place to be a woman in Asia (not that big of an accomplishment, since the bar is low worldwide), and women do assert themselves for power there that would not be articulated as feminist there. Pre-colonial times had much more power for women and there are anecdotes from women who immigrate to the West that they find horribly sexist when they come to America.
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