HAVE you noticed that almost all of those so-called 1st Quarter Storm activists are now living comfortable if not affluent lives either in the United States or Europe? It would be safe to say that these so-called leftists / activists have truly embraced the capitalist way of life and abandoned the armed struggle.
If they truly believed in the so-called armed struggle, they would still be in the hinterlands fighting instead of playing golf at some burgis country club hobnobbing with capitalists.
Perhaps to project the image that they never left the so-called struggle, they would sometimes hold reunions with fellow “1st Quarter Storm” activists and reminiscence the “good old days” while singing “The Internationale”.
Most of those idealistic student activists are now ageing university professors that romanticized their activism, luring their trendy social-climbing naïve so-called millennial students to become “activists”.
It is pitiful to watch students from what is supposed to be the prime higher learning institution in the country, the University of the Philippines, acting like fools blindly following an obsolete ideology espoused by irrelevant old men.
So you fancy yourself a communist? You’re nothing but a second rate idiot espousing an obsolete and irrelevant ideology.
And what is an idiot?
An idiot is a stupid person. And stupid is knowing the truth, seeing the truth, but still believing the lies.
There you are breaking the law, vandalizing public property calling it “art”, or risking life and limb and enduring hunger, disease and the elements up in the hinterlands while your revered “leader” Jose Maria Sison is having the time of his life partying like Austin Powers in the Netherlands.
If that’s not stupidity then you’re just a naïve impressionable fool.
There is no armed struggle that will lift the masses from their wretched and miserable lives in the clutches of capitalism. There is no “withering away of the state” that will turn the Philippines into a utopian proletariat paradise.
What there is in these islands are organized armed mafia- like groups calling themselves the New People’s Army (NPA) making a profitable and ego-tripping livelihood of kidnapping, extortion, coercion and armed robbery.
If you believe all these bullshit that the National Democratic Front / NPA are churning out, then that makes you a naïve impressionable idiot.
Communism is not only obsolete but dead. Even the country that started it has long abandoned it for capitalism.
Russia where the top icons of the communist movement came from – Lenin and Stalin – and where Marxism became the form of government is now challenging the United States to be the No. 1 capitalist country in the world. And considering the huge debts of the United States, Russia is probably the top capitalist now.
China, home of that No. 1 communist icon in Asia Mao Zedong, is the top trading partner of the “hated capitalist” country the United States of America.
The most popular athletic shoes, the American brand Nike, are made in factories in China and probably all the known American brands i.e. Gap, Converse and Levis.
These sweat shops in China where these iconic brands are made have the same conditions that prompted Karl Marx to write the “Communist Manifesto” because of the exploitation and conditions of the workers during the Industrial Revolution in England in the early 19th century.
The “rich and famous” in China, a result of capitalism, spend money like there’s an endless source of it.
So much for communism and the workers struggle.
Meanwhile in the Philippines and the Netherlands, we have a bunch of senior citizens who still dream they will turn the country into a workers’ utopian paradise and behave like they’re still in full control of the armed bandits in the countryside a.k.a. NPA when in reality they may even have difficulty controlling their bladders.
In one of the media sorties of the NPA, they like to parade this bunch doing cosplay of armed revolutionaries complete with faces painted with red “hammer and sickle “led by an old NPA Commander wearing a Red Guard uniform, obviously his inspiration is Mao Zedong’s “cultural revolution”.
This old guy wants the Philippines to be like Mao Zedong’s China. Is he aware that China is now the one of the biggest capitalist countries in the world? I guess not.
He is also probably not aware that Henry Sy’s SM Shoemart has one of the biggest malls in China. Come to think of it, he might not even know what a mall is.
Meanwhile, the Frappuccino-infused so-called eskolar ng bayan, the supposedly “cream of the crop” students in the University of the Philippines, act out – or as millennials now call it, “cosplay” – the romantic fantasies of their ageing professors as communists revolutionaries fighting to free the motherland from the evils of capitalism.
Wake up, people! Communism is obsolete, dead and buried in Russia and China, while Mao Zedong is just a print on a T-shirt for tourists.
And the “last communist in the world” Joma Sison is having a ball in the Netherlands in the name of communism.
Karl Marx must be spinning in his grave./PN
