Expletive Deleted

While researching about the Philippine Revolution online (see my next post), I came across what seems to be the official website of the armed communist rebels (glorified bandits if you ask me) known as the CPP-NPA-NDF. The communist rebels clearly prides its military practice, calling itself the genuine Army of the Filipino people! Describing their so-called people's Army, the website says:

The New People's Army is the revolutionary army of the Filipino people under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

In carrying out the revolutionary armed struggle, the NPA follows the general line of the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war. It is the principal instrument in implementing the revolutionary program for land reform, the main democratic agenda of the people's revolution.

You would think that these lofty principles would translate to engaging government military forces (which they do on occasion). Rather, their main occupation is actually to extort money from local businesses and residences (with what they euphemistically call as revolutionary taxes) through threats of violence. They are cult-like in their total submission to their movement, worshipping (though as godless communists they would not agree to this characterization) Marx, Lenin, Mao, or whichever posterboy of communism they wish to deify. Communist propaganda (which the website has graciously reproduced) is a scary mish-mash of deusion-think and militant aggressiiveness. Their tenuous grip on reality is further weakened by their fanciful use of dialectical materialism to revise history.

As a left-leaning person, I am totally aghast by the communist movement in the Philippines. Marxist Communism, like Freudian Psychoanalysis, is an outdated 19th century concept that no longer reflects the social and political dynamics (as if it ever did!) of modern societies, not even if it was revised (made even more brutal) by Lenin or Mao. The local Communists are nothing more than bandits and criminals who regularly extort and steal from innocent people (of course, to them everyone who is not for the revolution is not innocent, double negatives aside) while hiding behind the banner of "people's revolution." You see, they actually think that forcing people to hand them money is a perfectly justified way of funding for the procurement of ammunitions.

Let us hope that their revolution will never prosper. We do not need another Khmer Rouge! Down with la revolucion!