Thread by @josephscalice

There is not one context. These racist attacks are a repeated pattern of behavior from Stalinists and their supporters. Look at the quote tweets sharing my video sampling and you'll see more of the same. 1/

https://twitter.com/josephimperial_/status/1507443614472826884

This began in August-September 2020 when I delivered a lecture exposing in detail how both the National Democratic movement and the CPP supported Rodrigo Duterte. 2/
wsws.org/en/articles/20…

There were attacks of all sorts against, including the lying slander made by Joma Sison that I was a paid agent of the CIA & an informant for Duterte's death squads. Images of icepicks were widely circulated invoking the murder of Leon Trotsky and threatening me with the same. 3/

Having allied with Duterte in 2016, the Stalinists adopted many of the far right methods of the DDS, including the most vulgar behavior on social media, reducing politics to the level of disgusting memes. It was at this point that my race became a target. 4/

I was told "shut the fuck up, cracker," was termed a "crusty ass settler." The word "white" was used as means of dismissing my arguments and evidence. Joma Sison openly encouraged this behavior. Here he is responding to a meme calling me "cracker." 5/

The CPP itself generated material for this campaign. Sison circulated a foul image of Leon Trotsky and me as rats being killed by a peasant. The depiction of Trotsky as a rat originates with the anti-Semitism of fascist and White Russian forces. 6/
wsws.org/en/articles/20…

The racist attacks were regularly coupled with death threats. Here is an example from last December. This threat came from someone who referred to me disparagingly as "a white boy." 7/

Much of the recent outpouring of racism came in response to a thread in which I argued that attacking Marcos with the Dovie Beams sex scandal, rather than exposing the crimes of the dictatorship, was a right-wing strategy, oriented to winning over the most conservative layers. 8/

Such a campaign I argued sought to win the support of those who were more offended by adultery than by the suspension of habeas corpus. It attempted to depict Marcos as simply an "evil man," a moral monster, rather the representative of capitalist interests. 9/

Martial law was a crime of capitalism. Marcos played a criminal role in service to these interests. I argued that effigies depicting political figures as demons obscured the capitalist roots of dictatorship, and presented them as simply evil. 10/

I argued this in multiple threads, but here is one of them. You can see the hysterical and racist reaction in various quote tweets. 11/

https://twitter.com/josephscalice/status/1495741451292258304

I was told that I did not understand the significance of demonic and religious imagery in Philippine politics because I had not read Ileto's Pasyon and Revolution. In fact, I wrote the two most widely read scholarly criticisms of Ileto's work. 12/
researchgate.net/publication/32…

The overwhelming majority of comments, however, simply attacked me with the racism that been encouraged and solicited by Joma Sison and the Stalinist CPP. 13/

Hindi ako balat sibuyas. I can deal with trolls. Their behavior is embarrassing to themselves, not to me. 14/

But there is a political point to be made here. Stalinism represents everything reactionary and backwards -- racism, death threats, vulgarities. Anyone serious about fighting the threat of dictatorship must break with these social layers and their rotten program. 15/end