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Joseph Scalice Profile picture
Joseph Scalice
@josephscalice
Historian of the Philippines & SE Asia | Revolutionary movements | Authoritarianism // Asst Prof, @hkbaptistu // The Drama of Dictatorship, @CornellPress
Jul 26, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I am sorry to hear of the passing of Willie Nepomuceno. He made us all laugh, while satirizing presidents and the powerful.

What many may not know is that he was closely connected to the student radicalism of the KM and SDK from 1970 to 1972 on the eve of martial law. 🧵 I regularly came across Nepomuceno in my archival research for The Drama of Dictatorship and he makes a walk-on appearance in my book at several points. 2/
cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/978150177…
May 10, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It is not sinister. It is correct.

Yes, there are other factors, many of far greater objective weight.

But in a revolutionary situation it is the subjective factor -- revolutionary leadership -- that is decisive. This is why the CPP has played such a critical role. 1/ The central question in a revolutionary situation such as February 1986 is this: will the working class fight for its own political interests, will it take up the perspective of socialism?

Here the intervention of the revolutionary party is decisive. 2/
May 10, 2023 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
A year ago today, I wrote an assessment on the WSWS of the election of Marcos. Published the day after the election, it is a historically detailed explanation for the return of the Marcoses.

Marcos' election, I wrote, was part of the "death rattle of democracy." 1/ Image "The outcome is a result of the impact of US imperialism on the country’s history expressed in a concentrated form under the conditions of the current global crisis of capitalist rule." 2/
wsws.org/en/articles/20…
May 1, 2023 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
As Mr. Marcos goes to Washington, it is useful to recall the state visit of his parents to the White House in 1966.

LBJ needed to manufacture the appearance of multilateral support for America's bloody war in Vietnam and he courted the Marcoses. 1/ Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos... We know from declassified material that LBJ's National Security team told the US president that the secret to securing Marcos support was to pledge discretionary money that Marcos could pocket, and to stoke Marcos ego. 2/ Image
Apr 29, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
What were your childhood movies that stuck around? The ones you have watched dozens of times and can happily watch again? I'll go first.

The Great Race (1965)
The Karate Kid (1984)
Chariots of Fire (1981) I remember my father took me to watch The Karate Kid in Cubao along Aurora Boulevard under the enormous handpainted billboards.

He also took me to see The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) in Cubao, back when Manila cinemas showed old movies. I still remember the skeletons.
Dec 17, 2022 • 27 tweets • 7 min read
Founder and lifelong leader of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Ma. Sison, died on December 16 at the age of 83.
No figure in the past half-century was more instrumental in the betrayal of the Filipino working class and oppressed masses than Joma Sison. 1/ In an article published in Sojourn last year, "We Are Siding with Filipino Capitalists," I traced the nationalist, capitalist origins of Sison's core Stalinist ideas as a graduate student at UP at the beginning of the 1960s. 2/
doi.org/10.1355/sj36-1a
Mar 26, 2022 • 31 tweets • 5 min read
Stalinism is fundamentally the nationalist betrayal of Marxism. It is a historically developed phenomenon. What follows is a careful outline definition. 🧵 Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian revolution of 1917, a socialist revolution which created the world's first workers state, which they defined as a transitional form between capitalism and socialism. 2/
Mar 26, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The racist attacks against me by the Stalinists were most recently occassioned by my criticism of their use of bestial and demonic iconography, drawing upon the racism and anti-Semitism of the far-right. In the thread I'm retweeting here I examined its history. 1/ Here is an example of what I am criticising. It is repugnant and monstrous. This is the man they heralded as "socialist" three years earlier. They will not explain his social role, so they draw on the iconography of fascism & Catholic medievalism. 2/
Mar 25, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
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/ 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…
Mar 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Here are the five reasons why the Marcoses are back:
Reason 1 - Social Failure.
#BongbongMarcos #NeverAgain
Reason 2 - They were Rehabilitated
Feb 23, 2022 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
1/ The use of bestial and demonic imagery to depict opponents originates with the racism and anti-Semitism of the far-right. This found its sharpest expression in the propaganda of the Nazis. Such artwork has nothing to do with genuine progressive or left-wing politics. A thread. 2/ This kind of imagery cultivates visceral hatred but not principled political opposition. It appeals to superstition and backwardness, not to a rational understanding of society. One learns nothing of capitalism from these effigies. It is a medieval bestiary.
Feb 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A critical factor in the stabilization of the martial law regime was the support given to the #Marcos dictatorship by a wide layer of intellectuals.
Miriam Defensor Santiago, for example, was an apologist for martial law from its inception.
facebook.com/HistorianJosep… The newsmagazine in which this was published, Focus Philippines, was a key pro-martial law publication.
It was edited by Kerima Polotan, managed by Gregorio Brillantes. 2/4
Feb 21, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This tweet of mine has aroused a good deal of hostility from NatDem forces on Twitter, who attack me for "humanizing Marcos." 🧵 Marcos was brutal dictator. He presided over an apparatus of repression. He shut down the press, arrested 60,000 people on political grounds in the first five years of his dictatorship, was responsible for nearly 4,000 deaths. 1/
Oct 17, 2021 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
Remember this? The national democratic movement, led by Makabayan, endorsed and supported Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, depicting him as progressive, even "socialist." 1/ 🧵 We are witnessing, as the 2022 Presidential election opens, another mad scramble by the 'national democratic' forces, to secure a useful alliance with a leading politico, whom they can endorse and with whom they can campaign. They are courting Robredo, Pacquiao & Isko Moreno. 2/
May 1, 2021 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
1/ This is false. In Mindanao and the Visayas the Makabayan bloc campaigned for Duterte, not Poe despite their alliance with her. 2/ Here for example is the campaign of Anakpawis in Mindanao. Note that Anakpawis rep Ayik Casilao is leading a Duterte fistbump during the campaign. Image