Bandilang Pula
Written by: Anoymous;
Published: Bandilang Pula, Ika-5 ng Pebrero 1971;
Source: Bandilang Pula, Ika-5 ng Pebrero 1971
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
It takes a thoroughly-sick society and a cabal of Marcos partisans to bring about the military invasion of the University of the Philippines, the ever-proud citadel of Philippine bourgeois liberalism. Conceived by American imperialism as the main assembly plant for its brown bureaucrats, UP has, above all, provided an ideology for its brazen rule. A pseudo-democratic formulation designed to gloss over the semi-feudal, semi-colonial conditions both in the cities and countrysides; in short, a political yahahoo oblivious of basic economic relations and premised on the tall tale of equal opportunity.
The UP intellectual community, in close economic liason with the benign oligarchs of La Salle and Ateneo, has long since borrowed American liberal rhetoric neatly wrapped in the constitutional “guarantee” of academic freedom, Despite the firm authoritarian mold of the UP, which was hardly disputable even in late 1969, the belief that its campuses were sacred grounds has been largely conceded.
The intellectual ambivalence of the UP has always been manifest. The neo-colonial strings attached to its alleged commitment to Truth were never really obscured by the elitism and snobbery that nourished its pretensions to excellence. It was never free from Quezonian bombast or Marcosian recruitment, Its vociferous crusaders are entrenched in provincial fiefdoms and Makati executive suites. Its idealists today dominate all the sanctuaries of corruption, from the Isabela municipal hall to Malacanang. Its bunch of do-gooders spearhead recurrent bourgeois attempts to modulate exploitation by institutionalizing mendicancy in the name of civic consciousness.
And so long as this ambivalence, this installation of the individual as a “free” entity able to achieve rectitude over and above social factors, governed the thinking of the University, it was tolerated and rhapsodized as intellectual freedom. To be radical was to be different, to be individual, to be intellectual. Radicalism manifested itself in the greek-letter societies, in pseudo-bohemian cults, in nihilist writers circles. To join Recto was the upper limit, a dangerous flirtation with the antisubversion law. Villa’s tyranny was rebellion, Rebellion didn’t really hurt the State if it merely strayed into the excitements of the brain drain.
But a University discovering National Democracy is a Univerversity in arms. A Kabataang Makabayan that gets farther than a booing squad is a rebellious portent. A studentry that has renounced the seperatist allures of Student Power is a herd unloosed against law and order, Student leaders who openly denounce the inherent deception of legislation and dialogue are potential Dantes.
In short, the Establishment is expectedly hypersensitive. It cannot stand close scrutiny nor honest dissent. It cannot and will not take lightly any attempt to mobilize the people against its institutionalized oppression. The military invasion of the University of the Philippines along with many other universities in Manila and the provinces is nothing but the violent admission that the political crisis against the ruling classes has indeed come to a dangerous point, to a point where revolution is no longer a slogan and a battle cry but a viable threat to the very existence of the neocolonial State. Fascism is the other name for decay and distintegration, Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.