DEEP DIVES | Masterclass in Weaponizing a Narrative

How Jose Maria Sison revealed the CPP’s dual tactic of armed struggle and legal electoral participation and how the Party protects it through the myth of “red-tagging.”

By Jay Dimaguiba

In one of his last major essays before his death, Jose Maria Sison laid bare the Communist Party of the Philippines’ political playbook, one that turns democracy itself into a weapon.

Written in October 2021, “On Three Viewpoints Concerning the 2022 Elections” was not just an ideological commentary. Certainly not rare but a candid exposition of the CPP’s dual political strategy: the simultaneous pursuit of armed struggle and electoral participation through its legal “patriotic and democratic” organizations. Read carefully, Sison’s own words reveal how the Party sustains this two-pronged approach, and how it protects the tactic by weaponizing the narrative of “red-tagging.”

The Party’s Dual Tactic

Sison begins by identifying three political “viewpoints”: the revolutionary underground, the legal patriotic and democratic movement, and the competing conservative reactionary parties of the ruling class. What makes his explanation stand out is how openly he admits that the legal national democratic organizations and the underground movement are bound by one revolutionary project.

He writes: “The revolutionary movement adheres to a people’s democratic constitution, builds its own system of government and elects its officials to organs of political power… It seeks to overthrow the ruling system which is run by the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord class.”

Immediately after, he draws the counterpart line: “The legal patriotic and democratic forces and people that constitute the national democratic movement adhere to the 1987 Constitution of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines. They assert, defend and promote the national and democratic rights of the Filipino people and seek reforms… through various forms of legal activities and campaigns.”

Two fronts, one objective. The first works outside the system to destroy it; the second works within to weaken it. Sison calls this an “electoral and political exercise of the ruling system” used to “advance the just cause of full national independence, democracy and social justice.”

This shows that the Party’s flexibility is strategic in participating in the democratic process, gathering mass influence, then redirecting the momentum toward revolutionary ends when conditions ripen.

Elections as Tactical Battlefield

Sison’s discussion of the 2022 elections makes this duality plain. The Makabayan Bloc and its allied party-lists, Kabataan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, ACT Teachers, Anakpawis, are described as instruments for “the legal patriotic and democratic forces” to gain limited footholds in government.

According to Sison, these groups engage in elections “to help cause the election of a president, vice president, senators, members of the Lower House and local officials whom they can rely on and cooperate in advancing the just cause of full national independence, democracy, genuine land reform, national industrialization, social justice, expansion of social services, [and] a patriotic, scientific and mass-oriented culture.”

The key phrase—“whom they can rely on and cooperate with”—reveals the intent to influence the system from inside, not reform it, but repurpose it.

Sison concedes that these forces “have been able to elect a small number of candidates to the Lower House of Congress. These are a mere minority but have been outstanding in exposing the serious ills of the ruling system and the anti-national and anti-democratic policies of those in power.” He praises them for using their legislative platforms to amplify the revolutionary line.

But his most telling admission comes when he describes what happens when the electoral path closes: “The Makabayan Bloc can play an even bigger role than competing for a few seats in the electoral struggle…” He says that if [the regime, in this case former President Rodrigo Duterte] rigs the elections, postpones them indefinitely, or declares martial law, a fertile ground can be set for sustained mass protests or have a great number of Makabayan’s members to join the revolutionary underground and armed movement in the countryside.

Historically, the names of Dee Supelanas, Josephine Anne Lapira, Rendell Ryan Cagula, Kerlan Fanagel, Alvin Luque, and many others bear fatal witness to this. 

But here, alas, Sison articulates the CPP’s version of tactical flexibility where elections are useful only insofar as they serve the protracted people’s war. When democracy functions, exploit it; when it falters, weaponize its failure.

Protecting the Duality through Narrative Warfare

To sustain this maneuver, the Party must shield its legal network from exposure. It does so through the rhetorical weapon of the accusation of “red-tagging.”

Sison complains in the same essay that “the ultra-reactionaries of the ruling system cannot tolerate the party-list groups in the Makabayan Bloc and wish to eliminate them by disqualifying them as ‘terrorists’… or by using state terrorism under the so-called Anti-Terror Act in order to red-tag Makabayan Bloc party-list groups, candidates and campaigners.”

In the Party’s narrative, scrutiny becomes persecution. What Sison frames as “red-tagging” is, in reality, the inevitable consequence of his own admission that the legal and underground fronts are ideologically and strategically aligned. The rhetorical inversion becomes a clever device that allows the CPP to delegitimize any inquiry into its network while painting itself as the victim of political repression.

In portraying the state and civil critics as “ultra-reactionaries” waging a witch-hunt, the Party secures moral cover for its legal operations. Every investigation into its linkages can then be dismissed as fascist paranoia. The result is a narrative shield that blurs the distinction between legitimate activism and covert support for the armed violence of the CPP-NPA.

The Art of Ambiguity

This manipulation thrives on what communication scholars call strategic vagueness. The CPP’s legal national democratic organizations never deny affinity with the national-democratic program because they simply couch it in creative language. 

Well, except perhaps for Anakbayan, Kabataan Partylist’s main backbone, which openly declares in its Constitution’s Preamble that it wages a “....pakikibaka para ibagsak ang imperyalismo, pyudalismo at burukrata-kapitalismo at makamit ang pambansang kalayaan at demokrasya at sosyalismo…” [... struggle to overthrow imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism, and to achieve national freedom, democracy, and socialism…]

Compare this to the CPP’s own Constitution's Preamble which contain the key phrases “... through a life-and-death struggle against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism…” in order to carry out “... the people’s democratic revolution as the current stage of the Philippine revolution in preparation for the subsequent stage of socialist revolution…”  

Sison himself uses this linguistic sleight of hand. He describes Makabayan’s allies as “legal patriotic and democratic forces” who “adhere to the 1987 Constitution” while simultaneously affirming that their ultimate mission is “to advance the just cause of full national independence.” The formulation allows the CPP to occupy both spaces at once, the legal and the revolutionary, without openly confessing contradiction.

This is weaponizing a narrative in its purest form so that words no longer inform but obscure. Thus, when critics point out the ideological continuity between the underground and the legal fronts, the Party can simply retreat to the ambiguity it engineered in the first place.

Turning “Red-Tagging” into a Shield

The effectiveness of this narrative is most visible in public discourse. The term “red-tagging” now functions less as a warning against false accusation and more as a deterrent against legitimate scrutiny. Media outlets, NGOs, and even government agencies hesitate to map the CPP’s networks for fear of being labeled persecutors and red-taggers.

The genius of the tactic lies in its self-reinforcing logic: the more one exposes the Party’s methods, the louder it cries “red-tagging,” thereby confirming the stigma it invented. What began as an accusation of repression becomes an instrument of silencing.

Sison’s essay institutionalizes this posture. By asserting that critics of Makabayan are “ultra-reactionaries” seeking to “eliminate” patriotic groups, he transforms the defense of transparency into an act of aggression. The legal fronts are thus insulated from accountability, while the underground continues to operate under their cover.

This inversion is not accidental; it is strategic. For a movement that depends on dual legality—one foot in Congress and in the streets, the other in the so-called “Red bases”—survival hinges on the ability to make suspicion taboo.

Using Democracy to Weaken Democracy

The deeper consequence of this kind of rhetorical engineering is the slow erosion of what democracy truly means. In blurring the line between criticism and persecution, the CPP turns the same freedoms it aims to destroy into its own tools of survival. Its participation in elections is no longer about improving our democratic spaces, but about using its institutions to systematically and quietly mainstream a revolutionary agenda.

Through elected representatives and national democratic mass organizations, the Party gains access to government funding, legitimacy, and legal platforms for mass recruitment. Meanwhile, the underground benefits from the credibility and protection these legal instruments provide. The dual tactic functions like a pincer: legal activism draws sympathy and resources, while armed struggle sustains pressure from the periphery.

Sison was explicit about this synergy. He wrote that the broad masses “will certainly welcome the promise of any presidential candidate to resume peace negotiations and make comprehensive agreements with the NDF,” but warned that “no elected president… can be trusted without the accomplishment of the required agreements. Until then, the Filipino people have all the reason to continue their new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war.”

In short, democracy should be tolerated only until revolution triumphs.

A Masterclass in Manipulation

Taken together, these admissions form what can only be described as a masterclass in weaponizing a narrative. The CPP has learned to cloak subversion in the language of civic virtue, to disguise revolutionary intent behind calls for reform, and to brand exposure as oppression.

At this point when the CPP and NPA can no longer claim battlefield victories, they content themselves in the psychological terrain of discourse, where words of lies and denials dictate legitimacy. Every slogan, every statement about “red-tagging,” every invocation of human rights serves a dual purpose: to hide behind genuine activists who act in good faith and to shield Party cadres who operate in bad. The tragedy is that the former becomes the unwitting armor of the latter.

To confront this, the public need not abandon activism or dissent. What is required is clarity, an insistence on transparency about ideology, affiliation, and ultimate allegiance. Calling out the CPP’s manipulation is not an attack on democracy; it is a defense of it.

As Sison’s own essay inadvertently demonstrates, the Party’s most potent weapon is not the rifle but the narrative. And unless citizens learn to read that narrative critically, the lines between advocacy and insurgency, between reform and revolution, will remain dangerously blurred. The issue, then, is not “red-tagging.” The issue is truth-telling.