OP-ED | Genuine Militancy or Performative Activism?

Para kay Roman at iba pa, 

Many years ago, militancy was not a costume you could wear for a protest photo, nor a hashtag that lived for twenty-four hours before the algorithm buried it. 

Militancy was a discipline. It was a commitment that demanded time, study, humility, and sacrifice. Those of us who came from that tradition remember it clearly.

Before slogans were shouted, there were long nights of political education. Before placards were raised, there were hours spent listening to workers, farmers, and communities whose struggles were not theoretical abstracts but painfully real. Militancy meant understanding the roots of injustice, not merely reacting to its symptoms.

To be militant was not to be permanently angry. It was to be organized.

A militant learned to argue with ideas, not silence them. We debated strategy and criticized each other openly. We corrected mistakes, and for the most part, no one hid behind identity or moral superiority to avoid discussion. In fact, criticism was considered a responsibility, because movements only grow when they are strong enough to confront their own weaknesses.

More importantly, militancy was not measured by visibility. It was measured by work. Real militants spent days in communities that never appeared on social media. Swerte na kung lumanding sa media ang mga prop actions. They organized workers who had never held a megaphone. They sat in cramped rooms discussing plans that would never trend online but could change the lives of real people.

Militancy was not aesthetic. It was exhausting. It required discipline to continue organizing even when no one was watching. It required courage to stand firm even when public opinion turned hostile. It required patience to build movements slowly rather than chase instant validation.

Today, something different is beginning to appear. In many spaces, activism has become increasingly performative. Outrage spreads quickly, but analysis grows shallow. Hashtags replace organizing. Call-outs and cancel culture replace debates. The language of struggle is often used, yet the difficult work of building movements is sometimes absent. (Cue “Dami ng Likes” by Musikangbayan.)

Anger is easy to display but commitment is much harder to sustain. The older tradition of militancy was never perfect. It made mistakes. It carried its own contradictions. But it understood one essential truth: real change is built collectively and patiently. It cannot be reduced to online approval or the performance of moral certainty.

Social movements are not built by appearances. They are built by people who are willing to do the quiet, difficult, unglamorous work of organizing. If the word militant is to mean anything again, it must return to that tradition, yet also evolve into something else. 

By something else, it means to be apart from the construct of the communist insurgency or as a stepping stone for the New People’s Army’s armed violence. It means to break free from the shackles of activism being the sole property of the national democratic movement of the Communist Party of the Philippines. 

Militancy, at its core, was never about being seen. It was about being committed to the masses long after the cameras are gone. Hindi sa pagiging visible, hindi sa pagiging viral.

Nanggagaling ito sa paggagap sa kalagayan ng bayan, sa disiplina ng kolektibo, at eksaktong paglubog sa masa, hindi sa Facebook or sa Tiktok. At hindi sa kontrol ng CPP-NPA-NDFP.