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\title{The Black Scare and the Party of Anarchy}
\date{2026-06-30}
\author{Simoun Magsalin}
\subtitle{Notes from the Philippines on the Second Battle of Mendiola}






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  {\usekomafont{subtitle}{Notes from the Philippines on the Second Battle of Mendiola\par}}%
  
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In August 2025, a
powerful \href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/04/voices-from-the-uprising-in-indonesia-affan-kurniawan-lives-on-in-the-streets}{uprising} shook
Indonesia and spread rapidly throughout the region, helping to catalyze
a revolution
in \href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/22/nepali-anarchists-on-the-toppling-of-the-government-an-interview-with-black-book-distro}{Nepal}.
Yet even as it set off further explosions from the Philippines
to \href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/06/30/\%5Bhttps://crimethinc.com/2025/10/13/morocco-the-gen-z-212-uprising-an-interview}{Morocco},
this momentum hit a wall everywhere as governments counterattacked with
repression specifically targeting anarchists—in what some in the region
have called the “black scare.” In the following analysis, Simoun
Magsalin draws on the events in the Philippines to outline the
challenges confronting today’s revolutionaries and explore what it will
take to overcome them.


You can read a full account of the confrontation that took place in
Manila, the Philippine capital, on September 21,
2025 \href{https://www.altermidya.net/mendiola-september-21-2025/}{here}.


You can support the black scare detainees and defendants from the
Philippines who were arrested at Mendiola on September 21, 2025
through \href{https://ko-fi.com/duriandistro}{Durian Distro}, which is
handling international donations via Ko-Fi. Please include a message
noting that your donation is for the 9\Slash{}21 prisoners. Salamat po!


You can support Indonesian prisoners
via \href{https://sociabuzz.com/serikattahanan}{Serikat Tahanan} or the
Serikat Napi Lintas-Lapas \Slash{} Inter-Correctional Prisoner Union. Please
use the “Donasi” button on their website. Terima kasih!


This line of inquiry is equally relevant in North America, as anarchists
confront intensifying repression
from \href{https://prairielanddefendants.com/}{Prairieland} to \href{https://chuffed.org/project/186570-minnesota-15-legal-defense-fund}{Minneapolis}.

\section{ 9\Slash{}21 and the Party of Anarchy}


On September 21, 2025, a host of leftists, socialists, and
pro-revolutionaries marched at the fateful site where the Spanish
colonial government executed José Rizal on December 30, 1896. Rizal was
executed under false charges for an anti-colonial insurrection he had
little to do with but which had proclaimed him as its north star. In
2025,
a \href{https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/21/protests-philippines-corruption-state-flood}{march
of more than 80,000 Filipinos} assembled by the monument where his
remains are interred to express outrage in response to a massive
corruption scandal involving the graft of funds designated for flood
control infrastructure projects—the plunder of which through fraudulent
projects caused numerous deaths across multiple tropical typhoons.


For months before the march, the outrage had led nowhere, as the
Philippine left was at an almost-historic nadir after years of
opportunism, repression, and dynastic restoration from the
previous \href{https://crimethinc.com/2020/07/19/the-new-terror-bill-in-the-philippines-another-front-in-the-worldwide-struggle-against-tyranny}{Duterte
presidency} and the continuation of Dutertismo in
the \href{https://crimethinc.com/2022/07/14/deserting-the-image-factory-on-the-2022-philippine-elections-anarchist-strategies-amid-the-dying-liberal-status-quo}{current
administration} headed by Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. Morale was
so low that a leftist attempt to organize a general assembly in an urban
poor community facing demolition apparently drew almost no one. At a
factory strike, the workers self-managed their picket to limit and
pacify their own actions.


Yet
the \href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/04/voices-from-the-uprising-in-indonesia-affan-kurniawan-lives-on-in-the-streets}{insurrection} that
broke out in Indonesia at the end of August 2025 inspired something in
Filipinos. Militants from National Democracy organized limited direct
action at the beginning of September,
involving \href{https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2104620/ph-must-avoid-indonesia-like-protests-over-flood-projects-palace.}{publicized
vandalism and minor street fighting}. They hoped to arouse “the
masses” from slumber and invoke spontaneity. Alas, such energy did not
arise—at least, not at first. Then
the \href{https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/world/asia/nepal-gen-z-revolution.html}{insurrection
in Nepal} bloomed and then withered, and morale rose once again. \emph{To
know that power is vulnerable elsewhere is to see that it is vulnerable
everywhere.}


Several groups announced a mass mobilization for September 21 at Luneta
and at EDSA.\footnote{EDSA, pronounced “Ed-Sa,” stands for the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the same avenue where the First and Second People Power Revolutions, or EDSA Uno and EDSA Dos respectively, took place. Similar to Luneta, marching and mobilizing at EDSA is highly symbolic.} The
Catholic Church was one of
the \href{https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/959168/september-21-rally-edsa-luneta/story/}{biggest
forces} that organized mobilizations, followed by various right-wing,
liberal, social democratic, National Democratic, and socialist groups.
Anarchists of various persuasions were there, too, in our own fashion.
Banners of all kinds were on display: the National Democratic Mass
Organizations (NDMOs) and Makabayan, the bloc of
Sanlakas-PLM-BMP-Oriang, Akbayan, Kilusan, Kamanggagawa, Partido
Sosyalista, the Spartacists, Partido Manggagawa, Manibela and other
workers’ associations, and university fraternities. The right-wing
Duterte Diehard Supporters (DDS)\footnote{“DDS” originally stood for the nickname of then-mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s private army, the Davao Death Squad, which Duterte is accused of using to terrorize the urban poor of Davao City. During Duterte’s campaign for president, the fascist Dutertista movement co-opted and embraced the acronym DDS as Duterte Diehard Supporters.} were
there too,
some \href{https://www.rappler.com/philippines/despite-no-permit-duterte-supporters-rally-camp-aguinaldo-september-21-2025/}{projecting
phrase-mongering} into the military base to spontaneously induce
a \emph{kudeta} (Tagalog for “coup d’état”\footnote{Where appropriate, \href{https://www.spot.ph/newsfeatures/culture/105991/list-filipinism-phrases-in-fairness-as-in-and-for-a-while-a5229-20230819}{Filipinisms} (words specific to the dialect of Philippine English) are used in this text.})
among the generals in a vain attempt to oust President Bongbong
Marcos, \href{https://opinion.inquirer.net/186403/ph-democracy-is-this-the-endgame}{catapult
Vice President Sara Duterte} to the highest office, and (somehow?)
bring former president Rodrigo Duterte back home from his incarceration
at the Hague by the International Criminal Court.\footnote{Former president Rodrigo Duterte finished his term of office without much fanfare, having been constitutionally barred from running for president again as a consequence of finishing his term of office. Political dynasties in the Philippines routinely endorse family members and allies to keep power within their circle. The Duterte and Marcos dynasty colluded to run for office, with Bongbong Marcos (the son and junior of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.) running for president and Sara Duterte (the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte) running for vice president as a tandem. It is highly rare for tandems to win, as a president and vice president are elected separately, yet both won. Nonetheless, the two dynasties began \href{https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/910546/duterte-marcos-uniteam-ends/story/}{quarreling in public}, with Marcos ordering the extraordinary arrest and extradition of Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court.}


On the margins of all these parties was another: \emph{the party of
anarchy}.\footnote{The term is borrowed from Karl Marx, who first used it in what became \emph{Class Struggles in France}; in this text, we play on his meaning. See Marx’s most famous usage of the terms “party of order” and “party of anarchy” in \href{https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18\%3Csup\%3Eth\%3C/sup\%3E-brumaire/}{\emph{The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte}}.}


After the protest march program of the Makabayan bloc ended on the way
to
Mendiola, \href{https://www.altermidya.net/mendiola-september-21-2025/}{black-clad
youth initiated violent direct action}, attempting
to \href{https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/53901}{set fire to a freight
truck} used as a police barricade and then lobbing rocks at the
police. The police struck back with their own rocks, trapping the
militants from Makabayan in the crossfire. At that moment, another wing
of the party of anarchy revealed itself, opening up another front in the
Philippines just as had occurred in Indonesia and Nepal. The same sigils
of the
One-Piece \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw\_Hats\%27\_Jolly\_Roger}{straw-hat
skull-and-bones} flag flew again, raised by those in anarchistic
black attire.


The \href{https://www.rappler.com/philippines/what-we-know-so-far-september-21-riots/}{spontaneous
movement of September 21 (or 9\Slash{}21)} was no party of anarchists, much
as we might wish they were. Neither were they self-identifying National
Democrats, Maoists, socialists, or communists—nor fascists, though
fascists want to appropriate the symbolism and significance of the 9\Slash{}21
events.\footnote{The Kilusang Setyembre Bente Uno (KS21) is a fascist entryist group that appropriated the symbolism of 9\Slash{}21. We know they are fascist entryists because they are platformed by the usual fascist Telegram channels while claiming to be some kind of patriotic united front. Some of their members were \href{https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2025/11/30/police-call-out-apprehend-3-men-wearing-balaclavas-during-manila-protest-1354}{arrested} while challenging a Manila ordinance designed to prevent another 9\Slash{}21.}


The party of anarchy is not a particular organizational formation, but
a \emph{spontaneous emergence} that cohered at a time of high morale among
our class. As in Indonesia and Nepal, it emerged outside the milieu
known as the “left.” But how the self-ascribed left relates to this
party of anarchy is of crucial importance, especially in view of how
quickly some on the left sought to denounce the militants as
“\href{https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/09/23/news/national/government-vows-to-prosecute-anarchists-behind-violent-protests/2187985}{anarchists},”
fascists, \href{https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2025/09/24/2474985/airtight-cases-be-filed-vs-rioters-financiers}{Dutertistas},
or
(Chinese?) \href{https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1259389}{saboteurs}.

\section{The Black Scare and the Party of Order}


The party of anarchy that emerged at the battle of Mendiola was small.
The majority of the (at least) 277 detainees at Mendiola
were \href{https://nupl.net/lawyers-call-for-accountability-for-widespread-rights-violations-and-police-brutality-in-september-21-mass-arrests/}{not
involved} in the direct action at all or else were not anarchists.
Many were innocent bystanders, some of whom were colonized minorities
within the Philippine nation-state who didn’t even speak Tagalog and
were in Manila for less than a week. Another was a student journalist
who just happened
to \href{https://www.bulatlat.org/2025/09/28/arrested-for-wearing-black-youth-groups-decries-continued-detention-of-student-leader/}{wear
black} to the protest and was illegally detained only because he
looked vaguely like an anarchist. Around or at least 91 of the Mendiola
detainees
were \href{https://www.philstar.com/nation/2025/09/24/2474939/mendiola-riots-91-minors-detained}{legally
minors}. All were beaten on the streets and then systematically
tortured, denied legal representation, denied food and medicine, and
denied access to their families.


Yet despite not being \emph{partisanos} of the party of anarchy, they were
red-tagged\footnote{“\href{https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/what-is-red-tagging-and-how-does-it-harm-climate-action/}{Red-tag}” is a Filipinism somewhat equivalent to “red-bait.” The use of “black-tagging” is a play on words, though that phrase is already sometimes used to refer to baiting or tagging individuals and groups by alleging connection to Daesh-aligned groups (the so-called “Islamic State”) like the \href{https://www.reuters.com/article/world/the-mautes-of-the-philippines-from-monied-family-to-islamic-state-idUSKBN19E0AA/}{Maute group}. It goes without saying that I am not using the phrase to refer to Daesh.} (black-tagged?)
as “anarchists.” By then, this was a familiar refrain, coming as it did
on the heels of the black scare in Indonesia that saw the open hunting
of anarchists
by \href{https://magdalene.co/story/prabowo-perintah-ambil-langkah-tegas/}{Prabowo’s
decree}, as well
as \href{https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-designates-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/}{Trump’s
criminalization order} targeting so-called “antifa” in the United
States and
the \href{https://www.morungexpress.com/anarchists-and-reactionaries-infiltrated-gen-z-movement-confirms-nepal-minister-after-19-die-in-anti-govt-protests}{accusations} of
Nepali politicians that anarchists had “infiltrated” the insurrection
there. In September 2025, security forces were conjuring whole parties
of anarchists out of the air to explain various riots and
insurrectionary episodes across the world, each imagined
conspiracy \href{https://orinocotribune.com/mexicos-gen-z-rebellion-exposed-as-viral-right-wing-plot/}{more
fanciful} than the last. If only such revolutionaries could be born
fully armored and ready to fight, like a hundred thousand Athenas born
from the mind of Zeus!


Conspiratorial baiting of this kind is not new. In the wake of October
7, 2023, whole battalions of Hamas were identified all across the
world. \href{https://www.jalopnik.com/paranoid-brit-thinks-paragliders-are-hamas-fighters-att-1850941437/}{Paragliders} in
the middle of Britain? \emph{Hamas}. Students occupying campuses to protest
investments in the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of
Palestine? \emph{Hamas}. Jewish anti-Zionists? \emph{Hamas}. Random people on the
train who don’t look like me and aren’t bothering anyone? \emph{Hamas!} As
with earlier waves of red-baiting, “Hamas-baiting” and the current black
scare serve to \emph{delegitimize and criminalize} protest and organizing,
whether in response to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza or
the brazen corruption scandals in Asia and elsewhere.


We’ve seen how black-tagging and the black scare has been deployed
in \href{https://www.newmandala.org/whos-afraid-of-a-little-anarchy/}{Indonesia},
Nepal, and the Philippines in much the same way
that \href{https://industrialworker.org/wobbly-sues-seattle-police/}{red-baiting} was
used in the past. It didn’t matter whether you were an anarchist or a
social democrat—you will be red-baited and deported or imprisoned as a
filthy godless communist! Non-state actors including liberals
and \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company\_union}{yellow
unions} have used red-tagging to delegitimize their ideological
rivals in the electoral or labor-union arena. Now, in a similar way,
just being some kind of leftist, wearing black, or being at the wrong
place at the wrong time can get you black-tagged as an anarchist
and \href{https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2025/10/6/4-alleged-protest-leaders-subpoenaed-over-sept-21-chaos-in-manila-1523}{threatened
with subversion charges}. We saw this in Indonesia and Nepal and
again at Mendiola. In a consistent, predictable way, the \emph{party of
order} uses the \emph{black scare} strategy to suppress not only the party of
anarchy, but all who criticize the prevailing order.


What is the party of anarchy, really? It is not something that can be
constructed the way you construct a formal party. It is constituted and
coheres on the basis of a social insurrection, or at least the
beginnings of one. It is on this basis that the party of anarchy is not
merely a threat to the dominant wing of the party of order—the caucus of
the \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-at-daggers-drawn-with-the-existent-its-defenders-and-its-false-critics}{\emph{existent}}—but
also to the caucus of
the \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-at-daggers-drawn-with-the-existent-its-defenders-and-its-false-critics}{\emph{false
critics}}, who conduct
a \href{https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000020464}{two-line
struggle} within the party of order but remain its loyal opposition.
The black scare, then, works slightly differently than the red scare in
terms of how the caucus of the false critics uses it to target the party
of anarchy.


In the immediate aftermath of the police repression at Mendiola, another
parallel narrative began to form. The direct actionists and the Mendiola
detainees were at the pay of foreign agents, or of Sara
Duterte—or \href{https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3327831/fake-coup-and-cia-plot-rumours-philippines-fuelling-real-political-turmoil}{so
many commenters said}. Liberals and leftists alike repeated this \emph{ad
nauseam.} The caucus of the false critics is constantly negotiating
their place within the party of order and within the broader effort to
reimpose normalcy. The black scare is used by these false critics to
dissolve the party of anarchy in order to achieve that purpose. We have
seen this before: for example, in the peace police who branded direct
actionists “agent provocateurs” and handed them over to the police
during the George Floyd rebellions in 2020. Through such actions, the
false critics position themselves as a legal, legitimate, and loyal
opposition within the prevailing order.


In addition, the false critics also use the black scare to legitimize
their own activism and organizations at the expense of the insurrection
and the party of anarchy. They do this by tagging the party of anarchy
as “saboteurs,” “provocateurs,” Dutertistas in disguise, and so on, but
also by taking advantage of the efforts of
the \emph{partisanos} and \emph{insurrectos} of the party of anarchy to build
their own organizations using pragmatic pacifism and legalism.


The black scare represents a dual threat: the obvious threat from the
dominant caucus of the existent of the party of order, but more
dangerously, an additional threat from the caucus of the false critics.

\section{Imposing Normalcy}


Normalcy is what we have today—the regime of work, gender, money,
capital, the state, racism, \emph{ad nauseum}. The party of order imposes and
maintains normalcy by keeping our class dependent upon its functioning.
If,
as \href{https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/}{\emph{The
Communist Manifesto}} proclaims, the workers of the world have
nothing to lose but their chains, why do we cling so hard to them? The
prospect of our chains loosening opens us to immense risk because
normalcy renders us dependent.


We all have material interests in maintaining normalcy and much to lose
from its rupture. This dependence on normalcy constrains many from
becoming active pro-revolutionaries. My own disabilities, for example,
tie me to normalcy, forcing me to have a material interest in the
stability and predictability of medicine and healthcare. Millions of
people and their families likewise have similar material interests that
ties them to normalcy. Even something as basic as access to food can be
disrupted by the interruption of normalcy. Such dependence on normalcy
constrains us in what we can do.


Under these conditions, we can talk of revolution and insurrection all
we like, but any act of violence against the party of order means
risking harsh repression. Those \emph{partisanos} who cling to illegality and
illegibility find refuge in
the \href{https://bandilangitim.xyz/library/simoun-magsalin-rebel-peripheries-en}{rebel
peripheries}. On the margins of society, they cannot intervene in the
heat of the class struggle, and must instead strive for revolution from
their peripheries.


Those outside the rebel peripheries operating where the imposition of
normalcy is most coherent often find that they can still do some good
work through the framework of legalism. Legalism pushes the left and
anarchists towards
“\href{https://freedomnews.org.uk/2025/08/04/notes-from-commonwealth-avenue/}{pragmatic
pacifism}.” As pro-revolutionaries, we refuse to affirm pacifism as a
principle of the class struggle, yet we find we must be pragmatic in our
relationship to violence, and even in the extent to which we publicly
endorse it. This is why, when we march, the leaders of marches must meet
with the police to negotiate time and space for their protest,
regardless of permits.\footnote{In the Philippines, \href{https://www.respicio.ph/commentaries/legal-requirements-for-public-assemblies-and-protest-marches-in-the-philippines}{permits are required for most protests}.} Even
without protest permits, the police understand that informal allowances
for such illegal assemblies are pragmatic in the long term. This
negotiation is part and parcel of the imposition of normalcy. If we
don’t negotiate, we risk repression that will drain vital resources that
will have to go towards prisoner support, driving away those with lower
appetites for risk, and (perhaps most importantly) being identified as
an enemy of order at a time of a lull and retreat in the class struggle.
This is not a value judgment: \emph{it is merely the reality of normalcy}.


Outside the milieu of leftists, militants, and anarchists, normalcy
takes the form of \emph{mass apolitical passivity}.\footnote{This discussion on apolitical passivity (which I term “apolicity” elsewhere) is also an intervention into the discussion in the Philippines about the notion that working-class people are “apolitical” and “passive,” which reduces individual agency to a \emph{choice} rather than recognizing that individuals orient themelves in the context of their material and ideological conditions.} Many
a Marxist would cite ideology or hegemony to explain this—yet beyond the
ways that commodity relations obscure and alienate the source of the
power of our class, our class is not made of sheep, nor are we passive
recipients of burgis\footnote{“Burgis” is a Filipinism for “bourgeois,” and “burgesya” is a Filipinism for “bourgeoisie.”} ideology.
Nor is this merely a matter of disinterest in politics. People know the
world is fucked. This condition of mass apolitical passivity is not
merely ideological, but \emph{material}. Being apolitical is not so much a
choice as a condition—the material and ideological imposition of
normalcy. Reformers, activists, militants, and pro-revolutionaries
establish themselves as such by overcoming the particular material and
ideological limits that this condition imposes. But even overcoming
these limits does not necessarily mean that one can overcome normalcy
itself—hence the necessity of pragmatic pacifism.


Through pragmatic pacifism, reformers and leftists can negotiate their
position within normalcy and the party of order. This is how the
struggle for reform galvanizes many to overcome their passivity. Circles
of militants become movements, movements become political parties and
NGOs, and political parties run for election while NGOs support reform,
and—if all goes well—these parties and NGOs win reforms for their mass
bases. This process of reform legitimizes these leftists and ties them
to the reigning order. To remain legitimate, they must remain within the
bounds of the law, and to do so, they must continue to be pragmatically
pacifist. This is how the legal and legitimate left establish themselves
as false critics to the party of order, as the
“\href{http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1k5317j.6}{permitted left}” and
left wing of capital.\footnote{Taken from “\emph{izquierda permitida}” (permitted left) discourse used in Bolivia to \href{https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.15238519.6}{describe the transformation} of MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo) and other ruling left electoral parties from being a radical left (\emph{izquierda radical}) to a “permitted left” (\emph{izquierda permitida}).}


To retain this status, it often becomes necessary to denounce the party
of anarchy and engage in the black scare.

\section{Organized Disorganization}


The party of anarchy has constituted itself many times over the
centuries of the modern era, from the Reformation to the great
revolutions in England, America, France, Russia, Germany, China, and
elsewhere. Over the past decade, we have seen it emerge in
the \href{https://crimethinc.com/2018/12/14/the-yellow-vest-movement-showdown-with-the-state-reports-from-the-clashes-in-paris-around-france-and-across-europe}{Yellow
Vest movement} in France,
in \href{https://crimethinc.com/2019/09/20/three-months-of-insurrection-an-anarchist-collective-in-hong-kong-appraises-the-achievements-and-limits-of-the-revolt}{Hong
Kong}, in
the \href{https://crimethinc.com/2020/06/17/snapshots-from-the-uprising-accounts-from-three-weeks-of-countrywide-revolt}{George
Floyd Uprising} in the United States, and most recently in
Bangladesh, \href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/04/voices-from-the-uprising-in-indonesia-affan-kurniawan-lives-on-in-the-streets}{Indonesia}, \href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/22/nepali-anarchists-on-the-toppling-of-the-government-an-interview-with-black-book-distro}{Nepal},
Madagascar, and here in the Philippines.


Yet the party of anarchy is dissolved through the imposition of
disorganization, by churches, liberals, self-appointed vanguards, the
permitted left, social democracy, and other factions within the caucus
of the false critics. In the People Power Revolution of 1986 (EDSA
Uno), \href{https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2022-02/philippines-bishops-people-power-revolution-anniversary-election.html}{the
church} and
the \href{https://www.edsarevolution.com/chronology/beforeedsa.php}{liberal
oligarchs} led the Filipino workers to support the \emph{kudeta} plotters
and install the liberal oligarch Cory Aquino as president. In the events
of May 1968 in Paris, the Communist Party of France and several other
left institutions demobilized the workers and radical students. In the
Iranian revolution, the clerics undermined the \emph{shura} councils of the
working class until the Ayatollah was able to consolidate power. In
Poland, liberals who wanted to negotiate a place within the Polish state
apparatus undermined the self-organization of workers in Solidarność. In
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong himself rushed to
co-opt and demobilize the very forces he unleashed to regain and retain
control over the Party-state.


The caucus of the false critics is fearful of mass spontaneity and
self-directed activity, rushing to co-opt and demobilize the party of
anarchy in order to arrange
the \href{https://www.autistici.org/tridnivalka/phs-clarifications-on-class-war-and-proletarian-internationalism-in-the-current-context-of-imperialist-war-and-revolts/}{resumption
of normalcy under their rising caucus}. Politicians target the party
of anarchy so that the caucus of the false critics can be reconstituted
as the new caucus of the existent and ultimately reconstitute the party
of order.


The logic of this organized disorganization is the crystallization of
legality and legitimacy as \emph{tamang proseso}. Literally meaning “correct
process” or “due process,” \emph{tamang proseso} is invoked in the
Philippines as the “right way” or a “legitimate way” to do things,
usually in the context of engaging with bureaucracy or procedure. This
affirmation of legality and legitimacy permeates all under normalcy,
even outside the reach of the state’s law, police, and courts. Harm, for
example, has to be \emph{demonstrated} and \emph{proven}, if not in a court of
law, then via the adjudication of peers. According to the apostles
of \emph{tamang proseso}, “both sides” have to be heard—and this obscures the
inherent power relations, whether they be the gender dynamics of rape
culture or the hegemony of Israel and Zionism over Palestine before
October 7.


Even in civil war, there must be \emph{tamang proseso}, with guerrillas
both \href{https://peace.gov.ph/cpp-npa-ndf/introduction/}{communist} and \href{https://peace.gov.ph/2025/10/bangsamoro-peace-process-remains-strong-advances-under-marcos-administration/}{Bangsamoro} bowing
to the legality and legitimacy of the peace table. The negotiations at
the peace table fulfill two functions. First, they represent the
negotiated merger and legitimation of a faction as it ascends into the
party of order. Second, they serve to demobilize the force of arms of
their own faction and delegitimize any participants in the struggle who
refuse to accept the compromise. In this context, \emph{tamang
proseso} suggests that there are only two routes to reform: negotiated
integration into the party of order, or armed struggle for the purpose
of negotiated integration into the party of order. The possibilities of
social insurrection, rupture, revolution—much less anarchy and
communization—are excluded altogether.


\emph{Tamang proseso} is the “correct” and “legitimate” way of doing protest,
organizing, and politics. It is the \emph{mediation} and \emph{management} of the
energies that would otherwise have cohered into the grand party of
anarchy and communism. The week after the events of
9\Slash{}21, \href{https://crimethinc.com/2022/07/14/deserting-the-image-factory-on-the-2022-philippine-elections-anarchist-strategies-amid-the-dying-liberal-status-quo}{former
presidential candidate} and outspoken socialist Ka Leody de Guzman
released
a \href{https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story\_fbid=1412146490919166\&id=100063714849748\&\_rdr}{solidarity
statement} affirming the legitimacy of the anger, yet calling for the
recruitment of disaffected urban poor into his particular tendency of
organizations. Most notably, this statement implied a dichotomy between
the organized and the supposedly not-organized—or, to be more precise,
those organized under \emph{their} command and those organized outside it.
Never mind that the direct action against the police forces took
place \emph{outside} the command of legitimate left parties, while all
parties at Luneta and Mendiola did not intervene to elevate the riot
into an insurrection.


Even the Maoist insurgency of the Communist Party of the Philippines–New
People’s Army (CPP-NPA) is structured within \emph{tamang proseso,} despite
the overt illegality of their insurgency.
To \href{https://bandilangitim.xyz/library/simoun-magsalin-rebel-peripheries-en}{\emph{mamundok}} (go
up the mountain) and join the guerrillas is seen as the “highest form of
struggle” within the Maoist milieu. To criticize the brave guerrilla is
cowardice—what have \emph{you} sacrificed that gives you the right to
critique them? If they are fighting a guerrilla war, \emph{then they must be
right!} Never mind that the funneling of committed militants
to \emph{mamundok} drains the cities of cadres who could have intervened in
the class struggle (setting aside, for now, the problems with Stalinist
interventionalism).


\emph{Argumentum ad guerrilla}, or the appeal to the guerrilla, frames
ideological issues as beyond question because the guerrilla are making a
costly, sometimes ultimate, sacrifice. This cult of action takes for
granted that the correctness of a strategy can be proven through
dramatic deeds and mass recruitment. Yet conservative forces such as
Daesh also wage such guerrilla wars—shall we consider them correct
because they managed to establish the so-called “Islamic State”?
The \emph{argumentum ad guerrilla} is the other side of pragmatic pacifism:
the fetishism of “revolutionary” violence is the inevitable reaction to
the timidity of such pragmatism.


It is this \emph{argumentum ad guerrilla} that constrains the choices of
those who desire social change to a choice between reformism and \emph{armed
reformism}, between social democracy and social \emph{democracy out of the
barrel of a gun}. Only these options fall within the boundaries
of \emph{tamang proseso}. But when we conceive of revolution merely as one
apparatus against another, the notion of class power constituted for the
abolition of all classes disappears.


Consequently, while the Communist Party of the Philippines recognized
the events at Mendiola
as \href{https://philippinerevolution.nu/statements/historical-significance-of-the-september-21-protests-and-prospects-beyond}{legitimate
albeit badly channeled violence}, they called for
these \emph{partisanos} of anarchy to be funneled into its New People’s Army.
Similarly, the legal and legitimate left called for the recruitment of
the angry \emph{partisanos} and \emph{insurrectos} into their organization—simply
to build their membership. The idea that the solution to our woes is to
“organize”—or even to “\emph{mamundok}“—is the slightly more radical
equivalent of the liberal mantra that the solution is “to vote.” The
outcome is the same: the demobilization and dissolution of the party of
anarchy and the subordination of its alumni to some apparatus of the
caucus of the false critics—mediation, management, and integration into
political life.

\section{Anti-Politics against \emph{Tamang Proseso}}


Political life and its notions of legality, legitimacy, and \emph{tamang
proseso} is the very lifeblood of normalcy. Negotiation for reforms or
for a place within the hierarchy of normalcy is managed and mediated by
political life. The party of anarchy, as a party outside all integrated
political life, is
resolutely \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pura-acracia}{\emph{anti-political}}.
As such, the party of anarchy \emph{must} be red-tagged, black-tagged, and
subjected to the cruelest black scare \emph{because it is through the
anti-political that the party of anarchy acts outside the bounds of
legality and legitimacy, as it is the greatest threat to normalcy}. The
social insurrection and revolution abolish legitimacy, that ideology of
hierarchy and class society.


In this sense, the black scare takes place on three levels, all of which
are intended to demobilize the party of anarchy. We have already
discussed the first two levels. The first is \emph{repressive}: the use of
force to suppress the party of anarchy and in some cases
opportunistically repress the caucus of the false critics as well. The
second level is \emph{mediative}: having dissolved the party of anarchy, to
integrate its alumni into the caucus of the false critics under the
general management of political life.\footnote{Compare with Phil A. Neel’s notion of an “anti-party” in his works such as “\href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/06/30/\%5Bhttps://illwill.com/theory-of-the-party\%5D\%28https://illwill.com/theory-of-the-party\%29}{Theory of the Party}.”} The
third level of the black scare is \emph{reimpositive}: the restoration,
resumption, and reimposition of normalcy under the old or new party of
order. This \emph{reimpositive} aspect of the black scare is the most
insidious, for it emerges as a consequence of fear of anarchy on the
part of the party of anarchy itself, which loses its coherence when the
party fails to overcome the limits of insurrection.


The \emph{repressive} black scare is the task of the party of order,
specifically under the dominant caucus of the existent.
The \emph{mediative} black scare is the task of the caucus of the false
critics through their two-line struggle to become the dominant caucus.
The \emph{reimpositive} black scare emerges from within \emph{the party of anarchy
themselves,} as a consequence of the real material and ideological
limits to the insurrection, limits that the \emph{insurrectos} must overcome
if they are to transform an insurrection into a social revolution that
engulfs the whole world.


\emph{Tamang proseso} is the motor of the imposition and reimposition of
normalcy. Against the \emph{reimpositive} black scare, the \emph{insurrectos} must
struggle against the very power to legitimize, developing an
anti-politics that rejects even (or especially) the democratic form and
the legitimacy and citizenship it implies.


Aside from the obvious repressive function of policing deployed against
our class and the party of anarchy, policing serves the \emph{tamang
proseso}. The flood control scandals in the Philippines are being
investigated by the
Marcos-formed \href{https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/philippines-creates-independent-panel-to-probe-infrastructure-corruption/}{Independent
Commission for Infrastructure} (ICI). Such mechanisms affirm the
legitimacy of the party of order. The state’s apparatus for policing
corruption persuades citizens that the system works. This is how the
state manages class antagonisms. That is the ultimate limitation of
corruption discourse, via which citizens are reproduced and reaffirmed
as such with all the passivity that implies under the regime of
democracy. The abolition of legitimacy and \emph{tamang proseso} starts with
the failure of this discourse, the seeds of which can remain dormant for
decades; there has been abject wanton corruption for a very long time,
but its contradictions did not reach a breaking point until September
2025.


The party of order proactively carries out the mediation and management
of political life to prevent the party of anarchy from cohering. At
crucial turning points within burgis politics, such as political
revolutions or major elections, the reconfiguration of the caucuses and
sub-factions of the party of order creates new avenues for mediating and
managing political life. The People Power Revolution and the EDSA
Republic brought segments of the Philippine left into engagement with
the ruling liberal oligarchy. Consequently,
the \href{https://rightsreport.org/2026/04/13/sicogon-ayala/}{laundering
of land grabbing} under the administration of Noynoy “PNoy” Aquino
(2010–2016) by those who called themselves popular democrats led to mass
disillusionment, which contributed to the election of Rodrigo Duterte in
2016. In Nepal, the dissolution of the people’s governments
by \href{http://site.ebrary.com/id/10272432}{Prachanda’s decree} and
Prachanda’s own ascension to the premiership of Nepal led to the
integration of his and other communist parties of Nepal into the caucus
of the existent, while the official Maoists enriched themselves. In
Indonesia, the contradictions and antagonisms that remained from the
Reformasi gave way to the restoration of a son of the New Order through
the election of Prabowo Subianto.\footnote{Almost literally so, since Prabowo is the son-in-law of Suharto, the old dictator of the New Order period, and Prabowo is an advocate of a return to \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-neo-orba-the-rise-of-civil-military-dictatorship-in-indonesia}{New Order-style of governance}.}


The party of anarchy coheres as the abject failure of \emph{tamang
proseso} becomes harder and harder to ignore. More and more become
disillusioned, not only with the \emph{tamang proseso} of the existent, but
also of its false critics. Like the \emph{church invisible} (a church of
elect or future converts known only to the true believers of Christ),
the party of anarchy first coheres as a \emph{party invisible,} as affinities
form between militants who recognize each other as elect but do not yet
even know they are comrades and \emph{kasamas} in struggle. Then, eventually,
the pressure ruptures the dam. The police murder
of \href{https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dj9w306wzo}{Affan
Kurniawan} launched the August–September insurrections in Indonesia;
the banning of Nepali social media (and therefore of criticism) launched
the September 2025 insurrection in Nepal; and the long-simmering
discontent from the flood-control scandals combined with the high morale
from seeing insurrections elsewhere inspired the battle at Mendiola on
September 21 in the Philippines. The failure to mediate and manage
brought together the party of anarchy in all of these countries.


Marches overcome the limits of pragmatic pacifism and escalated into
individual acts of illegalism. Acts of individual illegalism overcome
the limits that block the way to collective acts of illegalism, and the
riots of collective illegalism give rise to mass illegalism, then to
insurrection, revolution, communization, and the unification of
humanity. Each level of escalation must overcome its particular limits.


Fundamentally, insurrection and revolution open the horizons to
possibilities beyond the world we currently inhabit. Once we catch a
glimpse of the possibilities beyond, why should we remain where we are?
To remake what has been unmade? Yet our class does not make that choice,
or if we have had to, we chose so with grief in our hearts as the
ultimate limits of the insurrection broke up the party of anarchy.

\section{\emph{Tamang Proseso} against the Party of Anarchy}


\emph{Reaction is inevitable. Revolution is not.} As the party of anarchy
coheres as a consequence of the failure of politics, pro-revolutionaries
struggle to reconfigure themselves in relation to the party of anarchy.
The repression from the party of order and mediation from the caucus of
the false critics are not the only threats. The reimposition of normalcy
becomes inevitable when \emph{insurrectos} fail to communize social life
within the insurrection and are unable to escalate towards
revolutionizing the whole world.


There will not be an invisible hand of the insurrection like there is an
invisible hand of the market—or at least, not initially. Market forces
are driven by the invisible hand of the totalizing logic of capital. In
contrast, the logic of the insurrection emerges embryonically, as a
seedling in an entire hostile ecology. Workers who
become \emph{insurrectos} and \emph{partisanos} of anarchy stand to lose much by
breaking with normalcy. Yet what we \emph{gain} through that insurrectionary
logic can reorganize social life during the rupture. That
insurrectionary logic must fight to the death against the totalizing
logic of capital, or else be smothered in counterrevolution. This is
where the pro-revolutionaries must intervene to nurture and cultivate
that seedling of insurrectionary logic of anarchy and communism. This is
where revolution creates the revolutionaries.


In Indonesia, the insurrection led to mass looting and mass arson of
government buildings. Pro-revolutionaries convened parliaments of the
streets, creating spaces for \emph{insurrectos} to talk revolution. Yet they
did not seize the arms before burning the police armories. In the end,
the \emph{insurrectos} could not defend themselves, their campuses, and their
homes from goons from the party of order or opportunist looters and
rapists. The insurrection did not expand into the countryside, nor did
pro-revolutionaries link the different sites of insurrection together in
a meaningful way. With neither the means to defend nor feed themselves,
the \emph{insurrectos} across the vast archipelago arrived at the same
calculus with little coordination: \emph{to pacify themselves}, to continue
to mobilize but in a non-violent manner, to appeal for a compromise with
the party of order. Self-pacification was driven by fear of reaction and
counterrevolution. Yet the reaction was inevitable regardless. It was
Prabowo’s reaction that became the vanguard for the global black scare.


Many in Indonesia who didn’t intervene or intervened only in a defensive
manner found themselves stuck waiting for conditions to ripen, for the
insurrection to develop into a feasible scenario for revolutionary
intervention. Such \emph{attentisme,} a “wait-and-see attitude,” is yet
another form of \emph{tamang proseso}—as if the proper order of operations is
to consolidate a revolutionary organization \emph{before} a revolution. In
fact, ideal conditions do not exist, but opportunities do, and
opportunities for revolution arise regardless of readiness or level of
organization. \emph{Attentisme} traps pro-revolutionaries in an endless loop
of waiting for ideal conditions, endlessly organizing and building the
movement—patience for patience’s sake. But our class is not weak because
it is
disorganized, \href{https://www.autistici.org/tridnivalka/phs-flyer-questions-for-the-2025-national-strike-in-ecuador/}{\emph{our
class is disorganized because it is weak}}. Patience and prudence
were not rewarded at all, for the reaction was inevitable once the
horizon for revolutionary action closed.


In Nepal, the \emph{insurrectos} armed themselves as they burned down the old
order. The almost-total integration of the various official communist
parties into the party of order ensured that virtually no organized
pro-revolutionary force (or at least no \emph{legible} force) intervened in
the insurrection. Yet the \emph{insurrectos} seized arms as they burned down
the government, overcoming a crucial limit that the \emph{insurrectos} in
Indonesia had not overcome.


After the dust settled, it was alleged by many,
including \href{https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/world/asia/nepal-protests-genz-arson.html}{\emph{The
New York Times}}, that a shadowy conspiracy had organized the mass
arson. In political revolutions, like the one that occurred in EDSA Uno
in 1986, the most organized and coherent political forces have the
legality and legitimacy to take state power.\footnote{In EDSA Uno, this force was the liberal-democratic oligarchy organized by the Church and the political-dynastic opposition to the dictatorship. The Communist Party of the Philippines failed to intervene at this crucial moment and lost the momentum for insurrection in what is now called as the “boycott error,” now understood by ideologues as a problem of “ultraleftism.”} Had
a conspiracy to commit mass arson existed on the scale that many
implied, that conspiracy would have been powerful enough
to \emph{seize} state power directly. Yet no such \emph{kudeta} took power, nor
did a Bakuninist-Tiqqunist invisible collective dictatorship prevent the
resumption of normalcy. Nor did General Ashok Raj Sigdel use the moment
to brazenly impose armed rule or restore the monarchy as many feared
might occur. In the absence of a legitimate civilian government, nothing
could have stopped Sigdel, not even the party of anarchy, which had
failed to overcome particular limits and was in retreat.


But while the party of anarchy in Nepal was able to pass from individual
acts of illegalism to mass collective acts of illegalism, it failed to
transcend the limits of legalism and legitimacy itself. Thus, when
Sigdel and the army restored legality, law, and order, the army offered
to confer legitimacy upon the
infamous \href{https://kathmandupost.com/politics/2025/09/29/how-nepal-s-enraged-gen-z-turned-discord-into-a-political-arena}{Discord
election}. Simultaneously, the \emph{de facto} military government used
the black scare to suppress the party of anarchy,
shooting \emph{partisanos} in the streets. The anti-political revolution
became deeply untenable. \emph{How could it be otherwise?}


Anti-politics may burn down the parliaments and the great mansions of
the official Maoists, but how are \emph{insurrectos} supposed to burn down
the entire state apparatus without feeding themselves? Looting is only a
temporary stop-gap solution, after all. Both Vladimir Lenin and Peter
Kropotkin understood (and agreed with Karl Marx) that for the revolution
to survive, it must feed itself, overcoming the distinctions between
town and country. For Lenin, the solution was the great alliance between
the proletariat (and the state) and the peasantry. For Kropotkin, it was
free exchange between urban and rural workers. When the Bolsheviks could
no longer appease and persuade the peasantry to participate in their
class alliance, they resorted to open coercion, thereby triggering
countless revolts by so-called “green armies.” The party of
anarchy—whose primary weapons are not guns and force of arms, but
the \href{https://www.endnotes.org.uk/issues/issue-1/gilles-dauve-when-insurrections-die\#:\%7E:text=A\%20communist\%20revolution\%20will\%20never\%20resemble\%20a\%20slaughter\%3A\%20not\%20from\%20any\%20nonviolent\%20principle\%2C\%20but\%20because\%20revolution\%20subverts\%20more\%20\%28soldiers\%20included\%29\%20than\%20it\%20actually\%20destroys.}{subversion
of society} through
the \href{https://libcom.org/article/self-organisation-first-act-revolution-it-then-becomes-obstacle-which-revolution-has}{“suicidal”
rejection} of themselves as men, as citizens, as workers—have no such
army to coerce the extraction of food. Many anarchists and communists
suggest that the revolution can only succeed only when it is
international in character. They are correct—but how can revolution
become international if cannot overcome the nearer divisions between
town and country?


So while normalcy was interrupted, as a consequence of the
insurrection’s failure to sustain and socially reproduce
itself, \emph{insurrectos} found themselves with little choice but to seek a
political solution in the restoration of the party of order. Sigdel and
the army, functioning as a bastion of law and legitimacy, gracefully
conferred legitimacy upon
the \href{https://www.himalayanherald.com/discord-picks-a-prime-minister-how-nepals-gen-z-rewrote-the-rules-of-democracy/}{greatest
Discord poll} the world has ever seen yet. \emph{Insurrectos} found
themselves satisfied with being citizens again, and normalcy returned,
along with all the social reproduction that implies.


Many of the prisoners who escaped in the insurrection in Nepal, finding
their squalid cells burned to ash,
dutifully \href{https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/nepal-police-re-arrest-3723-inmates-who-escaped-jail-during-gen-z-protests-2787250-2025-09-14}{reported
to other squalid cells elsewhere}, for legality within the prison
cell was preferable to a life of fugitivity under the weight of the
party of order. The prison, including the prison that makes up the whole
of society today, can only be abolished as a consequence of the
abolition of the law and legitimacy. Without those, how could it even be
conceivable to report back to prison? To the resumption of democracy and
the order it maintains? Normalcy \emph{will} be preferable to the harshest
reaction. Citizenship \emph{will} be preferable to uncertainty. And precisely
because compulsion under capitalism is the freedom to work or starve
(rather than the naked coercion of slavery or death), the grace
conferred to legitimize the greatest Discord election is a wholly
understandable choice. For the proletariat is revolutionary or nothing,
and they are not revolutionary precisely when they reproduce themselves
as
workers, \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/les-amis-du-potlatch-down-with-the-proletariat-long-live-communism}{\emph{as
proletariat}}\emph{,} as \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/proletarios-revolucionarios-the-self-abolition-of-the-proletariat-as-the-end-of-the-capitalist}{the
class of capital}, persuaded to continue being loyal citizens of the
party of order.


Without overcoming these particular limits—the \emph{reimpositive} black
scare, reaffirming \emph{tamang proseso}—things could not have turned out any
other way. A grand secret conspiracy to burn down the physical
manifestations of government is always insufficient—for the state, much
like capital, patriarchy, and other hierarchies, coheres not in
locations but in \emph{social relations}. A parliament can burn down, but its
legitimacy will remain intact. Reconstituted as citizens, the
former \emph{insurrectos} rebuilt the parliament on Discord. At that point,
under the ever-watchful eye of the Nepali armed forces, the choice was
clear.


Had we faced the same choices, would we be like
the \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish\_Maquis}{\emph{maquis}} who
continued the fight against Francisco Franco after the defeat of the
Spanish Revolution? Would we go on, like
the \href{https://libcom.org/article/sabate-llopart-francisco-el-quico-1915-1960}{Sabaté
brothers} who hid in the forests and mountains and persisted despite
the victory and consolidation of Spanish fascism? Individual acts of
illegalism, even small collective acts of
illegalism—and \emph{especially} such acts in the peripheries—rarely
challenge normalcy enough to inspire mass collective outbreaks of
illegalism like what we saw in Indonesia and Nepal.


Inevitably, normalcy is reimposed. This is the result of the material
and ideological limits that constrained the growth of the insurrection
and smothered its embryonic logic. \emph{Tamang proseso} triumphs, along with
all the legality and legitimacy it embodies. The black scare takes place
and \emph{insurrectos} become citizens, prisoners, fugitives, or
guerrillas—it matters little which as long as the party of order reigns
supreme. The false critics reconfigure themselves within the new
normalcy. The anti-politicized either become politicized or retreat back
into passivity. “God is in his
heaven. \href{https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Kingdom\_of\_Conscience}{Everything
is normal on Earth}.”

\section{Overcoming the Limits}


The emergence of the party of anarchy at Mendiola on September 21, 2025
revealed the impotence of all the factions of the left and post-left in
the Philippines, including this author. Even without a party conspiracy,
urban poor youth took action where many others could not. It is the
greatest irony that those involved \emph{with} party conspiracies (some of
which involve armed wings) remained limited to rebel peripheries or
pragmatic pacifism. Militants and cadres from National Democracy had
engaged in delimited acts of vandalism and light skirmishes with the
police at the beginning of September, but it was only weeks later, on
9\Slash{}21, that the so-called unorganized acted autonomously. In the
intervening weeks, between the beginning of September and 9\Slash{}21, the
permitted left shifted from limited violence to pragmatic pacifism,
while these direct actionists shifted from apolitical obscurity towards
openly-legible violence.


It is not a simple thing to demand of those who were present at Luneta
and Mendiola last September that they should have thrown themselves into
the fray of a riot in order to escalate it into an insurrection. Instead
of asking what those on the ground that day could have done differently,
we could ask—what would have been required to create a situation in
which they \emph{could} \emph{not have acted otherwise}? That is to say: what
constraints shaped what actions they could take? What material and
ideological limits prevented them from intervening to elevate the riot
beyond its limits?


The skirmishes and vandalism by National Democracy in September 4
involved militants who understood the risk and committed to it. At
Luneta and Mendiola, during the events of September 21, the composition
of the crowd was different. Many had less appetite for risk, and indeed,
were ordered to disperse by those who had convened the marches.


Legality has its uses. The National Democrats who marched under the
banners of the Makabayan bloc acted as the permitted left. Had they made
the decision to join the riots at Mendiola,
their \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025\_Philippine\_House\_of\_Representatives\_elections\#:\%7E:text=Some-\%2CMakabayan\%2CAll\%2C-Vacant}{seats
in congress} could have been forfeit. To lose their position within
normalcy would mean forfeiting their planned reforms. Again, this is not
necessarily to pass judgment on their inaction, nor to call their
socialist credentials into doubt, but to recognize the limits that
normalcy imposes us and to recognize when we have been tied to
preserving it.


\emph{Naming our demons is the first step towards exorcising them.} We cannot
overcome material and ideological limits that go unnamed or
unrecognized. Studying why insurrections failed, we can arm ourselves
with the knowledge of what to avoid. Intentionality is impossible
without cognizance. Our revolutionary forebears provided us with the
language to identify various limits: the division between town and
country; feeding the revolution, or
the \href{https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread}{\emph{Conquest
of Bread}}\emph{;} breaking with burgis ideology, whether that be
workerism, the affirmation of proletarian identity, citizenship,
legalism, or legitimacy; securing the logistics of healthcare and
medicine; overcoming various divisions of labor, especially the gendered
division of labor and social reproduction; defense and the military
question; accountability and safety; overcoming peripherality and
revolutionary isolation; overcoming ideological and sectarian divisions;
overcoming separations, identities, and bigotry in the working class;
expropriating the expropriators; dealing with the state; resolving the
“crisis of revolutionary leadership”; and many more.


The legitimacy of the party of order has its material basis in the
smooth reproduction of normalcy: simple things like the logistics of
food and medicine, keeping the lights on and the hospitals open, keeping
homes and dignities safe from violation. Legalism flows from this,
and \emph{tamang proseso} from that. Experiencing the insecurity of rupture
and insurrection, how else would one imagine engaging with the state
other than through the legitimate processes? To break with the party of
order, then, means to challenge the material basis of its legitimacy and
legality—for the logic of the insurrection to answer the hard questions
of how to overcome specific limits, communizing food, safety, and care.


Under normalcy, yes, we are pacifist because we are pragmatic. But when
does pacifism cease to be pragmatic? When the time comes, will our
pragmatic pacifism have become so deeply ingrained in us that it is no
longer pragmatic? Will we become so used to deferring to limits that we
miss the chance to transcend these limits? Our relationship to
pragmatism must never be raised to the level of a principle. Pragmatism
is not a “value” to uphold or defend, precisely because it
is \emph{merely} pragmatic. It is tautologically true that pragmatism is not
principle. Pragmatism itself becomes a material and ideological limit in
the insurrectionary process.


Previous revolutionaries have made a virtue of necessity and raised
pragmatic proposals to the realm of ideology. “We \emph{had} to do this” on
the grounds of contingency and pragmatism became “we \emph{have} to do this”
on the basis of principle. That is \emph{ideologization}. Many such cases
exist: secret police and concentration camps (whether Gulag or Laogai)
were justified as pragmatic in a given context, but now
pro-revolutionaries have ideologized these and raised them to principle,
arguing that the repressive functions of a revolution must necessarily
be carceral. Similar examples of ideologization can be found in the
revisionism of Eduard Bernstein, the vulgarization that is
socialism-in-one-country, the dogmatism of democratic centralism.
Ideologization is the legitimization of contingency becoming \emph{tamang
proseso}.


It is also not the case that the “revolution,” “anarchy,” or “communism”
will “solve” issues like the liberation of women—issues that some people
wish to put off addressing until after power is won or the burgesya is
defeated. This is because capitalism is an \emph{alienated system} built on
our own \emph{alienated agency}. Market forces and the totalizing logic of
the capitalist mode of production both structures our agency and depends
on it. It is in this sense that revolution, anarchy, and communism are
still conceived in capitalist terms, as \emph{alienated agency} rather than
the reclaiming of our own collective agency.


This is why revolution will not “solve” anything, nor will anarchy and
communism “eliminate” domination because \emph{we will be the ones in charge
of our own fate}. Revolution, anarchy, and communization are \emph{our agency
no longer separated from us}. The revolutionary process can and will
fail if \emph{we ourselves} fail to overcome the material and ideological
limits we face. The revolution will not “liberate” women; women and all
who are gendered must liberate themselves and abolish the gendered
division of labor and gender itself—to name a single example—or else the
revolution will degenerate. Rather than an invisible hand of the
insurrection, our own hands will be very much visible in revolution.
Consequently, we must have clarity on the mechanics of the material and
ideological aspects of each limit we confront, so that we can overcome
and surpass them.


It is often said that “the end justifies the means.” To this, we reply,
“\href{https://archive.org/details/latheofheaven0000ursu}{But what if
there never is an end? All we have is means},” to quote Ursula K. Le
Guin. The distance of the end we desire—nothing less than the full
revolutionizing and communization of society and the end of all forms of
domination—and the unimaginable gravity of what we are up against forces
us to consider that “all we have are means,” at least during periods of
normalcy.


If all we have are means, then our means ought to be
prefigurative\footnote{While I no longer believe in the theory of change that prefiguration and its adherents put forward, I still believe it has a place somehow, as suggested in the following paragraphs. This is not the place to expound on the subject in depth.} and
generative, helping us to develop agency, autonomy, and ability for
self-directed militancy. These tasks are not “revolutionary” in the
sense that they can trigger rupture, insurrection, or revolution by
themselves, nor achieve the ends we want during periods of normalcy.
Rather, they are revolutionary in that they can enable us to organize,
resist, fight, and build powers and capacities that will be of use in
insurrections and revolutionary situations. The fact that these
capacities were severely underdeveloped explains why the recent
insurrections in Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, and Madagascar ended
with the demobilization of the party of anarchy and the reimposition of
normalcy. In this sense, certain kinds of pragmatism—such as the
pragmatism of appealing to a different faction of the ruling class, as
occurred after 9\Slash{}21—are self-defeating, as they accustom us to
subordinating ourselves, deferring our desires, and appealing to power.


For the ends we want, \emph{maximalism} is in order—fighting for a “maximum
program,” for a maximum amount of change, for anarchy, communism, and
the end of all domination. Maximalism is a muscle that we must
continuously practice using. As means, maximalism allows us to
strengthen our capacities for thinking beyond the current moment. If the
ends we seek are not ambitious—if we merely call for reforms (reforms
from whom?), for accountability (accountability according to whom?),
for \href{https://politiko.com.ph/2025/11/21/bbm-sara-resign-artikulo-onse-pushes-creation-of-peoples-transition-council/politiko-lokal/}{vague
unities with a different section of the oligarchy}—then whatever
means we build will not be able to transcend the current moment. During
periods of normalcy, maximalism is a practice of political imagination
that challenges us to think beyond capitalism, the state, gender,
patriarchy, and hierarchy. When normalcy breaks down, it is the
clear-sightedness of maximalism that enables pro-revolutionaries to
resist the return to normalcy. In this sense, maximalism embodies one of
the demands of the French revolutionary episode of May 1968: “Be
realistic, demand the impossible.”


Alongside maximalism, we must
also \href{https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2026/06/17/read-this-if-our-task-is-daunting-and-overwhelming/}{cultivate \emph{bravery}}.
In the sense that it is used here, bravery is the means by which our
class becomes capable of participating in insurrections and revolutions.
Bravery is the impetus that overcomes the material and ideological
limits of pragmatic pacifism, that enables the party of anarchy to
cohere beyond a riot in order to precipitate a social insurrection.
Safety in an insurrection is obviously an illusion—it is not a dinner
party after all. But like a dinner party, an insurrection must be a time
and space for us to finally be ourselves—our \emph{rewilding},
our \emph{self-abolition} as proletarianized, alienated, gendered, and
separated beings.


Materially speaking, normalcy is legitimized is through our collective
dependence on its reproduction. Ideologically, this manifests as mass
apolitical passivity. The permitted left and the false critics
politicize members of our class by cultivating their bravery only to
channel it towards seeking meager reforms. Bravery enables our class to
demand more and more from the party of order. Bravery is also necessary
in escalation, enabling our class to break with the party of order and
the imposition of normalcy.


To raid an armory before burning a police station can carry greater
penalties than arson. What kind of bravery would be required to take up
arms at such a moment, rather than reveling in mere destruction, as in
Indonesia? And when the reaction inevitably comes, what kind of bravery
could enable our class-in-abolition to keep our arms raised against
opportunists and goons rather than surrendering them to the party of
order, as former \emph{partisanos} did in Nepal? The assault on our class is
what drives our class to yearn for the reimposition of normalcy for some
semblance of safety. Cultivating bravery also means keeping food
supplies and healthcare openly available while defending ourselves from
opportunists and reactionaries. Inevitably, \emph{insurrectos} will also have
to find the bravery to forego money and division of labor altogether.


This bravery has to be cultivated under normalcy. One deeply pervasive
constraint on bravery under normalcy is rape culture, which forces
countless women and queer people out of movements. Ableism and bigotry
also drive people away and break up the unities required for more
bravery. Will it be \emph{our} insurrection, the unleashing of \emph{our} agency,
if it cannot include us dancing in it?


Similarly, when militants and \emph{insurrectos} become caught up in the
repressive black scare, it is crucial to support them, lest the bravery
of all shall be constrained if we see that we will not be supported when
reaction comes. Likewise, the fight for carceral abolition, for
defunding the police and decarcerating prisoners,
is \href{https://cosmonautmag.com/2025/02/why-socialists-must-be-abolitionists-challenging-carcerality-in-socialist-spaces/}{essential
to cultivating the bravery of our class}.


A similar capacity for bravery is required in food and goods. It is
abundantly clear that solidarity economies and alternative institutional
arrangements (so-called dual power) cannot and will not challenge
normalcy nor overcome the totalizing logic of capital. But the partial
manner of these alternative lifeways can still provide us bravery and
foundations for generalization under a revolution. Our intentionality in
such matters, then, requires us to be cognizant of the limits of what we
can do under normalcy.


Insurrection \emph{will} come again, just as it has ebbed and flowed since
even before the Reformation. Intentionality, maximalism, and bravery
will be required for the next to come.

\section{The Coming Black Scare}


We are in a state of world war—from
the \href{https://crimethinc.com/2022/09/26/russia-mobilization-and-resistance-can-the-russian-anti-war-movement-rise-to-the-challenge}{Russian
war on Ukraine} to the Israeli genocide
in \href{https://crimethinc.com/2024/10/03/ya-ghazze-habibti-gaza-my-love-understanding-the-genocide-in-palestine}{Gaza} and
the ethnic cleansing in Palestine
and \href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/05/14/israels-long-war-on-lebanon-a-joint-history-of-the-zionist-and-lebanese-entities}{Lebanon},
the US-Israeli war
on \href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/03/19/iran-between-repression-co-optation-and-war-three-waves-of-counterrevolution}{Iran},
the Gulf, the Horn of Africa, the conflicts in the Sahel, the civil war
in \href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/02/10/five-years-of-coup-burmese-anarchists-within-and-without-the-revolution-an-interview}{Burma} and
West Papua, and the threat of war on Taiwan and the Southeast Asian sea.
All of the sides in all of these conflicts are united on the black
scare. In the war on Iran, we have seen a new mode of imperial
counterinsurgency, in which the
imperialists \href{https://x.com/TariqAli\_News/status/2027717241454686454}{preemptively
bomb revolutionary Iranians} to ensure that a revolutionary movement
cannot cohere. World war signals two possibilities ahead: either the
opportunity for rupture and insurrection, or an even more violent
imposition of normalcy throughout the world. All governments belong to
the same party of order, albeit as competing and even contending
factions and caucuses. Our class is not of the party of order; ours is
the party of anarchy to come.


As partisans of the party of order organize
international \href{https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-counterterror-officials-plan-antifa-summit-sources-say-2026-03-31/}{anti-antifa
conferences} and intensify the black scare, our task as
pro-revolutionaries is to recognize our role in the struggle ahead.
Despite the deficiencies of military analogy, one reference might still
be useful. In military theory, the vanguard is not the commander of the
forces in a field, but the unit that scouts ahead to meet the enemy,
delay them, and lay the groundwork for the main forces to advance. In
this analogy, the party of anarchy is that main force, but we can open
the way by scouting the metaphorical terrain. Laying down the groundwork
means cultivating the bravery we all need. But the class struggle is not
a war between fronts or apparatuses; it is the proletariat struggling to
abolish their roles as proletarians, as men, and women, as whatever
identities normalcy imposed upon us.


As the current world war intensifies, internationalism will be crucial.
Yet, as the insurrections of 2025 have shown, if the \emph{insurrectos} and
pro-revolutionaries have been unable to interlink struggles between town
and country—or even to feed themselves—how much more difficult would it
be to interlink struggles across \emph{de jure} borders and states? It is in
bridging and partially uniting these various separations and peripheries
that pro-revolutionaries can be most effective during periods of
normalcy.
“\href{https://illwill.com/print/the-invisible-committee-to-our-friends}{It’s
not up to the rebels to learn to speak anarchist; it’s up to the
anarchists to become polyglot}.” It is our task to speak different
languages of struggle and translate these into one another. It is
in \emph{our struggles interlinked} that the party of anarchy coheres, from
the forging of solidarities before and during the insurrection. The
grand unification of various peripheries cannot be done under normalcy,
but the intention and bravery to pave the way for it may be possible, so
long as we do not succumb to \emph{attentisme}.


Here in the Philippines, the situation is critical. There may not be
enough electricity to power the most economically productive parts of
the national grid in this summer. Summer is expected to be particularly
brutal as it is an El Niño season, so droughts, crop failure, and heat
strokes may be common. Adding in a fertilizer and fuel oil crisis, the
coming crisis could signal a breakdown of normalcy on a larger scale
than the COVID-19 pandemic. The black scare in response to the events of
9\Slash{}21 is still ongoing, with many of those detained that day still facing
charges. Yet the party of anarchy can still cohere again. If the answers
remain uncertain, we can at least be certain which questions we must
ask.


I cannot presume to prescribe a mode of organization, whether formal or
informal, to meet the tasks of cohering the party of anarchy at a point
of insurrection. To argue that we must understand the black scare and
other material and ideological limits is not necessarily to argue for
formal or informal models of organization.\footnote{Neither is informalism an inherently superior mode of organization in counterrevolutionary times. We have seen in the Philippines how informalist organization can constrain bravery no less than transmisogyny or manarchism. The dichotomy of formalism versus informalism (as also framed as pro-organizationalism versus anti-organizationalism) is a false dichtotomy. People have repeatedly raised the point against Murray Bookchin that so-called lifestylists (his referred term for informalists\Slash{}anti-organizationalists) still take part in formal organizations.} Here,
we have simply reviewed what it will require to overcome the particular
limits we have encountered. How to build the organization to fulfill
those tasks without being subsumed into normalcy again is up to the
coming insurrections.


The task of overcoming limits is one that all pro-revolutionaries must
undertake as the self-conscious elect of the \emph{party invisible.} As
pro-revolutionaries, we can see this \emph{party invisible}, the coming party
of anarchy, everywhere we look—the jeepney \emph{chupers},
the \emph{mambubukid}, \emph{kadamay}, \emph{kamanggagawa}, \emph{kababaihan}, \emph{kabaklahan},
and \emph{kasama}.


All under heaven is in chaos; the situation is excellent for anarchy.

\section{Acknowledgments}


\emph{All writing is autobiographical, more so with political theory.
Dedicated to lovers, comrades, kasamasa, kaoomchies, and kaibigan—to all
who persist. D—, K—, P—, T—, H—, N—, H—, I—, R—, H—, I—, A—, A—, M—, R—,
B—, J—, K—, P—, A—, M—, A—, P—, L—, G—, J—, I—, M—, A—, A—, V—, A—, 1—,
R—, R—, PM, ISE, BI, TDP, A!, PS, MF, and many more.}

\section{Further Reading}


On the wave of uprisings that spread from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, then
from Indonesia to Nepal, Madagascar, Morocco, Peru, and elsewhere:


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2022/09/06/sri-lanka-it-takes-a-whole-village-gota-go-gama-what-we-learned-in-the-occupation-movement}{Sri
Lanka: It Takes a Whole Village}!—Gota Go Gama: What We Learned in
the Occupation Movement



\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/04/voices-from-the-uprising-in-indonesia-affan-kurniawan-lives-on-in-the-streets}{Voices
from the Uprising in Indonesia}—Affan Kurniawan Lives on in the
Streets



\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/22/nepali-anarchists-on-the-toppling-of-the-government-an-interview-with-black-book-distro}{Nepali
Anarchists on the Toppling of the Government}—An Interview with
Black Book Distro



\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2025/09/29/in-the-afterglow-of-revolution-a-new-nepal-emerges-gen-z-fights-against-corruption-developing-political-consciousness}{In
the Afterglow of Revolution, a New Nepal Emerges}—Fighting against
Corruption, “Gen Z” Develops Political Consciousness



\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/06/30/\%5Bhttps://crimethinc.com/2025/10/13/morocco-the-gen-z-212-uprising-an-interview}{Morocco:
The Gen Z 212 Uprising}—An Interview




\end{itemize}

More material on the Philippines:


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2020/07/19/the-new-terror-bill-in-the-philippines-another-front-in-the-worldwide-struggle-against-tyranny}{The
New Terror Bill in the Philippines}—Another Front in the Worldwide
Struggle against Tyranny



\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2022/07/14/deserting-the-image-factory-on-the-2022-philippine-elections-anarchist-strategies-amid-the-dying-liberal-status-quo}{Deserting
the Image Factory}—On the 2022 Philippine Elections Anarchist
Strategies amid the Dying Liberal Status Quo



\item\relax 
\href{https://crimethinc.com/2020/12/29/kill-your-heroes-a-filipino-anarchist-discussion-about-national-heroes}{Kill
Your Heroes}—A Filipino Anarchist Discussion about National Heroes




\end{itemize}








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Simoun Magsalin

The Black Scare and the Party of Anarchy

Notes from the Philippines on the Second Battle of Mendiola

2026-06-30


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retrieved on 2026-07-02 from \href{https://crimethinc.com/2026/06/30/the-black-scare-and-the-party-of-anarchy-notes-from-the-philippines-on-the-second-battle-of-mendiola}{<crimethinc.com\Slash{}mendiola>}
   

       

       

       

       

       

       

   



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