raised fists, left & right

to my surprise, watching news video of the greenhills mass for jun lozada, in particular the singing of bayan ko, brought goose pimples. what a rare sight. the church-going middle-class with fists raised, many with great gusto, some self-consciously, and a few who just wouldn’t, or couldn’t, yet. oh, and one who flashed the L (laban) sign instead. never mind, they’ll get around to it, once they’re mad enough, and engaged enough, in the struggle for nation.

so is this a triumph for the communist left, that the raised fist has become the signal, too, of middle-class resistance? i think not. i think it’s mostly just the appeal of that palaban posture — it feels right (never mind that it’s left) and feels appropriate to the situation, as in dramatic and fraught with tension. ideologically, however, the middle-class is more rejectionist (RJ) than reaffirmative (RA) of joma sison, which is a great divide.

so how do we tell them apart, the true leftists from the bourgeois middle-class? i’m not sure about RJs, but certainly RAs raise left fists, burgis churchgoers raise the right.

Comments

  1. i’m not sure about RJs, but certainly RAs raise left fists, burgis churchgoers raise the right.

    Nice observation. Reminds me of the time I ran for student council positions under a ND campus political party from 2004-2006. We raised our left fists everytime UP Naming Mahal or the National Anthem was sung. The other groups who bothered to raise their fists at all raised the right.

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