UTRECHT – Yesterday the Jose Maria Sison Legacy Foundation successfully launched the  compilation, the Little Book on Fascism and How to Fight It at BAK Basecamp for Tactical  Imaginaries, Pauwstraat 13a, Utrecht, to a lively online and in-person audience. 

The program opened with Ka Julie de Lima, Jose Maria “Ka Joma” Sison’s life-long  comrade, collaborator, editor, and partner, reading from the foreword of the book, which  reminded the audience that while the current period is marked by worsening economic crises  of imperialism, which drive intensifying fascisation in both the imperialist core and the  neocolonies, these conditions are also ripe for revolutionary resurgence.  

The insights and reflections of the speakers and panelists offered sharp and timely analysis of  each participant’s relevant context and highlighted the ways in which Ka Joma’s writings  continue to hold relevance in navigating the global situation today. Key to correctly  analyzing the current global fascist upsurge, as detailed by University of the Philippines (UP) faculty member Professor Sarah Raymundo, is understanding the essential class character of  fascism: “that fascism cannot be understood apart from imperialist crisis, class power, and  organized violence required to preserve an unequal social order…. This is why the little book  on fascism matters now: it compels us to recognize fascism not only in the spectacle of strong  men, but in the normalization of militarization, surveillance, permanent war, dispossession,  techno-imperial control and the criminalization of dissent.” 

Director of the UP Center for International Studies, Professor Ramon Guillermo, further  clarified the fundamentally bourgeois nature of fascism in his analysis of how neoliberalism  in the Philippine education system lays the groundwork for fascism by pointing out “the most  important sworn enemy of fascism, which is communism.” While acknowledging that  education is only one of the factors that Ka Joma mentions in the struggle against fascism,  Guillermo asserts that Filipino educators must “pursue an anti-fascist education” both inside  and outside the classroom. This is why Guillermo considers it important for “every student  and educator in the Philippines to read this little book by Joma, which gives us the tools to  fight against the rise of a new fascism.” 

Building on the foundation laid out by Raymundo and Guillermo, speakers Chris de Ploeg,  journalist, author, and board member of political party De Vonk, based in the Netherlands;  Joe Iosbaker, founding member of Freedom Road Socialist Organisation, based in the United  States and Azra Sayeed, Secretary General of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle  (ILPS), based in Pakistan, each spoke to their relevant regional and national contexts of  struggling against repression and fascisation. Each speaker drew on various articles in the  book, using their own organizational experiences as examples of the concepts Ka Joma wrote  about: the use of anti-terror laws as instruments of fascism, taking advantage of sharpening  contradictions to bring about new and higher levels of struggle, and the importance of  building a broad united front against imperialism and fascism, both nationally and  internationally. 

1 

The event ended with a panel of four representatives of local organizations based in the  Netherlands, to further concretize how theoretical study and political education strengthens  their political work. Their contributions and further discussion brought us to a militant and  powerful close with determination to continue and raise higher the struggle; to collectively  study the Little Book on Fascism and How to Fight It and apply its lessons, and to deepen  cooperation and unity between progressive forces.  

This call to action for the world’s oppressed and exploited masses to dare to rise up and  struggle for socialist victory against fascism was the common theme and overarching  sentiment repeated throughout the program, based on the Filipino chant, makibaka, huwag  matakot: “Fight! Fear not!” 

Copies of Ka Joma’s Little Book on Fascism and How to Fight It are in stock at the JMS  Legacy Museum and available by contacting the JMS Legacy Foundation. (jms.foundation@proton.me)Email