Reading the foreign press, you’d think they were heroes.
“A Hayward man who dedicated his life to advocating for impoverished farmworkers in the Philippines,” a TV news station in Oakland, California, dubbed one.
Speaking to the “San Francisco Standard,” the same man’s widow described him as “kindhearted, a fan of history and ‘Star Wars,’ a caring uncle, a loving son, and a thoughtful brother. Most of all, though, he cared for the everyday people of his homeland.”
She was speaking of Lyle Prijoles, 40, one of two Americans killed seven weeks ago in Negros Occidental during a clash between government troops and the New People’s Army. The other dead American was Kai Dana-Rene Sorem, 26.
“He died,” Prijoles’ widow concluded, “doing what he did best: being with the masses and learning from them.”
And that was the tipoff: the only people I’ve ever heard referring to “the masses” that way are doctrinaire communists paraphrasing Karl Marx. “Only the masses can break the rule of the old powers,” the famous revolutionary is often quoted as saying.
I thought about that weeks later after hearing several speakers at a Los Angeles Filipino festival invoke Prijoles’ name in calling for the “liberation” of the Philippines. “Don’t pay any attention,” my local Filipino companion quickly averred, “they’re just communists.”
And my suspicions were finally confirmed by a recent Daily Wire piece produced in collaboration with the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based public policy think tank. “Prijoles and Sorem were not outlier cases,” it concluded, “but part of a nation- and globe-spanning network of Filipino groups” committed to “a Marxist-Leninist conception of a people’s democracy led by a Communist vanguard.”
Hmm, I couldn’t help thinking, not so different from what the NPA says it’s fighting for.
Prijoles’ radicalization, according to the report, began around 2004 at San Francisco State University where he became a leader in the US chapter of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines and, later, a Solidarity Officer for Anakbayan-USA, a militant Filipino youth organization former high-ranking communists say recruits fighters for the country’s underground communist insurgency.
“You say you don’t recruit for the armed struggle,” one told the Sun Star, addressing Anakbayan directly. “But how many of your members suddenly vanish from school, only to turn up in NPA casualty lists?”
Sorem, according to the institute’s report, got radicalized at Central Washington University in 2020, eventually launching Anakbayan’s South Seattle chapter. By early this year, it said, he was working as a full-time organizer in the Philippines.
Just in time to take part in the fatal altercation — in which 19 died — widely described as a “firefight,” meaning that the bullets came from both sides.
The reactions were harsh and swift. The US Embassy in Manila issued a warning to American nationals against affiliating with insurgent groups like the NPA, considered a terrorist organization by both the Philippines and the US. “Foreign terrorist organizations,” it said, “actively recruit Americans to participate directly in terrorist activities and/or provide financial support.”
The Philippines-based National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict expressed grave concern regarding “the increasing involvement of individuals from outside the Philippines in local armed hostilities,” citing the “disturbing convergence of foreign nationals in a live combat setting where the risks are immediate and the consequences irreversible.”
But in California, the reaction was decidedly different. “He cared about people deeply,” Sandra Stone, a San Francisco United Methodist pastor and fellow activist, said of Prijoles amid protests at the Philippine Consulate and calls for an end to US military aid to the Philippines. “He just wanted to create a better world.”
Sorry, but for my money the Manhattan Institute report seems far closer to the truth. “Prijoles and Sorem’s deaths,” it concluded, “were the tragic results of two Americans going down the radicalization rabbit hole. What started as innocent interest in their national origins ended in their deaths in a hail of bullets.”
My fervent advice to other would-be foreign radicals: take heed.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise.