The ongoing US-Zionist war against Iran is not just a regional conflict but a microcosm of global imperialism’s decay, exposing the contradictions at the heart of the imperialist system. Since February 28, Iranian cities have been bombed, killing over 1,200 civilians, including children, and destroyed schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. This may look like a show of overwhelming US-Zionist military power, but rather an exhibition of imperialism’s weakness.
With every missile launched, city struck, false pretext invoked, only strengthens the resolve of the Iranian people, fuels the Axis of Resistance across Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq; and sharpens the global masses’ understanding of the real enemy. Imperialism, amid advanced weaponry, depends on fragile logistics, puppet regimes, and black propaganda—conditions that can be shattered by fierce resistance. Iran’s counterstrikes Operation “True Promise 4,” inflicted serious losses on US and Israeli forces, grounded aircraft and destroyed anti-missile systems, shattering imperialism’s illusion of invincibility.
This is crucial for oppressed peoples globally. The US and its allies have used hybrid warfare, economic coercion, and military threats to dominate nations. The Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s oil flows, is just one example of how imperialists control global energy to oppress entire populations. In the Philippines, the oil price shock, triggered by the US-Zionist offensive against Iran, directly harm small farmers, fisherfolk, and workers, whose livelihoods depend on petroleum-powered irrigation systems, farm machineries, and transportation. A peso oil price hike reduces the already meager income of peasants, deepening class oppression.
Artists and Cultural Workers Stand with the Peasantry
Resistance is not only fought through the battlefield, it is through ideas, art, and culture. Artists, writers, and cultural workers must expose US imperialism’s poison and rally the Filipino people to fight. The national democratic revolution is our path to smash local exploitation, repression of freedom of expression and imperialist domination over culture and arts, politics and economy. The armed struggle is the core of this revolution, as it gradually destroys the reactionary state and paves the way for masses’ red political power.
To liberate the nation is to liberate art. To free the nation is to free the imagination, to return art to the hands of those who live its realities. Oppression of the people is constraint of art: shaped by censorship, commodification, and the interests of those in power. But when the people begin to assert their sovereignty, art breaks from these limits. It becomes grounded in real experience, no longer filtered through elite interests. It ceases to be decoration and becomes expression, critique, and resistance. In this sense, the struggle for national liberation is also a struggle over meaning, over who has the power to define reality and envision the future.
A new government by the people’s struggle will foster a progressive, popular culture that strengthens the collective fight for liberation.
It will end exploitation, advance justice, and build a society rooted in the people’s needs.
Artists standing with peasants and workers make it clear: the fight against US imperialism is inseparable from the struggle against feudalism, bureaucratic capitalism and fascism at home. These battles are one. The agrarian revolution must uproot the semifeudal system that enslaves the peasantry, ensuring land is in the hands of the tillers. Hand in hand with national industrialization, labor and national patrimony will be for the building of an independent, self-sustaining economy, and not for imperialist profits.
A new government by the people’s struggle will foster a progressive, popular culture that strengthens the collective fight for liberation. It will end exploitation, advance justice, and build a society rooted in the people’s needs.
Imperialism is weak and stretched. Its intervention in Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba show its fragility. In our country, US bases and troops serve imperialist interests. We must expel these forces and free our lands from being launching pads for imperialist wars. Resistance, both here and abroad, proves that imperialism can be defeated.
From Tehran to Manila, from Iran’s villages to the provinces’ rice fields, peasants, workers, and artists, unite for the armed struggle, the force that can break imperialism’s grip. We must transform our material conditions, struggle to end exploitation, for sovereignty as revolutionary action.
Advance the National Democratic Revolution
Artista at Manunulat ng Sambayanan (ARMAS-Ericson Acosta) calls on all patriotic and progressive organizations, workers, peasants, and artists: stand in solidarity with Iran’s resistance against imperialism and continue the struggle against the puppet US-Marcos Jr. regime! We affirm that only by advancing the protracted people’s war and completing the national democratic revolution can we dismantle the semifeudal and semicolonial system that has long oppressed the Filipino people.
A bright future is within our grasp. One where the revolutionary armed struggle, in unity with the front of revolutionary forces, paves the way for a new social order. The revolution is inevitable, and victory is certain for the people.
Advance the National Democratic Revolution! Join the New People’s Army!
