Seditious crimes and rebellious conspiracies: Anti-communism and US empire in the Philippines

Abstract

This article details how US colonial policymakers and Filipino political elites, intent on fostering a non-revolutionary Philippine nationalism in the late 1920s and 1930s, produced an anti-communist politics aimed at eliminating or delegitimizing radical antiimperialism. Communist-inspired, anti-imperial activists placed US imperialism in the Philippines within the framework of western imperialism in Asia, thereby challenging the anti-imperial ideology of the US empire. Americans and elite Filipinos met this challenge by repressing radical, anti-imperialist visions of Philippine independence through intercolonial surveillance and cooperation, increased policing, mass imprisonment, and the outlawing of communist politics in the Philippines.