[Pinoy Criminology] Radicals and extremists: Is there a distinction?

The news of the killing of students from the University of the Philippines, local journalists, and Filipino-American immersionists in Negros Occidental has once again torn open an old wound in the Philippine body politic.

Nineteen lives, abruptly extinguished in what the Armed Forces of the Philippines claims was a legitimate encounter with communist combatants, while the Communist Party of the Philippines insists that some of the dead were civilians engaged in research and community immersion.

Between these competing narratives stands the Commission on Human Rights, tasked to sift through the fog of war and determine whether the lines of international humanitarian law were crossed, or deliberately erased.

But long before facts are established, judgment has already been rendered in the court of public opinion. Social media, that great equalizer and great distorter, wasted no time in assigning blame — not to the gun that fired, but to the bodies that fell. The dead, especially the students and journalists, are accused of choosing their fate. They went to a “hotbed of communism,” we are told, as if geography alone confers guilt.

The implication is clear: they were extremists, willing to bear arms, willing to die, and therefore deserving of neither sympathy nor inquiry. On the other side are those who insist that these young people went not to wage war, but to understand it; not to inflame conflict, but to document the quiet violence of poverty, landlessness, and state neglect.

What is lost in this shouting match is a careful, sober understanding of the terms being thrown around so carelessly. Radicalism and extremism are treated as interchangeable, as if questioning the system is already an act of violence. Yet, the distinction between them is not merely semantic. It is moral, political, and deeply consequential.

Radicalism, at its core, is about questioning the roots. It asks why the Philippines, rich in resources and richer in human potential, continues to produce poverty in abundance. It asks why farmers who till the land remain landless, why laborers who work twelve-hour days cannot afford a dignified life, why justice moves at a glacial pace for the poor yet sprints for the powerful.

Radicalism is not a crime. It is an intellectual and moral exercise. As scholars like Paulo Freire have argued, critical consciousness emerges when individuals begin to interrogate the structures that shape their oppression. In the Philippine context, this means examining how political dynasties, bureaucratic corruption, and a deeply unequal economic order reproduce suffering across generations.

In my own work on prolonged pretrial detention and jail congestion, I have argued that the criminal justice system itself becomes an instrument of structural violence. When individuals languish in jail for years without conviction, when facilities operate at 300 percent capacity, the system ceases to be merely inefficient; it becomes oppressive. Radical thought arises precisely from these conditions. It is a response to lived injustice, not an abstract ideology detached from reality.

Radicals, therefore, are not enemies of the state. They are often its most honest critics. They write, they organize, they immerse themselves in communities not to incite rebellion, but to understand suffering at its roots. History reminds us that even José Rizal, armed only with a pen, was branded a subversive. His radicalism did not lie in violence, but in his refusal to accept injustice as normal.

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Extremism, however, is something else entirely. It is not merely a set of ideas but a method — a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends. Research in radicalization, such as the work of Marc Sageman and Clark McCauley, shows that pathways to extremism often involve a progression from grievance to moral outrage, to identification with a cause, and eventually to justification of violence. Extremism thrives not only on ideology but on experiences of humiliation, repression, and perceived injustice.

This is where the danger lies. When the state collapses the distinction between radicalism and extremism, it risks producing the very violence it seeks to eliminate. Labeling all dissent as extremism delegitimizes peaceful critique and closes off avenues for reform. Worse, it sends a message that engagement with marginalized communities is itself suspect. The chilling effect is profound. Students, researchers, journalists — those who seek to understand — are discouraged from going to the margins. And when understanding disappears, fear and misinformation take its place.

Empirical studies on insurgency and radicalization consistently show that heavy-handed state responses can exacerbate conflict. David Kilcullen has argued that indiscriminate use of force often drives neutral actors toward insurgent groups, not out of ideological commitment, but out of survival and resentment. In the Philippine setting, where historical grievances over land, governance, and inequality remain unresolved, the line between radical critique and armed rebellion is already fragile. State violence that fails to distinguish between the two only erodes that line further.

This brings us back to the tragedy in Negros Occidental. The question is not simply whether those killed were combatants or civilians. The deeper question is what kind of society produces conditions where young people feel compelled to go to conflict zones to understand their country. What does it say about our institutions when immersion programs are viewed with suspicion, when empathy is mistaken for insurgency?

Radicalism, in its truest sense, is a form of patriotism. It is the refusal to accept that things must remain as they are. It is the insistence that poverty, corruption, and injustice are not natural conditions but political choices. The University of the Philippines has long been a cradle of such thought, and it should remain so. Universities are not meant to produce obedient citizens; they are meant to produce critical thinkers.

The task, then, is not to suppress radicalism but to engage with it. The questions radicals raise — about inequality, landlessness, corruption, and justice — are not threats to national security. They are calls to national conscience. Ignoring them, or worse, silencing those who ask them, only deepens the crisis.

To my fellow radicals, the challenge is to remain steadfast in the realm of ideas. To write, to teach, to organize, to serve. Radicalism need not — and must not — descend into violence. It can be expressed in integrity, in refusing to participate in corruption, in choosing public service over personal gain. In a society where rule-breaking is normalized, ethical conduct itself becomes revolutionary.

The state, for its part, must resist the temptation to conflate dissent with rebellion. Killing radicals does not eliminate extremism. It fertilizes it. It provides the narrative that violence is the only language the state understands. And once that narrative takes hold, it becomes exceedingly difficult to undo.

Radicals are not the enemy. They are, in many ways, the country’s last line of defense against moral decay. But treat them as enemies, hunt them as enemies, and sooner or later, you may succeed in turning them into exactly that. – Rappler.com

Raymund E. Narag, PhD, is an associate professor in criminology and criminal justice at the School of Justice and Public Safety, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.