The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) recently issued a statement expressing solidarity with the people of Venezuela following the devastating earthquakes that struck the country. It mourned the loss of thousands of lives, condemned what it described as decades of US imperialist intervention, and called on revolutionary and social movements around the world to stand with the Venezuelan people during their time of crisis.
There is little to object to in extending sympathy to people devastated by a natural disaster. Human suffering does not require ideological agreement before it deserves compassion. When homes collapse, families disappear beneath the rubble, and entire communities are forced to rebuild from tragedy, expressions of solidarity are both natural and necessary. Whether one agrees with the NDFP’s political analysis of Venezuela is ultimately secondary to the more fundamental recognition that every life lost to disaster deserves to be mourned.
Yet the statement raises a question that extends far beyond Venezuela and beyond the NDFP itself. It asks us to examine what gives any political movement moral credibility when it speaks about justice, human rights, and human suffering. Is solidarity measured by how passionately we condemn the actions of our adversaries, or by whether we apply the same moral standards to ourselves? Can compassion remain credible if it is offered generously to distant victims while becoming hesitant whenever the suffering is connected to its own history?
These questions are not directed at the NDFP alone. They apply equally to governments, political parties, churches, advocacy organizations, revolutionary movements, and even nations themselves. Throughout history, institutions have often demonstrated remarkable consistency in exposing the failures of others while showing far less enthusiasm for examining their own. Every ideology develops an impressive vocabulary for describing injustice committed by its opponents. Far fewer develop the same language when confronting the consequences of actions carried out in pursuit of their own ideals.
Our country offers countless examples of this selective memory. Supporters of the state rightly remember soldiers, police officers, barangay officials, and civilians who lost their lives to insurgency, yet some become uncomfortable discussing alleged abuses committed by government forces during decades of counterinsurgency operations. On the other hand, revolutionary organizations have carefully documented cases of state repression, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings, but discussions become noticeably quieter when the conversation turns to revolutionary taxation, internal purges, executions of suspected informers, the recruitment of minors, violence against Indigenous communities, or civilians caught in the crossfire of an armed struggle carried out in their name.
This pattern is not unique to the Philippine conflict. It is a recurring feature of ideological politics everywhere. Human beings have an extraordinary ability to grieve for victims whose stories reinforce their convictions while overlooking those whose experiences complicate them. Memory becomes selective not because the forgotten victims matter less, but because acknowledging them demands difficult questions about our own beliefs and the institutions we have chosen to defend.
Perhaps this explains why solidarity has become such an easy word to invoke and such a difficult principle to practice. It is relatively simple to stand beside victims whose suffering confirms what we already believe about the world. It is considerably harder to extend that same compassion toward people whose experiences challenge our political narratives or expose uncomfortable truths about causes we once considered unquestionably just. Genuine solidarity, however, is tested precisely in those moments. It asks whether our concern for human dignity survives even when it requires us to confront the failures of our own side.
For those who have lived through the armed conflict in the countryside, this distinction is more than philosophical. It is deeply personal. Former rebels often speak of joining the movement because they believed in addressing poverty, inequality, landlessness, or political exclusion. Many continue to believe that these social problems remain real. What changed for many of them was not necessarily the desire for justice, but their understanding of the means used to pursue it. Years inside the movement exposed contradictions between the ideals that inspired them and the realities they witnessed. Some eventually concluded that a cause claiming to defend the people could not remain indifferent to the suffering experienced by the very communities in whose name the struggle was being waged.
That realization carries an important lesson beyond the experience of any single movement. Justice cannot depend solely on the righteousness of an objective. It must also be measured by the methods employed to achieve it. A political cause does not become morally immune simply because it speaks the language of liberation. Nor does a government become automatically legitimate because it claims to preserve peace and order. Both derive credibility from their willingness to examine their own mistakes with the same honesty they demand from others.
The NDFP’s solidarity with Venezuela therefore deserves neither ridicule nor dismissal. Compassion should never be criticized simply because of who expresses it. But if solidarity is to possess genuine moral authority, it cannot remain selective. It cannot condemn foreign intervention while remaining silent about communities displaced by domestic armed conflict. It cannot speak eloquently about victims of imperialism while overlooking victims of revolutionary violence. Nor can governments invoke the suffering caused by insurgency while refusing to acknowledge the pain caused by state abuses. The principle is the same regardless of who holds power or who claims to resist it.
Our communities have lived with armed conflict for more than half a century. Entire generations have grown up hearing competing accounts of who the real victims are, who bears the greater responsibility, and whose suffering deserves national remembrance. Yet perhaps the more important question is not whose grief should prevail, but why grief itself has become divided according to ideology. Every civilian life lost, every Indigenous community uprooted, every child deprived of a peaceful future, and every family fractured by conflict represents a human tragedy before it becomes a political argument.
That is why solidarity should never begin with ideology. It should begin with humility. It requires the courage to acknowledge that no movement, no institution, and no government possesses a monopoly on justice or innocence. It asks us to mourn victims regardless of the uniform worn by those responsible, and to recognize that the pursuit of peace demands not only holding our opponents accountable but also examining ourselves with equal honesty.
The people of Venezuela deserve the world’s sympathy as they recover from disaster. So too do the countless communities across the Philippines that continue to live with the long shadows of armed conflict. If we truly believe that every human life possesses equal dignity, then our compassion cannot stop at national borders, nor can it stop where our own political narratives become uncomfortable. The ultimate test of solidarity is not how sincerely we grieve for strangers. It is whether we possess the same moral courage to grieve for those whose suffering forces us to confront ourselves.
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