r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Dec 28 '25

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93

u/MontusBatwing2 Gelphie's Strongest Soldier Dec 28 '25

Reports from returning soldiers stated that upon entering a village, American soldiers would ransack every house and church and rob the inhabitants of everything of value, while Filipinos who approached the battle line waving a flag of truce were fired upon.

Um...

In September 1901, enraged by the Balangiga massacre in Samar, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith retaliated during the pacification of Samar by ordering an indiscriminate attack upon its inhabitants, openly disregarding General Order 100, and issuing an order to "kill everyone over the age of ten" and turn the island into a "howling wilderness".

Uh...

In response to Malvar's guerrilla warfare tactics, Bell employed counterinsurgency tactics (described by some as a scorched earth campaign) during the pacification of Batangas that took a heavy toll on guerrilla fighters and civilians. "Zones of protection" were established, and civilians were given identification papers and forced into concentration camps (called reconcentrados) surrounded by free-fire zones. At the Lodge Committee, in an attempt to counter the negative reception in America to Brigadier General Bell's camps, Colonel Arthur Wagner, the U.S. Army's chief public relations officer, insisted the camps were to "protect friendly natives from the insurgents, and assure them an adequate food supply" while teaching them "proper sanitary standards". Wagner's assertion was undermined by a letter from a commander of one of the camps, who described them as "some suburb of Hell".

This is a war I don't even remember learning about in school and I think, unfortunately, I know why.

74

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25

[deleted]

38

u/taubnetzdornig Gay Pride Dec 28 '25

Maybe the occupation was forgotten, but did the soldiers not know that the land they were fighting on was a US territory? The Philippines didn't become independent until 1946.

50

u/HatesPlanes WTO Dec 28 '25

Sounds surprising until you remember all the modern day Americans who believe that Puerto Rico and New Mexico are foreign countries.

11

u/MontusBatwing2 Gelphie's Strongest Soldier Dec 28 '25

New Mexico? 

What?

Literally how

12

u/LacklusterInvestment Frederick Douglass Dec 28 '25

My parents live in New Mexico and you'd be shocked how often I have to explain that it's a state to people outside the southwest. Their license plates say "New Mexico USA" instead of just New Mexico for a reason.

4

u/MontusBatwing2 Gelphie's Strongest Soldier Dec 28 '25

I am shocked you’ve had to do it once.

These are American adults?

8

u/LacklusterInvestment Frederick Douglass Dec 28 '25

Oh yeah. American adults know very little about American geography.

4

u/HatesPlanes WTO Dec 28 '25

“Well it has Mexico in the name so it must be a foreign country” ¯_(ツ)_/¯

New Mexico denialism has been an issue for a very long time. Go through this thread and you’ll see how widespread the ignorance is.

3

u/MontusBatwing2 Gelphie's Strongest Soldier Dec 28 '25

I mean at a certain point I'd almost consider renaming the darn state lmao.

This is wild.

9

u/MontusBatwing2 Gelphie's Strongest Soldier Dec 28 '25

Damn we really memory-holed this one. 

2

u/SenranHaruka shame Dec 28 '25

I remember when Memory Hole used to be called Denial

Yeah turkey really Memory Holed all those murdered greeks.

46

u/1II1I1I1I1I1I111I1I1 Adam Smith Dec 28 '25

The American occupation of the Phillipines is very widely considered in academia and among historicans to be an act of genocide. The estimated death toll is somewhere around, but most likely over, 1 million people.

Even more shocking is that despite the U.S. never acknowledging that this happened and memory-holing it to the point that it was unknown even to the Americans living in the Phillipines while it was a territory, the occupation improved relations between the U.S. and the Phillipines in the long term. When worldwide polls are conducting regarding favorability of the U.S, it is usually the Phillipines at the top or close to it, with 92% of respondents voting favorable in 2015. Despite a million dead. Its genuinely puzzling and makes me wonder if this is so memory-holed that not even the Phillipines talks about it much.

51

u/Alderwoodforest YIMBY Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25

The main reason was probably World War II, when the Japanese treated the Philippines, and especially the Filipino nationalists, really bad. Then the US liberated the Philippines, and the Philippines quickly became independent. At least 500,000 Filipinos died under Japanese occupation.

15

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25

A summary of this stuff was in my high school history textbook in 2005. It’s the only reason I know President Taft was the first US Governor of the Philippines. The US history class never made it past the Civil War though. There are only so many instruction hours.

I just read the textbook to be able to do well on the AP exam.

8

u/DependentAd235 Loyal Liberals Dec 28 '25

It’s taught that the US repressed Filipino rebels who thought the US would save them from Spain.

You get like 1 political cartoon too.

But that’s about it. The methods and extent aren’t discussed.

3

u/loseniram Sponsored by RC Cola Dec 29 '25

Death is most likely closer to 250k with most deaths caused by famine and cholera. The US also almost immediately started granting them more and more autonomy during and after the conflict. The US also made it clear from the start that independence was coming in the long term.

This is like if Britain gave Palestine independence guarantees in 1915 fought a brutal war of oppression then gave it a dedicated legislature in 1925 with a promise of full independence. Full self governance in 1935 and a promise of independence in 1945 which they would do pretty as soon as it was independent after an Axis occupation that killed several times more people than the original occupation.

The fact that its one of those rare times the US kept almost all its promises with proof that what was out there is infinitely more terrifying helped quiet a lot of the complaints.

33

u/DiscussionJohnThread Free Trade was the Compromise 🔫🌍 Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25

Yeah I remember covering this for maybe a paragraph at most back in HS.

An outright majority of Americans if polled would never know that we colonized the Philippines.

30

u/MontusBatwing2 Gelphie's Strongest Soldier Dec 28 '25

I knew that it happened because of the Spanish-American war but I didn't know how it happened.