When I was little (2000s) the consensus seemed to be that Vietnam was a shitshow. It was sort of not talked about because it was considered an embarrassment for the west.
Lately on Boomer TV I’ve been seeing a lot of stories about gusano Vietnamese that “escaped” the “eeeevil communist north Vietnam”.
Shits weird. It’s one thing to paint a country like North Korea as evil because it’s easy to make shit up about an isolated country. But people can watch like a billion travel shows that show communist Vietnam is a normal ass country. The idea that people fled from that becomes less harrowing when you see that it’s a beautiful place that’s just as free as any other country.
I don’t know how it is for you down under, but here in burgerland the North Vietnamese “Vietcong” have, for as long as I’ve been alive to remember, been portrayed as sadistic beasts who would capture our God fearing corn fed warfighters, torture them, and keep them in captivity for decades after the war ended. It’s very common to see MIA/POW flags here.
At most, it’s considered a war that was pointless and wasted thousands of American lives; next to no one cares about the many more Vietnamese lives that were lost (to say nothing about those who were bombed in surrounding countries).
keep them in captivity for decades after the war ended. It’s very common to see MIA/POW flags here.
and EVERYBODY believes this shit, even well educated libs who should know better. They all think Rambo 2 was based on a true story.
I saw some myself earlier this week. Very normal, thinking The Deer Hunter was a documentary and not a gross inverse of what actually happened.
The flags being flown long after the end lean more on the MIA part. I had never heard about POWs being held into the 1990s; WWII had a lot of those stories though.
If you think EVERYBODY believes that shit you may need to surround yourself with other people.
MIA was borne from Nixon propaganda. It’s wordplay to hide dead bodies and keep the fingers pointed at the enemy.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enduring-cult-vietnam-missing-action/
First of all I learned a lot reading that article. It’s a great read that slings me toward more like it. But today the term MIA represents to those I know representing it that they have ones that never returned for whatever reason. The flags are still flown not because they think they’re still held captive, not because they have any opinion on the politics, not because they care about the history of the term, but because they don’t want to stop remembering those lost. It sucks it may cause people to think they’re sheep for believe the propaganda behind the term. They’re just trying to cope with losing a loved one for a reason no one can comprehend.
They’re just trying to cope with losing a loved one for a reason no one can comprehend.
If you find all that interesting, you should give the Blowback podcast a listen. Start from season 1. None of this is incomprehensible, but someone sold us all on the idea we and the people around us are expendable. And that’s some bullshit, my friend. Our lives have value and the answers to comprehension are out there when you’re willing to look.
owning up to being a lib
lol, sorry comrade
What are you quoting in your comment?
It’s pretty much the same as it always was. Cobra Kai is a recent series and it had “Vietnamese POW camps were brutal prisons where they made people fight to the death!” A similar plot was in The Deer Hunter. Then there’s that Mel Gibson movie about American troops being hit by human waves of Vietnamese.
Even “”“anti-war”“” films like Born on the 4th. of July have brain worms. They casually drop a line about “having to kill babies” and it’s said like that’s not one of the most disgusting things a person could do. If a foreign army killed white, American babies, we’d never hear the end of it. That shit would be unforgivable for Americans. But when Americans admit to doing the same thing? It’s “Aw shucks, golly-gee whiz! Look how bad it made our soldiers feel, who are obviously the true victims!”
I’m sometimes seeing the flag of the Republic of Vietnam on people’s profiles. It shocks me, as at no point during the puppet government’s history was it anything near a democracy or a human rights champion.
Also Vietnamese gusanos piss me off. They’ll spend hours talking about some “[pro-capitalist] journalist jailed”, and not bat an eye about the bombing and agent orange. Like come on, which is hurting the people of Vietnam more???
The kinda shit I’m used to seeing shared amongst Vietnamese gusanos.
I used to work for some gusanos, they were prissy little small business owners that complained about everything and only ever hired family members or disabled people they could get or cheap.
The city hall of my ex-locale would circle through various national flags thay they’d fly for a few days. It was always a fun game of guess the comprador of the week. They’d often fly the South Vietnam flag to appease the small business owners.
They’d also fly the Falun Dafa flag too.
USA’s the trash heap of the world. Like a bug lamp that pulls in reactionaries across the world. Or a festering wound on the world, full of maggots. The place is cursed.
There was someone who used to take the Republic of Vietnam flag to refugee rallies where I live, I think they got swept up in the big anti lockdown protests, havent seen them since 2021
I see the flag around a lot in decoration at resturaunts / places of worship :/
If the US lasts another twenty or thirty years, that’s probably how our media will start portraying the Republic of Afghanistan and the occupation there.
The US has never had a shortage of people who want to memory hole any embarrassing facts and rewrite history the way they think it should have happened.
It’s clearly timed to coincide with the recent 50th reunification day anniversary, and yeah, I’ve seen a shit load of it on wechat. Wechat gets an awful lot of western propaganda from these mayfly accounts. Probably because I’m from the UK the algorithm feeds me this slop constantly. Recently there has been a lot of Vietnam nonsense, usually clips from war movies that portray the Vietnamese as inhuman monsters and the US as being somehow unfairly caught up in the conflict.
I fucking hate the west, I really do. So many gormless tourists wandering around Hanoi during this period who will go home having listened to and learned jack shit.
The Sympathizer on HBO was about as sympathetic as it gets. There’s still a lot of both-sidesing, but I think on the whole it slants against the US and the south Vietnamese regime.
Edit: should note that the author of the book identifies as a “Marxist atheist”:
I haven’t quite worked myself up to being a communist yet or an anarchist, but I might get there someday. But I’m comfortable saying Marxist atheist, because I grew up in the Catholic community. My parents are very devout Catholics. I just completely reject that. I feel comfortable. Marxism, I’ve read a lot of Marxist theory. I went to UC Berkeley, and I think you need Marxism because it’s the only valid critique of capitalism out there right now. You can’t trust capitalists to critique capitalism.
There’s that episode of Hey Arnold where a Vietnamese character recounts his daughter I think getting on the last helicopter out of Saigon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ok--WYeBdc
Heartwarming. It’s not really taking sides at all though, more of a generic antiwar stance
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Do you have examples?
Saw a CNN video where they interviewed Vietnamese Americans, was a youtube short so it wasn’t long.
They gotta realize these people are not a good indicator of what VIETNAMESE people actually think of. These fucks left Vietnam 50+ years ago because they were (mostly) pro-imperialist dogs and enemies to their own country.
Related:
I have a friend who does a lot of work with Afghan refugees, he himself being one (he got bombed as a child, was able to go to the US for treatment and stayed).
His work was mainly as a translator for them as they came to America. A lot of them but not all of them did work for the US military, whether it was being a local guide, translating, or ratting out their neighbors, he told me that they were all glad to gloat about these things during their immigration process because they thought it would grant them a cushy life in America. They later realized the American dream never existed, them and their spouses having to work minimum wage jobs just to be able to scrape by, and began demanding proper compensation for the “intelligence” they provided to the US.
You got your fucking golden ticket and are now upset it’s made out of that shit that wraps chocolate coins. These gusanos left their countries because they were enemies of the state and could probably not be welcomed if they returned. Whether that’s Cuba, Iran, Lebanon, or Vietnam.
Anyways, I found the vid: https://youtube.com/shorts/a4rUKwvjoEA
Oh like news media. I thought you meant popular media fiction stuff
Yeah I bit hard for me to source my TV lmao, sorry.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Yeah, i could imagine ANZAC countries getting some weird propaganda, especially with its proximity to vietnam compared to the US. Where i am, it’s not really a thing. Kinda disappointed tbh, i want to see a Vietnamese version of those Shen Yun shows.
I need to get a cable TV subscription just to report in about it here.
it’s a beautiful place that’s just as free as any other country.
Freer for the working class.
Less free for the bourgeoisie.Not what you asked, but this footage from 1999 is kinda interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjIHe5VSHc4
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
