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.

  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    5 days ago

    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.