Seemingly every square kilometer of Vietnam — where I’ve resided for a few months now — is covered with streetside inspirational, feel-good propaganda posters erected by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).
They inspire. They motivate. They hearten.
The proletariat struggle continues.
A tangent on ideology:
I am often told the Antifa/Pride/BLM culture war stuff in the West is communist agitation.
But the question is: if that’s what it is, why does none of this stuff exist in Vietnam? There is no Drag Queen Story Hour in Vietnam — a mentally ill man in full-on womanface reading children’s literature in public school is unheard of — nor is there critical race theory.
Given the disparity, one of these — the allegedly commie West or Vietnam — is apparently not communisting right.
What gives?
I’ve thought a lot about it, and my conclusion, for what it’s worth, is that neither is really true communism.
In the United States, although much of the Deep State’s agenda is clearly borrowed from the social engineering tactics of the communists of yore, what the technocrats aspire to is something more like techno-feudalism than classic communism. At the top of the pyramid, the Blackrocks of the world are all fascist (in the narrow sense of merging corporate and state power, minus the nationalism); the communist cosplay is for the weaponized low-tier BLM/Antifa/transgender morons on the ground who act as enforcers.
Related: The State of Feminism in Southeast Asia
In Vietnam, while the trappings of communism are maintained (the iconic yellow star in the red flag is draped all over the place), the reality is that, even if they study the works of Karl Marx and Lenin, a 19th-century European ideology was never going to fit cleanly into an Oriental culture that has been so vastly different in its developmental trajectory over thousands of years.
Ho Chi Minh, the vaunted revolutionary, seemingly only embraced communism out of convenience, as he found the ideology useful in his quest to drive the occupiers out of his country. The communism, in other words, was merely a vehicle for his nationalism — as contradictory and messy as that proposition is.
At any rate, he certainly wasn’t the internationalist Trotskyite brand of communist, as he literally fought a war against the Chinese Red Army in 1979, the last war fought by Vietnam, which has maintained a frosty diplomatic relationship with China ever since.
One crucial piece of evidence of Ho Chi Minh’s ideological flexibility, among others, is a letter that he wrote to U.S. President Harry Truman in 1946, just after the conclusion of World War II, praising the United States for its dedication to “Peace and Security all over the world” and effectively begging it to intervene and help him evict the French colonialists.
Via History Net (emphasis added):
Dear Mr. President,
On the occasion of the first assembly of the United Nations in London, I beg to congratulate you for the continuous and successful efforts your Government has been making to maintain Peace and Security all over the World.
As Peace is indivisible and as the Far East is being taken into especial consideration by your high Representative in China, General MARSHALL, I think it our duty to inform you on what is going on in our country and on what grave consequences for World Security the aggressive war inflicted upon us by the French may bring about.
As early as 1941, Vietnam has risen up against the Japanese fascists, and taken arms by the side of the Allies. After the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, a Provisional Government was set up to restore order and eradicate all fascist intentions in Vietnam. Supported by the whole nation, it carried out a democratic program, and succeeded in restoring order and discipline everywhere. Under very difficult circumstances, general elections for National Congress were organized and took place on January 6th 1946 throughout the land, including 9,000,000 electors of whom more than 90% went to the polls.
The French colonialists, on the contrary, surrendered to the Japanese as early as September 1941. For four years they wholeheartedly cooperated with the Japanese to fight against the Allies and to repress the Vietnamese population. On March 9th, 1945, five months before the Japanese were defeated, the French by a second surrender, lost all right and control over Indochina.
On September 23rd, 1945, while the New Vietnam Democratic Republic was making strenuous efforts to carry out her reconstruction program, the French launched a night attack on the innocent population of Saigon, which was followed up by a systematically destructive and murderous warfare. Facts of looting, assassination of civilians, violence, indiscriminate bombing of non-strategical places by war planes, are reported everyday. Their intention is to invade the whole country and to reestablish their domination.
In the meanwhile, after the offer of interference voiced by Mr. VINCENT CARTER, Chairman of the Far-East Department, our people enthusiastically welcomed President TRUMAN’s address on October 28, 1945, in which he vigorously and concretely set forth the principles of self-determination and equality of status laid down in the Atlantic and San Francisco Charters.
Since that time, the French have tremendously increased their fighting forces. Millions of people will suffer, thousands will be killed and invaluable properties will be destroyed, unless the United States would step out to stop that bloodshed and unlawful aggression.
For this reason, on behalf of my people and Government, I respectfully request you to interfere for an immediate solution of the Vietnamese issue. The people of Vietnam earnestly hopes that the great American Republic would help us to conquer full independence and support us in our reconstruction work.
Thus, with the assistance of China and the United States, both in capital and technique, our Vietnam Republic will be able to bring her share in the building-up of World Peace and World Prosperity.
With respect,
I am, dear President,
Yours truly,
Ho Chi Minh
But back to the communist posters:
One can tell a lot about the priorities of the ruling class by the propaganda it disseminates.
Related: Converted Pagan Headhunters and the Shining City on a Hill
What is impossible not to notice about Vietnamese propaganda is that these posters, without fail, depict nuclear families with smiling, normal-gendered children — no tattoos (nothing against them; I have a lot), no hair dyes, no piercings.
Meanwhile, at least up until the dawn of the Golden Age, the American government was flying the Pride™ flag off of embassies the world over as clear agitprop, embarrassing Americans in whose name these displays are erected and confusing natives in equal measure.
Strange times.
