#anti-Vietnam

[kropotkindersurprise]

June 20, 1967 - On this day in 1967, boxing legend Muhammad Ali was given a prison sentence for refusing to join the US military and fight in the Vietnam War. He was sentenced to five years behind bars and fined $10,000, an unusually harsh sentence aimed at breaking his anti-war resistance. “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” argued Muhammad Ali. [source]

[troythecatfish]

[watermelinoe]

it's funny how baffled my dad is by today's leftists bc he'll be telling me about organizing a high school walkout after mlk jr was assassinated or being in college during the vietnam war and taking over a building (???) and i'll be like yeah the leftists released live insects to thwart a meeting of gay and bi activists and he reacts like that image of joe biden looking at the quantum computer

[dre759]

I’m reading Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War In Vietnam by Nick Turse and Jesus Christ it’s such a jaw dropping read. The behavior the US army demonstrated against innocents in Vietnam was beyond evil. In fact I think the two most used phrases in the book so far have been “There were no soldiers/VC there. Only women and children” and “No American soldiers were punished for their actions.”

It’s a very important read; I highly recommend it. But please don’t read if you’re already having a bad day. It tests your endurance for violent content. So major content warning for that.

Here’s an audiobook on YouTube for those who are more inclined to listening rather than reading.

[embodiedfutures]

from @/pslnational

[degeneratedworker]

"They're having problems with their economy again" Ron Cobb United States 1975

[iasirene]

Reposting my most popular Reddit post from r/Hungergames!

Could the Reaping in the Hunger Games be inspired by the 1969 Vietnam War lottery draft?

As we know, Suzanne Collins was inspired to write the series after flipping through tv channels, surfing between the Iraq War and reality tv and realizing that the lines became blurred. Collins’s father served in the Vietnam War, and I’m sure she heard many stories from him. In 1969, the Vietnam War was raging and its unpopularity was being felt all around the USA with growing anti war movements. Because of this, a draft was instated, and here’s how it worked.

366 blue capsules in a jar, one for each day of the year (leap year included). If your birthdate was drawn, congratulations son! You’re first in line to serve the empire. The first date drawn was September 14th, and the last was June 8th. They did this again in December, with letters instead of numbers. The last draft lottery was in 1975, and from 1965-1972, over two million men were forced to fight because of this. There are strong parallels between the Vietnam lottery and the Reaping. During the Vietnam War, poor, uneducated men were more likely to be chosen, as the rich could pay their way out of service. Much like the impoverished Districts being unable to resist. The Hunger Games is a much deeper series than some people give it credit for. It explores issues such as imperialism, propaganda, capitalism in decay, and revolution. It’s not just “some kids story.” It’s even more radical than we remember. Reading again as an adult has been incredibly rewarding. The imperial core (USA, UK, Japan, Canada, etc.) is the Capitol. The imperial periphery (Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, Yemen, etc.) are the Districts. The truth is stranger than fiction.

[icedsodapop]

Hate the popular narrative of the disrespected, spat upon Vietnam War veteran becos it erases how badly draft dodgers, conscientious objectors, and anti-war/anti-imperialist protestors were treated by the US government and society, maybe even worse. They were blacklisted, arrested and some were even killed by state sanctioned violence but sureee, cry about how the big bad hippies were mean to you for blowing up Vietnamese villages.

[damthosefandoms]

i love you vietnam vet au cherrycola where soda hasn’t written to anyone in months because he’s terrified and he doesn’t want to give his loved ones hope. but one day he just up and sends a girl he hasn’t spoken to basically since he dropped out of high school a zero-context letter saying “i get why you hate fights now” and something implying he’s been in love with her since first grade, and in the package with the letter is a book with a cherry blossom flower pressed inside. because he saw it in a dark time over there and it reminded him of her.

[folk-enjoyer]

Sing Out! Poster from 1968, signed by various folk singers

[kropotkindersurprise]

July 16 - Happy birthday Assata Shakur! 🥳 [video]

[my-dark-happy-place]

War isn't murder by Jesse Welles

This song is incredible and it hasn't left my head since it came out. There is so many haunting and poignant lyrics in there. Jesse Welles is an incredible songwriter and artist.

[oldshowbiz]

1969.

US Customs harassing anti-war filmmakers.

[t00thpasteface]

shebbz i just want to say that you are single-handedly convincing me to watch mash... i know nothing about the show but ur chipping away at my brain like a misfolded protein

just make sure you watch it without laugh tracks

[historyfordummies]

The Vietnam War

French colonisation of parts of Southeast Asia (French Indochina)

While there were previously conflicts between different areas of Vietnam, the start of the Vietnam War (or, as the Vietnamese call it, the American War) lies in the French colonisation of Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia (such as Laos and Cambodia).

2. World War One and the Paris Peace Talks

It was during this period that much of the colonised countries (not just in East and Southeast Asia, but globally) decided to request international assistance in freeing them from their imperialist rulers, partly motivated by the Paris Peace Talks, where U.S. president Woodrow Wilson stated that all nations have the right to self determination. This gave hope to leaders of independence movements all over the world, so Kim Kyu-sik and, importantly, Hồ Chí Minh, who requested U.S. support for Vietnamese independence. This, however, was ignored by Wilson, and it became obvious to leaders of independence movements across the world that the right to self determination was a right given to "white" nations only. This did its part in radicalising some of these movements, who now knew that they could not depend on Western assistance in their struggle for national self determination and independence.

3. World War Two and the First Indochina War (The French War)

During World War Two, Vietnam, as much of East and Southeast Asia, had been colonised by Japan. For countries such as Korea, this meant their first experience with colonisation, but for Vietnam, it was exchanging one colonial ruler for another, with little substantial difference for most Vietnamese.

Significant, though, was the end of the war and Japanese surrender, leading (most) Japanese troops to be expelled from Vietnam through the August Revolution. For a short period, an independent Vietnam seemed possible; the Việt Minh (Việt Nam Độc lập Đồng minh Hội; League for Independence of Vietnam) were made the government of the now independent Vietnam, under the leadership of Hồ Chí Minh (who had disassociated from his communist ties to fight for a unified Vietnam), and with (now former) emperor Bảo Đại as "supreme advisor" to the Việt Minh government.

Part of the success of the Việt Minh was owed to their massive popular relief efforts during the Vietnamese famine, which, much like the Irish famine in Great Britain, had much to do with French and Japanese colonial adminstration forwarding Vietnamese food to their own countries while the Vietnamese were starving.

This independence, however, was not due to last. With the Japanese surrender, the French anted "their" colony back, but met fierce Vietnamese resistance. The Vietnamese, naturally, did not want to be re-colonised by the French now that they had regained independence, however briefly.

The First Indochina War (in Vietnamese known as the French War) was what followed, with French troops and the Vietnamese Imperial Army fighting Vietnamese independence fighters under the Việt Minh. The French, however, were devastated by World War Two and unable to keep a colonial war going for very long; they simply did not have the means. This is where the United States comes into the picture.

4. The French War becomes the American War (Second Indochina War)

After it became clear that the French could not keep up the war, the Geneva Accords of 1954 temporarily split the country along the 17th parallel, promising elections in 1956 (much as had been the case in Korea, and with similar success). This resulted in a communist North and a South led by the pro-American president Ngô Đình Diệm.

The United States, much in contradiction of their declaration that every nation has the right to self determination, had supported the French, who were not able to continue their war economically, since they had to focus on rebuilding France. For much of the First Indochina War, the United States stood for majority of the costs, as much as 70%. They also provided troops, equipment, and, eventually, they took over the war, partly motivated by the Domino Theory, which hypothesised that if one country falls to communism, its neighbours will soon follow. After the defeat on the Korean peninsula, which established a communist North Korea, and after the "Loss of China", they did not want yet another communist country in Eastern Asia. So they fought.

Worth noting is, though, that they did not fight the North much. Instead, they focused on finding "Communist collaborators" in the South, using this as an excuse to spray large parts of the South with Agent Orange, and to kill numerous civilians, oftentimes after torturing (or, in the case of women and girls, raping) them. Body counts became a competition, and any Vietnamese could be labelled a Communist collaborator, though the Americans did not always even bother claiming that. Entire villages were slaughtered, and racism among the American troops ran rampant, causing them to treat the Vietnamese as less than human. Song My/My Lai is perhaps the most well known massacre of a Southern Vietnamese town, but by far not the only one. This "search for communist collaborators" devastated the South, and is the reason why most Vietnamese refugees are originally from Southern Vietnam, contrary to what one would expect when knowing that it was North Vietnam who was the "communist enemy", and South Vietnam was supposed to be the United States' ally.

The U.S. were not able to successfully fight the North Vietnamese troops, and as the war dragged on, it became obvious that the United States would not be able to win. So, instead, they tried to find a way to retreat without being humiliated.

5. "Vietnamisation" of the War

This, along with a constantly worsening public opinion, led to the "Vietnamisation" of the war, meaning that the United States would remove its troops and leave the South Vietnamese to fend for themselves. What followed rather soon was the Fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, which was captured by Northern troops. Thus, Vietnam was united under the North Vietnamese, with Lê Duẩn (General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam since 1960) as fe facto head of state.

6. Other Aspects Worth Noting

The Vietnam War was very useful for South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, who offered the United States South Korean military support in exchange for economic support for the South Korean economy. Additionally, he used it as leverage to keep the U.S. "tame" regarding some of his policies that the U.S. government would not otherwise have accepted as easily as they did within this context.

South Korean troops were known as some of the most brutal ones towards the South Vietnamese civilians.

Additionally, calling it the "Vietnam War" is misleading, since the Americans also bombed parts of Laos and Cambodia, despite not formally being at war with them. The North Vietnamese fighters got much of their supplies through mountain paths in these countries, which, to the United States, meant they were free game. This, however, is not usually mentioned in discussions of the war, nor is the Third Indochina War, in which Vietnamese troops invaded neighbouring Laos and Cambodia, and which forced China to intervene, making use of the domino theory themselves, claiming Vietnam had to be stopped from throwing its neighbours into chaos.

Sources:

Lecture materials (will not disclose the names of my lecturers/my university for privacy reasons)

Brocheux, Pierre: Ho Chi Minh. A Biography

Hägerdal, Hans: Vietnams historia

Immerwahr, Daniel: How to Hide an Empire. A Short History of the Greater United States

Kim, Byung-Kook & Ezra F. Vogel: The Park Chung Hee Era. The Transformation of South Korea

Smedberg, Marco: Vietnamkrigen 1880-1980

Turse, Nick: Kill Anything That Moves. The Real American War in Vietnam

Young, Marilyn B., John J. Fitzgerald & A. Tom Grunfeld: The Vietnam War. A History in Documents

See also: Snow in Vietnam (Amy M. Le), All They Carried (Tim O'Brien), The War Prayer (Mark Twain) for fictionalised narratives.

[degeneratedworker]

"United by the same ideal" Vietnam 1960s