• btaf45@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    If Vietnam has billionaires then why the f*ck were they fighting against capitalism in the Vietnam War? North Vietnam might as well have just asked to join South Vietnam and they could have skipped 20 years of wars. Looks like all they were really fighting against was democracy.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      7 months ago

      They were not fighting against capitalism, they were fighting for independence. They didn’t care who supported them, they just needed support. Because France was in the West, and had Western support, the only external support they could easily find was communist. So they put on the Communist hat, but they really cared about independence

      The history is fascinating

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Minh

      the Việt Minh established itself as the only organized anti-French and anti-Japanese resistance group.[6] The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. The United States supported France. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China. After World War II, the Việt Minh opposed the re-occupation of Vietnam by France, resulting in the Indochina War, and later opposed South Vietnam and the United States in the Vietnam War.

      • btaf45@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        They were not fighting against capitalism, they were fighting for independence.

        Both North Vietnam and South Vietnam gained their independence in 1954. So whatever they were fighting for in the 1960’s, it was definitely not “independence”.

        The history is fascinating

        Yeah, but I was talking about the Vietnam War against north and south of the 1960’s. Not the separate colonial war against France in the 1950’s.

          • btaf45@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            That isn’t how they saw the situation

            “They” == North Vietnamese propaganda. The actual facts are that colonialism ended 10 full years before the US sent troops to protect South Vietnam. This was a civil war, not a colonial war. It doesn’t matter what North Vietnamese propaganda wants you to think. It matters what reality is. If all your information is coming from youtube you are definitely getting your information from the wrong sources.

            Colonial powers drawing lines on maps has famously been a way to make people happy with outcomes

            Doesn’t apply at all here. The only ‘border’ they were fighting over was the border between North and South Vietnam. And that border was created by North Vietnam, not by any colonialists.

            • jet@hackertalks.com
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              7 months ago

              I’m happy to read better references on the real political situation you can give me.

    • Apollo42@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The South Vietnamese governments were all extremely repressive and pretty much openly fascist. The US pretty much didn’t care so long as they were opposed to communism (a recurring theme in US cold war foreign policy)…

      • btaf45@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        So much of that was wrong. The last government was not “openly fascist” Thanks to the USA, it was democratically elected. North Vietnam was 100x more repressive than South Vietnam in 1975.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam

        Under pressure from the US, they held elections for president and the legislature in 1967. The Senate election took place on 2 September 1967. The Presidential election took place on 3 September 1967

        • Apollo42@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          The US should really be congratulated for not installing a fully fascist puppet government that one time.

          Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted, which sounds great but it was 84% of those eligible to vote. Huge swathes of the population were not allowed to vote due to their political beliefs or past opposition to the government.

          • btaf45@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Even in that last election, 57% of the voting age population voted

            That was actually better than most countries.

            The big picture is that the Vietnamese dictatorship did exactly the wrong thing. Creating a billionaire class proves that they ditched socialism. But they kept the dictatorship. They should have instead entrenched socialism and become a democracy. That would have been a very interesting thing to see. That they did exactly the wrong thing proves that North Vietnam’s entire reason for fighting the war was a farce.

            • Apollo42@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Are they really fair elections if the communist parties, the ones with large rural support, are banned from taking part?

    • ilikenoodlez@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      The freedom to run their own country whether that’s into the ground or into prosperity its the right of the vietnamese to self govern. How you correlate colonialism and democracy as the same thing is interesting.

      • btaf45@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The freedom to run their own country whether that’s into the ground or into prosperity its the right of the vietnamese to self govern.

        Huh? Both North and South Vietnam gained independence in 1954. The South Vietnamese had an elected government by 1968. North Vietnam had a dictatorship so the people couldn’t run their own country. Then North Vietnam robbed South Vietnam of the ability to run their own country.

        North Vietnam was literally fighting to deny the people to run their own country. To this very day nobody in Vietnam gets to choose their own leaders. The people are not allowed to govern themselves. But South Vietnam got to elect their own leader in 1968.

        How you don’t know that French colonialism ended 10 years before Americans arrived is bizarre.