Culture of abhorrent: how ultra-racist and radical opinions from the Vietnamese Americans ensured their failure to bring a democratic environment to Vietnam and downgrading sympathy to Vietnamese abroad?

I grew up being Vietnamese, and I have a divisive family. A father who is a fervent anti-communist but drunk and violent, and a mother who herself is a high-ranking official working as a judge in a State Court in Hanoi, a caring woman but arrogant. Being born in such a unique family of a communist mother and an anti-communist father shaped my experience with both anti-communist Vietnamese and the pro-communist Vietnamese, and this made me have a clearer insight into the communist party that has reigned Vietnam ever since the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and the vast majority of Vietnamese abroad who are 80%, anti-communist. I don't think I am a bridge, but circumstances made me so.

For me, I am always interested to see the opinions of Vietnamese Americans, the largest Vietnamese diaspora in the world. The history of Vietnamese immigration to the U.S. is just a recent contemporary one, yet pretty much connected to the tragic history of Vietnamese people. The Vietnam War, began from 1956-1975, ended with a communist conquest. The war was highly unpopular for many Americans, but for Vietnamese who fled south and later 1975, it became a national tragedy.

South Vietnamese fleeing to the helicopter before the fall of Saigon

Vietnam in 20th century

20th century Vietnam was connected with wars, like a circle. It was brutally conquered and exploited by the French, who turned Vietnam into one of Asia's richest, but with little human rights and freedom as the French curtailed all kind of dissents against French rule. Then the Japanese who conquered Vietnam in 1940 confirmed no change at all, it was unique that Indochina (the name for French colony in Southeast Asia) the only colony throughout World War II to be governed by two different oppressors. The French and Japanese were hostile to widespread opposition against this dual-rule, which deliberately caused the famine from 1944 to 1945, killing more than three million Vietnamese. The Viet Minh, a mainly communist guerrilla group, assembled an army with support from the United States, in particular, the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of CIA). One of the officers that helped to assemble the army that would go on becoming the People's Army of Vietnam was Archimedes Patti, who in 1980s, condemned the Vietnam War.

OSS agents and the Viet Minh. Archimedes Patti was the man sitting in the forth from the left near Ho Chi Minh.

I can't say if this was really a defining moment, but it had a storming effect. Though Ho Chi Minh was a clear communist, his best wish in life was always establishing an alliance with the United States because he did not trust Soviet Union. When the Japanese were beaten in August 1945, Ho Chi Minh led a revolt, seizing back the country's capital the same month, before declaring independence in Ba Dinh Square. When he declared independence, Ho already asked Patti to draft the American constitution for his speech. Ho Chi Minh even sought to exchange by abandoning his communist idea for any potential partnership with Washington. His plea was not heard aftermath. Patti, who became sympathetic to Vietnamese cause, disgusted by British and American attempts to back the French, left the country.

And so the mess went on. The French made it clear that they had no intention to let Vietnamese independence and fought a bloody war to regain control from 1946-1954. The French lost. Then the Americans decided to jump in, prompting an unpopular Catholic nationalist to govern South Vietnam, or Republic of Vietnam, reigning the country with corrupt Catholic officials in a Buddhist-dominated society. This already set up the final collapse of the Republic at the hand of communists, as it drove Buddhists, and later poor civilians, to the communists. The communists also successfully manipulated the population throughout saying about how corrupt South Vietnam was, to deflect from the brutal land reforms and famine during 1960s in North Vietnam that killed more than 500,000 people. To add further the pain, the Americans intervened alongside its allies (Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines), but instead of understanding the locals, they mercilessly launch a bombing and killing campaign indiscriminately, as well as long-lasting damaging policies like Strategic Hamlet, that finally alienated the whole population from the Saigon Republican government. By 1970s, the hope was lost, and South Vietnam's collapse was just a matter of time. It was fulfilled in 1975 when North Vietnam dishonoured the Paris Peace Treaty of 1973, invading the demoralised South.

Tragedy to radicalisation

North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam in 1975 led to the flooding of Vietnamese refugees, creating the worst human exodus ever happened in Southeast Asia. Many Vietnamese fleeing from communist oppression, persecution due to their religious and political affiliations. The loss of Vietnam was severe for the United States, and to apologize, the U.S. allowed Vietnamese refugees to settle in the country, and supported Deng Xiaoping's China to invade Vietnam in 1979. They also urged other countries to defend the fleeing Vietnamese refugees from Thai and Malaysian pirates. The loss of South Vietnam caused severe emotional damage for many Vietnamese refugees, but it also set the tones of their political affiliation in the future, in particular, the Vietnamese Americans, as my detail indicated.

Ronald Reagan, President of the United States from 1980 to 1988.

It came in 1980 when Republican candidate, former movie star Ronald Reagan elected into the White House. Still trying to recover from the loss of Vietnam, American political makers sought to weaken Soviet advances, and the Sino-Soviet split suited the agenda. Ronald Reagan, however, created a massive revolution on the Vietnamese refugees' mindsets.

Reagan was not just an ardent anti-communist, his policy was very radical as well. He openly welcomed Vietnamese refugees to stay in the United States, and also made his fame by the 1983 Evangelical speech, where he confronted the Soviet Union as an "Evil Empire". Not just that, he also doubled the military arms race against the Soviets, enriching anti-Soviet coalition networks and supported the Afghan mujahideen of Ahmad Shah Massoud fighting Soviet occupation force. He also announced his open support for the Solidarity Movement in Poland. In 1987, 12th June, Reagan came to Berlin, making his famous speech "Tear down this wall" challenging the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Subsequently, the Soviet Union and its communist friends started to fall apart. Poland set freed in 1989, the first state in Iron Curtain to do so. It was later followed by a string of communist regimes falling on until the Soviet flag was taken down from the Kremlin in 1991. The United States ended victoriously and achieved the status as the sole superpower. The charisma of Ronald Reagan left a deep impression that, for many Vietnamese Americans, they need a man like Reagan once more. And because Reagan was a Republican, the Vietnamese refugees subsequently bestowed before Reagan, deep like a father figure.

Unfortunately, when most communist regimes in the world disintegrated, this didn't happen in Vietnam. The communists in Vietnam were quick to realise the Chinese invasion of 1979 and subsequent Soviet failure to hold the words making them nearly impossible if not to say vulnerable to potential downfall. So in 1986, they enabled "Đổi mới", but maintained a huge powerful grip by suppressing opposition parties. So economic reforms were achieved, but political reforms were not followed. This helped Vietnam to achieve a miraculous growth from 1990s onward, but the communist party successfully evaded the collapse of other communist regimes to follow the model of China, the bigger communist neighbor in the north.

And this has dragged Vietnamese Americans to be even more hostile than ever. Frustrated to see how the communist party of Vietnam didn't collapse as expected, the Vietnamese Americans, alongside many Vietnamese diaspora who came with refugee background, tried to pressure international governments, notably the United States, or Australia and France, to push the communist regime to acknowledge democratisation process and its human rights violation, even when the U.S. normalised tie with Vietnam in 1995. It failed to materialise because the communist dictatorship in Vietnam was always ahead one step, quickly dispersed and suppressed the voices of dissidents before they could raise any single demands. The fact the Hanoi communist dictatorship went faster than democratic desires raised eyebrows, and affected the Vietnamese Americans' stance, making them more radical than ever.

"Freedom in Republican Way"

It's a bit voodoo if you ask Vietnamese Americans, but since Ronald Reagan's era, their loyalty in American politics is strongly followed with the Elephant. They blamed Democratic President Bill Clinton for normalising relations with the communist regime in Hanoi, thinking that if Vietnam had been isolated furthermore, the communist party of Vietnam, lacking technology it needed like North Korea, would have suffered and collapsed. So their support for Republicans even followed, because of the synonymous word "Republic" identifying with the fallen Republic of Vietnam. So that's how "freedom" on Vietnamese American mind gets the shape.

No better example of this than the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The United States launched an invasion to depose the despot Saddam Hussein but with a false accusation that Saddam was trying to develop chemical and nuclear weapons. It was not found, but Vietnamese Americans still thinking that President Bush Jr. was right, the Democrats were trying to conceal information. Many Vietnamese Americans in 2008 and 2012 elections voted for Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney, but were defeated by Democrat's Barack Obama. When Barack Obama refused to make intervention to Syria out of fear that it could lead to another military catastrophe like Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnamese Americans bombarded with racist, degenerate words accusing Obama as a traitor and unpatriotic. They also criticised the Obama Administration for not doing enough to stop Russian imperialism in Ukraine and Syria, as well as rising Chinese imperialist ambitions in South China Sea and East China Sea.

And this has followed without any concerns about a reservation.

Obama's refusal to maintain military presences in Iraq and Syria have been the cause of Vietnamese Americans' criticism and has driven further Vietnamese Americans to Republican hands.

And that blind hatred against anything Democrats descended to affect their votes. So in 2016 election, Vietnamese Americans voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump, because they thought he was a hardliner. Trump won, and many Vietnamese Americans started to feel enthusiasm under the new administration, so much that they did not care about other waries about Trump's unstable mentality.

This has completely let Vietnamese Americans become ignorant of Trump's long list of failures. He made a series of political disasters that led the United States become increasingly less reliable than ever. From withdrawing to the TPP that led to China to take advantage of America's absence in Asia-Pacific, as well as Trump's decision to end the nuclear deal with Iran that made Iran increasingly furious and determined for nuclear weapons, threatened to destabilise whole Middle East. Trump also abandoned the Kurds despite the latter's efforts to crush ISIS, presenting Turkish dictator Erdogan golden opportunity to invade northern Syria and Iraq. Trump also greatly antagonised the allies in Europe by being soften to Russia's aggressions and his attempt to discredit Joe Biden when talking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (who is accused as Putin's puppet by Ukrainians). His endless trade wars with China and many countries had made the United States' economy become more fragile and easier to be broken due to his high tariffs that let American producers to receive very little while inflation rose. Trump's hardline policies against immigrants also alienated human right defenders. Yet Trump had also campaigned nothing for human rights either and embraced racist groups like KKK or Proud Boys; and exploiting racial tensions to the core. To make it worse, when COVID-19 spread out in America, Trump didn't take care about health situation, letting the country completely collapsed and making America to become the worst affected by COVID, with over more than 400,000 deaths and 28 million people infected when he left the Presidency. Trump also delayed the distribution of vaccines.

For Vietnamese Americans, Trump has become even greater than Lincoln, Reagan or Eisenhower - to a point he became a kind of Jesus. They even campaigned for his re-election in 2020. A survey from APIA the same year revealed that Trump got 48% support from Vietnamese Americans, the highest among all Asian Americans, and the only Asian American group to view Trump positively.

And Trump's defeat enraged a lot of Vietnamese Americans, many belong to the hardline. For them, supporting Republican Party is equivalent to supporting for free Vietnam, despite many Democrats are also anti-communist and Trump's racist, ignorant nature.

The Capitol Siege and the karma

In Buddhist traditions, if you do something wrong before, you will receive the punishment in the later life. It is called karma. Many Vietnamese are Buddhists, and this is well-ingrained in Vietnamese traditions.

This elaborated what would happen. On 6th January, 2021, when the Congress was about to ratify the victory of Joe Biden, Trump rallied his supporters, including many White supremacists, anti-semitic and Asianophobic supporters, to besiege the Hill with hope to disrupt the convention, which became the first insurrectionist activity in the history. A number of Vietnamese Americans also joined the rally. Based on my witness from Vietnamese American community, I realise a lot of them truly thought it was "fine" to do so. And they were encouraged by even their own people despite the sacred nature of the Hill.

Vietnamese Americans flying the flag of defunct South Vietnam in the Capitol Hill siege.

According to Professor Long T. Bui, it emphasized the Vietnamese militant nationalist fervour, the fear that was truly rooted from history that if Trump went out, no one would protect Vietnam from communism and China. The fear of China is justified, basically because of historical tensions and resentment. The fear of communism is also correct one, too, based on how Vietnamese Americans traced their root from.

Yet, I feel people ignore string of reasons that tolerated such insurrectionist activities by Vietnamese Americans.

For only four years under Trump, Vietnamese Americans were fed with racist media blessed by Trump. It painted the Black Lives Matter movement as a communist-funded movements, all black Americans are Chinese/Russian supporters. It also openly adopted the word "Chinese virus" to insult people of Chinese origins, without knowing that many white racists can't distinguish Vietnamese to Chinese because Vietnamese and Chinese are the same. A lot of Vietnamese Americans were also filled with theories about Vietnam War like the Jews stole South Vietnam money and weapons to Israel letting to South Vietnam's defeat, or Joe Biden was a Soviet/CCP spy disguising as American politician. And more. It's still being tolerated.

Such xenophobic culture made Trump an ideal politician for Vietnamese Americans. Because it represents the real kind of democracy Vietnamese Americans want to see in future Vietnam: a democracy that is rooted on racism and segregation policies, as well as tolerance of hate speech.

Trump's insurrection attempt, however, failed, with five deaths. And the karma law soon comes to Vietnamese Americans. They are facing an unwanted "welcome" post-Trump government. A new wave of American progressive saw Vietnamese Americans "dangerous, uneducated"; some even advocated Vietnamese Americans to be deported to Vietnam for what they perceived as "traitors" or "domestic terrorists". White supremacists bred with Trump's backup in four years began launching attacks on Asian Americans, including a lot of Vietnamese Americans, as well as their properties - and Vietnamese take all the blames because they support Trump. Vietnamese Americans now campaigning for politics are largely seen as Republican stooges, even young Vietnamese may have leaned to progressive. Vietnamese Americans also suffer one of the highest ratio of COVID infects and deaths among Asian Americans, over 26:1, because they really think COVID is a hoax. The South Vietnamese flag is going to be connected with racism and hate speech by other Americans due to its involvement, especially African Americans, due to Vietnamese opposition to Black Lives Matter. And Vietnamese Americans in majority, stay silent. The monster they supported, now return to bite them back.

It makes me now so ashamed to declare myself a Vietnamese when seeing how our brethren abroad waving the Republic's flag in the siege. But it underlines a greater problem of Vietnamese Americans - they've failed from the day they make its political agenda.

A final look

By not adopting or disassociating with the reality, Vietnamese Americans have lost the chance to regain conscience.

In modern world today, there is a new Cold War, and this is between China, the most powerful dictatorship in the world with an economy 30 times larger than that of Soviet Union; and the United States, which has seen a relative decline. Moreover, China has shown its better perpetration than Russia for an eventual conflict with the West, notable by how fanatic Chinese nationalism can go, and the diversity of Chinese economy. Communist Vietnam realises this, and even when many communists in Vietnam dislike China due to 1979 war, it also finds China their only source to keep its political system alive. The communists in Vietnam also shows the world it can cooperate with every countries, while the same time keeps up its repression against public dissents freely. Trade and economic embargoes have little effects today, by how we see Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Russia, Myanmar, Belarus, both have been sanctioned by the West for obvious reasons, but China ensured they can survive even with Western economic isolation. If embargoes return to Vietnam, it will have little impact, too.

Why did Vietnamese Americans support Donald Trump anyway? Possibly because of Trump's perceived anti-Chinese policies. But Trump is not an economist, nor even a professional politician. He just gets the money for himself only, and he has expressed little condemnation when Russia and China's repeated their attacks on America's allies and values. The Vietnamese blind support for Trump also coincided with their failure to condemn Russian aggression, nor even raising the voice of ongoing human rights abuse in Vietnam, just because what Trump said is "true". Trump did not even participate in Vietnam War. He even insulted Vietnam War veterans like McCain. But they still support him and the Republican Party which has become corrupted from times.

This, in the end, creates a counter-productive result. Vietnamese Americans' demonisation of Democrats and recently, anti-Trump Republicans, isolate Vietnamese further from mainstream politics. The price of having a yellow flag with three red stripes, is now seen as a symbol of terrorism. Other Asian Americans are barricading Vietnamese further due to their Trump's roots. But it is nothing if you don't address the root of paranoid xenophobia among Vietnamese Americans. Just look on democratic countries in Asia today like South Korea and Japan, the new Vietnamese migrants carrying red flag with golden star in the middle, now outpaced the previous Vietnamese refugees, and representing more the voice of Vietnam than that of old guards. And increasing Vietnamese immigration from Vietnam to Europe also carrying the same. They mayn't be necessary pro-communist regime, but some surely develop dislike on the former refugees because of its racism and the disrespect former refugees look on new migrants.

Vietnamese Americans have the chance to tell the world their tragedy while the same time also demonstrating their capabilities to move forward and also bring the hope for the democratisation of Vietnam. Instead, they allow radicalisation to destroy it.