Commies are baaad, m'kay?

Benh Thanh Market

Thirty odd years ago, the fall of South Vietnam and the end of the war started an exodus of thousands of Vietnamese fleeing the arrival of the «conquerors from the North». They ended up settling down in Western Europe, Australia, other Asian countries, but mostly in North America. Today, the Vietnamese diaspora is about 3 million strong. Many Vietnamese emigrants have since gone back to the country but a vast majority of them are still living abroad and remaining very antagonistic towards the current government of Vietnam.

The most vocal group resides in California, where they lobby the American government against any concessions or goodwill gestures towards Vietnam. As a group, they are similar to the Miami Cubans, who have never forgiven Castro for taking the power that they felt belongs to them by divine rights and who are still tediously plotting their comeback.

I read a lot of Vietnamese blogs every day, mainly those written by Western expatriates living and working in Vietnam, but also some written by Vietnamese in Vietnam. I find these blogs more honest and more credible in their description of life in Vietnam, than the blogs written by Vietnamese living abroad or comments from bitter and resentful Vietnamese-Americans of the Miami Cuban School. Most of the latter are mainly crude propagandistic rants that are so remote from facts and reality that I wonder whether the person writing them has been living in a cave for the past thirty years.

Ad hominem insults and criticism of the current Vietnamese government are presented without any proof or references, without any links to credible sources of information. Over the top allegations and accusations are printed in Vietnamese local magazines (I’m talking about North American magazines written in Vietnamese) and blindly accepted by their readers. All this creates an echo chamber where lies and propaganda are mixed and ingurgitated by the same captive audience. Any public figure in the Vietnamese community who dares to raise any question or express any skepticism is immediately accused of treason and branded «communist», which is the ultimate insult. Any individual or artistic group that has any connection with Vietnam is immediately boycotted. And of course, lecturers, entertainers, etc. from Vietnam are also boycotted and hounded by demonstrators to make sure that nobody can hear their messages or watch their performances. All that in the name of freedom, mind you, to protest the absence of, in Vietnam.

This is why I would like to reproduce below part of an expat’s blog in Saigon: http://tinyurl.com/h6axk

«A capitalist, consumer culture has taken root with a vengeance here. It's almost as if the Vietnamese are in overdrive to make up for 25 years of economic stagnation. Everywhere I see evidence of a burgeoning middle class and the trappings of wealth -- DVD shops (pirated, but obvious evidence of DVD players) , florists, photo studios, refrigerators, LCD HDTVs, glossy fashion magazines, etc.

Yesterday I went to a Walmart-type store crammed with toasters, cookies, cell phones, audio equipment, shampoo, cosmetics, pots and pans, produce, a bakery (the Vietnamese bake excellent bread), clothing, stationery, rice cookers -- you name it, this place had it. Except for the checkout girls wearing ao dais, It felt pretty much like any similar store in Des Moines or Milwaukee. It warmed my heart.

Some find it fashionable to bemoan the spread of wealth and market-based economies across the world. "Everything is being Starbuck-ized!" they complain as they sip their lattes or Pinot Noir. Certainly the free market has its ugly spots. But I challenge any of those people to spend 40 years working from dawn until dusk plowing fields with a water buffalo and living in a dirt-floor house. I'm pretty sure they would politely decline. Instead, they would go to the local Whole Foods and drop a wad on overpriced organic produce and free-range chicken packaged in tidy, sanitized containers. Just like the Vietnamese.»

Magazine stand

Supermarket

Here are some of the blogs about Vietnam that I mentioned earlier. Go read them and make your own opinions. Ignorance is not a good option.

http://noodlepie.typepad.com/blog/
http://www.vietnamesegod.blogspot.com/
http://www.stickyrice.typepad.com/
http://tphcm.blogspot.com/
http://www.ourman.typepad.com/
http://vietnamstreets.blogspot.com/
http://www.diacritic.org/blog/
http://layered.typepad.com/antidote_to_burnout/