Second indochina war: further reading guide

Feel free to modify/change the image if it's too graphic (it's of the My Lai Massacre), and please suggest stuff to add to the reading guide.

The German communist left journal Kommunistisches Programm had a three part series that may be relevant, translated by Libri Incogniti:

Not a bad analysis. I'll add it to the list. There are certainly more works just critiquing American imperialism than there are those critiquing both that and the Lao Dong Party/Vietnamese Communist Party, so it's sort of refreshing to see both. Then again the majority of Vietnamese actually supported Ho and the DRV, as American officials constantly lament throughout the documentary record, and which was also the reason why the Diem government refused to ever hold the reunification elections as specified in the Geneva Accords of 1954. Nonetheless, I agree that there was nothing "socialist/communist" about the Vietnamese Communist Party, whether before or after reunification.

Thanks for getting this started. For now I have moved this into the Further reading guide. Have updated the graphic image, and used the latest Solidarity pamphlet which superseded the earlier one.

Np. I'll try to add links for the books and articles and possibly upload some of the content on here. I'll also probably reformat all the entries into proper citations with more info at some point (kind of like the China reading guide).

It's rather interesting how the term "Viet Cong" was actually a pejorative invented by the Saigon government that the National Liberation Front never used themselves (and which is still not used in Vietnam today). Ngo Vinh Long (who recently passed away) argued that it was coined by Nguyễn Văn Châu as a homonym for "Diệt Cộng" (meaning to "annihilate the communists") and was part of the Diem government's Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign. See this correspondence here, and also the above "Remembering Vietnam" clip starting at around 14:53. It's sort of a testament to the effectiveness of U.S./Saigon propaganda that virtually everyone in the West, whether intentionally or not, treats it as if it were some "official term" for the NLF (or rather the Vietnamese who rose up against the aggression of the U.S.-backed Diem regime). I'd be interested in other sources discussing the origins of the term; most sources seem to acknowledge that it's a pejorative or slang term, but don't really go into any depth.

Considering adding a music section. The Clash have at least two songs that deal explicitly with the Vietnam War. "Charlie Don't Surf" is in reference to "Victor Charlie" (i.e. the American name for the so-called "Viet Cong") and the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which Strummer was a big fan of. In the latter film, there's a scene where the American commander (appropriately named Lt. Kilgore) argues for clearing a beach so that he and other soldiers can go surfing. When told that the beach is too dangerous, or is "Charlie's point," Lt. Kilgore angrily responds that "Charlie don't surf!" The Clash lyrics "Charlie don't surf and we think he should" is basically a reference to American/Western imperialism and the spread of capitalist social relations.

The other song, "Straight to Hell," partly criticizes how the US and American servicemen took little responsibility for the thousands of Amerasians fathered during the War. That situation would slightly improve with the 1987 Amerasian Homecoming Act, allowing mother-child migration to the US, but there were still a number of Amerasians essentially abandoned by American soldiers. (Amerasians' treatment within reunified Vietnam also wasn't much better.) It's pretty self-explanatory what the lyrics are about here: "Let me tell ya 'bout your blood, bamboo kid / It ain't Coca-Cola, it's rice / Straight to hell boy." Anyway, just some song analysis for the only band that matters...