Uncle Ho wasn't truly Communist

Discussion in 'History & Past Politicians' started by Jolly Penguin, Sep 29, 2022.

  1. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    Anybody here familiar with Uncle Ho and what Americans call the Vietnam War? I know the Vietnamese perspective well but am curious about the US point of view today.

    I have read that Uncle Ho was fighting against the oppressive government in the south, appealed to the US for help, was ignored and later identified as communist because Communists agreed to back him. Then the USA invaded.

    Is that your understanding? Or are Americans taught that Uncle Ho was an ideological communist? Did the Americans believe they were fighting for freedom as they actually were fighting against it?

    Uncle Ho fought off the US aggression, and because he never actually was communist, it was easy for Vietnam to transition to the capitalism you see in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) today.

    Uncle Ho is now remembered fondly by Vietnamese, with similar reverence you have for Washington, etc. He has become more legend than man at this point, hence his moniker Uncle Ho.

    And USA is mostly forgiven. Americans are sometimes surprised that they aren't jeered at in Vietnam today.
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2022
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  2. Soupnazi

    Soupnazi Well-Known Member

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    Ho was a communist from his days as a young man. While strudying to be a pastry chef in europe he took a trip to Moscow and stood in line for hours to view Lenin's corpse. Not the sort of thing the average tourist does but exactly the sort of thing a commited communist does.

    He established his own government in North Vietnam slaughtered over a hundred thousand innocent people and then attacked the south.

    He was the aggressor in that war.
     
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  3. Grey Matter

    Grey Matter Well-Known Member Donor

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    Very interesting dude, that is seemingly indisputable just based on his Wikipedia page,

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

    It's free and in spite of the what seems to be the opinion around here of a fair lot of those on the right, it's more often than not the absolute best resource of information available on thousands of topics on the internet.
     
  4. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    What I think drives the point home the most is that Uncle Ho tried multiple times to get the Americans on his side before they wound up on the other side.

    Somebody ideologically opposed to the US and to capitalism, wouldn't have done that.
     
  5. Soupnazi

    Soupnazi Well-Known Member

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    Sure they would.

    Stalin wanted us on his side in WWII
     
  6. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    You need to read more on the subject.

    I spent an extended period of time studying the Vietnam war and associated subjects. I have read extensively on the subject, I have read biographies of Ho Chi Minh, I have read Vietnamese sources on the war and I have travelled to Vietnam to do research. I also live next to a large Vietnamese community. None of this means I am necessarily right, but I hae a good grasp of the facts.

    The short answer here is that Ho Chi Minh was a committed Communist from his youth until his death. He was already involved in far left politics by his late twenties, was a founder of the French Communist party at the age of 30 and spent almost 20 years working for the Comintern in various nations before returning to Vietnam in 1941. The Comintern was a body effectively run by the USSR and specifically dedicated to spreading Communism. The only people who worked for it were dedicated Communists. One of the tactics they used was to create 'front' organizations comprised of numerous parties, most of them not Communist. You worked with whoever could get you closer to your goal.

    Ho Chi Minh was committed to freeing Indochina from French rule and turning it into one large Communist state (in the end it became three Communist states). He was ruthless to this end. He worked with the US because they could help him get rid of the Japanese. I am sure he hoped he might use them to help him deal with the French & Chinese too. After WW2 Chinese troops occupied Nth Vietnam, so Ho negotiated a return of French troops to get the Chinese out. Then he cut a deal with the French to help his Communists wipe out another nationalist group who were potential rivals. Ho was clever and ruthless. He didn't kill people the way Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot did, but he was prepared to murder people who got in his way. All of this is well documented.

    When the war with the French was over he effectively handed over control of Nth Vietnam over to Le Duan, who went about the business of setting up a Communist state. That state was more brutal & repressive than its Southern counterpart. Over a million people fled to the South after the COmmunists came to power. There would have been more, but the Communists freaked out & stopped people leaving. There was no comparable movement North. The land reform program of the late 50s killed tens of thousands. There was a serious debate within the Vietnamese Communist Party about starting a war in the South. Unfortunately Le Duan was a southerner and was determined to conquer it. He got his way and millions died needlessly so South Vietnam could become Communist. The US tried to stop this. Not sure that qualifies as 'aggression'.

    Happy to answer any questions.
     
  7. Anonymous.Professor

    Anonymous.Professor Newly Registered

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    Yes uncle Ho was in fact always a hardline communist, follower of Stalin and Comintern. Also red China under Mao supported Vietnamese communists already in 50s and they were the main ally until late 60s when Soviets under hardliner Brezhnev took this position. So Vietnamese communists were even more radical than the Soviets under Khrushchev.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2022
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  8. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I still just can't reconcile the worker's paradise and the modern day sell out of the local labor to be entirely exploited by globalists. Nike? Can you hear me yet?? When the workers finally understand how ridiculously exploited they have been by their communist regimes, likely, as happened across Europe, these countries will follow their lead and throw off their brutal communist regimes.
     
  9. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    Problem with Communism is of course humans. Sharing isn't bad. The problem is somebody has to be in charge, and power corrupts.

    Problem with Capitalism is also humans. And yes, unferrered capitalism without regulation is also always going to lead to terrifying results.
     
  10. JohnHamilton

    JohnHamilton Well-Known Member

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    Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist and communist, but what should the U.S. have token from that?

    We got involved in a war that didn't concern the national security of this country. The real concern in the 1960s and '70s was Western Europe. Viet Nam didn't matter, and given the enmity between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, the fact the Viet Nam went communist should not have concerned us. Yet, “the domino theory” and containment policy prevailed and we go involved in a costly useless war that is hurting us down to this day.

    Why is it hurting us now? The reason it that it radicalized a lot of the young people who are my age. The worst of them stayed on to get graduate degrees and become college professors. From there they spread communism into the education system. Their grandchildren are indoctrinated and screwing this country as we speak.

    We are paying the price for that now, and might end up paying the ultimate price with the loss of our basic freedoms and the economic system that has brought prosperity to the world. I hope I’m gone before we reach that point.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2022
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  11. Moi621

    Moi621 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Moi supports
    Uncle Ho
    to this day!
    Go look up his biography
     
  12. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    Those who screw with Vietnam wind up getting screwed. China learned this lesson over hundreds of years and invasions only to be ultimately repelled over and over. The French and USA have now also learned this.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2022
  13. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    As a Vietnam veteran I tell you we where not the aggressor. We were in essence fighting a Soviet vassal state aka North Vietnam. The South was corrupt but not as corrupt as any communist state is.
     
  14. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    Agreed with a lot of what you say.
     
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  15. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    Without going into another long post, I have serious issues with some of the choices America made in Vietnam, in particular some big choices made by Johnson, Westmoreland & Nixon. However, those choices were made attempting to stop communist North Vietnam expanding its influence into Laos & Cambodia & taking over South Vietnam.

    North Vietnam's success condemned all three of those nations to decades of crushing dictatorship, and in the case of Cambodia a massive genocide. An American victory would have been better for everyone, including North Vietnam.
     
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  16. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    Even if they do not jeer us I still do not want to visit Vietnam. They are doing what China did in that they are playing the “capitalist game or better said they are playing us capitalists. They are too small to be a threat to us as China is and China is betting more bold all of the time.
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2022
  17. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    You do not have to convince me. I learned about the evils of communism and Russian depravity from my parents who lived under Soviet Russian occupation from 1939 to 1941 when an equally but different depraved entity -the Nazis invaded Western Ukraine. Both of my grandfathers were sent to Siberia one for allegedly being a capitalst( he owned and ran multiple small farms that he bought from failed farmers. My other grandfather owned two really small businesses - shoe making shop ( he actually made shoes) and a tailor shop actually made clothes. His “sin besides being a “capitalist” was writting anti Soviet leaflets for the OUN. So yes I knew about the evils of Communists, Russians, and Soviets from about age 5. Actually all three entities were equally evil.
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2022
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  18. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    I've been to both Vietnam (very recently) and China (pre-pandemic). It isn't even remotely the same these days. Vietnam and China used to be similar but they've gone in completely opposite directions in the past 40 or so years. They are also enemies, and Vietnam is on our side against China; a natural ally. Ironic given how the USA tried to invade them, but still the case because China is the big threat now. Vietnamese ships, civilian ships, are often sunk by Chinese in "misunderstandings" whenever the Viet ships travel too far off their own shore, even from Saigon, into the "South China Sea" which China considers its waters (which is nuts). There's no reason to call that the "South China Sea". It should be the shared territory of the countries in that area: Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.

    Sailing out of Hanoi too chose to Hainan I can maybe understand, but Saigon is nowhere near China.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2022
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  19. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    I am unaware of any American attempt to 'invade' Vietnam. Perhaps you are mistaken.

    You are correct that Vietnam is shifting strongly towards the US & other nations in their ongoing fight with China, but there is no 'irony' here. Vietnam's entire history is defined by its relationship to China. Ho Chi Minh even negotiated the return of French colonial forces in order to ensure Chinese withdrawal and his successors fought a war with China a decade after hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops had been stationed in Vietnam as a guarantee against a US invasion that never came. Vietnam knows all about using distant powers as a balance against China.
     
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  20. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    I do know the history of Vietnam. China seems to have the attitude against Vietnam as Russia does against Ukraine. China resents the fact that Vietnam is an independent country just as Russia claims that Ukraine should not be independent. Though I know a couple Vietnam veterans who visited Vietnam because that was a stop off on the cruise they booked. I have no such desire to visit and obviously I know Vietnam is not the place it was when I was there
    . I still refer to Saigon as Saigon.
     
  21. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    No, I am not mistaken. The USA is just one of many who invaded and sought to control Vietnam. The French before them, and the Chinese repeatedly for a thousand years.

    Vietnam is tough and has repeatedly driven out the invaders. Few have fought off so many aggressors so often.

    In contrast in the past 200 years, Vietnam only invaded one other country once; Cambodia, ending the murderous Khmer Rouge.

    The irony is Vietnam becoming friends with USA after USA invaded. Vietnam today is also friendly with France.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2022
  22. Jolly Penguin

    Jolly Penguin Well-Known Member

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    So do most Viet who live there today. It's just easier to say.
     
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  23. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    You really don't know much about the hisory of Indochina. It sounds like you have read some very bad history or none at all. I suspect I am wasting my time, but I dislike seeing untruths presented as 'facts'.

    There was no invasion. America tried to stop North Vietnam imposing a communist government on South Vietnam. Unfortunately it failed.

    That is one of the most ignorant statements I have ever read. North Vietnamese forces invaded Laos in 1958 and stayed there until its communist Pathet Lao allies overthrew the government.

    North Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1959 & stayed there until their invasion of South Vietnam was complete in 1975. When the Cambodian government made a concerted attempt to expel the North Vietnamese army (PAVN) and VietCong (VC) & in 1970 it seized a number of provinces in the east of Cambodia. During 1971 the PAVN & VC effectively destroyed the offensive capacity Cambodian Army in a series of battles, reducing it to a strictly defensive force unable to stop the Khmer Rouge eventually taking over Cambodia. In case youwere unaware, the Khmer Rouge were armed & tgrained by North Vietnam.

    So, contrary to your claims, North Vietnam invaded Cambodia and helped the Khmer Rouge come to power. If not for Vietnam they would never have been able to defeat the Cambodian government. Vietnam only invaded in 1978 because Pol Pot kept attacking Vietnam. If not for that the Khmer Rouge would have been able to murder Cambodians unhindered.

    Vietnams invasions of Laos & Cambodia condemned those nations to generations of dictatorship and in the case of Cambodia one of the worst genocides of the C20th. Anyone ignorant of these events doesn't know enough to discuss Indochinese history.
     
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  24. Anonymous.Professor

    Anonymous.Professor Newly Registered

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    I would add here that USA intervention against North Vietnamese aggressive spreading of communism would probably not be necessary if USA would not allow the loss of China to communism after WW2 in the first place.
     
  25. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    Wasn't America's to 'allow' or 'disallow'. America pumped in vast amounts of weapons & money & it still didn't save the Nationalists. Nothing else America was ever going to do would have altered that. CSK had his opportunities but never could exploit them.

    Not everything is about America.
     

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