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Vietnam
I was wearing my hammer and sickle tee today and think I offended a few people from Vietnam at the nail salon my mom was at.
I can understand why they have a negative view of communism, but it did make me think about my own beliefs.
I don't fully understand why something like a hammer and sickle shirt could be so offensive to the Vietmanies. Since they're from Vietnam, they obviously experienced negativities.
What are your thoughts on Vietnam?
Most refugees from socialist countries are counterrevolutions who fled because they didn't agree with the system or had a stake in capital.Very rarely do these peoples opinions matter because they are capitalist to begin with.
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It's either this or they get their impression of communism from the capitalists who continue to run their formerly revolutionary country in the name of Marxism-Leninism. (which is pretty saddening -- why do they even do that?)
^This. I can't tell you how many Cuban Refugees I have met who start their stories with how much land or money their family owned and how that terrible Fidel ended their monopoly over the island while they fled to the USA. Of course they don't admit why the USA gave them a free ride to Florida in the first place.
implying people don't leave countries because of injustices done to them by capitalists, and the only chance of help comes from marxist leninist scumbags who would regularly sell out the proletariat.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
Not all South Vietnamese refugees left Vietnam because they were bourgeois ideologues. Nor is the current Vietnamese government all that proletarian in reality. Many Vietnamese refugees were actually incredibly poor or lower-middle class, or even rural ethnic groups which had been exploited by the US government to fight the VC and NVA.
I think there are some serious flawed policies which the Vietnamese government pursued when it won. This isn't to say that the South Vietnamese government or the US government was any better or less repressive of course but the NV had serious flaws too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF
Equating the members of the Vietnamese American community with some Bay of Pigs-era Cuban American bourgeois without recognizing the huge mistakes made by the Vietnamese is unfair to Vietnamese Americans. It also is very unfair to the poor tribal communities which the US used as mercenaries in Laos and Vietnam to pretend that the Laotian and Vietnamese governments were not (and are still not) unfairly repressive towards those communities. The Montagnards and Hmong didn't fight the Vietnamese because they were capitalists-on the contrary, they were rural farmers deep in the jungle. It would be a joke to call them bourgeois, yet when they won the new Vietnamese and Laotian government treated these minorities very badly. In fact both governments still do repress these minorities, as well as others. Lastly, the current Vietnamese government remains both incredibly corrupt and bourgeois, so it should not be of any surprise that the state there uses repressive tactics against its people just as much as any other. Since it took over South Vietnam, the economic inequality between the proletariat and the bourgeois has continued as has economic privilege for those connected to power.
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Woah, it is NOT at ALL REMOTELY OKAY to say that the opinions of people you have privilege over "don't matter" because they're "capitalist". Do you realize that you just said that the opinions of refugees/immigrants from countries whose regimes call themselves "communist" VERY RARELY MATTER? SERIOUSLY??
It's not like every immigrant from Vietnam/the USSR/whatever place did it just because they disagree politically with the choices that their governments make. It's not like everyone can just pick right the fuck up and move to a different country that speaks a different language and has a different culture where -- dear god, where people say terrible things like you just did. Way to silence EVERY SINGLE PERSON who's been harmed in the name of a political ideology you endorse, right there.
To the topic creator:
Another thing I want to point out here in addition to Sinister Cultural Marxist's post is that as someone who (I assume, correct me if I'm wrong) has never lived under a communist dictatorship, you need to be really careful about using imagery that real life people have been oppressed in the name of. It sounds like you're doing it, like you took it seriously that you made people uncomfortable -- which is good.
It's not about whether they're valid in feeling that way -- and they are -- it's about what you want to communicate. If what you're doing makes people you have privilege over feel uncomfortable then DON'T DO IT - seriously. It's not okay when a fascist waltzes in with a swastika tattoo, and it's not okay when a communist walks in with a hammer and sickle. Communist regimes have committed and endorsed genocides. If you're going to call yourself a communist you need to be REALLY FUCKING CONSCIOUS of that because it's a really big deal.
(With the disclaimer that I am white and have never left the United States.)
Dude....you sound like a capitalist.
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I... wha... bwuh. I don't even know how I can respond to that. Is everyone who acknowledges that a communist regime has ever done anything bad a capitalist? If it helps you sleep at night I think capitalism is a crock of shit and I've put a lot of work into that idea. I just also don't believe in dismissing... you know, every Vietnamese-American when they talk about the ways that that particular ideology has been harmful to them.
Most communist regimes (with the exception of Pol Pot and Stalin who either weren't socialist or barely socialist) are not as bad as their capitalist counterparts;they try hard to provide for their people and only enact regressive laws when revisionism and imperialist pressure is added.
I never said I dismissed every refugee but a great deal of them have claims that are bullshit which involve them pissing and moaning over their land and money.
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I'd hardly hold capitalist regimes as a beacon of all that is good in the world. If you're saying "not as bad as a capitalist regime" like it's some kind of accomplishment I don't know what to tell you there at all at all. Whether socialist regimes have historically been as bad as capitalist ones I can't say (because, you know, that's subjective and I'm a white person who's never been outside of the United States) but
okay, is US imperialism bad? yes, of course. has bad stuff happened in communist countries because of US intervention? yes.
HOWEVER
communist regimes have done bad things. People have suffered, died, been through genocides because of policies of communist regimes. This is FACT. As a result, communist imagery carries an extremely negative connotation to a lot of people, and if you make no effort to distance yourself from that you are replicating the same dynamics.
and it's still extremely racist to say that "a great deal of refugees" are well-off capitalists who are "just" upset at losing their land and whose opinions therefore don't matter.
#1: No socialist regime has ever committed anything which comes close to genocide.
#2: It is not at all "racy" to simply tell the truth and say that a great deal of refugees from socialist or formerly socialist countries are capitalists.It is a statement of fact which is proved by their rhetoric and ideology.
#3: Your post has made me want to wear my Che shirt....so no,I will not distance myself from the symbols of progress.
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1. The Hmong in Vietnam and Miskitia in Nicaragua come to mind immediately.
2. "This extremely terrible generalization I made about why you shouldn't listen to people is okay because it's TRUE" -- come the fuck on, for real? What rhetoric? What ideology? There is no refugee-from-a-communist-country "ideology". With rare exception, people who just move halfway across the world don't do it because of "rhetoric and ideology". You're making extremely hurtful generalizations about a diverse group of people. I don't understand how this is okay at all at all at all?
3. Okay, I don't care. I have no personal stake in this because as I've said numerous times I'm a white person who's never left the US. You're not going to hurt me or bother me in any way by wearing a Che t-shirt. You've basically been told that your use of imagery is potentially hurtful to people and your reaction is to do it more, and that is your problem and not mine. I'd like to ask you what the difference is, though, between that and wearing a swastika tattoo for shock value? "My ideology is good and that other one isn't" isn't a valid response because that isn't immediately obvious to all marginalized people who see you wearing it. I'm not saying distance yourself from the imagery (although in Che's case I'd be careful but that's an argument for another time), I'm saying if you're going to use it do it in such a way that it will be immediately obvious that you don't agree with terrible things that communist regimes have done to people and aren't just wearing it to make people uncomfortable. Although, since you just stated that you're doing it explicitly to make people uncomfortable...
#1: Still isn't anything which comes close to genocide and in the case of the Miskitia I do not have any sympathies for religious zealots.
#2: Ideology and rhetoric which is pro-capitalist...see previous statements
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1. There you go again with the "everyone in Miskitia is a religious zealot" thing -- what are you even referring to, and what's the difference between you and people who use the exact same rhetoric to justify US imperialism in the middle east, and who the fuck are you to decide what genocides matter or not?
2. No. You're making generalizations. Racist as fuck generalizations. You can repeat them all you want (although I'd prefer if you didn't).
#1: There you go again with putting words in my mouth.And you are getting way off track here:justifying? Genocide? None of these things have happened.
#2: Since you seem to be hard of hearing I shall repeat it: I am simply making a very truthful statement-"refugees" from socialist or formerly socialist countries are often times capitalist.It is as simple as that.
I have decided that you are obviously a bourgeois apologist so I am going to cease this useless banter.
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1. No. Seriously. What is the difference between you justifying abuses towards Miskitia with "they're all religious zealots" and the justifying abuses towards Iraq with "they're all religious zealots". Really. Do tell.
2. As a matter of fact I actually do have problems hearing, and fuck you for using that in a derogatory way. We are on the internet where my ability to hear is completely irrelivant because I can read your racist, ableist crap.
And I'd really like it if you could point me to where in this conversation I apologized for, defended, or otherwise supported class stratification? I don't, I think it's crap. It's just you're being oppressive too.
To your hearing problem: I apologize,in hindsight it was rude of me,so I am sorry to you and anyone else that I may have offended.
To everything else in your statement: bullshit-complete and utter bullshit.
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Vietnam is not a socialist country. It is fully state-capitalist. Hell, they even do joint military exercises with the US nowadays. I know a couple of Vietnamese guys studying in the US whose parents are big in the agricultural machinery industry and they basically epitomize the bourgeois individual; constantly going shopping, designer jeans, flashing wads of cash, etc. On the other hand, not every Vietnamese or Cuban-American is anti-communist either. Assuming so would be a stupid thing to do.
They wouldn't be disappointed I'm sure if you had walked in wearing a big American Flag T-shirt. Now how many Vietnamese did the US and their ARVN buddies kill in Vietnam? 4 million, more? How many cities did they bomb, how many children did they rape and kill? The US used more explosives on Vietnam than they did in WWII. And you know, the revolution was democratic, originally. A date was set to vote on the unification of the country, the majority of the country was in favor of communism, so the US had to go in, set up a capitalist government under a right-wing catholic who had been living in the US (who had a nasty little habit of killing monks), and basically destroy the entire nation. Go to Vietnam with a big Stars and Stripes T-shirt, and go talk to some of the people who lived there during the war, and see what their reaction is. The US is responsible for so much war and global devastation it's unbelievable.
Also, wear whatever the hell you want. If someone wants to sport a swatstika tattoo fine. It's their body. If you want to wear a hammer and sickle t-shirt, go ahead.
