Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which
Speaker 1: is a podcast that you are listening to. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Margaret Kiljoy. With me today is my guest, the One
Speaker 1: and Only Snow from Yellow Peril Tactical I Snow. How
Speaker 1: are you on this totally different day than last time? Hello,
Speaker 1: I am doing well. Yeah. Yeah, it's sunny, so that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm having one of those days where like it was
Speaker 1: like sixty degrees in the mountains and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so nice. I can go do things outside. And
Speaker 1: then I'm like it shouldn't be. This is bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mixed feelings on the on the good weather, I hear. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to our future where our seasons
Speaker 1: are summer, summer, summer, hell Mouth and those are four seasons.
Speaker 1: Maybe like an ice storm as a tree every like
Speaker 1: a few years. Oh yeah, totally like during any of
Speaker 1: the seasons. Yeah. Yeah, that's exciting. I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: the future. Sophie is our producer. High Sophie, how are you.
Speaker 1: I had the exact same conversation with my mom to there.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, it's so nice. I'll look at
Speaker 1: this blue sky and then I was like, oh, ship, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably not supposed to be that way. This is
Speaker 1: probably you probably want as much rain as you can
Speaker 1: get in the winter. Yeah yeah, I was like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: not good. I was like, ah hoo hoo. Yeah, but anyways,
Speaker 1: glad to be here. Yeah. Is our audio engineer and
Speaker 1: our theme music was written for us by a woman.
Speaker 1: This is part two of our two part series, which,
Speaker 1: for those who are doing the math, means it's the
Speaker 1: second and final part about the Previetnam War resistance French
Speaker 1: colonialism in Vietnam. And of course we've got two protagonists
Speaker 1: we've declared cool. There's no von who wrote a memoir
Speaker 1: called In the Crossfire that a decent chunk of this
Speaker 1: is based on any anything that feels narrative of I'm
Speaker 1: probably getting from that memoir. Any other cool person is
Speaker 1: Vietnamese people who funked up everyone in the world who
Speaker 1: sucked with them, And don't you forget it? No, I hope,
Speaker 1: and no one listening this ever forgets it and tries
Speaker 1: to colonize Vietnam. I don't really want them to colonize anywhere.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this, I'm indifferent, Okay, I will
Speaker 1: come out on the I don't know if it counts
Speaker 1: this colonization if it's a planet with no living life
Speaker 1: forms on it. I've got like mixed feelings about Mars colonization,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it could be understood in the
Speaker 1: same context as colonization of people. That's my um wild
Speaker 1: cancellable take. Interesting. You look like you don't agree with
Speaker 1: me here. You know, I just when I hear Mars
Speaker 1: and colonization of Mars, I think about Octavia Butler's Parable
Speaker 1: of the Sower and Talents Well, and then that's as
Speaker 1: far as I get, because then I think about that
Speaker 1: book and then I stopped listening. I'm sorry. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that's fair. I'm really excited for Elon Musk to
Speaker 1: lead an expeditionary um mission to Mars as well as
Speaker 1: he has led Twitter. I hope he dies, Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean no, yeah, and it's on tape. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to see it. Yeah. People try and spread
Speaker 1: around on what's left of Twitter. That's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you know that man is a dead man switch for Twitter, though,
Speaker 1: you know that if he doesn't, if he doesn't press
Speaker 1: the button once every hour, all of Twitter goes down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt like you might have been dying yesterday based
Speaker 1: on how poorly the app was working. Yeah. Is it
Speaker 1: just like connected to his spinal cord you think? Oh?
Speaker 1: Probably like like pure Cyder tracks exactly. Yeah, fair enough. Oh,
Speaker 1: I hope it's a two way okay, And um, so
Speaker 1: where we left off, resistance, the French Indo China was
Speaker 1: starting to heat up again, and to be honest, never
Speaker 1: really actually stopped being hot, but it would, like, you know,
Speaker 1: cycle between hot and very hot. Communists and nationalists and
Speaker 1: religious groups and bandits and just a whole goddamn ton
Speaker 1: of people who didn't want to listen to the French
Speaker 1: are doing some fighting. And we've made it up to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. Our hero No Vaughan is about seventeen or
Speaker 1: eighteen at this time. He's not quite on the main
Speaker 1: stage yet, but he's starting to be around. For the
Speaker 1: events that happened in garrison of Vietnamese troops led by
Speaker 1: the French mutinied as part of a conspiracy by a
Speaker 1: secret society more than fifteen hundred people, because once again,
Speaker 1: secret societies are doing all kinds of ship. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: leaders of this group were guillotined but many of the
Speaker 1: rank and file fled the country and they're going to
Speaker 1: come back later. They're like, they try to do this mutiny,
Speaker 1: it fails. All their leaders get guillotined because guillotine is
Speaker 1: not actually a symbol of working class resistance. And I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say that last episode we talked about
Speaker 1: like the French being like no revolutions like are thing
Speaker 1: we we and so they're gonna bring guillotines, and Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just okay, I just want to make sure everybody
Speaker 1: heard that the guillotine fucking hundreds or thousands of Vietnamese
Speaker 1: colonial subjects who were revolting against them, um during this time,
Speaker 1: which I think they've only gotten one king, and so
Speaker 1: I feel like one king to all of these codes. Anyway. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to like the guillotine as a symbol, but
Speaker 1: I no longer do. Damh. I should maybe get that
Speaker 1: tattoo removed them. See, I always liked it because I
Speaker 1: always thought it was the symbol that contained its own critique.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like being like, hey, sometimes violence and
Speaker 1: revolutionary situations might be necessary, but we all know it
Speaker 1: could easily go too far. Because that's what I thought
Speaker 1: that we all do. The guillotine meant was revolutionary violence
Speaker 1: going too far, but instead people just completely on ironically
Speaker 1: liked it. And I'm like, yeah, there are other means
Speaker 1: that people used to get rid of tyrants that um anyway,
Speaker 1: So all of these the rank and file who lose
Speaker 1: uh and flee the country, they show up again later
Speaker 1: and just continue throwing down. They just like kind of
Speaker 1: take a break, come back later, and they're fucking cool.
Speaker 1: Peasants are running around torching official records with kerosene. Poor
Speaker 1: workers in the city are rioting against the capitulation task
Speaker 1: tax tax that's the word I can't pronounce this time,
Speaker 1: and being gunned down for it. And news about all
Speaker 1: these revolts are spreading around by illegal newspapers. Many of
Speaker 1: them are basically zenes going hand to hand between workers
Speaker 1: and peasants. We love a good scene, I know, and
Speaker 1: between workers and peasants, I like literally mean both directions
Speaker 1: in a really cool way that we're gonna keep talking
Speaker 1: about a little bit um. This whole like dichotomy of
Speaker 1: like the workers versus the peasants. That's like fucking nonsense,
Speaker 1: And I think the Vietnamese resistance shows it really well.
Speaker 1: By the end of nineteen thirty is just open revolt
Speaker 1: all over the place. Prisoners are being set free, cop
Speaker 1: shops are being ransacked, Whole villages and then regions where
Speaker 1: the French do not dare step foot. And importantly to
Speaker 1: our story, when peasants take over an area, they tend
Speaker 1: to form democratic councils to administer the region. And there's
Speaker 1: a word for this type of local rule by democratic council.
Speaker 1: That word is Soviet. Because that's what people forget, is
Speaker 1: that the word Soviet means fucking local control of a
Speaker 1: reach anyway or upon It's Soviet, excellent, excellent, which okay,
Speaker 1: but like instead of like saying like say levies, so
Speaker 1: be it like okay, anyway, so vit. I want to
Speaker 1: quote no Von directly here. In September, in the villages
Speaker 1: of Naen, which had been abandoned by the notables and
Speaker 1: the local militia. Not is this I'm no longer quoting
Speaker 1: not and is this whole big fucking province in north
Speaker 1: central Vietnam, the peasants began organizing themselves into soviets. They
Speaker 1: took over the administration, and without touching the landed property,
Speaker 1: proceeded to share out the communal land that had been
Speaker 1: annexed by the landlords. They confiscated rice reserves and distributed
Speaker 1: them to the starving, allocated agricultural work, collectively abolished taxes,
Speaker 1: imposed lower farm rents on the landowners, and launched a
Speaker 1: literacy campaign. The Soviets extended themselves to the provinces of Ha,
Speaker 1: tin Con, Low, thak Ha and home San the French
Speaker 1: no longer quoting. The French responded by just carpet bombing
Speaker 1: people's because of course they did. Hundreds of people were
Speaker 1: killed at a time. But this is like literally the
Speaker 1: coolest thing that I can imagine in any episode I
Speaker 1: ever do, Like people fucking taking over their areas and
Speaker 1: running them through democratic councils and like const remaining the
Speaker 1: land evenly. It just doesn't get better than that, No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. I mean that's what it really should be
Speaker 1: all about, like all of our work. Yeah, totally. The
Speaker 1: cities are fighting too. The revolt is less intense in
Speaker 1: the cities. I think basically there's like less capacity to
Speaker 1: actually take and hold terrain strikes in marches and the
Speaker 1: occasional assassination are happening in the cities. The government being
Speaker 1: French set up the guillotine in front of Saigon's central prison.
Speaker 1: Over the over a few years of this revolt, there's
Speaker 1: twelve thousand political arrests with almost a hundred beheadings, and
Speaker 1: no Von he's seventeen or so at this point, and
Speaker 1: he's bicycling back to his village with the zines rolled
Speaker 1: up in the handlebars to distribute among the peasants, which
Speaker 1: just fucking rules. That's creative. I know, I would never
Speaker 1: think to look there, and he's reading them to people
Speaker 1: who can't read. When he gets there soon he's organizing
Speaker 1: with people at his work. They can't even say words
Speaker 1: like labor union, so instead they build a mutual aid society,
Speaker 1: one of these things where everyone like takes care of
Speaker 1: each other or whatever, and they pull money to take
Speaker 1: care of each other, and they meet at under the
Speaker 1: guise of like birthday parties and ship because in order
Speaker 1: to have the French don't let more than like I
Speaker 1: can remember if it's seventeen or twenty seven, some low
Speaker 1: number of people. M Vietnamese people meet in one place
Speaker 1: at any given time without getting like special permission. That's
Speaker 1: so funned, because we have such big families yes, kids,
Speaker 1: one of thirteen. Yeah, like our our family, Like my
Speaker 1: mom like it's like your fifth cousin. And I'm like
Speaker 1: what yeah, yeah, all right. Well, and so they can
Speaker 1: get permission for birthday parties and so they use those.
Speaker 1: The birthday parties become the labor organizing meetings, and then
Speaker 1: the coolies, the least paid people at the job, the
Speaker 1: at his place, they go on strike, and so he
Speaker 1: goes up and he's like, hey, our our quote unquote
Speaker 1: mutual aid fund, it is now your strike fund. Ah sick, yeah,
Speaker 1: do what you want with it. And then he acts
Speaker 1: as an interpreter for the strikers and they win a
Speaker 1: modest pay raise. So this is how he gets into
Speaker 1: labor organizing. Inasmuch as anyone is organizing the huge revolt,
Speaker 1: there's two major players. Both are Communists. Um, there's the
Speaker 1: Communist Party, which takes its orders from the common turn
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks up in Russia and they're already doing some
Speaker 1: wacky stuff. They had a revolutionary tribunal. It's like, way
Speaker 1: before they have any power any territory, they have a
Speaker 1: revolutionary tribunal for one of their own members and sentenced
Speaker 1: him to death and kill him because he fell in
Speaker 1: love with another comrade and that took his mind off
Speaker 1: his duties. That is at least how it is presented
Speaker 1: by no Van. The person who ever sees this tribunal
Speaker 1: is Tom Duke Tongue, who later succeeds Ho Chi Minh
Speaker 1: and is like this great revolutionary hero or whatever. And
Speaker 1: one of the other people who was also part of
Speaker 1: the like murder of this guy, ends up being like
Speaker 1: second in commando ho chie Men and stuff later down
Speaker 1: blood in. Yeah. Um, that's the State Communists. Then there's
Speaker 1: the Communist Opposition, the Communist Left Opposition group uh not
Speaker 1: a incredibly original name, and they basically are the communist
Speaker 1: who don't take order from Russia. I like them more
Speaker 1: so that my bias is going to be towards them,
Speaker 1: and no Van is with them soon enough, and they're
Speaker 1: more or less trout skifts. They are Trotskyists, which basically
Speaker 1: at this point is like a Communist who doesn't like Stalin.
Speaker 1: Anarchists are there and involved in all this struggle too,
Speaker 1: but not to the same degree. I believe it's isolated
Speaker 1: individuals and small groups. I haven't been able to find
Speaker 1: more information specifically about that yet. So the people who
Speaker 1: are the major players and a lot of this organizing
Speaker 1: stuff who are like die hard about one ideology or another.
Speaker 1: They are not most people. Um, most people are poor
Speaker 1: workers and peasants who are like, I'm a funk up
Speaker 1: the French and taking care of each other sounds good,
Speaker 1: rather than being like specifically ideologically committed. And so you'll
Speaker 1: see the majority of people who are the actual fighters
Speaker 1: will shift allegiances back and forth. Um, it's not just
Speaker 1: like the left opposition, like yeah, these two different communist
Speaker 1: tendencies like kind of go back and forth a lot.
Speaker 1: The major players of both parties get arrested and exiled
Speaker 1: at the end of this whole nine one thing. Um
Speaker 1: there sentenced to their exile or sense to hard labor
Speaker 1: or given the old chopity um. By the end of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, the revolt is crushed for good and
Speaker 1: France still rules Vietnam to this day. Just just kidding.
Speaker 1: They're very chumba womba. They get right back up again
Speaker 1: and they do something particularly cool that imprisoned journalist on
Speaker 1: nin he's out now and as of ninety one he
Speaker 1: gets out and he refuses to align himself to one
Speaker 1: of these communist parties or another. Um later after his death,
Speaker 1: the Communist Party is like, Oh, his whole thing about
Speaker 1: refusing to align to parties, it's because he liked us.
Speaker 1: It was just to get people to join the Communist Party.
Speaker 1: That's why he refused to it. Yeah, yeah, he um.
Speaker 1: Not only but he refused to join the parties, the left,
Speaker 1: opposition or the you know the Trotsky story of the Stalinists,
Speaker 1: but he was completely down to work with them. And
Speaker 1: his whole thing was that he kept the two together
Speaker 1: for years, like long after the rest of the world
Speaker 1: where the Trotskis and the Stalins are murdering each other,
Speaker 1: he's holding them together together with the Party, communists, opposition,
Speaker 1: communists and anarchists. He starts a newspaper called The Struggle.
Speaker 1: Um it's in French, not Vietnamese. And the reason it's
Speaker 1: in French is because the French belief in free speech
Speaker 1: in French. Oh okay, got it. I'm with you. If
Speaker 1: you live in Psigan at this point, you can have
Speaker 1: a journal with free speech as long as it's in French.
Speaker 1: If it's in Vietnamese, it needs to be approved. Okay.
Speaker 1: So basically every single article and every single issue is like, please,
Speaker 1: for the love of God, translate this and tell it
Speaker 1: to people who don't speak French. And for most of
Speaker 1: the paper's existence it was legally owned by a white man,
Speaker 1: an anti colonial Frenchman named Edgar Ganowski, who you to
Speaker 1: citizenship to get help them get away with ship. Privilege
Speaker 1: doesn't save him in the end, he dies in poverty
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen forties. But he's basically like, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a couple um French colonials who are entirely
Speaker 1: militantly committed to the um anti colonial struggle. Okay, well
Speaker 1: they can hang yeah. And this was a particular achievement
Speaker 1: that it gets the Stalinist and the trotsky Is working
Speaker 1: together because at this point Stalinists are hunting down and
Speaker 1: doing the old murder, which is a euphemism for killing
Speaker 1: um on Trotskyists in Vietnam. There was some piece which
Speaker 1: really lends credit to the idea that even the party
Speaker 1: communists there at the end of the day, we're actually
Speaker 1: looking to free Vietnam more than they were like looking
Speaker 1: to specifically be like, oh my god, we love the
Speaker 1: USSR or whatever the fuck. And the paper starts running
Speaker 1: political candidates it's like this big central leftist organization basically
Speaker 1: at this point, and it includes a popular front of
Speaker 1: candidates from both the Communist Party and the Communist Opposition,
Speaker 1: and they fund all of this by opening a bar.
Speaker 1: Interesting I like them. No Van starts writing for it,
Speaker 1: basically information about what's going on in the plantations. I
Speaker 1: think through his connections in the villages where he's from.
Speaker 1: The peace between the Communist doesn't last. Yeah, the thing
Speaker 1: about being beholden to a foreign power is that you're
Speaker 1: beholden to a foreign power, and this thing happens that
Speaker 1: normally is kind of good. Elsewhere. On May second, Russia
Speaker 1: and France make friends the Franco Soviet Mutual Assistance Pack,
Speaker 1: and from their point of view it makes some sense. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Hitler is starting to get all hit larry
Speaker 1: in and history shows pretty clearly that it takes Western
Speaker 1: Europe and Russia working together to stop the Nazis. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's okay. So like, okay, you you get why why
Speaker 1: the USSR wants to be friends with friends for a moment,
Speaker 1: but beholden to foreign power. The Communists are no longer
Speaker 1: allowed to fight the French part on. Yeah, in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Orders came from the common turn the high the Communist
Speaker 1: Party that the Vietnamese Communist Party has to stop trying
Speaker 1: to become free of France because France is Russia's ally,
Speaker 1: and the Communist Party is beholden to Russia and can't
Speaker 1: make their own decisions. That's why tons of the Communist
Speaker 1: Party go along with this. I think a ton of
Speaker 1: other people stopped being in the Communist Party because there
Speaker 1: they were willing to be in the Communist Party as
Speaker 1: a means to get rid of the French the struggle.
Speaker 1: That newspaper it doesn't report on any of this because
Speaker 1: it's trying desperately to keep the peace. But now the
Speaker 1: Trotskyists are like, Okay, if we don't start doing our
Speaker 1: own thing, resistance to France is just going to become
Speaker 1: bourgeois nationalist. It's just going to be you know, the
Speaker 1: rich people who want to like restore the monarchy or
Speaker 1: have a bourgeois republic or whatever. Because the state Communis
Speaker 1: are out of the fight, so uh No, Vaughn and
Speaker 1: some others decide to act and they formed the League
Speaker 1: of Internationalist Communists. And their strategy, which I really like,
Speaker 1: is that workers peasants and industrial like workers. Both peasants
Speaker 1: and industrial workers should form action committees, elect delegates and
Speaker 1: create a bottom up communist revolution. Okay, I got no notes, Um,
Speaker 1: sign me up. Yeah uh. He still had to keep
Speaker 1: his day job and him at night. He and his
Speaker 1: friends start building a printing press that of salvaged parts
Speaker 1: and starting an illegal Vietnamese language newspaper called Permanent Revolution,
Speaker 1: which supported revolt and condemned Russia's open support for French imperialism.
Speaker 1: That's so sweet. You know, things get spicy again real quick.
Speaker 1: Wagon drivers go on strike and the internationalist communists support them.
Speaker 1: Repression goes after that. Um, the Popular Front newspaper burn
Speaker 1: of the struggle and his editors end up going back
Speaker 1: to jail. The paper keeps going even as it's like
Speaker 1: main people get thrown in jail. Vaughan and his friends
Speaker 1: have to move their press constantly. They're weird steampunk salvage
Speaker 1: parts fucking press. That is honestly so cool, just thinking about,
Speaker 1: like I couldn't do that now with the Internet and
Speaker 1: like hive YouTube videos. Yeah no, totally, he's a clerk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Yeah, it's it's not a coincidence. How
Speaker 1: many historical revolutionaries. Background is type setting like, but there's
Speaker 1: hope on the horizon, and people are actually there's a
Speaker 1: very hopeful period, partly because the workers in France go
Speaker 1: on strike two in the mid mid thirties. The revolution
Speaker 1: feels so close that they can touch it. They set
Speaker 1: about pulling together a call for workers to, as van
Speaker 1: put it, stormed the gates of hell then and then
Speaker 1: um and then they all get arrested, including including Vom,
Speaker 1: before they could do any storming or even any advocacy
Speaker 1: of storming. He's he's twenty two or twenty three. But
Speaker 1: you know who else is prison? Not puppy therapy. No, no,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, you know what, let's let's stick to
Speaker 1: puppy therapy. And what was the other one? Was the
Speaker 1: other today's sponsor? Yeah, free hot soup. Well everyone, if
Speaker 1: you want free hot soup, go to food not bombs.
Speaker 1: If you don't have one, you should start one. Or
Speaker 1: if you don't like that particular framework, call something else,
Speaker 1: sup with your friends, super your family. Yeah, call it
Speaker 1: soup with your fab for your family. And that is
Speaker 1: the advertiser that's enough that could support, that has enough
Speaker 1: money to run this podcast, right, well, if we need
Speaker 1: the extra money, will use some other ads. Yeah, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: And we are back and he's about to go to jail.
Speaker 1: He's twenty two or twenty three at this point. They
Speaker 1: come into the offices he's working out of and they
Speaker 1: drag him off and they make him watch as they
Speaker 1: raid both his mother's house. Basically, they like, I think
Speaker 1: he probably planned this with his mother, because he's kind
Speaker 1: of a um. He gets along well with his mom.
Speaker 1: He tells them. He's like, they're like, where do you live?
Speaker 1: And he's like, my mom's house. And so they go
Speaker 1: to his mom's house and they like take some of
Speaker 1: those books and stuff from his old room and then
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, but where are your clothes? And he's
Speaker 1: like a ship, you got me. So if you're planning, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're planning to use your mom's house, that's the
Speaker 1: place you claim to live, you need to keep enough
Speaker 1: clothes there to make it believable. So then they go
Speaker 1: to his own house and they raid it as well,
Speaker 1: and at this point he's like, I'm in it. This
Speaker 1: is my life, Like okay, I I mean he's already
Speaker 1: started groups, he's already been working on this stuff. But
Speaker 1: he's like, this is this is the moment. And then
Speaker 1: his quote unquote civilizers take him to jail and torture
Speaker 1: the ship out of him. Humans are very creative at
Speaker 1: exactly two things, execution and torture. I'm not gonna read
Speaker 1: tell you about this particular torture, but it's one i'd
Speaker 1: never heard of before. It sucked. And then they sent
Speaker 1: him to prison, which also sucked. And they while in
Speaker 1: prison with along with his other prisoners, he started organizing
Speaker 1: because of course you do. Because I can't stop. We'll stop, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, organizers to prison. You're getting an organized prison.
Speaker 1: The twenty or so prisoners in a cell elected him Delicate,
Speaker 1: and he was tasked with making demands of the prison.
Speaker 1: First it was we need another drug of water. So
Speaker 1: when they came in the screws came in the morning,
Speaker 1: he was like, hey, we need another drug of water
Speaker 1: and they were like what. He's like, we needed to
Speaker 1: drug of water, and so they drag him off in
Speaker 1: front of the head jailer who screams at him, says
Speaker 1: I'm going to disembowel you, holds up the book of
Speaker 1: French rules, and then gives them another drug of water. Okay.
Speaker 1: Every morning thereafter, the prisoners compiled a list of their
Speaker 1: needs and delivered them to the guards. Yes, and they
Speaker 1: do the best they can. Life sucks in the prison,
Speaker 1: but his family walks all the way from the village
Speaker 1: to see him. When they can. They all pass news
Speaker 1: about the prison out to the radical press. And the
Speaker 1: one upside of the Franco Russian Pact is that it
Speaker 1: lightens some of their sentencing, probably because communism was no
Speaker 1: longer considered the enemy of the French people. But he
Speaker 1: still is taken in front of a judge and gets
Speaker 1: a year for running a newspaper. That's, you know, in
Speaker 1: the scheme of things. Maybe not, yeah, exactly, I mean
Speaker 1: I personally would not. I'm not like ya, No, I
Speaker 1: don't want to Yeah, yeah, no, totally. It's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things is like the prison system
Speaker 1: in the United States is so nightmarish that fairly regularly
Speaker 1: I read about these incredibly horrible regimes where they're perfectly
Speaker 1: willing to carpet bomb people, where prison is like roughly
Speaker 1: equivalent or a little bit nicer than the United States prisons, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to paint the French colonial prison
Speaker 1: is nice. I'm trying to specifically say that America is
Speaker 1: a hellscape. A lot of prisoners were in there for
Speaker 1: ship like raised a red flag on a tree in
Speaker 1: his village or read out a leaflet on a street.
Speaker 1: Some of them had five years extra tagged on for
Speaker 1: every time they shouted down with French imperialism during their sentencing,
Speaker 1: which at that point, like some of these people were
Speaker 1: just like just fucking kept yelling at yeah, and no
Speaker 1: matter how long they got sentenced to French imperialism last
Speaker 1: at the longest you could possibly pretend forty more years
Speaker 1: um by most standards, substantially less than that, most standards
Speaker 1: less than ten more years m. Outside of prison, people
Speaker 1: kept revolting. Rice planters, brick makers, sugar refiner, soap maker,
Speaker 1: street car drivers all go on strike. The rubber plan
Speaker 1: plantations such as our friend the Michelin rubber plantation. The
Speaker 1: workers go on strike there, including against the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that you would not imagine needing to go on
Speaker 1: strike against. What is it the fact that there are
Speaker 1: private prisons on this plantation just for workers. That must
Speaker 1: be a widely deeply felt issue. That makes sense, though yeah,
Speaker 1: you imagine if I mean the Amazon whereas also sound
Speaker 1: like help I amount of they just like literally had
Speaker 1: private prisons in them. Twenty coal miners go on strike.
Speaker 1: Coal miners are gonna come back really awesome, A little
Speaker 1: bit okay. In Saigon, striking workers are fed by peasants
Speaker 1: from the countryside, because again, ship happens when you get
Speaker 1: the peasants and the workers working together. Yeah. Uh, sawmill workers,
Speaker 1: saw millers occupy their workshops. Oh good old sit down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And these revolts take on more and more of a
Speaker 1: syndicalius tendency of intention and only specifically named as such
Speaker 1: syndicalist tendency a bottom up communism um, and like largely
Speaker 1: is being done not necessarily. I can't tell whether it's
Speaker 1: being done by the opposition communists or whether it's being
Speaker 1: done with the style of communism that they advocate. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: because after all, the Communist Party wasn't organizing against imperialism
Speaker 1: at this point. There were buds with imperialism at this point. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, tell that to all the imprisoned Communist
Speaker 1: Party anti imperialists who are in prison. Like anyway, so
Speaker 1: Ivan gets out of prison and This is how you
Speaker 1: know he's a good person. The first thing he did
Speaker 1: when he got out of prison is he went home
Speaker 1: to his village and he saw his mom. I fucking
Speaker 1: knew it. Okay, okay, all right, Yeah that's also really sweet.
Speaker 1: I know his his dad has died. His dad died
Speaker 1: when he was like a ten or something like that,
Speaker 1: and his mom isn't increasingly retreating into the invisible world
Speaker 1: like um. And she you know, practiced an ancestor worship
Speaker 1: and she spends more of her time talking to spirits
Speaker 1: and hanging out with spirits than the human world, which
Speaker 1: fucking fair at this point, you know, Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I can't blame her. Yeah. Another thing
Speaker 1: that happens is the Stalinists, who are part of that
Speaker 1: common Front newspaper, the Struggle, they get a letter from
Speaker 1: their higher ups saying they can't play nice at the
Speaker 1: Trotskyist anymore. In fact, they're all actually kind of in
Speaker 1: trouble for having played nice with the Trotskyis for so long,
Speaker 1: which is why you shouldn't have higher ups. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Stalinist left the paper, they started their own paper,
Speaker 1: and then they said that all the Trotskyist are fascists.
Speaker 1: It's like Twitter but with more guns. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: which is saying something based on current Twitter. So um. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the French have their Popular Front government at this point
Speaker 1: that is ostensibly socialist. So they changed the colonial code
Speaker 1: because the socialists are in charge of France. They changed
Speaker 1: still have a colonial code. Oh yeah, literally all they
Speaker 1: changed the language. Um. It used to say that colonial
Speaker 1: subjects had to do quote compulsory public service work, but
Speaker 1: they changed it to quote community work canceled canceled. No, yep,
Speaker 1: sorry six France, You're all right. This time period of
Speaker 1: France is about to get canceled hard, but in a
Speaker 1: different direction when the new Popular Front colonial governor shows up.
Speaker 1: So when the new popular Front colonial governor shows up,
Speaker 1: the cops arrest and torture all the protesters. Thanks Western
Speaker 1: liberals who pretend to be leftists. Hashtag in our Vietnam?
Speaker 1: Did they have the stickers back then? Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, hashtags were a big I'm trying to come
Speaker 1: up with like a way of I got nothing. I
Speaker 1: can't come up with a weird, old timy way that
Speaker 1: hashtags could come up with. I'm sorry, maybe people carving
Speaker 1: them into I got nothing, Okay, So Von sets himself
Speaker 1: up editing and at another paper for a living, and
Speaker 1: he goes on to make pamphlets because at this point
Speaker 1: he's like basically a newspaper guy, and he goes on
Speaker 1: making his own zines and pamphlets and stuff, and he
Speaker 1: basically is discussing how to organize syndicates and how to
Speaker 1: do bottom up communism because this is like a huge
Speaker 1: way that they're doing the organizings, telling people how to
Speaker 1: how they can do their own ship. Right. So the
Speaker 1: cops kick in his door and drag them right back
Speaker 1: to prison. Classic, Yeah, that'll teach you magazines about syndicates.
Speaker 1: So he gets out and he funks off to Cambodia
Speaker 1: for a few years. He's like all this because Cambodia
Speaker 1: it's just still part of French Indo China. I like
Speaker 1: spent a while reading about the relationship between Vietnam and
Speaker 1: Cambodia at this point, and it's basically it's like the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese folks living in Cambodia were like seen as a
Speaker 1: privileged class and therefore in some ways resented by the
Speaker 1: Cambodian folks. But he is just fucking trying to lay Low,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, for a couple of
Speaker 1: years in the middle of this ship he is being
Speaker 1: constantly watched, and he still writes for papers in Saigon,
Speaker 1: but honestly, he's just trying to work. And the political
Speaker 1: differences between Communists and Vietnam are getting more and more intense.
Speaker 1: As the nineteen thirties come to an end, both sides
Speaker 1: are running candidates for the colonial government. It's no longer
Speaker 1: a slate between the two. Um. The Stalinists have a
Speaker 1: collaborationist set of candidates that are support the French. The
Speaker 1: Trotskyists have a slate of candidates that oppose the French. Okay,
Speaker 1: choice seems pretty clear here. It was a fairly clear
Speaker 1: choice for the public as well. The Stalinists are pushing
Speaker 1: for support in World War Two. The Trotskyists are like, no,
Speaker 1: we should not be taxes, be in like, be conscripted
Speaker 1: to fight in Western Wars. We tried that, it sucked.
Speaker 1: And so the trotsky Is win um very clearly and strongly.
Speaker 1: And I doubt it's because people were like I specifically
Speaker 1: care about this Russian political difference, and more because I
Speaker 1: know I just don't want to go fight a war
Speaker 1: I don't give a funk about Yeah, exactly. The French
Speaker 1: colonial guy, the governor general. I think he's the popular
Speaker 1: fronts ostensibly socialist guy. He put it bluntly. While the
Speaker 1: Stalinist communists have understood that the interests of the animite
Speaker 1: Vietnamese masses require them to ally with France, the trutsky
Speaker 1: Iss have not hesitated to incite the natives to revolt
Speaker 1: so as to take advantage of a possible war in
Speaker 1: order to gain total liberation. Don't you hate it when
Speaker 1: people manipulate the political situation for something they want? Oh?
Speaker 1: I hate it on that, I know, like freedom for themselves.
Speaker 1: A fucking tricksy Trutskyists forty Unfortunately, the candidates that they're
Speaker 1: running in are basically the local elections. They don't have
Speaker 1: any power in the colonial government as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, I haven't read the details, but they clearly
Speaker 1: are not exerting enough power to stop the fact that
Speaker 1: forty thousand Vietnamese or script can scripted anyway, two of
Speaker 1: them as soldiers, of whom six thousand die, and twenty
Speaker 1: as laborers. One interesting cool thing about conscripting a bunch
Speaker 1: of laborers from your colonial government right before you're conquered
Speaker 1: by the Nazis. Is that those labors have to work
Speaker 1: for the Nazi war machine essentially pretty quickly mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Then Russia switches sides again and joins the Hitler's side
Speaker 1: in the old Molotov Ribbon trap packed and Russian, Russia
Speaker 1: and Germany invade Poland. War is to get declared. Everything
Speaker 1: starts happening faster. Now the Communist Party is allowed to
Speaker 1: fight the French again because Russia's on Hitler's side and
Speaker 1: hates the French. Okay, yeah, and it's going to go
Speaker 1: back and forth so many times. It's just the Vietnamese
Speaker 1: people are just ping ponged by which side Russia's on
Speaker 1: so many times. And no Van is deported from Cambodia
Speaker 1: to Vietnam without any particular new charge. He's just rounded
Speaker 1: up as a troublemaker basically. Um. A friend in Vietnam
Speaker 1: had written him and been like, Hey, what Trotsky book
Speaker 1: should I read? And he was like, read these two
Speaker 1: and then like he was, um taking him prison. Damn.
Speaker 1: He just cannot catch up, right, he absolutely cannot. For
Speaker 1: the first thirty eight years of his life, He's held
Speaker 1: in jail for months and then it's taken for trial
Speaker 1: and then to check off a box on the cool people. Bengo.
Speaker 1: He defends himself in court, but not because he's cheeky
Speaker 1: like all of the other people who defended the seals
Speaker 1: in court, because they don't give him a lawyer. Ah right,
Speaker 1: okay um. The only evidence against him is that in
Speaker 1: all of his letters that they've been reading all of
Speaker 1: his letters he at one point mentioned to Trotsky books
Speaker 1: by name. He gets eight months in prison for this, wow,
Speaker 1: and he's and then in with the political So all
Speaker 1: the political prisoners are sort of kept in one area,
Speaker 1: which is I know, I mean, I'm here for it,
Speaker 1: but that's a that's a rookie mistake, is amateurish. There's
Speaker 1: a new crew in the political prisoner camp, the Communists
Speaker 1: who have never actually been the only people on the scene,
Speaker 1: but now they're like extra not the only people on
Speaker 1: the scene. You have the cow Dietists and cow die
Speaker 1: is Um is a syncretic religion that was developed in
Speaker 1: the ninet twenties that has millions of followers today and
Speaker 1: it's a I can't do it justice. It's a monotheistic
Speaker 1: religion that seems to pull from everything that was present
Speaker 1: in um in Vietnam at that period, and they kept
Speaker 1: getting thrown in prison because they burned their tax cards
Speaker 1: and refused to cooperate with the French government, which is
Speaker 1: a cool first move for a new religion. And no
Speaker 1: Van writes an article about why communists should be in
Speaker 1: solidarity with them, and then goes through a fair amount
Speaker 1: of work to get that article smuggled out of prison
Speaker 1: and with a guard bribed with opium. Nice, okay, I know,
Speaker 1: I like this guy. Yeah, he serves his time, he's
Speaker 1: let out, he's re arrested that day, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Like literally he walks out and there's this woman with
Speaker 1: his bicycle who's like, hey, you should follow me, and
Speaker 1: he's like what, He follows her and they arrest him.
Speaker 1: Wait what that's in traumant? Well not that that whatever,
Speaker 1: there's no charges, just arrest him. Oh okay, okay, that's
Speaker 1: where we're at in this particular. Uh, they stopped trying.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, they're like, oh, we only got
Speaker 1: eight months when we arrest him for writing letters, So
Speaker 1: they send him they call it house arrest, but it's exile.
Speaker 1: He gets sent to a distant rural town called Travin, Okay,
Speaker 1: and he's allowed in the whole town. He has to
Speaker 1: not he's not allowed to leave, and he has to
Speaker 1: check in every two weeks with the authorities. Like I
Speaker 1: literally don't think there was any charge besides people screaming
Speaker 1: communists in his face. Okay. He sets about making his
Speaker 1: money making rice cakes and selling fish in the market.
Speaker 1: Plus he's now also making and selling traditional medicines that
Speaker 1: he learned how to make from fellow prisoners. Somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way, and all of this, he has three kids,
Speaker 1: which he does not mention until the second to last
Speaker 1: page of his memoir. Well, you know, they can write
Speaker 1: their own memoir, I know. And it's like I've gone
Speaker 1: back and forth about whether he's just pulling a misogyny
Speaker 1: and just being like, oh, family doesn't matter, or if
Speaker 1: his wife is like our partner baby mom or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like, lea me a funk out of it. Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, he loves his mom, I
Speaker 1: know exactly, And he talks about his brothers and ship
Speaker 1: all the time and his sisters. So anyway, somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way, I don't know if it's an hour later,
Speaker 1: but here's where I chose to throw it in. He
Speaker 1: ends up with some kids. Meanwhile, while he's an exile,
Speaker 1: You'll be shocked to know what the Vietnamese people are doing.
Speaker 1: They're fighting the French. No, what you haven't mentioned that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's coming out of nowhere. So Japan has
Speaker 1: sort of invaded Vietnam. People are still salty about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at this point they're sharing it with France. UM,
Speaker 1: I think this is when the I think there's old
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I couldn't figure out whether there's overlap
Speaker 1: with the VICI, the the Nazi French and the Japanese, like,
Speaker 1: whether it was only ever them, or whether the Japanese
Speaker 1: ever shared Vietnam with the estensibly socialist French. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But at this point Vichy government, Nazi of Nazi Frances,
Speaker 1: now the controllers of Vietnam and the viet and the
Speaker 1: Japanese show up. Okay, and yeah, people are salty at first,
Speaker 1: They're like, Okay, the Japanese are going to help us out,
Speaker 1: but then the Jabs don't help them out. Instead they
Speaker 1: just conquer it, right, so people revolt. This time it
Speaker 1: was primarily organized by the Communist Party. UM. Most of
Speaker 1: their leaders are in jail, but um, that doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter at the end of things. Um, and they've got
Speaker 1: some solid networks. Uh. One article I read referred to
Speaker 1: them as more as like surfing the wave of revolt,
Speaker 1: rather than being the direct organizers of it, and that
Speaker 1: might be accurate. Also, oh interesting, but to some degree
Speaker 1: they were directing ship that was going to happen anyway,
Speaker 1: some degree they were organizing it whatever. Um. A lot
Speaker 1: of the fighters during this uprising are not communists. They're
Speaker 1: more religious than political. You have the Cawdietists that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and you also the how how who are
Speaker 1: a Buddhist sect formed? It is kind of what I
Speaker 1: was talking about where I was like, every religion is
Speaker 1: getting into this fight and like really interesting in different ways,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, that's cool. And so the how how
Speaker 1: are Buddhist sect formed? In nine and them in the
Speaker 1: cows are some of the main people fighting in the
Speaker 1: French for decades? Um? The how how hold large swabs
Speaker 1: of territory? They end up fighting the National Liberation Front
Speaker 1: alongside the State Communist until the final victory of State Communists.
Speaker 1: Of course, as soon as the party came into power,
Speaker 1: they outlawed cow die is Um and it wasn't relegalized
Speaker 1: again until but the revolt itself November ninety against the
Speaker 1: French and the Japanese both The whole western half of
Speaker 1: coach in China is revolting. The southern region of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Peasants are storming the barracks to steal weapons. They're singling
Speaker 1: out and killing all the torturers like at whenever they
Speaker 1: yeah um, and they're starting to set up autonomous regions
Speaker 1: and they're succeeding for for short periods of time. And
Speaker 1: because patterns repeat themselves, they get carpet bombed and machine
Speaker 1: gunned and hundreds of them are guillotined in the streets. Okay,
Speaker 1: survivors are put into prison barges and have to die.
Speaker 1: And the whole uprising failed for a bunch of reasons,
Speaker 1: one of which is that they planned it around the
Speaker 1: French being busy invading Thailand. But at the last minute,
Speaker 1: the French didn't invade Thailand. You know who did invade
Speaker 1: THI No, um, let's just stick to the soup thing.
Speaker 1: I really am really excited about the soup free hot
Speaker 1: soup and turtles. I like turtles turtles can support the podcast,
Speaker 1: I think, so all right, anything else? Any any sponsors
Speaker 1: were missing snow, I don't think so. Okay, you're looking
Speaker 1: around on your desk trying to find something sponsible. I
Speaker 1: don't know, sponsored by Bao Fang. The easiest way to
Speaker 1: commit sec crime, Yeah, only if they find you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why it's so easy hard to get caught. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Here's some as So Okay, you're wondering with this, uh,
Speaker 1: this failed uprising, whether the Communist party like lost their
Speaker 1: ship and started killing a bunch of their own people,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of cartoon villains. The answer is yes. Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: here's where it starts becoming really important to note not
Speaker 1: nearly to the same degree that the French and Japanese
Speaker 1: government was running around killing everyone. Um. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that's where some of the biased stuff of my
Speaker 1: own bias and I should be really careful about is
Speaker 1: because when I'm like going forward, the stay Communists are
Speaker 1: gonna do a lot of pretty awful and indiscriminate murder,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to hold a candle to the
Speaker 1: indiscriminate murder of the colonial powers that they're fighting, right.
Speaker 1: Vaughan for his part. He's an exile near the edge
Speaker 1: of this uprising. He doesn't hear about it until it's over.
Speaker 1: He just gets to see the carts full of dead
Speaker 1: peasants rolled past town. That's devastating, I know. And he's
Speaker 1: also getting sick after nine months in exile East its
Speaker 1: spinning up blood. My god, does he have tuberculosis? Are
Speaker 1: you reading the script? Yeah, he has tuberculosis. He gets
Speaker 1: leave to go to Saigon for medical care out of
Speaker 1: the blue. He didn't expect this to happen. His mom
Speaker 1: shows up to escort him back to Saigon. You know,
Speaker 1: I started crying when I was writing it. You know
Speaker 1: this mom, the peasant who prefers the company of the
Speaker 1: dead to the living. Her son is sick and just
Speaker 1: out of prison sort of, So she comes by herself
Speaker 1: across the country to bring him back to Saigon on
Speaker 1: a boat. He spends a month in the hospital. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's got tuberculosis. I was good. I had this
Speaker 1: whole drum roll thing he caught on early. He recovers partly,
Speaker 1: he recovers partly he doesn't die of it, and he
Speaker 1: has to get a job. He's allowed to no longer
Speaker 1: be an exile somehow, or maybe he just doesn't go back.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure. He gets a job processing Buffalo
Speaker 1: High it's to send to the Japanese, which is terrible
Speaker 1: for his lungs and means he's like literally helping out
Speaker 1: his fucking occupiers. And basically it's like it's this or
Speaker 1: dive starvation. So that's got a fucking sucked. And then
Speaker 1: his memoirs fast forward through the entire fucking World War two.
Speaker 1: What I know, I like literally got confused and like
Speaker 1: had to keep scrolling back and forth, scrolling. It was
Speaker 1: a physical book. But ship is happening, Yeah, especially up
Speaker 1: north how Chi men the leader of the vietnmam. Um,
Speaker 1: they're fighting guerrilla style against the Japanese and VICI France,
Speaker 1: with the help of the US, of course, because the
Speaker 1: US has armed every single person we fought against. I'm
Speaker 1: actually curious this was anyone that we that the US
Speaker 1: fought against in the twenty century that they didn't arm
Speaker 1: first but themselves. Mm hmm. So near the end of
Speaker 1: the war, Vietnamese folks are starving. Um, we're talking about
Speaker 1: earlier likely a million people. I've seen up to two
Speaker 1: million people ar in Vietnam during World War Two due
Speaker 1: to a combination of famine and how the Japanese just
Speaker 1: stole food for themselves. Um, you were talking about how
Speaker 1: this is something that your family talks about. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My grandma like, well, my great grandma and great grandpa
Speaker 1: were alive until I was like twenty something, like early
Speaker 1: mid twenties, and so it was just like in their
Speaker 1: scene all days, they would mention stuff. And my grandma
Speaker 1: still mentions every now and then that like the siblings
Speaker 1: that she that I've met, Um, they're like twenty plus
Speaker 1: years apart. Yeah, and so there was like a bunch
Speaker 1: of siblings in between that just died. Yeah, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I just can't even really wrap my head around being
Speaker 1: in this country and having to work for and having
Speaker 1: all your food stolen by your occupier and like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Then two days after Germany surrenders fucking overnight
Speaker 1: March nine to nine to ten, the night between the
Speaker 1: ninth and the tenth of March, Japan ended French indo China.
Speaker 1: There's debt. They're just fucking fucking arrested all the French.
Speaker 1: Oh okay um, they created the independence that quasi independent
Speaker 1: State of Vietnam uh and then immediately occupied it. The
Speaker 1: Nationalist Party, along with the how How and the cow Diists,
Speaker 1: they called for big demonstration of gratitude to the Japanese
Speaker 1: for their liberation, and the Japanese were like, hell, no,
Speaker 1: you can't demonstrate um, even though these people would like literally, actually,
Speaker 1: the how How and the cow Dists have helped Japan
Speaker 1: do the actual rounding up of all the French and
Speaker 1: ship like that, you know, and then Japanese started looting
Speaker 1: the place and murdering people and kidnapping women for sex slavery.
Speaker 1: H None of this lasts very long because on August five,
Speaker 1: Japan surrendered and then they should cause fucking messy or somehow.
Speaker 1: Still France is like, but we want our colony back.
Speaker 1: How Cheamn's like, no, you can't have your fucking colony back.
Speaker 1: Fuck you. And that's how you get the first into
Speaker 1: China war with the Vietmain versus the French. It's actually
Speaker 1: a diverse group of nationalists and leftist versus the French. UM.
Speaker 1: At first, before they'd even taken real power, they start
Speaker 1: rounding up and killing and torturing all the opposition groups.
Speaker 1: I want to quote von about my favorite action during
Speaker 1: all of this, which is not not the this not
Speaker 1: meaning the Stalinist murdering people, but about all the peasant revolt,
Speaker 1: all this stuff that's happening. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: knowing my favorite time that the Stalinist murdered people. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a burst of wild hope filled us when we
Speaker 1: learned that thirty thousand miners in the hong I Comfo
Speaker 1: coal mines had taken their fate into their own hands
Speaker 1: in the left to worker councils to manage the coal
Speaker 1: production themselves. The miners were now in control of the
Speaker 1: public services in the area, the railways, in the telegraph system.
Speaker 1: They were applying the principle of equal pay for all
Speaker 1: types of work, whether manual or intellectual. That even begun
Speaker 1: a literacy program, setting up courses in the in which
Speaker 1: those who were literate taught their fellow workers how to read.
Speaker 1: In this working class commune, life was organized with no
Speaker 1: bosses and no cops. I fucking I want to read
Speaker 1: entire books just about this, and I want us to
Speaker 1: talk about it as much as we talk about ship
Speaker 1: that had the label anarchy attached to it, because that's
Speaker 1: really just like that. I would just want to know,
Speaker 1: like read someone's diary from that time. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: just like what was like the average daylight, because I
Speaker 1: think this kind of stuff really just gets really glorified,
Speaker 1: like you were just saying, and what really interests me
Speaker 1: is just like the everyday aspect of it. Yeah. Within
Speaker 1: a few months, the Vietmin arrested the leaders of this
Speaker 1: working class commune forced a rigid hierarchy on the place.
Speaker 1: Why Yeah. In Saigon, the Vietmin held a big rally
Speaker 1: declaring the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. One of their old
Speaker 1: friends from that newspaper the Struggle asked that this rally, well,
Speaker 1: who elected you? Yeah, good question. He was found shot
Speaker 1: dead a few days later in the streets. The people's
Speaker 1: army they had in the south consisted of river pirates
Speaker 1: and the people who had served as the riot cops
Speaker 1: under the French and then the Japanese. So basically the
Speaker 1: people who are like, as long as we get to crackheads,
Speaker 1: don't care or cracking heads for And this was actually
Speaker 1: probably um just going around going we're we're yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is even before this particular meeting in Saigon,
Speaker 1: is before the French came back and tried to rule
Speaker 1: it again, and the vietmain said, no one is allowed
Speaker 1: to carry guns when the French come back, except cops,
Speaker 1: which is actually a weird mirror of that time that
Speaker 1: the dynasty, the new dynasty refused to arm the populace
Speaker 1: and then they lost. Yeah, the trutsky Is and the
Speaker 1: people themselves were like, hey, we should carry guns when
Speaker 1: the French come Yeah. Absolutely, And fortunately no one listened
Speaker 1: to the Vietnam about this particular thing, and specifically they
Speaker 1: said we should organize ourselves into people's militias, and so
Speaker 1: people started doing that, and then people started setting up
Speaker 1: people's counsels based on neighborhood self organizing um, and then
Speaker 1: but but doing organizing all across Sigon, and no Van
Speaker 1: is running around buying weapons on the black market and
Speaker 1: stashing them uh in various places of the different people's
Speaker 1: militias can get access to them. This guy just like
Speaker 1: does not stop. No, he is fucking and he's disabled.
Speaker 1: He is like like he is a very sick, long
Speaker 1: affected tuberculosis patient as he does us and he still
Speaker 1: does this and has three kids. Yeah, yeah somewhere and
Speaker 1: that's all of this at some point. Yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: he's a good dad. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll see the French show up. The Vietmin are like, hey,
Speaker 1: Bud's welcome back. We're pals right, and give up a big,
Speaker 1: warm welcome. I don't quite understand this part. The French,
Speaker 1: with British soldiers backing them, order them to dissolve and
Speaker 1: have everyone and everyone's disarmed. No one goes along with it,
Speaker 1: but in order to appease the French and maybe negotiate
Speaker 1: as equals. That's my best guess about what's happening in
Speaker 1: Saigon with Vietmain. I don't think this is like Ho
Speaker 1: Chi Men's strategy. I think this is what the Vietmain
Speaker 1: you're doing in Sigon. But I don't know. Um, the
Speaker 1: Vietmain blame the people's militias and the people's counsels. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're the ones who didn't like you. And since the
Speaker 1: Vietmin run the prisons, because of course they do, everyone
Speaker 1: else is like listen a people with councils, and Vietmins
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, we Vietmain are like, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: the prisons. They start rounding up and arresting the people's counsels. Classic, classic, classic,
Speaker 1: and this was they didn't like the French. This was
Speaker 1: them attempting to like negotiate power or something, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Soon enough they call for a general strike, which leads
Speaker 1: to martial law, and the city hall is stormed by
Speaker 1: the British and the French, and so are the prisons,
Speaker 1: and now all the political prisoners, all the people counseled
Speaker 1: prisoners who are arrested by the stalinists are now in
Speaker 1: the French hands. And the whole I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: country is in revolt. The city puts up this desperate resistance.
Speaker 1: They barricade the streets that met my machine gun fire.
Speaker 1: The French left calls this the dirty War, in part
Speaker 1: because most of the people in the colonial forces were
Speaker 1: colonial subjects themselves, Like the British are there with their
Speaker 1: Indian soldiers and the French are there with their Algerian soldiers.
Speaker 1: So it's basically like making people of colorified people of
Speaker 1: color mm hmm. The colonial forces hold the city center,
Speaker 1: Vietmain and their coalition UM and the people's militias UM.
Speaker 1: Because the Vietmam's coalition includes I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the other religious groups. I'm not. It's just so fucking messy.
Speaker 1: They hold the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, they go
Speaker 1: around and kill all the trots Kists they can find.
Speaker 1: No Van has to flee. Him and his friend. They're
Speaker 1: smuggled out of the city in a riverboat. So he
Speaker 1: goes home to his village, arms his brothers, says goodbye
Speaker 1: to his mother, and goes and joins the people's militia.
Speaker 1: You know, I just love that he loves his mom.
Speaker 1: I know, like he could. He's like, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: like kill some motherfucker's but also I love you mom. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna give everyone in the family a handguns too,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna need that. I mean that, honestly. I
Speaker 1: can't say that I haven't had that day dream whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the city, other people people's militias, all the
Speaker 1: non Vietmin fighters, they stay and fight. Hundreds of them die,
Speaker 1: including the workers that the newspaper the struggle. Uh. They
Speaker 1: form a like hundreds strong block that I think is
Speaker 1: like gunned down by the French, not the vietmain I believe.
Speaker 1: On a on a bridge out in the countryside, Vaughan
Speaker 1: and a few other folks from his people's militias are
Speaker 1: arrested by the Vietmin and the Vietmain at this point
Speaker 1: are using local bandits and local ex colonial cops, and
Speaker 1: they're rounding up any prisoners they can to look good
Speaker 1: to their bosses, including every Catholic they can find, deciding
Speaker 1: that all Catholics are working with the enemy and executing them,
Speaker 1: plus just torturing people into false confessions of working with
Speaker 1: the French and then executing them. And no Van spends
Speaker 1: several days in the Vietmin jail in the countryside, listening
Speaker 1: to people being tortured and executed. One of his fellow
Speaker 1: prisoners is a surveyor who had been arrested for helping
Speaker 1: divvy up land that the peasants had stolen back from
Speaker 1: a rich landowner um because the Stalinists had decided to
Speaker 1: make common cause with the rich against the poor. That
Speaker 1: seems fucked up, Yeah, it's not so good, no, But
Speaker 1: then he's rescued. The rest of his unit finds him
Speaker 1: and they have negotiations with the Vietmin. The negotiations are basically,
Speaker 1: there's more of us, we have more guns. Let them
Speaker 1: the fuck go, Yeah, that's compelling. I think it is.
Speaker 1: It's a strong negotiating position. And so he gets out
Speaker 1: and he rejoins the People's militia, and when he gets out,
Speaker 1: he finds out that three of his friends had tried
Speaker 1: to get into Saigon to help. They had been arrested
Speaker 1: by the French, released and then we're executed by the
Speaker 1: vietmin oh. And at this point Van he can't keep
Speaker 1: up with the militia, is tuberculosis has ruined his lungs,
Speaker 1: but he's like gott to be of use, so he
Speaker 1: heads off to Saigon, where he literally just heard about
Speaker 1: three of his friends fucking going through hell and then dying.
Speaker 1: So he hides from both sides of the war. Even
Speaker 1: though he's a he himself is on one side of
Speaker 1: the war. Along the way, he sees how the French
Speaker 1: during the recolonizing they are brutal, and they are they
Speaker 1: are in order of magnitude, are more more brutal than
Speaker 1: the VIETNMAM. And that is the thing I do need
Speaker 1: to feel like like at one point and try not
Speaker 1: to go with too many of the specific descriptions of
Speaker 1: bad ship, but at one point at least they're like
Speaker 1: booby trapping dead children, so that when people go to
Speaker 1: go find their dead child, they're blown up by a
Speaker 1: hand garnade. Who's doing there? Okay, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I include that is because
Speaker 1: like part of the Western demonization of um of the
Speaker 1: Viet Cong is like booby traps and ship um, and
Speaker 1: so like we learned it from you. Dad is like
Speaker 1: a pretty freaking valid. Anyway, his own village was attacked
Speaker 1: by the French. His brother had been shot in the
Speaker 1: knee but survived. French colonists who sided with the Vietnames
Speaker 1: were rounded up and beaten. One woman was stripped to
Speaker 1: the waist and marched to the streets with a sign
Speaker 1: around her neck that says I signed a Marxist resolution.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that I think overall, the French
Speaker 1: aren't murdering the French citizens who are siding with the
Speaker 1: Viet the Vietmin, but they are absolutely beating the ship
Speaker 1: out of them and arresting them and subjecting them the
Speaker 1: weird torture. He's also hearing about more and more people
Speaker 1: killed by the Vietmin, about doctors and comrades, about a
Speaker 1: teacher killed by his own former student, and people hide him.
Speaker 1: He spends several days lying flat in a fishing boat,
Speaker 1: talking with the fisher. When the fisher takes it out
Speaker 1: to go fishing, um, he spends longer in a series
Speaker 1: of safe houses. Once he gets the Saigon, his own brother,
Speaker 1: brother number ten, was murdered by the Vietmin. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so he just keeps hearing terrible news all across the country.
Speaker 1: Peasants had redivided the land under the slogan the land
Speaker 1: to those who work it, which is a pretty reasonable
Speaker 1: slogan and probably better than the used the French to
Speaker 1: prug or s our society or whatever, only to have
Speaker 1: Ho Chi Minh make declarations that it was illegal to,
Speaker 1: you know, make communism. The various religious sects that had
Speaker 1: fought for the revolution, we're getting persecuted too. And by persecuted,
Speaker 1: I mean murdered at least a ton of their leaders,
Speaker 1: plus all the non aligned nationalists. The how how after
Speaker 1: the after Vietmin tried to assassinate their leader, and I
Speaker 1: forgot to mention that his name was the Mad Monk.
Speaker 1: They held their territory and they killed the Vietnamin who
Speaker 1: tried to enter their territory because the Vietmain were trying
Speaker 1: to kill them all the while they stayed fighting against
Speaker 1: the French. But then, in a master stroke of giving
Speaker 1: a huge chunk of people over the enemy, the Vietmain
Speaker 1: successfully assassinated the mad Monk. On the next tr and
Speaker 1: the how how it started fighting for the French instead
Speaker 1: on what? Okay, all right, I will say that of
Speaker 1: all these people, the communist opposition group is the one that,
Speaker 1: even when the Vietmain were killing them, did not go
Speaker 1: and then join the French. Because the cow diists did
Speaker 1: the same thing. They were part of the resistance until
Speaker 1: the Vietmin arrested their leader, and then they moved to
Speaker 1: support the French. The pirates. They've been working for rebellion
Speaker 1: for the rebellion Um, but demanded autonomy from the Vietmin.
Speaker 1: So they were followed into the swamps and murdered, and
Speaker 1: the few survivors went and joined the French. The nationalists
Speaker 1: were executed by the Vietmin. And I am certain that
Speaker 1: the Vietmin used the fact that these people switch sides
Speaker 1: after being murdered to retroactively justify the murder. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: that's usually okay, Yeah, that said, despite all the enemies
Speaker 1: of the Vietmin made the French never retook Vietnam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: racked with tuberculosis, constantly under threat from both the French
Speaker 1: and the Vietmin. Like he's like opened a bookstore and
Speaker 1: Saigon that's getting like rated every fucking just like constantly,
Speaker 1: And Ship Vaughan decides to funk off for good. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have a passport, but he pulled strings for three
Speaker 1: months travel visa to get to France, and he goes
Speaker 1: into exile in Marseilles, which makes him the second person
Speaker 1: in two thousand twenty three on this podcast to go
Speaker 1: into exile and Marseilles because as Babar Heart did the
Speaker 1: same thing after the colonial forces in Algeria tried to
Speaker 1: kill her. He left his kids in someone's care without
Speaker 1: telling us the reader, who hopefully a good person, I
Speaker 1: don't know. So he goes to France by every one
Speaker 1: of his friends from his opposition from the opposition party
Speaker 1: who stayed in the country were dead. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's so sad, I know. He describes a torture that
Speaker 1: several women friends of his were subjected to in a
Speaker 1: new creative way that I'm also not going to relate
Speaker 1: and he moved to Paris and he took badly paid
Speaker 1: work as an electrician. Um he stayed involved and left
Speaker 1: his politics his whole life. He tended to avoid ideological
Speaker 1: labels going forward. He was no longer a Trotskyist. He
Speaker 1: mostly rolled with the anti authoritarian communists, especially what are
Speaker 1: called council communists, which are communists who even bottom up
Speaker 1: communism built out of workers councils. He wrote a ton
Speaker 1: of history books. He also wrote his memoirs, and he
Speaker 1: wrote books about the connections between Taoism, anarchism, and other
Speaker 1: liberatory ideas through time and place. And that's more or
Speaker 1: less where we're gonna leave it the cliffhanger, but here's
Speaker 1: a short version for anyone needs to know. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of cutting it before the second end of China War
Speaker 1: because that's just so much more covered and understood. The
Speaker 1: Vietmin fought the French to a draw in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four and in what's called the first end of China War,
Speaker 1: and it left the country divided. There were supposed to
Speaker 1: be a country wide election to unify the country. Um
Speaker 1: the Vietmin and the Soviet Union wanted the election to
Speaker 1: be overseen locally the US, who I have no idea
Speaker 1: why they should have had any any say in any
Speaker 1: of this, said that it should be supervised by the
Speaker 1: U N. Instead, this was rejected. There was no election.
Speaker 1: The empire in exile. Who's the French puppet? Mhm. He
Speaker 1: appoints a prime minister instead of having an election. So
Speaker 1: the communists in the south rose up. This triggers the
Speaker 1: Second Indo China War, what the US calls the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War and the Vietnamese I believe called the American War.
Speaker 1: And that war peasants kicked the ship out of the
Speaker 1: US and along and bloody war, and they win in
Speaker 1: the country's unified and global capitalism wins brutal decline. McDonald's
Speaker 1: does what the French in the US failed to do
Speaker 1: When Vietnamese state capitalism turned into private capitalism, no Van
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised. The two were. He felt blood brothers. Near
Speaker 1: the end of his life, he went home and visited
Speaker 1: his village for a while. His extended family was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you should stay here and die among family, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a wanderer. And he lived until two thousand five,
Speaker 1: into his early nineties and he was undefeated, despite the
Speaker 1: best efforts made by all of the major antagonists who
Speaker 1: have ever been on this show, capitalist colonialists, authoritarian communists,
Speaker 1: and tuberculosis. Writing about that experience with his Emily and
Speaker 1: deciding not to return back to his village, he wrote,
Speaker 1: it's life. The instant of life that is eternity. I
Speaker 1: feel immortal, I feel eternal. You may die tomorrow or
Speaker 1: right now, but when you really immerse yourself in some project,
Speaker 1: you're living beyond the hundred revolutions of the earth around
Speaker 1: the sun. Actually, time has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: When your eternal, your eternal. Wow, that's really beautiful. I know,
Speaker 1: I really liked it, and I feel like it's like
Speaker 1: it comes it's like so good and useful and also
Speaker 1: comes from such an obvious like you can you can
Speaker 1: see how that comes from his experience of discussing eternity
Speaker 1: with his family. You know. Um yeah, so reflections, uh
Speaker 1: some nations, slight cliffhanger there, I know, it's I'm ready
Speaker 1: for part three, four or five, eleven twelve, Like I'm
Speaker 1: it's interesting because like I can't remember if I mentioned
Speaker 1: this in the last episode, but just like the U
Speaker 1: the wow, oh my God, I'm tired. Um. The history
Speaker 1: that we see in the diaspora is never like this comprehensive,
Speaker 1: and it's usually skewed towards capitalist, colonial perspective. Like my
Speaker 1: like I spent years going to a Vietnamese school on Sundays,
Speaker 1: and conveniently this kind of stuff is not taught, you know,
Speaker 1: And so like I see so much of myself in
Speaker 1: Govan and like, I don't know, I I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: chewing on this for a while, but like I've always
Speaker 1: felt like I don't know, I have I don't know
Speaker 1: a lot of other like specifically like Vietnamese leftist specifically
Speaker 1: not like anti authitarian, and so like hearing this and
Speaker 1: like it feels really heartfelt. It feels like maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not so far from home in my spirit. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that like you have this, you know, we
Speaker 1: end up with like histories one but written by the
Speaker 1: victors or whatever. And like, from a Western point of view,
Speaker 1: you have the capitalists, and from a you know, stay
Speaker 1: socialists of Vietnam point of view, you have the communist party,
Speaker 1: right and like, and it seems so funny to me
Speaker 1: because it seems so obvious that it's like, well, actually
Speaker 1: just people working together and fighting to like be free
Speaker 1: and equal is like clearly the cooler thing and like
Speaker 1: and neither side could neither side comes off looking so
Speaker 1: great in this version of this story. You know. So
Speaker 1: it makes sense that they don't want to talk about it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Yeah, and it you know, and
Speaker 1: I really worried, Um, we talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: this um off off mic earlier. I really worried about, like,
Speaker 1: it's still worth absolutely celebrating the fact that Vietnamese people
Speaker 1: like defeated every fucking major power, yeah, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and like and in the end, that was done in
Speaker 1: the name of state communism, right, and that's like messy
Speaker 1: as hell, but like still worth. There's still something amazing there,
Speaker 1: you know. But then, yeah, so that's that's what I
Speaker 1: worry about by telling specifically this story about someone who,
Speaker 1: for very good reasons, absolutely hated the Vietnam you know,
Speaker 1: mm hmm. I mean it's you know, war is ugly.
Speaker 1: I think I said this already. You know, war is ugly.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever wins, blah blah blah. And I think it
Speaker 1: maybe could be a lesson for folks who have like
Speaker 1: a really idealistic idea of like what collapse will look like,
Speaker 1: and that like they're them and their affinity group will
Speaker 1: be the ones in charge, and you know it's always
Speaker 1: it's never never going to be that simple. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just sad. I feel like most episodes of this unfortunately
Speaker 1: follow this like you know, and then these really like
Speaker 1: like for me, the most high point is these thirty
Speaker 1: thou miners living in a like communist society, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and so so that's like part of why they're de
Speaker 1: feet is like extra sad is because like because we're
Speaker 1: like it could have been so beautiful and I'm sure
Speaker 1: it would have been absolutely messy and complicated too, right,
Speaker 1: you know. But like, um yeah, well, uh, anything you
Speaker 1: want to shout out or plug uh yeah. If you
Speaker 1: like my cheesy jokes, you can hear more of those,
Speaker 1: um somewhere on the internet. But more specifically, um, I
Speaker 1: am part of Yellow Peril Tactical. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Yellow Underscore Peril Underscore Technical, and we
Speaker 1: are also on Twitter y p t Actual and we
Speaker 1: also do a podcast, Tiger Block Podcasts, where those are
Speaker 1: actually more even more specifically where my bad jokes are.
Speaker 1: But you can hear us do weird interviews and us
Speaker 1: talking to each other? Um, and yeah, that's where to
Speaker 1: find my my ship posts as well on the internet.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I want to shout out that people should
Speaker 1: consider reading UM. I read a lot of history books
Speaker 1: for my job. This is my job. You're listening to
Speaker 1: me do my job. I read a lot of history
Speaker 1: books from my job. And In the Crossfire by no
Speaker 1: von n g O space v a n was one
Speaker 1: of the most readable and interesting UM books I've read
Speaker 1: for this and so I really recommend people people read it.
Speaker 1: And also just as informative and meaningful is Escape from
Speaker 1: Insul Island, which is about an island of insults that
Speaker 1: the protagonists wants to not be on, therefore they must escape,
Speaker 1: which you can order directly from wherever you order books,
Speaker 1: or from Tangled Wilderness dot org or from a k Press.
Speaker 1: So if you have anything you want to plug, I
Speaker 1: want to plug the UH. Some resources for the earthquakes
Speaker 1: that the earthquakes happened in Syria and in Turkey. UM.
Speaker 1: Check out the White Helmets that's white Helmets dot org.
Speaker 1: Check out this Syrian American Medical Society Foundation that's s
Speaker 1: a MS DASH USA dot net doctor Doctors Without Borders
Speaker 1: Doctors without Borders dot org. And then uh, the Kurdish
Speaker 1: Red Crescent and that's their website is h E y
Speaker 1: v A s O r uk dot org. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to the episode that Shrine Lenny Units
Speaker 1: did for it could happen here on What's what happened there?
Speaker 1: Please check it out. Yeah that's what I got. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll see you all next week with more tales of people.
Speaker 1: Who is the first surviving of tuberculosis tale? Actually, I
Speaker 1: mean I think there's are you sure? In our podcast
Speaker 1: it subreculous is about death rate? Um yeah, that's not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but still means there'll be a lot of people who
Speaker 1: survive it. Um but yeah, in terms of this, in
Speaker 1: terms of this show, it is it usually goes in
Speaker 1: and kills everyone. The state doesn't It's usually like and
Speaker 1: uh they died of TV. Yeah, all right, by everyone
Speaker 1: Next week By Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,