Because if you spend enough time on the internet, especially the Western side, you start to hear voices of people who oppose their governments and not enough from those who support it.
Even many who are supportive tend to say that their government is authoritarian.
I’m a southern Vietnamese. I genuinely support the Communist Party and the government. But I have to say, they just let liberalism and western propaganda run rampant over here. People getting more and more liberal, most don’t even know what communism even is, they think it’s something taboo. As an average person, I barely see any effort to educate and inform the mass. That’s my one strong criticism for the government.
I don’t know for real but I think maybe most of party members are in the northern part. The south used to be heavily colonized by the west before it got liberated by northern folks. The situation here might be similar to Shanghai in China.
To elaborate on this, after the French Indochina war in 1954 due to the treaty with France, most of the party members in the South had to move into the North, many of them didn’t get to come back South until 1975. The Southern fascist regime also hunted down and killed a lot of our Southern comrades during the war. The lead to a big lost in the Southern branch of the party capability of organization and leadership.
In urban area where the control of the puppet regime is the strongest, they also had a lot of propaganda to brainwash the mass into anti communism. After the war, many of those same suburbanite also saw the biggest lost of quality of life due to the drop in free money from US aid and new sanctions which reinforced those past propaganda. That’s why you see a tendency for Southern suburbanite to be skeptical to hostile toward leftist ideology and have a rosier picture for capitalism.
I’m also a Southern Vietnamese here to answer your questions. Party members are still required to study Marxism-Leninism. You are actually tested in how well you know ML ideologies before your application to the party is approved. But deal to history, most of the core members of the politburo is from the North and the Northerner are typically more hard line ML while many Southern party members flirt with socdems and liberal ideology.
When he mentioned liberalism I think he mean the ideology and not the culture war in the West. Most people living in those socialist countries still have to struggle mostly with consequences of colonialism and capitalist imperialism and is less embroiled in identity politics like in the West. Vietnam and Cuba is still better than most of the US regarding LGBTQ issues and gender equality though.
Are you not taught marxism-leninism in school? The books Luna Hoi is translating are some sort of school textbooks, right?
From what I remembered from my highschool. You are not to taught ML fundamentals untill you are in university. However, you are taught some socialist world views and some historical materialism in both civic and history classes. Most kids wouldn’t pay attention to it since they have to focus on STEMS subjects for the university exam though 😞
In university you have to take classes in ML which will have affect on your grade so people do pay more attention to it. But unless you are major in it, most people would just forget about it after their classes to spend time doing what university students do. It’s pretty much the equivalent to mandatory civic classes in the West.
At the end of the day, while the education system in Vietnam have a more nuance view on socialism and have actual communist content (instead of the usual anti communism trash in US textbook). Majority of the time, people are simply too occupied with other things to learn it in depth.
Despite being a Vietnamese living in Vietnam, I’ve never met anyone that consider themself a communist IRL. People my age think money is everything. No one’s even bothered to educate themself ideologically. Older people are always skeptical of the government after being traumatized by poverty and war, combined with western propaganda.
The game shows are dumb, all of them.
