“The nation of South Vietnam still exists in the people who came here after the war,” Sandy said. “It is a nation that ceased existing in 1975 on a map. But there’s this diaspora of people who became Vietnamese American and brought with them their conception of that citizenship and nationality.”
Insightful article from a few years ago on the recently deceased David Horowitz. The murder of Betty Van Patter was probably the occasion rather than the cause of his beginning his migration from the new left to the far right. One important consequence of this migration was his launching of the political career of the malignant Stephen Miller.
As an individual, Horowitz sounds awful and given the politics of his latter years, a feeling of relief or even joy at the news of his death is understandable.
Yet we need to be ready to ask what in the culture of the new left and of the US left in general nourished the loathsome politics of Horowitz. Just uttering the words "horseshoe theory" will not suffice.
https://newrepublic.com/article/162227/david-horowitz-profile-trump-propagandist-radical-leftist
"One of the first-ever uses of aerial-dropped bombs was against the miners' army in West Virginia. The Italians had done it a few years earlier in Ethiopia."
#LettersAndPolitics welcomes #RobertOvetz, author of #WhenWorkersShotBack: #ClassConflict from 1877 to 1921
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-30-2025/
#labor #labour #laborHistory #labourHistory #USlaborHistory #UShistory #AmericanHistory #GreatRailroadStrikeOf1877 #WestVirginiaCoalWars #PullmanStrike #books @bookstodon @histodons
This 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War reminds me of my trip to Vietnam in 1992, and how wonderful everyone was to me. People wanted me in their photos, wanted to practice their English with me, wanted to know if Mr. Bill Clinton was going to lift the trade embargo. No one mentioned the war.
Tomorrow is Labor Day in most of the world except the USA. Never forget they changed the date in the US precisely in order to separate it from the world wide leftist labor movement. Look it up!
#laborday #leftism #us #usa #uspol #france #communism #anarchism #mayday #workersrights #solidarity #nogodsnomasters #marx #karlmarx #history #ushistory
What an amazing, informative thread! Thanks for sharing.
"This April, 50 years after the loss of their homeland, Vietnamese refugees and their descendants who helped shape San Jose and Silicon Valley are pondering their legacy and what it means to be Vietnamese American moving forward. For Vương, who goes by Lauren Vuong and now lives in San Francisco, this includes illuminating what became of those left behind after the U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam War."
: https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/04/27/san-joses-vietnamese-refugees/?share=on2ye4w2ss25euwotose
80 years ago, the 855 members of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, known as the Six Triple Eight, headed to Birmingham, England, to sort an enormous backlog of mail. They were faced with millions of letters and packages addressed to American soldiers and government personnel stationed across Europe, some of whom had received nothing in years. Three months later, the predominantly Black, all-female unit, which had the motto, "no mail, low morale," had done it. In 2022, then-President Joe Biden signed into law an act that would award members of the battalion a Congressional Gold Medal. Today, the two surviving members received theirs. Here's more from @npr about the work the unit did, the campaign to get them their medals, and how the Department of Defense's DEI purge impacted their legacy.
Link: https://flip.it/jdxwB_
#History @histodons #USHistory #BlackHistory @blackmastodon #USMilitary #USGovernment #Women
"Tháng Tư Đen or Black April commemorates the Fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Communist forces on April 30, 1975 after a month-long campaign into the southlands that would end the Vietnam War and start one of the largest refugee crises in history."
America: What's In a Name?
#LettersAndPolitics welcomes historian #GregGrandin to talk about his latest book, #AmericaAmérica: A New #History of the New World
#historyOfTheAmericas #LatinAmericanHistory #AmericanHistory #UShistory #ModernHistory #colonialism #colonialViolence #revolutions #books @bookstodon @histodons
"The Trump administration has told its senior diplomats in Vietnam not to take part in events marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
Four U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity to describe sensitive diplomatic decision-making said that Washington had recently directed senior diplomats — including Marc Knapper, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam — to stay away from activities tied to the anniversary on April 30."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/world/asia/us-diplomats-vietnam-war-anniversary-trump.html
On March 27, Trump signed an executive order declaring the Smithsonian Museum’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. — a.k.a. The Blacksonian — and a few others as institutions that divide America.
The order states that the museums undermine the nation’s "remarkable" history by casting it "in a negative light," and directs Vice President JD Vance to clear the museum of its liberal "ideology."
Ten days before the order, Kevin Young, the NMAAHC’s director, went on indefinite personal leave. The cascade of bad news left historians on edge and Black Americans concerned that the groundbreaking museum would survive Trump 2.0.
https://wordinblack.com/2025/04/can-this-chicago-preacher-save-blacksonian/
Remarkable. I've never heard this writer's name, but she was a major celebrity when her first memoir was published at age 19. It was translated into 30 languages. She brashly toyed with the public for years, and wrote frankly about bisexual desire ... in 1902! She wrote and starred in a pre-Hays Code film called Men Who Have Made Love to Me.
And yet, she's completely left out of American cultural history and feminism.
h/t @publicdomainrev
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/i-am-making-the-world-my-confessor/
In 1920 the NAACP began flying a flag from the windows of its headquarters at 69 Fifth Avenue when a lynching occurred. The words on the flag were “a man was lynched yesterday.”
The threat of losing its lease forced the NAACP to discontinue the practice in 1938.
Bothwell on the negotiations over the Alaska border at the turn of the 20th century:
Now, the difference between Theodore Roosevelt, the president, and Donald Trump, is that Roosevelt was really smart, and he was very well-educated, he liked the British, he had actually worked in Canada, he knew Canada, he admired what had happened in the War of 1812 -- he was basically a rather fair man even if he had an excitable temperament. So he said, "Well, you try this, and I'll send troops." And the British had a stroke, and said, "No, no, no, we'll arbitrate it!", and Roosevelt said, "That's fine, as long as I win the arbitration." So they went through this charade in London [the Alaska Boundary Tribunal, created by the Hay-Herbert Treaty spearheaded by Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge] and the arbitration decided in favour of the United States. But in my opinion, the Americans had the better claim, and [Canadian PM Wilfrid] Laurier was just hopeless.
So it's an interesting event, because Roosevelt settled it, because he actually did not want war, he didn't want a confrontation, he didn't really want bad relations... he just thought "Well, hell, the Canadians are trying to put one over on us" -- Trump uses that language, but this is the only case where it actually applies.
And Laurier very soon forgot about it, and by 1908 Laurier was ready to tie up all the Canadian-American differences that had occurred, in a series of agreements in that date. Now ironically, this is because of the maturity and the intelligence of Roosevelt's Secretary of State [Elihu Root]. Roosevelt had an outstanding cabinet. And this guy said, "Hey, wait a minute, we don't really know the Canadians, we deal with the Brits. I'm going to catch the train to Ottawa." And so he shows up for what's announced to be a "social visit". And in Ottawa, he starts negotiating with the Canadians, and saying, "you know, we've got X, Y, Z, A, B, C differences along our 3,000-mile border, so why don't we just put them all in a package, and we'll make an agreement?" And so that's a series of agreements, compromises, very reasonable, all of them, between the United States -- via Great Britain, which still owned Canada, and the United States -- but really it's between the United States and Canada, because we were the other end of the negotiation. The Secretary of State called it "cleaning the slate", and it was perfect, it really worked very well, and for the last 120 years, it's just been accepted. ...
(dialogue continues with more historical review and commentary)
Emeritus Prof. Bob Bothwell has published many works (and spoken many times) on modern Canadian history, Canada-US relations, and American exceptionalism, including Trump. Here's a recent interview on the Brian Crombie Radio Hour, on the history of the longest border in the world:
https://soundcloud.com/user-412306973/robert-bothwell-canada-us
"This month marks 50 years since the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. It’s also the anniversary of many Vietnamese families arriving to start a new life in the Pacific Northwest. Thousands of people fled the country and became refugees in 1975, and many of those people ended up on the West Coast of the United States. According to census data, there are now more than 37,000 Vietnamese Oregonians."
