Y T Nguyen

This chapter critically reviews the historiography of the Vietnam War and the Republic of Vietnam and advances a perspective that reconceptualizes Vietnamese America as the political, cultural, and institutional legacy of Republican Vietnam. In doing so, the chapter highlights how the study of Vietnamese America can guide questions and problematics in the study of the Republic and, vice versa, the ways in which the historical exploration of the Republic can shed light on contemporary dynamics in Vietnamese America.

This chapter focuses on the process of anticommunist subject formation during the First Republican period by utilizing the unstudied Political Study Program (Chương Trình Học Tập Chính Trị) to explore the development and transformation of South Vietnamese anticommunism. It utilizes the South Vietnamese narrative on the Geneva Accords—an anticommunist narrative taught through this program and had persisted throughout the era—to examine the ways in which South Vietnamese anticommunism as a discourse had endured. The author argues that the persistence of South Vietnamese anticommunism came about through ritualization of anticommunist beliefs and practices and the persistent and modular deployment of the anticommunist narratives.

This article views Vietnamese anticommunism as a historical institution designed to bolster the legitimacy of the Republic of Vietnam, and argues that political and violent aspects of South Vietnamese nation-building continue to shape and influence contemporary Vietnamese American politics. It explores the rise and decline of the underresearched Homeland Restoration (Phục Quốc) movement, which dominated Vietnamese American politics during the 1980s. It demonstrates how this movement shaped the contours of Vietnamese American politics and aided the consolidation of anticommunism as the dominant form of community politics. By binding cultural politics of Vietnamese Americans to concrete historical processes, this article illustrates the need for the scholarship on Vietnamese Americans to integrate issues of power, politics, and conflict into the analysis of diasporic and refugee collective memories.

This dissertation seeks to explain the discursive origin, development, and transformation of “Republican anticommunism,” and how and why this state-originated ideology continues to shape Vietnamese exile communities today. The dissertation focuses on examining mechanisms that allows certain narratives produced by the Republic of Vietnam to persist, despite the regime changes, turmoil, war, and, ultimately, state collapse that characterizes Vietnamese Republican history (1955-1975). The dissertation explores the unstudied “Political Study Program” Chương Trình Học Tập Chính Trị (PSP) of the Republican government and examines its operations and ideological messaging throughout duration of the Republican era. Focusing on three state-derived Republican anticommunist narratives (Narrative of the Geneva Accords, Anti-Neutralism, and Vietnamese Underdevelopment), the dissertation demonstrates how ideas once articulated as propaganda by the Republican state becomes a widely deployed form of “social knowledge” drawn upon by state and non-state actors alike. The dissertation, firstly, highlights the efforts of the Republican state to “cultivate,” develop, and disseminate an anticommunist political culture. Secondly, the project historically documents how these ideas were creatively reconfigured by diverse actors across the Republican era. Lastly, it traces the migration of these state-derived ideas following the Fall of Saigon (1975) and examines how Republican anticommunism was reconstituted in the formation of Vietnamese America. Alongside providing one of the first comprehensive political and social history of the Vietnamese Republican era, the dissertation critically analyzes the historical process has led to the creation of an anticommunist Vietnamese community overseas. It, furthermore, advances a new theoretical paradigm that views the historical significance of South Vietnam through its prevailing legacy on present day Vietnamese exile communities. At its crux, the dissertation demonstrates how state-derived ideas, forms of identification, and discourses can survive long after the state that progenerated them had fallen.

Book Review Roundtable: After Saigon's Fall

The impacts of the war in Vietnam did not end when Saigon fell. Our
contributors review Amanda C. Demmer's “After Saigon’s Fall: Refugees and
US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975-2000” and consider remembrance,
policymaking, and humanitarianism in U.S.-Vietnamese relations after the
U.S. withdrawal.