Part One: Ngo Van & Vietnamese Resistance Before the Vietnam War

Margaret talks with Snow about one communist’s life of resistance against colonialism and authoritarianism both.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Clo and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
You're twice weekly reminder that despite all the horrible ship
in the world, we can try and do what's right.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today is
my guests now from Yellow Peril Tactical. So how are
you doing? I am doing okay. I haven't had a
day off since last Sunday, but I am hanging in there.

(00:22):
Those dudes do seem like contradictory statements. Yeah, but it's
like baby yea. For those who have never heard of
your work with YPT Yellow Parel Tactical, how would you
sum it up? We are eight tigers in a trench coat, Okay,
but truly we are nowhere more than eight. I think

(00:44):
we're at like eleven now actually, um, but we're a
group of leftist Asian Americans who fly the same flag
of anti authoritarianism. Some of us are anarchists. I think
most of us are, um if we do decide to
have a singular ideology, but we mostly focus on firearms education,
political education, and the occasional ship post as a treat. Awesome. Yeah,

(01:09):
I believe it was your ship posting is how I
first came in range of tactics. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And
so our producer playing the role the voice of God
is Sophie. Sophie, how are you? I'm all Margaret, thank
you for asking. Well, of course, I mean we also
spent like a while before we started recording talking about it.

(01:30):
But I wanted everyone else to know that you're doing well. Yeah,
we're friends. Yeah, never let anyone say otherwise. Snow is
like you two hate each other, sworn enemies. No I can't.
I can't even like, I can't even joke about it,
like my feelings. I know our audio engineers Ian and

(01:55):
the theme music was written for us by a woman.
So Snow, we're talking about well, okay, before I started
talking about what we're gonna talk about. So what we're
not talking about? I have you ever heard of the
Second Indo China War aka the Vietnam War AKA the
some total of what white Americans know about the country Vietnam?
You know, I just see these like old white dudes

(02:17):
wearing the Vietnam War hats. That's all you know. That's
all I know about it. Not my family escaped from
a war torn country or anything like that. Yeah, exactly. Um,
since you don't have any context, not let me um.
We're not going to talk about the Second Indo China
War today. Maybe one day we'll talk about some of

(02:40):
what happened, but it's not gonna be today or Wednesday.
It's not even gonna be this week at all, because
this week we're going to talk about a century of
resistance against French imperialism in Vietnam that doesn't get talked
about as much, and we're gonna talk about, in particular,
the various communists and others who fought like hell in
the He's of the nineteen forties who were fighting for

(03:02):
a bottom up communist society instead of the bottom down
one that eventually won. And we are going to trace
it through the eyes of a guy named no Von
who's one of the only people who lived through all
of that, at least one of the only people with
his ideological viewpoint, like one of his only of any
of his friends who survived. He's sort of this week's

(03:25):
cool person. He would probably he's going to wind up
in the title, I'm sure, and he rules, but I
think it's going to come across real quickly that the
the real cool person or cool people this week is
basically the Vietnamese people broadly, who just kicked the ship
out of everyone who tried to rule them for through
just tenacity and organizing and courage. I really don't understand

(03:48):
why people funk with Vietnamese people. Know, it seems like
a really bad idea. Just it's bad. Like have you
met my mom? I haven't, but I would be afraid
to mess with her. She would, like I joke about
this all the time, but it's like super not a joke.
It's like she would chase me around the house with
a cooking utensil to spank me and then cooked dinner
with it. So imagine that was like a communal scale

(04:10):
of a bunch of people, you know, it's like that energy.
Yeah no, And and I think over the course of
today there, I'm we're going to talk about the Vietnamese
kicking out the the Dutch, the British, the Spanish, the French,
the British again, and the Americans. And they did it

(04:32):
only with cooking utensils. I read that somewhere. Yeah, yeah, no, actually, yeah,
that was That's gonna be a major part of it.
It's the wooden spoon Army. So I'm going to do
a condensed history of the country of Vietnam. Okay, let's
hear it all right, So most countries have had fluid
borders over their existence. In Vietnam is no exception. And

(04:54):
the BC era or the BC era or whatever the fuck,
there was some Vietnam as an independent region going back
almost about three thousand b C. And then for about
a thousand years starting in a hundred eleven b C.
It was mostly controlled by China, at least North Vietnam was,
except when it's successfully. Oh yeah, also China sorright, you
also kicked out China several times. Also except of course

(05:16):
when you all successful. Oh in the Japanese Yeah, anyway,
and nobody can come in. No successfully. The Vietnamese people
overthrew the Chinese here and there for a couple of
generations at a time, and then in nine d and
thirty nine they beat the Chinese sort of more or
less for good. This is the very oversimplified version of history,

(05:38):
forming what gets called the Dive yet Um, which means
the Great viet and this is basically North Vietnam. South
Vietnam was a series of kingdoms collectively called Chompa over
the course of its six hundred year existence, dive yet
slowly conquered, including some of modern day Cambodia as well,
but they conquered Champa basically and created the territory of

(06:00):
what is roughly modern day Vietnam by eight thirty two.
Dive Yette started off as a sort of monarchistic state,
a very strong monarchy, and that lasted several centuries, and
then eventually, basically it started to become more and more
of an in fighting space between different warlords like fucking

(06:20):
everyone else, like Ireland and all kinds of other places.
I'm just throwing that in there so that people don't
think this is something like uniquely non Western thing, for
you know, a lot of countries to be only sort
of vaguely countries. Well, and they were also very Buddhists,
which I think like the religious aspect of it and
gets super glossed over sometimes. Well, so I'm actually kind

(06:42):
of curious about that because I spent a nod insubstantial
amount of the time I was reading this reading about
different religions in Vietnam, and it seems like there was
a lot going on religiously and actually a lot of
sync syncretism, syncreticism even before like Catholic and ship showed up, like, um,
a lot of like animists meets Buddhism. And then also

(07:04):
I think a lot of the people who are like
running the place were more into Confucism because that was
a good way to be in charge. Was that particular religion?
That's my life? But yeah, no, it's it's yeah, no,
I'm gonna try, I'm gonna do my best. I spent
a long time reading about all the religious stuff, but man,
it is not uniquely complicated, but it is fucking complicated,

(07:28):
and it's the kind of thing you're right, that like
just doesn't get talked about, especially since like the Communists
are like ostensibly but not actually atheists, some of them are.
But so then they're like there just is no religion,
and You're like, yeah, what about all the animism And
they're like, there's just there's no religion. Yeah. One of
my dad's biggest beasts with the Communists is that there
they were persecuting Catholics, and I'm like, damn, that's crazy.

(07:51):
I we're going to talk about We're gonna talk about
some some murdered Catholics. Okay, I'll wait, I'll wait. Yeah, yeah, okay, so,
and there's actually some advantages to all of this war
already in fighting it made them very hard to conquer
and rule. See also Ireland and a lot of other places.
The Portuguese showed up in fifteen thirty three and they

(08:13):
were like, oh, this place is too fighty, gotta go,
and they went up and set colonial ventures in China
and Japan instead. In sixteen o one, the Dutch show
up and the locals are like, sick, let's funk him
up and rob him. Hell yeah, and then the Dutch left.
In sixteen thirteen, the English showed up. They left, though

(08:36):
by sixteen seventy two they did have some trade there,
and the French succeeded where everyone else had failed. It
was those damn bagets. They really got me, you know,
so good. That's the only thing I know how to
say in French is bagetts who play Jenna Parlot prof
That's how I lived in France for a month, as

(08:57):
I walked to the vagat store and Bagot's. Anyway, traders
came first. The traders came first in sixteen fifteen, and
then the Catholic missionaries in sixty eight, and they all
stuck around for a couple hundred years with some incidents. Um.

(09:19):
I think the first military encounter was when the French
Navy like rescued some missionaries in eighteen forty three, and
the West was like, you know those Vietnamese, they're just
so xenophobic. They don't let anyone in to just like
rob them and convert them to our colonial religion. Um,
just like specifically keep finding references of the West being
like the Vietnamese ares donophobic, fucking idiots, you're fucking robbing them.

(09:44):
It's like Michael Scott being like, this is a hate
crime because I hated it. Um, was that your first
time hearing that reference? Margaret? Yes, I have no idea
who Michael Scott is. I'll be honest, Michael Scott is
a character from the show That Office. And I was like,
Margaret laughing but she doesn't know why, but I want

(10:07):
you to know I got that joke and it was great. Um, yep,
you've never seen the office. I have seen the office.
I have seen the office, but I don't have a
memory for names. I was like, I was like, Magpie
does not know what your reference are right out, but
laughed anyways, because she's professional so sweet yeah, thank you,

(10:29):
thank you, so pinots all my tells. One of the
tells is someone made a pop culture reference. That's um
but I iually, I don't know whether I've seen the
British one or the American one, but I watched one
of them. It was funny. I sound like a robot. Okay, anyway,

(10:49):
I'm like, you should know which one you watch. I
know I should. Yeah, yep, I'm aware. I should know
a lot of things. I can't tell accents apart. One
time I was watching this movie, a British movie with
my British partner, and and my partner was like, oh, well,
the Scottish guy And I was like, which one is
the Scottish guy? And they were like the one speaking

(11:11):
with the Scottish accent. And I'm like, I don't know.
And they were like, he's the one talking to the American.
And I said, which one is the American And they
were like, the one that sounds like you like just sucking.
Could be anybody, yeah, exactly, just like anybody could be

(11:33):
France and conquer No, actually no one. Everyone else failed.
So but between eighteen fifty nine and eighty five, the
French occupied conquered the country, so I guess the xenophobia
had some merit. After all that said, it's worth noting
that the Newon dynasty, which was in charge when the
French started conquering, was not popular with the peasants, and

(11:56):
so that actually played into a lot of the things
that happened in terms of the conquer rain. Right, is
that you had this the rulers were seen as fairly
despotic by a large portion of the people who lived there.
In the year seventeen seventy six, there have been a
popular revolt that had temporarily overthrown that dynasty, the Newon dynasty,
organized by the Tasson, who fought with an army of

(12:16):
poor peasants and highland tribes. I can't tell if they
were like actually a populist revolt or if that was
like what they convinced everyone that they should be so
that they could be in charge. But it is something
that they did. And they promised land redistribution, which is
going to come up later as a thing that people
like to promise poor peasants and then not provide them.
So this seems like the way cooler War of seventeen

(12:37):
seventy six is compared to some other stuff that's happening
in the world. It it didn't last because the Newon
dynasty went to China for help. Every side in any
given wars usually ship bags, though, and the Tasson massacred
ethnic Chinese folks in Vietnam, which of course only made
China more apt to help the other side. This is
something we're going to see a lot throughout history as well.

(12:58):
And the French threw down on this side of the
ruling dynasty, the Nians alongside China, and the popular revolt
was crushed. The last taste On general was a woman
named by ut Chen, and she and her teenage daughter
were executed by crushed to death by an elephant and
let the soldiers eat her heart and liver. That's ruthless.

(13:19):
I know her husband who she met, who was another
general who she met when she saved him from a
tiger according to legend, but I'm down. I believe it
was caught and executed alongside of her, probably laid alive
a hundred years later. After this uprising, the Newon dynasty
is not a popular one with the people of the

(13:42):
Murdering people with elephants seemed to go over well or
something and then to make everything just fucking religiously complicated,
the Catholics kind of inserted themselves as the people's choice,
the religion of the oppressed. Classic I know, because also
the comparisons to Ireland, They're just going to keep stacking
up in this particular way, and its unpopular rain helps

(14:05):
the French conquered the place. During the invasion, the government
refused to arm the populace because which is actually okay,
the lesson about why the French one is because the
government and arm the populace, and the the people who
are capable of destroying every Western power are the populace,
like um as we will see over four years already
and then they cod several hundred years more. Well, it's

(14:27):
interesting because like as an aside, like well kind of related,
but like my mom's side is from the North and
they still talk about the wind Dynasty because like my
dad's side is Catholic and so interesting, yeah, very and
so based. Like my cousin like when we get super
drunk or whatever, he'll just bring up the wind Dynasty. Hey,

(14:49):
that was our demise, And I was like, all right,
I don't know that it was one singular moment, but
like that for sure, Yeah, how to play. Yeah, And
that's like because you're also also talking about like when
when people start like murdering the Catholics, which is going
to happen several times throughout this story. It's like they're
not necessarily talking about like murdering French missionaries, which I
am like, yeah, no, no problems here, right, but you're

(15:13):
talking about murdering like families of Vietnamese people who have
been Catholic for hundreds of years at this point, it's
a very different thing. But so the populace hates the dynasty.
The government is like, well, we're not giving you any
fucking weapons, and so then the newon dynasty relied only

(15:33):
on their own noble army or whatever. And also half
of the government was like, why don't we just do
this peacefully and negotiate instead of fight, which also doesn't
usually go well with colonial powers. Even still, the French
couldn't do it alone. Spain came and helped them, because
all of these quote unquote competing colonial powers are just

(15:54):
the same force of Western Christian imperialist ship heads. South
Vietnam fell first, as well as the dynasty basically, which
signed a surrender and became coach in China, which is
the place that's under the most direct colonial rule and
is also going to be the place where most of
our story takes place, not because this is where the
most action happened, but literally because where our guy no

(16:16):
no Von is from. M hm. You will be shocked
to know this. Now, the end of resistance from the
formal government was not actually the end of resistance. Damn,
I know it. I put some money down on that.
Well did you put your money down on instead? Leadership
moves to the confusions? Uh? No, is that is that question?

(16:42):
For it is what happened the local gentry, a scholar
class of confusions. They're like, all right, well, if the
government won't do it, we'll do it. And the government
was like, no, we're surrendering, play nice with the French.
But the people were like not, I don't want to.
I don't think so. Yeah, And so a ton of
the regular military left and joined these militias because they
were like, no, we're We're here to get stuff done,

(17:04):
not just follow orders. So one misstep that we keep
alluding to during this was the it's the Van Van movement. Um. Well, rather,
there's a bunch of movements that happened. One of them
is called the Van Van movement. This is the one
or von Van I believe, actually sorry, the von Van movement, which, um,
I can't tell how much the sources I'm using are

(17:26):
giving this a bad rapper or not. But these confusion scholars,
their motto was demolished the Westerners kill the heretics, just
fairly straightforward. Their plan was in the following order of priorities.
One kill all the Pacifists, to kill all the Catholics.

(17:47):
Three kick out the French. So yeah, they all they
actually did, possibly was attack a bunch of Christian in
Vietnamese villages and murder people and never actually attacked any
French people. Yeah, my dad still talks about that. Yeah,
this isn't the only time it's going to happen, um

(18:10):
in this story. It's also possible that this is a
mischaracterization of the guerrilla movement made by sources who liked
the Catholics. You know, one group that was fighting that
objectively had the best name. Have you ever heard the
Black Flag Army? I don't think so. Actually, Okay, I'm
really excited about them, mostly because of their name. Um,

(18:32):
they're not anarchists. But they're called the Black Flag Army,
so like, I'm gonna have some sympathies. They're bandits from
China who are living in Vietnam, and they actually have
a bunch of European and American mercenaries in their ranks. Also,
that's crazy. Yeah, And they got their name because they
used black flags as they're like command flags to direct battles,

(18:52):
and they were an army, so you know, you put
the two things together. But the okay, let's start with
the bad add The reason that they were really hanging
out in Vietnam and had a whole bunch of power
in Vietnam is that they started off as higher thugs
for the Newan dynasty, suppressing the indigenous mountain tribes who
weren't being properly conquered. Because that's something to remember about

(19:13):
all of this is anytime there's a government, even if
it's like the local government, it actually started off by
conquering everyone. So they showed up and they helped pacify
all these people and help the dynasty. So the dynasty
was like, all right, great, you can go be bandits
on the following rivers, the Black River and the Red River,
just to continue with weird symbolic parallels to anarchist stuff

(19:34):
that really has nothing to do with them. And then
they're allowed to be official pirates, and they're like, great,
everyone who uses the river pays us ten, but the French,
we're going to funk up their piracy deal. So they
went and sucked up the French and they wind up
basically a group of mercenaries who fight their entire lives

(19:55):
against imperialism, first in Vietnam, then like later in China
and a bunch of their places. They're just like, this
is who we are now. We're just imperially anti imperialist mercenaries.
And I think that, I know, they got really fucking
like and I think they got like it's like the
original people and they're like old as hell, and people
are like, oh funk, the black flag army is coming

(20:16):
as these like grizzled old Vets would roll up with
their black flags. I like them, even though they start
off bad. Well, you know who doesn't love a good
character arc. That's right, that's a good point. Oh and
then and then this isn't even in the script. I
just really like them. Their kids are like the next
generation was called the Yellow Flag Army and they were

(20:37):
like part of the same crew, but there was this
tension because of the Yellow Flag Army was like, we
are a fighting force against imperialism, and you know for
the people who hire us and stuff, and the black
Fog Flag armies like, yeah, but we're also bandits. But
you can't forget your origins. But they don't win. They

(21:00):
teen eight four. The rest of the country is more
or less under French control. Central Vietnam was called Annam
North Vietnam. Vietnam became Tonkin. A lot of the sources
that I'm reading refers to it by Vietnamese writers, refers
to all Vietnamese people as Anamites and collectively along with
Cambodia and later a few other places, this gets called

(21:22):
French Indo, China, and France did a colonialism trying to
eradicate Vietnamese culture in the fucking name of because of
the French, in the name of humanism. Infrastructure. Yeah, we're
providing them infrastructure and denying them any ability to express
their own culture and not get murdered constantly by US.

(21:46):
Settlers start arriving for the full settler settler colonial thing,
not just a place to extract from, but also a
place to go settle, mostly in South Vietnam, and then
you get more resistance. You immediately, I know, you get
the can Voon movement, which means aid the king their monarchists,

(22:09):
and they're mostly fighting in Annum in central Vietnam. They
do their thing for four years. They kill a third
of the country's Christian population, about forty people total, especially
in Annam where there aren't too many French soldiers. They
just massacre entire villages of Christian Vietnamese peasants instead of

(22:31):
attacking the French m The Kang Voon movement wasn't as
popular as it could have been Um because it was
defending a very unpopular royalty and because massacre in Vietnamese
people wasn't really helping either with their pr optics are
bad there. It really is as bad optics. The only
problem with murdering people based on their religious afflation the issue.

(22:55):
And it wasn't a united movement, which is actually in
this case a good thing, because some of the movement
leaders were like, hey, what if we had like religious toleration,
which just didn't let the French be in charge. Wild
they weren't the only people being cool and trying to
drive out the French. There's also this Chinese religious secret

(23:16):
society that predates Chinese organized crime that was involved, the
tnd WE, which means the Heaven and Earth Society, and
sometimes they're called the Hongmen. That's very like spiritual. Well yeah, actually, okay,
I'll just cut ahead to the part of the scripture
I say this, but the UM the triad, like the
the idea that the British eventually just started saying that

(23:38):
all organized crime in China is the triad, and that
actually comes from UM their belief in a a triad.
They use a triangle, and it was Heaven, Earth, and
people as like the three sides of the triangle. Oh
I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking cool. Then
you know who else is organized crime? The sponsors? Yeah,

(24:05):
and we're back. So so the Heaven and Earth Society,
the the DNDW. They're a secret society of working class folks.
They were founded in the seventeen sixties. People argue about
the exact date. I've seen seventeen sixty, seventeen sixty one,
and seventeen sixty nine, whatever, And they were founded as
a mutual aid society that was also into a whole

(24:26):
bunch of really interesting religious stuff, with mutual aid society
meaning something different in this context than most of how
people talk about it now. Mutually society basically being like
a mutual insurance group, like a fraternal organization, where you
you join and you pay dues and then it's much
more insular than Yeah, and this is who pays for
your like funeral expenses and your health insurance and stuff

(24:47):
like that. Basically is that like your crew of people,
your secret society of people that you pay into. People
always talk about wanting to start cults, and I think instead,
if you're thinking you out there, if you're thinking about
starting a cult, start a secret society, fraternal organization, mutual
aid organization instead. Yeah, you can still have weird religious beliefs,

(25:09):
you just don't put one person in charge. Yea. And
in this case, the TNDWA the heaven in our society,
they also robbed people and become pirates and trying and
overthrow the government to bring back the Ming dynasty in China. Jesus, Okay,
I'm still here. I'm still with you. Yeah, this society

(25:31):
has lasted until today. It has probably around three hundred
thousand members worldwide. And yeah, it's their iconography that inspired
the British to call or all organized crime in China
and the Triads. However, the modern day Hongmen are not
the Triad. They're a separate organization. And I think I'm
not even like putting like air quotes around this. I

(25:52):
think they just like actually completely separate organization. But more
importantly to our story, they were operating in South Vietnam
in the eighteen eighties where there was this large and
politically influential Chinese population, right mostly their refugees from when
the Ching dynasty took over a couple hundred years earlier,
which is what they were. You know. The whole thing

(26:12):
was they wanted to bring back the Ming dynasty and
get rid of the Ching dynasty. A bunch of them
more pirates, a bunch of them are Ming loyalists, loyalists
and exile. They're super fighty, and they brought with them
the tnd WE and they were not treated great by
the new and dynasty by the time the French showed up,
so first they cautiously allied with the French. This will
come up a lot too. Basically, Um, if you treat

(26:35):
everyone like shop and murder them. People look for reasons
to try and depose you, even even like foreign powers.
I think I read that on a mug once. Yeah yeah, actually, um,
that's a mug that you all produce as the Yellow
Peril tactical. I'm going to give you all merch ideas
instead of us anyway. But the French didn't like them.

(26:59):
They like, hey, hey, yeah, we we hate the Nean
dynasty too, want want you help us out? In? The
French were like, oh god no a French colonial assholes
basically said, they come and go without ceases their business demands.
They smoke opium, they gamble and they fight. It sounds
like a good time. Why are they hating because it's
they're not being properly conquered. Oh okay, my bad. Yeah no,

(27:22):
it's like is it the French had just come over
to like slum it or whatever, it would have been
a very different world. Okay, got you. It was hard
to get to them to agree to rules and government
because they already had rules and government that they already
don't like of their own. I think the French went
about trying to force them to be good citizens anyone
without papers was considered a quote vagabond and endangering public security,

(27:44):
which is goals. Well, did they offer them many bag
yetts at this point? I'm not sure that is probably
how they could have won them over, or maybe like
some condensed milk or something, because like I don't know,
maybe that could have helped. It could maybe maybe they
fought a lot because they had upset stomachs. That would

(28:05):
make me do a war. Yeah. Yeah, So whenever anyone
who was called without papers would get deported out of Vietnam,
even if their family have been there for you know,
hundreds years or whatever, this is a completely unfamiliar um
concept and problem to the modern audience. Yeah, that's an
old issue that doesn't happen anymore. So they started resisting

(28:28):
all of that. They refused to show up to surveys
and sentences and ship they refused to pay taxes to
the French, and they just went without documentation despite the risks.
It helped that all the locally appointed congregation heads, the
local people weren' put in charge by the French. They
just didn't comply with the French either, So when people
got deported, they just came right back. Yeah. Yeah, and

(28:52):
it wasn't like these this. The Chinese immigrant population wasn't
all of the Heaven and Earth society. And until all
this ship starts happening, and then having in earth society
is like, yo, what's up? I'll sign up entire villages
at a time. They would like show up and be like,
all right, y'all want to join the secret society. We're
gonna fight the French, and people like, yes, I do.
Having on Earth here we go. Chinese and Vietnamese folks

(29:14):
alike in this area, according to French colonial papers, and
their motives ran the gamut. Some people were into the
community and taking care of each other. Other people were
in for the crime and the violence. Other people were
in France like colonialism, and they started sucking up the French.
And in this case it was real bad for the
French because I don't know if you knew this, organized

(29:35):
crime sometimes runs drugs. Oh I heard that once? Yeah, yeah,
I don't mean to slander crime, but sometimes crime relates
to drugs. In this case, the tnd we UM ran
the opium farms of South Vietnam, which was the biggest
crash cash crop in South Vietnam. So of course the

(29:56):
French wanted to stop the opium. Now I'm just kidding.
They wanted to control the opium. Yeah, they wanted in
on that. They wanted to cut. Yeah, they want all
of it. They didn't want to cut. I'm willing to
bet when they showed up, I bet you they were like, yeah,
we don't like the government either. Yeah, you can be
in charge. We'll give you a ten percent. And the
French was like all of it, and they were like,
I guess it's a war. Yeah we yeah, so the

(30:21):
TN we they fought them and they organized just fucking
tons of riots. It was like one of their main things.
This eventually turns into armed revolt. They start controlling entire
areas I know from eighteen eighty eight eighty two before
the French eventually broke them. Unfortunately, the way the French
broke them was that they went to the rich people
who were part of them and find them and just

(30:42):
find the ship out of them. And people were like,
I don't want to lose all my money, so I'm
gonna I'm gonna back the government. Classic they didn't go away.
In eighty four, they assassinated a colonial collaborator who how
I don't wucky no, because I discovered this thread in
the story just a moment ago, and the book that

(31:04):
talks about it is an available in e book just print,
and I didn't get it in time. And I'm so
sad because I wanted to talk to you so much
more about organized crime in South Vietnam resisting French. But
they're cool. I ordered the book. I hope at some
point I get to talk about them again. Yeah, we
could do a part three. Yeah, yeah, we should do that. Okay,

(31:27):
So the French one again, the Khan Boon movement was crushed.
It's it's last members were guerilla armies in the hills
who did amazing and badass ship but by it was
pretty much over. The Sino Japanese War between China and
Japan broke out in so China stopped helping out with

(31:48):
supply lines because they were helping people resist the French. Um.
But now they're friends of the French, or rather they're
at peace of the French, and they don't want to
piss them off. So this is a pattern that's going
to repeat. Foreign help is fickle. French had all three
parts of Vietnam plus Cambodia. They formed into one colonial country.

(32:09):
They didn't want to call it Vietnam. They wanted to
call it French Indo China. So they did a colonialism.
They extracted resources and as you pointed out, they were like, look,
we're helping with infrastructure, which was used to extract more
resources and people kept fighting. That's pretty much going to
be the like at the end of every given trunk

(32:30):
with like oh and then they were defeated, but they
kept fighting, but they kept on going. Yeah, the political
lines yet really complicated. There's not two sides. Some of
the revolutionaries are really into European Enlightenment values and do
things like set up schools to teach people to write
Vietnamese and Latin script, only to have the French shut
them down because of their revolutionaries. Even though they're trying

(32:53):
to basically like westernize Vietnam, they're like doing it because
they're like, oh, yeah, we love the French. They have
that whole revolution and equality and freedom thing, and French
is like, no, no, no, I don't understand. That's like,
that's that's for us, that's our thing. Yeah, you have
your own thing, Um, you know things being ruled by

(33:13):
the French. Isn't that cool? We all have things. So
the French also then at this point turned on the Catholics,
afraid that the missionaries of too much power. Wait what Yeah,
I couldn't find out more about this part, and I
want to know more about it. But at this point,
and I'm guessing it's this classic thing and I don't know,
this is my conjecture. I'm guessing it's this classic thing

(33:36):
where Western powers don't actually like Catholics because Catholics um
have dual loyalty to Rome as well as to any
given country. That's that's my best guess. But at this
point the French are like, look, you useful idiots paved
the way for us to come in and conquer, but
you can't like keep having power, you know. And other

(34:01):
other radicals are drawing from Japanese leftism. One feudal lord
in Tonkin, the north of the country. His name is
swang haa tem He held out for thirty years having
been granted territory by the French because he like seized
it and he kept fighting them and eventually they're like, uh, okay,
you can have that little chunk over there, and he's like, okay,

(34:23):
I'll take that little chunk over there, but he serves
as a symbol of resistance because he's this one little
part of unconquered Tonkin, and they slowly, like piecemeal kind
of like fight him and take away more of a ship.
But he's like, I mean, I'm sure to the people
who live there who didn't have to then become French
were still grateful, right, but like, overall, his importance here

(34:44):
is is as a symbol of like the unconquered, the
one warlord left. Basically, he was part of a plot
in En eight to poison an entire garrison of French soldiers. Right, Okay,
but there's something I've learned from history. Mass poison plots.

(35:05):
I don't think they work. No. I know that the
Gallianus tried it in the US at some point. I
know that the ship the Jonestown. Oh well, actually that
did work. But all right, well, what is it the
the raj Nischi in Oregon, they tried to poison the

(35:27):
salad barsh really yeah, a country wild. Yeah, So this
mass poison plot didn't work. The cooks mixed deter a
poison into the food at a party for all the
French soldiers, and it knocked out two hundred of them

(35:47):
and didn't kill any of them. I think it's just
really hard to get the dosage right, especially if they
don't take the same serving. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So they
didn't kill anyone, and then they had them all knocked out.
They only two of them knocked out. Oh okay, okay, yeah, no.
So their plan was to basically like it was going

(36:09):
to be this revolt by all of these quote unquote
French soldiers were Vietnamese, like the local soldiers. They were
going to kill all the French soldiers and like take
over and they were going to help this warlord guy,
the um Hwanga tim come in and and retake it all.
But they didn't knock out enough of them, and they
didn't kill enough of them, and it was just basically

(36:30):
was like some cooks and then they like you're at
a party and you're like, all, we're gonna kill all
these people, and then you knocked two hundred of them out.
You're not gonna like walk out all six of you
and be like ha, start stabbing the unconscious people. Okay, okay,
fair enough, fair enough. This is the only time I
have found proof if so far my reading. I'm sure
other people know this and I don't that the Catholics

(36:51):
were part of the Vietnamese resistance because at least one
of the cooks was Catholic and he went to he
went to confession. I fucking knew you were going there.
Oh my god, I mean, what even sin is that?
Technically it's not coming anybody, he's not cursing anybody, he's

(37:12):
not using the Lord's name in vain. I know, I
see no since committed here. I know. I think Jesus
would approve. You know, I don't have a strong counterpoint
to that. I bet after eight years of watching his
like weird peace and love, I want to hang out
with sex workers and thieves, get turned into like all
of this ship. Yeah, I bet he would want to

(37:32):
do more than like beat the money lenders or whatever.
But so this Catholic feels guilty and he goes and
he tells the priest. He goes into a little snitch
box in the snitch church, and the priest tells the government,
and the whole thing falls apart. Oh my god. Yeah,

(37:54):
but it is evidence that the Catholics were part of
the resistance against the French. One time, yeah, one time,
but not exactly exactly. We were just like straight up,
I don't know. Um, I don't want to say we
don't know, but I don't know. Eventually, Howong Hot Tem
gets assassinated by one of his own guys who's a
black flag army dude who's sold out the resistance and

(38:16):
started working for the French and then the communist center
of the scene. But you know what else is communism? Well, actually,
I mean buying and selling products and services was a
big part of state capitalism. So by some standards advertising,

(38:41):
I don't know what would the role be of advertising
in a good and healthy, anti capitalist society, that's my question. Yeah,
I think, um, lots of flyers with all texts on
where to get free hot soup and um, where to
have puppy therapy. Okay, so if we can we get
those sponsors free hot soup and puppy therapy, those are

(39:03):
our only sponsors and anything else is a mistake. Okay,
and we're back. We're back, just like communism is back
in the nineteen twenties in Vietnama. Baby wow, because it
didn't really come back, it kind of entered for the

(39:24):
first time in v already heard about this is this
thing that happened in the world UH called the Russian Revolution.
I heard about that, Yeah, I watched the movie Anastasia
when I was a kid. I watched the movie Reds
before I had any idea of any context of anything

(39:44):
about what I saw, and I don't remember anything about
it except that it took two VHS tapes in seventeen
communists of all sorts out of revolution in Russia. And
then the Bolsheviks went around and murdered everyone who wasn't
willing to be specifically Bolshevik, which led to a civil
war that we will talk about on some episode at
some point. And eventually the Bolsheviks won, and this mattered

(40:08):
a lot by resistance to colonization of Vietnam, French end
of China took more and more of a communist turn.
This gets, I believe, exaggerated by history, since eventually communists win,
and then therefore they're like, all of the resistance was communist.
And then you go through and you're like, except for
this group in this group, and this group in this
group in this group, like and it's usually the list

(40:31):
of all the people that the UH vietmain eventually murder.
But now we get to introduced this week's main character,
shortly before the end of the first episode, No von
One thing to know about him is that I'm not
reading history books about him. I'm reading a memoir by

(40:53):
him and so yeah, and and it means he survives, uh.
And it also means that the contextual information that I
have about him is coming from him and his friends.
So there's a lot of bias and what I'm gonna
be talking about. And I talked with one of my
friends who knows a lot more about this topic than me,
about like how I was going to try and present

(41:14):
this particular thing, because like, I'm basically telling a story
about bottom up communist getting murdered by top down communists.
But that said, I'm not trying to specifically be like, well,
No Vaughan was very clear that he did not like
Ho chi Men because Ho Chiman went around and murdered
all of his friends. But there's still something about the

(41:36):
Vietmain's resistance and the Vietcong's resistance to the French and
the Americans that I think is like worth celebrating, and
so like it's a it's a I'm gonna try and
spread this needle. Yeah, And I'm probably gonna fail. Well,
you know, war is ugly. Yeah, nobody really wins. Yeah, totally.
And but you know, I share this guy's bias. I

(42:02):
don't like authoritarian communism, and neither did no Von. I
don't share his exact politics. He was a Trotskyist most
during all of the stuff that we'll be talking about.
That said no Von. He was born in twelve and
Tan Low, a village near what's now ho Chiuman City,
but was then Saigon, which is in the south of
the country. At the time, Saigon was the capital French

(42:23):
end of China, and it is now the biggest city
in Vietnam. Despite various official religions coming through Vietnam over
the course of the centuries, indigenous beliefs, usually summed up
as animism or ancestor worship, have held on pretty strong,
especially a hundred years ago. And his village was on
some cool ship. One of the results of that and

(42:44):
the colonial administration is that since a lot of okay,
there's a lot of infants die, why announced a kid's
birth until you know that they're not just gonna die,
right me, which means you would have to deal with
the colonial paperwork twice. So legally, he was born in
a nine when he was about six months old. So
you'll see some sources say he was born in nineteen thirteen,

(43:07):
and that's what his official paperwork says. But he's very
clear he was born in nineteen twelve, and he doesn't
actually know when because they didn't bother registering the birth
until he figured out that he wasn't about to die.
His mother was the village midwife, and she cut her
own umbilical core of the sharp piece of bamboo. Bark.
Jesus Christ. I know she's fucking hard. She's like metal.

(43:27):
She's like, actually my favorite character in this whole story.
I have like a hangnail and I'm like, yeah, no,
uh no. His mother, who I actually don't believe gets named,
she's fucking hard as fuck. She makes most of her
money making hassett of palm fronds and selling them to
local peasants for basically nothing. And he's his childhood home

(43:49):
is in the jungle. He and his siblings would catch
and raise owls and feed them, like keep them in
the houses pets, and then like feed them frogs and
ship like that. That's so cute. I know, I know.
I was lay in his owl. I was like actually
trying to figure out. I was like, because he includes
a lot of details like this about like growing up
and like riding buffalo and like how he was so
jealous of the neighbors who had a horse or whatever.

(44:12):
And I've been trying to figure out how to like
point out that this person had to like upbringing that
is very different than like a Western upbringing without trying
to like exoticize being like you know, but but it's
it's it's fucking interesting, and it like, it's also fucking
interesting because because he ends up involved in these political

(44:32):
things that usually gets seen as like Western leftist, like
Western ideologies, and so it's like, I think worth understanding
that someone who like grew up very different than like
a white Westerner would have was still involved in these things.
I don't know, That's where I landed. Mostly, I was like,
holy shit, he kept owls in this house. That's so
fucking cute. They were peasants, but his dad was literate

(44:55):
and his brother taught him how to read. He was
the youngest of twelve, so in traditional sty all they
referred to themselves as their birth order. He was brother
thirteen because the first born is born is named two
and not one, because they're trying to fool the evil
spirits to not carry off the firstborn Mum, and you
and I think about half of his siblings had like

(45:17):
actually like lived long enough to have names and like
survived infancy, you know, so you know, he's the youngest
of twelve, he's like one of seven or whatever. So
by anyway, whatever, I'm just got lost thinking about how
hard that would have to be for the mom. Yeah,
a lot of my grandma's siblings would have been born

(45:41):
around this time, and a lot of them died in
the famine. Okay, yeah, yeah, um is at the end
of World War two famine. Yeah, but a lot of
them just died because yeah, ship so totally. So it's

(46:05):
raised in this village. The village yourself was governed. I
don't know if it was specifically ruled, but it was
governed by a council of notables, basically people who are
trusted to make good decisions. Unfortunately, this is the colonial era,
so they're also entrusted to enforce all the French bullshit,
specifically the compituit capgitation capitate attacks mhm, the tax that

(46:25):
is a flat tax for every person, regardless of income,
which is totally fair, yeah, because it forces people into
the money economy. So all of these people who are like,
we're part of the fucking money economy, and all of
a sudden they have to come up with all this.
You know, it's about a month's worth of wages every
year for like a decently successful laborer, and it fox

(46:47):
over poor people in general. Rich people barely even notice it.
The village communal hall had a cell in the back
for prisoners, which was just people who didn't pay their tax.
The year after he's legally born, nine fourteen, world War
One breaks out and Frances like, man, we need um,
we need some living people to turn into dead people.

(47:09):
I know Vietnam they went around and quote unquote drafted
young men by and I think this symbolism is worth noting.
Young men were literally tied to poles like you see
in those like racist movies about savages and the South
Pacific or whatever. Like the people doing that in this
story are the fucking French, and they're going around and

(47:33):
drafting people by tying them into poles and marching them
out of the jungle to go fight and die for France.
Van's brother narrowly escaped kidnapping had to go into hiding.
But the Vietnamese people, the ones who don't want to
be ruled, they also don't want to be drafted. Yeah right,

(47:57):
they're not afraid of fighting. Yeah, listen, we're not scared. Yeah,
we just don't like you. Yeah. In nineteen sixteen, they
rose up with fucking machetes and swords and a handful
of rifles. Oh that's so hot, I know. And even

(48:17):
the combining of the machetes and swords is so fucking sick. Yeah.
Very also like what's the word um symbolic? Yeah, totally,
they rescued their kidnapped friends. They would like storm the
halls where the drafted men would be kept, who would
then join the crowd because again, not afraid of fighting.
The rebellion spread across all of coach In China, the

(48:39):
Southern province, and it wasn't put down until eventually. The
last big fight of it was a crowd of three
hundred people stormed the Central prison and Saigon and they
used swords to cut down the guards, but eventually they
were overwhelmed. This led to a d fifty arrests, thirty
eight executions, and the rest of at least these arrests
were sent to a penal colony on a nearby island,

(49:00):
which is still used as a penal colony and terrible
conditions today by the intensively socialist government. And all of
this was organized by the secret societies throughout the countryside
and specifically a bunch of religious sects. A crackdown followed
this leads a thousand more arrests. Von didn't see any
of that because he was like fucking four years old,

(49:20):
but that was the era of repression that he grew
up in. At one point, his brother was arrested because
their dad was bootlegging rice liquor in the woods, which
he literally only did because he needed to make offerings
to their ancestors, um since the commercially available liquor was
too shitty to offer up to people you actually care about,
like your ancestors. So they show up and Dad's like

(49:42):
kind of old and sick, so they steal Vaughan's brother.
As punishment for dad's crimes, Mom has to borrow jewelry
from extended family upon it to get him back. At
some point, Dad takes the handle off of his machete
in order to like be seen to be armed. Um,

(50:02):
and so he has to go around and do his
fucking work with a handle this machete. Yeah. Von Star
school at the age of seven in the village, alongside
thirty other kids. He was a smart kid. At ten,
he started going to a nicer school a little bit
further away, and he showed a lot of promise and
a lot of teachers pulled a lot of strings to
get him a higher education and put him into They

(50:24):
put him into scholarship competitions, whereupon he lost and did
not get to continue his education because the people who
was competing against were rich and we're bribing the judges
something also that doesn't happen anymore. When he was fourteen,
he moved into Saigon looking for work. Originally he moved

(50:45):
into Saigon looking for to keep applying himself to education.
But um, his mom had to pay his rent and
it was very hard on the family, and so he
was like, fuck this, I'm gonna I'm gonna go work instead.
And when he moves there a Segon, the city has
awash with revolutionary unrest, and you've got a bunch of
different fucking things all coming together, and like, I'm gonna like,

(51:09):
there's this like one day where three different leaders and
all their followers with very different ideologies but all anti
French are kind of coming together. You've got this pacifist
nationalist leader uh Fan Chu Trin who had just died
of tuberculosis, which is not everyone's been waiting for me
to say tuberculosis. So here we are the first death
of tuberculosis. This guy was interesting. He had been fighting

(51:31):
for decades for Vietnamese independence from both monarchy and colonialism,
but he believed that the French could be used to
further progress, like towards a republic in a way towards
away from monarchy. He had slogans like this is really
catchy slogan. I think that people should still use it.
Making use of the French in the name of progress.
That's catchy. I know. Um and his ideas were basically

(51:56):
and this was not actually this is a paraphrasing, asked
the French to live up to their own purported values. Oh,
which means that he got arrested and since to death
commune his life in prison and spent the last fifteen
years of his life in exile. Okay, wow, all right,
I took a dark turn yeah, because and this is
the most like he's like a pacifist nationalist who's like,

(52:17):
we want what you have, and they're like death. Another
radical leader was coming to town. I'm gonna put radical
in quotes here, but you know what, by the standards
of the day, Yeah, his name is Buoie Concio, and
he's even more boring. He was the head of the
Constitutionalist Party, which wanted slightly more reforms, specifically for rich
Vietnamese people, like voting rights for the wealthy. He did

(52:40):
not want independence from France and he um yeah, he
also didn't want poor people to be able to vote.
Like he was like, I don't like this guy. No,
he's yeah, he sucks so much. Um, but he's so
radical that when he shows up, all the French colonial
people like protest his arrival. What he is that's slow?

(53:02):
The bar is oh my god. He's like, what if
it was slightly less bad, specifically for the richest Vietnamese people,
And people are like, WHOA, get out of your that
crazy shit, fuck you? Oh my god. Finally a third
person was on people's minds at this point. This guy

(53:22):
was actually cool New yon On Nin and he was
a lefty journalist who had just been arrested for running
a newspaper. Mass protests filled the streets and anger at
his arrest and Um he'd actually he'd like turned down.
The French were like, oh, you're like smart, intellectual, you
want to like get a position in the colonial government,
will like hold you up as a figurehead. He was like, no, no,

(53:45):
I'm gonna instead dedicate my entire life to getting everyone
who's against you to unite. Um so I like him, Yeah,
me too. When he gets arrested for running a newspaper,
mass protests filled the streets and anger. Thousands of students
walk out of schools and protests, and a thousand people
are expelled for walking out because they're mad that this

(54:06):
guy got arrested. And now On Nin was one of
the quote five Dragons, who are the anti colonial socialists
who met while studying in Paris. Most notable among them,
of course, as Ho Chi Minh, who will go on
to lead North Vietnam to victory against the French and
then the Americans. First, of course, Ocimen will declare victory
over the rest of the Vietnamese left and kill a

(54:27):
bunch of people. But we'll get to that. So that's
what's in the air. When von moves to Saigon and
takes work as a clerk in some accounts department, he's
fourteen and he's getting in this kind of work. He's
just fucking smart as hell. Co workers are like, oh,
you like books, here's books, and they just give him
books and he reads French rebels and Vietnamese rebels and

(54:48):
poetry and rebellion and he's just like really into poetry
and revolt um because he's fucking cool. Also happening around
that time eight a man named Fan von Kim snuck
his way into court and assassinated a colonial judge. I
think the guy overseen on NaN's trial basically like someone's like,

(55:10):
I don't trust you to be fair, so I'm going
to murder you. On the rubber plantations, which had a
death rate among workers of a hundred workers killed, their
overseer in the director of the Bureau of Recruitment of
rubber Plantations was taken out with a revolver by a
high school student. See this is why union membership in

(55:33):
the United States is down to ten. They don't be
doing stuff like this. I'm joking, I'm for legal reasons.
That's a joke, Like, seriously, come on, have some class analysis.
I know, I know your homies are dying at work

(55:53):
and you're just like, well, um, no, I would, I
would at least consider yeah. Uh, you know, it's a
thing worth considering. Yeah, And some of it's like the
funking I'll talk about a little bit more in the
next episode, but some of these rubber plantations are the
Mitchel entire plantations. No, like literally literally yeah. Oh, and

(56:19):
that's like one of the things. It's like, it's so
easy to think about things like eighty years ago on
the other side of the planet as like being separate spears,
and they're just not they're not. Wow. Yeah. So in

(56:42):
the rebellion grew, which we'll talk about on Wednesday. Done,
that's my cliffhanger. Nice. Thanks, But do you have any
thoughts or feedback on this particular this first trunk before
we get into a great time? Yeah, I'm having a
great time. I think you're doing really well. Thank you. Um,

(57:04):
your pronunciations are okay, Yeah, they're not so great. I
looked up all of them, but yeah, it's okay. Vietnamese
is hard. I still struggle with it. I actually speak
like nineteen fifties Vietnamese, So people like more currently think
I like and weird. Yeah, I'm imagining like the equivalent
of you having like a Brooklyn accent, like an accent

(57:26):
that's kind of fallen out of style. Yeah, because the
Vietnamese that's taught here, at least when I went to
Vietnamese school, is taught by people who grew up in
like the sixties and seventies, and so that's the Vietnamese
they teach here. And so when people who live in
Vietnam now come, they're like, you sound like the equivalent
of like fucking John Travolta and Greece, you know, just

(57:49):
like thanks, that's really funny actually, but yeah, I had
no idea, like you sound like an old man, and
I'm like, maybe I am that rules. We just need
to get you a top me gun and god, I
think I think I need one mounted to the back
of my truck. That's okay, but it has to be
like one of those old fashioned trucks with like the

(58:09):
running boards and the like um, yeah, okay, okay, we
could probably make that happen, I think. So you don't
have handy people, Yeah, no, do you have anything like
to plug at the end here before we wrap up
part one. Oh yeah, for sure, I am one of
many tigers in a trench trench coat. UM. You can

(58:30):
find us on Instagram at Yellow Underscore Peril, Underscore Tactical.
Our Twitter regrettably is y P t actual UM and
you can find most of our content on either of those.
We also do a podcast semi regularly also UM, and
that is the Tiger Block Podcast. You can find it

(58:52):
on Spotify and I also believe Apple Podcasts, but that's
where to catch our content. Yeah. And Margaret, your your
book is now available for order, not just pre order
or still pre order, uh, you know, like Dealer's choice. Um. Yeah,

(59:12):
My my book Escape from Insul Island was going to
be released February first, but there was some problem with
the posters that the pre order people were getting and
they had to be reordered. And now they're coming and
soon out and probably around the time that you're listening
to this, or this is years ago and you're listening
in the future, in which case, either way, you've very

(59:33):
soon you can go from not reading Escape from Insul
Island to reading Escape from Insul Island. And it's so
short they can soon go to having read Escape from
Insul Island, which is a fiction book about what it
says on the title cover, whatever, and where can be
and where can people buy that? That's the most important part.

(59:53):
If you're pre order and you get from Tangled Wilderness
dot org. If you're regular order and you can get
from wherever you order your books, which could still include
Angle builders dot org, or it could include our distributor
a k Press, or it could include your library, or
it could include I don't know if Barnes and Nobles
will stock it, so it might be hard to shoplift.
But I believe in you. Cool people who did Cool

(01:00:15):
Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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