Introduction

The main entrance hall of the Museum of Military History in Hanoi is dominated by a huge relief with Hồ Chí Minh at the centre. The relief depicts a historic scene presented in an iconic picture taken during the First Indochina War (1945–1954) with the former President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) lecturing a group of Việt Minh soldiers somewhere in the Việt Bắc region, a remote region north of Hanoi. In addition, in the relief Hồ Chí Minh also serves as a revolutionary icon and a symbol of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP).1 Thus, the relief reflects the dominant role that the Party has played in the orthodox master narrative propagated in such memorial sites as the Museum of Military History: The VCP derives its legitimacy from its role in the struggle against French colonialism and for the country’s independence in the 20th century. This struggle is presented by the Vietnamese historiography as a teleological and triumphalist narrative with the VCP as its dominant actor.

The relief in the Museum, however, shows another important element of the dominant historical narrative: On the right of Hồ Chí Minh the visitor sees representations of Vietnam’s resistance against foreign aggressors in the pre-colonial period, such as the famous uprising of the two Trưng-sisters against the Chinese between 40 and 43 AD and the victory of Nguyễn Huệ against the Qing in 1789. And the left part of the relief adds to these other episodes in the struggle against foreign domination: It shows the surrender of the French fortress in the remote valley of Điện Biên Phủ in May 1954, the struggle against U.S. bombardments during the Anti-U.S. Resistance War for National Salvation (kháng chiến chống Mỹ cứu nước) and the liberation of Saigon on 30 April 1975 which ended one of the longest and bloodiest military conflicts of the Cold War.

In other words—the relief not only presents the Party as the legitimate leader of Vietnamese nationalism, but also as the legitimate inheritor of the “national tradition” of resistance.2 This continuity has been highlighted in the “New History” (see below) that started to be written after Hồ Chí Minh had declared Vietnam’s independence in August 1945 (August Revolution) and became the institutionalized interpretation of the past after the end of the First Indochina War in 1954 and the return of the DRV government to Hanoi.3

The writing of history in socialist Vietnam

The interpretation of the past and the present had been a highly contested issue between the VCP and other nationalist, but non-communist parties right after the August Revolution in 1945. After Hồ Chí Minh, the founder of the Party in February 1930 and leader of the Việt Minh national front organization that he had established in May 1941, had declared Vietnam’s independence, the French returned to Indochina and tried to re-establish colonial rule. Because the DRV regime was still quite weak, Hồ Chí Minh opted for a conciliatory approach and started negotiations with the French. That is why some of the other contending political parties such as the Vietnam Nationalist Party challenged his nationalist credentials and accused him of “selling out” the country to the French. As repayment, Vietnamese communists claimed to be the only genuine bearers of the nationalist cause and called the other parties derogatively Việt Gian, “Vietnamese traitors”.

In the following war against the French the Việt Minh organization and the VCP (in 1951 renamed Vietnamese Workers’ Party) increasingly managed to dominate this debate and to present themselves as the only genuine nationalists. For example, “when non-communist southern nationalists challenged the Indochinese Communist Party’s self-appointed right to lead the anti-French resistance in a heated meeting in 1949, Le Duc Tho shot back angrily to his astonished listeners that ‘anyone who opposed the communists was anti-resistance, a traitor’.”4

After the end of the war against the French, historiography in the DRV started to propagate a “New History” of Vietnam. The foremost task was to solve the “contradiction of the dual orientation towards writing the history of the nation and class struggle.5” Dân tộc, the Vietnamese term for nation, had reached Vietnam via Japan: In the 19th century Japanese reformers had to coin new words for concepts from Western languages that had not existed before in Japanese. These new terms were then adopted by speakers of Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese. There is evidence that the term dân tộc started to be more widely used in Vietnam in the 1940s. It competed for usage with other terms: quốc gia (nation, state in a more political sense), ái quốc (love of country like in Hồ Chí Minh’s former name Nguyễn Ái Quốc) and yêu nước(patriotism).6 Post-independent historians in North Vietnam followed models of historical writing that had been prevalent in pre-colonial Vietnam: representations of Vietnam’s past at that time had been didactic and teleological and used to emphasize the legitimacy of the current ruler. Thus, after 1954 DRV historians also crafted an official historical narrative to celebrate the wisdom of the VCP’s past and present actions and to legitimize the Party’s authority. They portrayed the VCP “as being ‘in’ history” and as “the rightful heirs of centuries of a common destiny”7 and inheritors of the Vietnamese national tradition. It is an irony of history that the Republic of Vietnam also presented itself as the bearer of Vietnamese nationalism. At the beginning of the 1960s the crumbling and increasingly authoritarian Southern regime had lost its nationalist credentials.8

Starting in the 1950s and even more pronounced during the Second Indochina War the VCP and the DRV propaganda machine continued to deny any legitimacy to the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Thus, the South Vietnamese government and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) were usually called “puppet government” (ngụy quyền) and “puppet army” (ngụy quân), respectively.9

It was no coincidence that at the beginning of the 1960s, in the wake of the Second Vietnam War, historians in North Vietnam increasingly wrote articles and books that celebrated Vietnam’s tradition of heroic resistance against foreign aggression and presented the DRV and the VCP as nationalists. This seemingly intricate relationship of Vietnamese communists with the nationalist tradition was also highlighted by many contemporary foreign observers. In fact, however, the VCP strove to achieve a twofold aim: national independence and the reunification of the country and realizing socialism in the whole country.10 They were also deeply committed to “internationalist duties” and after the great victory of 1975 thought of themselves even as vanguards of world revolution. In the case of Laos, for example, they made an important contribution to the overthrow of the US-supported regime and the seizure of power by the Laotian People’s Revolutionary Party at the end of 1975.11

After the end of the war in 1975 the leadership in Hanoi took a whole range of measures to systematically write the defunct Republic of Vietnam (RVN) out of history and to portray the victorious VCP as the only legitimate actor in Vietnamese history and bearer of the nationalist tradition of resistance against foreign invaders. First of all, the victorious North tried to further delegitimize the beaten South Vietnamese regime by sending all those who had used to work for the “puppet government” or served in the “puppet army” to re-education camps. The internees regularly had to attend struggle sessions where they had to commit self-criticism and to perform hard work. In sum, more than one million Southerners spent time in re-education camps; some stayed there until the 1980s. To punish the defeated enemies and even some who had fought against the Saigon regime before 1975 contradicted earlier promises to carry out a policy of national reconciliation. In addition, after 1975 history teaching in the South had to follow the orthodox model that had already been in use in the North for decades. Besides, Hanoi took also systematic measures to monitor and silence alternative forms of thinking and belief. This applied, for example, to the South Vietnamese culture that the VCP had classified as “decadent” and “poisonous” and which had been much more heterogeneous than the uniform state-controlled culture in the North. A campaign was launched to restrict the influence of “decadent South Vietnamese culture”, aimed at the “music of the former regime” labelled “yellow music” (nhạc vàng). Records with romantic songs about love and peace were forbidden and destroyed. Similarly, books, magazines, newspapers, and other printed material that were considered “reactionary” and part of the “neo-colonialist culture” of the Saigon regime were confiscated and burnt. Heterodox beliefs such as the Cao Đài and the Hòa Hảo sects that had millions of followers in the South were brought under strict control of the new communist authorities.

In addition to destroying music records and other cultural products of the former RVN, the North Vietnamese also tried systematically to erase the memory of the collapsed regime. This “condemnation of memory” (damnatio memoriae) had been the policy of many victors in the past. Thus, war cemeteries that had been built before 1975 and memorial sites of the defunct regime were levelled. As one of the first measures, the memorial statue of South Vietnamese marines in the park in front of the Opera House Saigon was pulled down by young supporters of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF). In the weeks following the liberation of Saigon the victors continued to demolish other memorial sites and to desecrate war cemeteries of the defeated ARVN. In 1983, the Mạc Đĩnh Chi cemetery in Hồ Chí Minh-City where many leading politicians and officers of the RVN had been buried was levelled on the orders of the local People’s Committee. Instead, the authorities built the Lê Văn Tám park—named after an alleged 14-year-old martyr of the First Indochina War.12

Since 1965, fallen ARVN soldiers had been buried on the largest war cemetery of the RVN, the National Military Cemetery in Biên Hòa near Saigon. With an area of 125 ha this war cemetery became the final resting place for approximately 16,000 fallen South Vietnamese soldiers—many of them had died during the Tết Offensive in 1968, the invasion of Cambodia, the Lâm Sơn Offensive in 1971 or the Easter Offensive in 1972. A high tower surrounded by a wall used to be the centre of the cemetery. This memorial was called Nghĩa dũng đài, which means “brave and righteous”. It was planned to engrave the names of the fallen soldiers on the inside of the wall and to decorate the area outside the wall with monuments representing the history of Vietnam. The entrance of the war cemetery was marked by a statue of a weary ARVN soldier with his rifle in his lap that would be called Thương tiếc (mourning). The site Nghĩa dũng đài was supposed to be accomplished and inaugurated on 19 June 1975, on the memorial day of the ARVN, but this plan did not materialize because the Saigonese regime was defeated at the end of April 1975. Right after the collapse of South Vietnam, the National Military Cemetery in Biên Hòa was put under the administration of Military Zone Seven under the Defence Ministry in Hanoi, and renamed Bình An Cemetery.

After the collapse of the RVN the cemetery in Biên Hòa was desecrated like many other South Vietnamese cemeteries. These desecrations are visible until this day. Next to desecrating many tombs North Vietnamese soldiers also demolished the statue Thương tiếc. It is rumoured that later on the statue was melted. Only the pedestal of the statue survived; however, it now stands outside the cemetery on private property. The Military Zone 7 that administered the former RVN National Military did not grant families of fallen soldiers access to the cemetery. As a consequence, they were neither able to care for the tombs nor to make offerings to their deceased family members as it is custom in Vietnam on the death anniversary day, lunar New Year (Tết) etc. In the course of time the cemetery Biên Hòa more and more fell into decay; the tombs started to be overgrown by weeds. In addition to that, many tombstones made of concrete were stolen. Thus, after 1975 the North Vietnamese victors had erased the memory of the defunct RVN almost completely.13

Many Vietnamese who fled to the U.S., Australia or other countries started to propagate counter memories that challenged the official narrative propagated in Vietnam. Although it is difficult to make general assessments on political views and views on history held by Vietnamese diasporic communities because those differ from generation to generation, there is a strong tendency in the U.S., for example, to celebrate the defunct Republic of Vietnam as the bearer of Vietnamese nationalism and to disseminate strong anti-communist views. These views have not only been propagated in Vietnamese-language books and newspapers, but also in popular musical variety shows such as Paris by Night that reach a wide Vietnamese audience. Many of these counter memories also reach Vietnamese in Vietnam via the internet although in the last few years the Vietnamese authorities have tightened the grip on social media and at the same time increasingly try to make use of the Internet to propagate their own views.14

Since the VCP embarked on its reform policy (đổi mới) in 1986, the party and its “memory machine” have continued to disseminate an orthodox master narrative that presents the VCP as the inheritor of Vietnam’s tradition of resistance against foreign invaders and Vietnam’s modern history as a succession of victories achieved under the correct leadership of the VCP.

In contrast to the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam did not have to introduce a “patriotic education campaign” to fill the void created by the collapse of the socialist states in Eastern Europe since before the Vietnamese propaganda machine had both highlighted class struggle and nationalism (compare the article on China in this forum).15

However, since the introduction of market-oriented reform the VCP was forced to further emphasize its nationalist credentials to boost its legitimacy. Thus, in addition to highlight its role in securing national independence against French colonialists and the American imperialists and propagating the “Hồ Chí Minh ideology”, the Vietnamese state and the VCP have increasingly emphasized the need to protect the national culture—also against the backdrop of the influx of foreign ideas due to Vietnam’s open-door policy. As a prominent example, the Party has upgraded the commemoration of the legendary/semi-mythical Hùng Kings who serve as founding fathers of the Vietnamese nation. The VCP had already supported this founding myth a long time ago, but it was only after the beginning of the reform period that Party leaders personally attended the Hùng Kings’ festival in the third lunar month and to make use of the myth to foster Vietnam’s national unity and identity in a post-communist era. The Vietnamese historian Vũ Đức Liêm who has done extensive research on the myth of the Hùng Kings in modern times refers to this as “religious nationalism” and claims that by acting as the main organizer of one of the most important religious festivities in Vietnam the Party wants to use the national culture of Vietnam as an additional source of legitimacy.16

Thus, from relating to the myth of the Hùng kings to highlight its role in protecting Vietnam’s national independence during the anti-colonial struggle and the war for the reunification of the country the Party has gone a step further to cultivate the commemoration of the founding myth of the Vietnamese nation to present itself as the main guardian of Vietnam’s national cultural identity (bản sắc văn hóa dân tộc) and as the bearer of nationalism.

Conclusion

The Vietnamese Communist Party and its Central Department of Propaganda and Education (Ban Tuyên Giáo Trung ương) still define the term “nationalist” and the limits of national conciliation. The Department strictly controls the tools to disseminate the national myth: history textbooks, museums, shrines and other monuments, state rituals such as national anniversaries, personal memoirs etc. At the same time, it aggressively defends the official master narrative against any challenges. An important resolution issued by the Central Committee of the VCP in October 2016 explicitly warns against “the distortion of history, making fabrications, and slandering […] of the leaders of Party and state.”17 Vietnamese who challenge the official historical account disseminated by Vietnam’s “memory machine” are criminalized.

In this context to uphold the celebratory narrative of the Vietnam War and the myth of the VCP as the only legitimate national player is mandatory. That is why the gatekeepers in Vietnam lash out at those who try to challenge the official view of history propagated in Vietnam. This applies in particular to some younger scholars of Vietnamese origin in the U.S. and elsewhere who dare to revise the orthodox picture of the Republic of Vietnam as a completely illegitimate political actor and to depict the Vietnam War as a civil war. They are routinely criticized for “distorting history”.18

Similarly, at least official publications such as the multi-volume history of Vietnam edited by the Institute of Vietnamese History a few years ago usually ignore the findings of Vietnam scholars outside Vietnam. For example, the volumes covering the history of Vietnam since independence until the end of the Vietnam War do not make use of books in languages other than Vietnamese and only in some rare cases list English or French titles, and only in heavily sanitized Vietnamese-language translations.19 This does not mean that on an individual basis some Vietnamese historians who can read English etc. do not incorporate findings of foreign colleagues in their publication. However, it is much less risky for them to do so in English-language publications than in Vietnamese language ones. In addition, at university they are expected to teach the official narrative of Vietnamese history.

Furthermore, when it comes to important English-language publications such as Keith W. Taylor’s The History of the Vietnamese the Party newspaper Nhân Dân and the VCP’s Department of Propaganda and Education provide an official reading that Vietnamese historians have to adopt. In his book the U.S. historian Taylor eschews a “rigid overarching narrative of the Vietnamese people or the Vietnamese nation” and also challenges the view that Vietnam had been regularly invaded by China and therefore developed a tradition of resistance against foreign aggressors. In addition, Taylor also supports attempts to revise the history of the Republic of Vietnam. Therefore, he also incurs the charge of having distorted history.20 High-level cadres in Vietnam also offer a revised version of Vietnamese history, but in a different way. Thus, in an interview with the Vietnamese television on 30 April 2020, Vice-Minister of Defence Nguyễn Chí Vĩnh praised the post-war development in Vietnam as a huge success enjoyed by all Vietnamese. He argued that due to the policy of the VCP and the state those associated with the old regime in the South “did not feel discriminated as long as they were patriotic.”21 National reconciliation, Nguyễn Chí Vĩnh added, had been implemented successfully because of the lenient policy of the Party and Vietnamese state. He claimed that the victory on 30 April 1975 first contributed to the Vietnamese revolution, but when the country started to develop even economically after the beginning of the reform period those Vietnamese linked to the defeated RVN benefitted from the victory as well.

It is indeed correct that since Vietnam carried out its open-door policy at the beginning of the 1990s, it also welcomed back those Vietnamese who had fled the country after the end of the war in 1975. However, the VCP only allows reconciliation on its own terms and continues to define what is “patriotic”.22 To challenge the Party’s orthodox master narrative and also to recognize the Republic of Vietnam as a legitimate actor in the modern history of Vietnam would be thus “unpatriotic” and therefore unacceptable. In other words—the rules of the game as explained by Lê Đức Thọ back in 1947 are still valid.

It is an irony of history that while the VCP continues to present itself as guarantor of the success of the Vietnamese revolution and of Vietnam’s national independence in the last two decades, the Party has increasingly been criticized in the Vietnamese cyber sphere as lacking determination in dealing with the People’s Republic of China. Especially against the backdrop of China’s assertive stance in the Southeast Asian region and its obvious preparedness to make use of all kinds of pressure to enforce its excessive territorial claims in the South China Sea, some Vietnamese actors in the social media have claimed that the VCP and the Vietnamese government have been much too subservient and conciliatory towards the neighbour in the North. In some cases, they have even accused the leadership in Hanoi of selling out the country to China. As a matter of fact, the regime in Hanoi has to do a delicate balancing act between responding to expressions of sometimes sinophobic nationalism by some Vietnamese and keeping friendly relations with the powerful neighbour in the North.23

The ongoing campaign against COVID-19 shows the significance of nationalist feelings in Vietnam. Via propaganda posters, mass media and a loudspeaker system that had already been in use during the Vietnam War the authorities have presented the campaign against the pandemic like a war against a foreign invader. Popular slogans read “Fighting the epidemic is like fighting the enemy!” or “To love your country is to stay at home.” It is striking that the nationalist imagery used by the government and the VCP obviously appeals to the Vietnamese public. Many citizens themselves “have demonstrated a similar willingness to frame the coronavirus as a patriotic, militaristic act.”24 All those who took an active part in the struggle against COVID-19 such as doctors, nurses etc. were likewise depicted as “frontline heroes.” 25 This also means that in some cases Vietnamese who dared to challenge the heavy-handed official approach to counter the coronavirus were criticized by some of their compatriots as “unpatriotic.”26

Notes:
1 For the sake of convenience the article uses VCP as abbreviation for the different names of the Communist Party of Vietnam throughout its history.
2 For details on this connection see Tuong Vu, Vietnamese Political Studies and Debates on Vietnamese Nationalism, in: Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 (2007), 2, pp. 175-230; Gerhard Will, “Kleines China” oder “Großes Viet”, in: Jörg Wischermann / Gerhard Will (eds.), Vietnam. Mythen und Wirklichkeiten, Bonn 2018, pp. 21-41.
3 For a detailed discussion see Christoph Giebel, Revolution, War, and Memory in Contemporary Viet Nam. An Assessment and Agenda. In: Sheila Miyoshi Jager / Rana Mitter (eds.), Ruptured Histories. War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia, Cambridge 2007, pp. 307-321; Patricia M. Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam. New Histories of the National Past, Durham 2002.
4 Christopher Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam, London 2016, Kindle Paperwhite Version, retrieved from amazon.com, p. 352, Location 6585.
5 Giebel, Revolution, p. 313.
6 See Bradley Camp Davis, Between Ethnos and Nation. Genealogies of Dân Tộc in Vietnamese Contexts, in: Regna Darnell / Frederic Gleach (eds.), Historicizing Theories, Identities, and Nations, Lincoln 2017, pp. 253-266, here p. 256; Craig A. Lockard, The Unexplained Miracle, in: Journal of Asian and African Studies 29 (1994), 1-2, pp. 10-35, here p. 29.
7 Giebel, Revolution, p. 313.
8 See Vu, Vietnamese Political Studies, p. 197.
9 Martin Grossheim, Der Krieg und der Tod. Heldengedenken in Vietnam, in: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 65 (2017), 4, pp. 545-579.
10 This connection has been highlighted by Tuong Vu. See Vu, Vietnamese Political Studies; idem, Vietnam’s Misunderstood Revolution, in: History and Public Policy Program, Wilson Center, Blog Post, 19 June 2017, <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/vietnams-misunderstood-revolution> (21.06.2021).
11 Idem, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution, Cambridge 2016, p. 9.
12 See Grossheim, Der Krieg und der Tod, pp. 562-563.
13 Ibid., pp. 563-565.
14 See Tuan Hoang, From Reeducation Camps to Little Saigons. Historicizing Vietnamese Diasporic Anticommunism, in: Journal of Vietnamese Studies 11 (2016), 1, pp. 43-95; Martin Grossheim, 1954 verlor der Vater seine Heimat, 1975 verlor der Sohn sein Vaterland. Teilung, Flucht und Wiedervereinigung in Vietnam, in: Andreas Hilger / Oliver von Wrochem (eds.), Nationale Verluste und Identitäten im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 2013, pp. 97-113, here pp. 111-113.
15 For the “patriotic education campaign” in China see Wang Zheng, Never Forget National Humiliation. Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, New York 2012.
16 Vu Duc Liem, Mythische Vergangenheit und die Politik der nationalen Identität im heutigen Vietnam, in: Jörg Wischermann / Gerhard Will (eds.), Vietnam. Mythen und Wirklichkeiten, Bonn 2018, pp. 63-89.
17 Ban Chấp Hành Trung ương. Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, Nghị quyết số 04-NQ/TW ngày 30 tháng 10 năm 2016 của Ban Chấp hành Trung ương Đảng về tăng cường xây dựng, chỉnh đốn Đảng; ngăn chặn, đẩy lùi sự suy thoái về tư tưởng chính trị, đạo đức, lối sống, những biểu hiện 'tự diễn biến', 'tự chuyển hóa' trong nội bộ (Resolution No. 04-NQ / TW of 30 October 2016 of the Party Central Committee on Strengthening the Building and Reorganization of the Party; Prevent and Reverse the Decline in Political Ideas, Morals, and Lifestyle, of Internal Manifestations of ‘Self-evolution’ and ‘Self-transformation’). 30 October 2016. <https://moha.gov.vn/DATA/DOCUMENT/2018/04/BCS%20%C4%90a%CC%89ng/04.NQ-TW.PDF> (02.03.2020). For the inner workings of the Vietnamese propaganda machinery see Martin Grossheim, ‘Đổi Mới’ in the Classroom? How National and World History Are Portrayed in Vietnamese Textbooks, in: SOJOURN. Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 33 (2018), 1, pp. 147-80; idem, Celebrating the Socialist Past. The Vietnamese ‘Memory Machine’ at Work, in: Journal of Humanities 77 (2020), 2, pp. 327-356.
18 The two most prominent examples are publications by the political scientist Vu Tuong and Sean Fear (ed.), The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975. Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building, Ithaca 2020; and the historian Nguyen T. Lien Hang, Hanoi’s War. An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam, Chapel Hill 2012. For articles on their publications in official Vietnamese media see Nguyễn Đình, Đừng nhân danh khoa học để xuyên tạc lịch sử (Don’t distort history in the name of science), in: Nhân Dân, 20 April 2015, <https://nhandan.vn/binh-luan-phe-phan/dung-nhan-danh-khoa-hoc-de-xuyen-tac-lich-su-230441/> (04.08.2021); and Hà Nguyên Cát, Chiêu thức mới nhằm xét lại lịch sử cuộc kháng chiến chống Mỹ cứu nước (giai đoạn 1954-1975) (New move to revise the history of the resistance war against America to save the nation), in: Tuần báo Văn nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh, 2 May 2020, <http://tuanbaovannghetphcm.vn/chieu-thuc-moi-nham-xet-lai-lich-su-cuoc-khang-chien-chong-my-cuu-nuoc-giai-doan-1954-1975-so-592/> (06.05.2020).
19 See Đinh Thị Thu Cúc (ed.), Lịch sử Việt Nam, Tập 10, Từ 1945 đến 1950 (History of Vietnam, Vol. 10, From 1945 to 1950), Hanoi 2017; Nguyễn Văn Nhật (ed.), Lịch sử Việt Nam, Tập 11, Từ 1951 đến 1954 (History of Vietnam, Vol. 11, From 1951 to 1954), Hanoi 2017; Trần Đức Cường (ed.), Lịch sử Việt Nam, Tập 12, Từ 1954 đến 1965 (History of Vietnam, Vol. 12, From 1954 to 1965), Hanoi 2014; and Nguyễn Văn Nhật (ed.), Lịch sử Việt Nam, Tập 13, Từ 1965 đến 1975 (History of Vietnam, Vol. 13, From 1965 to 1975), Hanoi 2017.
20 Keith Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, New York 2013, p. 620. For the reviews see Nguyễn Đình, Nhân danh khoa học để xuyên tạc lịch sử (Distorting history in the name of science), in: Nhân Dân, 2 October 2015, <https://nhandan.vn/binh-luan-phe-phan/nhan-danh-lich-su-de-xuyen-tac-lich-su-viet-nam-246725/> and 5 October 2015, <https://nhandan.vn/binh-luan-phe-phan/nhan-danh-lich-su-de-xuyen-tac-lich-su-viet-nam-tiep-theo-va-het-247012/> (04.08.2021).
21 Phạm Duy Thành / Minh Tuấn. 2020. Thượng tướng Nguyễn Chí Vịnh: Hoà hợp, hoà giải dân tộc đã thành công (Colonel General Nguyễn Chí Vịnh: National concord and reconciliation has been achieved), in: VTC, 30 April 2020, <https://vtc.vn/thuong-tuong-nguyen-chi-vinh-hoa-hop-hoa-giai-dan-toc-da-thanh-cong-ar543113.html> (18.05.2020).
22 Cao Đức Thái, Hòa hợp, hòa giải dân tộc – chủ trương, chính sách nhất quán của Đảng và Nhà nước ta (National concord and reconciliation – consistent standpoint and policy of our Party and state), in: T/c Quốc Phòng Toàn Dân, 22 March 2019, <http://tapchiqptd.vn/vi/phong-chong-dbhb-tu-dien-bien-tu-chuyen-hoa/hoa-hop-hoa-giai-dan-toc-%E2%80%93-chu-truong-chinh-sach-nhat-quan-cua-dang-va-nha-nuoc-ta/13459.html> (06.05.2020).
23 See Dien Nguyen An Luong, The growing salience of online Vietnamese nationalism, in: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 11 (2021), <https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/trends-in-southeast-asia/the-growing-salience-of-online-vietnamese-nationalism-by-dien-nguyen-an-luong/> (21.06.2021); Hannah Cotillon, Territorial Disputes and Nationalism. A Comparative Case Study of China and Vietnam, in: Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 36 (2017), 1, pp. 51-88; Nhung T. Bui, Managing anti-China nationalism in Vietnam. Evidence from the media during the 2014 oil rig crisis, in: The Pacific Review 30 (2017), 2, pp. 169-187; Tuong Vu, The Party v. the People. Anti-China Nationalism in Contemporary Vietnam, in: Journal of Vietnamese Studies 9 (2014), 4, pp. 33-66.
24 Maya Nguyen, Vietnam’s War Against COVID-19, in: The Diplomat, 19 October 2020, <https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/vietnams-war-against-covid-19/> (15.05.2021).
25 Lena Le, Nationalism, heroism and media in Vietnam’s war on COVID-19, in: East Asia Forum, 24 June 2020, <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/06/24/nationalism-heroism-and-media-in-vietnams-war-on-covid-19/> (15.05.2021).
26 This is based on my own reading of discussions by Vietnamese on Facebook in the last few months.