The Ugly Thugs Running Vietnam Aren’t Experimenting With Democracy

Thomas Bass is a professor of English and journalism at SUNY Albany, author of a number of books including The Spy Who Loved Us about Pham Xuan An, the Time correspondent who was a secret agent for Hanoi during the war.  In this article in Foreign Policy magazine, Bass weighs in with a critical look at Vietnam's leadership during the the current political maneuverings of Vietnam's 12th Communist Party Congress, now in session.  

The Ugly Thugs Running Vietnam Aren’t Experimenting With Democracy

Thomas A. Bass
Foreign Policy Magazine
January 22, 2016 
Vietnam is a moiré pattern: Squint at the country one way and you get an aspirational society zooming into the future. Squint another way, and you get an old-fashioned jailer of anyone who refuses to toe the party line. The sunshine lobby focuses on Vietnam’s lovely beaches, food, and allure as a tourist destination. Human rights reporters focus on patterns of abuse.

Yes, the country is opening to the West and rapidly developing. And yet — for all its sunny charms –Vietnam is a culture in ruins. The censors have silenced or exiled the country’s best artists. Vietnam’s best novelist and poets no longer write, except for those who circulate their work in underground samizdats. Journalism is a corrupt enterprise controlled by the government. Ditto for publishing. History is too dangerous to study. Freedom of religion, thought, speech — the ministers of propaganda curtail them all.