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During a webinar for Vietnamese professionals, a 39-year-old male named Rich Vu speaks about his experiences as a Vietnamese American entrepreneur in Saigon. The color of his black eyebrows and red lips are oversaturated in the Zoom camera, like the mythical heroes in ancient artworks. Before Rich’s anecdote, the conversation had been about bland racial identity politics.

Millennial and Gen Z Vietnamese professionals with perfect English complained about whites asking, “Where are you really from?,” sob stories about primary school classmates complaining about stinky lunches and dating disasters where their companion called them little lotuses or Jacky Chans.

I started paying attention again when the webinar facilitator asked Rich how he handled the reaction from the staunchly anti-Communist Vietnamese diaspora in Orange County, where Rich is from. It seems the discussion had finally dug beyond campus race politics and into the real cultural divisions plaguing Vietnamese society. What will he say, I wondered.

As it turns out, Rich was a three-time local council representative, so he is used to giving measured, rosy responses: “As understandable as our parents’ pain is, it’s up to the younger generation to let go of the past. We must choose love over prejudice. It’s time to forgive and forget.”

Although some lament the decline in Christianity among Americans , Rich’s empty rhetoric shows that the Christian appeal to forgiveness is not quite dead. Rather, he and other second-generation immigrants exercise a “convenience Christianity” that chooses forgiveness when it aligns with financial goals. The people nodding along in their Zoom windows to Rich’s reconciliation speech are the same types who spout about decolonization with phrases like “ always was [Aboriginal land], always will be ” and justification for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Trite sayings like “forgive and forget” are excuses to ignore ongoing human rights issues so they can party with other attractive young Vietnamese people on Friday night while maintaining the social justice high ground among their elite Western-educated peers.

National governments in the anglophone world also show weakness towards the dubious ethics of totalitarian regimes. Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Australia supposedly went well , although the plight of Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun (currently on a suspended death sentence) has only worsened. In 2021, Australian bilateral relations with Vietnam had continued to advance despite the ailing condition of Vietnamese-Australian prisoner Châu Văn Khảm.

Thanks to the West’s ‘convenience Christianity,’ the Vietnamese government interprets the “forgive and forget” sentiment from their Vietnamese American counterparts as permission to continue their human rights violations. International relations experts refer to Vietnam’s negotiations with democratic and authoritarian governments as “bamboo diplomacy,” which means that the Vietnamese government ensures everyone plays to the tune of its interests.

Individual apathy towards supposedly abstract ideas like free speech and political participation is as much to blame as Western elites for global tolerance of social oppression. For example, some political commentators (usually self-described ‘moderates’) love to highlight how in touch with lay people they are whenever noting that the average voter only cares about everyday issues (e.g., security, cost-of-living).

There is no reason political apathy should be the default, though. Ignorance is a luxury only afforded to those living in the most stable, free societies that are declining worldwide . According to Professor Staffan Ingemar Lindberg at the University of Gothenburg, this is the first time in two decades that “ there are more closed autocracies than liberal democracies in the world.”

Meanwhile, far-left activists in the West ignorantly chase ethical trends such as pro-Palestine/anti-Zionist movements and George Floyd-inspired race politics. For example, Konstantin Kisin’s interviews with pro-Palestine protestors found that many did not know what sea or river the frequent slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ referred to.

Clearly, progressive activists have no problem with overlooking the oppression of their Southeast Asian peers. Did any university students set up encampments for the Paracel Islands and other disputed territories in the South China Sea ? Did many turn up to protest the presence of Confucius institutes that intimidated professors and students who criticized the Chinese Communist Party? Does anyone demand a Sorry Day for the Vietnamese refugees who gather annually on Black April to mourn the loss of South Vietnam, which the motherland celebrates with flowery arches and lights as the “liberation of the South”? Does anyone demand reparations for Vietnamese refugees and the right of return from the government that seized their property during the war and blacklisted them for simply expressing anti-Communist sentiment?

In an article about the death of Nguyễn Phú Trọng, the New York Times gave lip service to media censorship but otherwise marveled at the leader’s frugal, calculating nature in his diplomatic tightrope walking with both democratic and authoritarian governments. The fact that the New York Times had kinder words to say about the leader of a Communist dictatorship than any Republican is rather telling.

Just like during the old Cold War, this new Cold War against democracy is being fought on multiple fronts, and the free world is losing. Within the free world, violent outbursts such as the Jan. 6 insurrection and the attempted assassination of Trump show distrust in democracy’s capacity to ensure the peaceful transfer of power. The major democracies continue to flail in disappointed promises (e.g., the Tory Party’s long and ineffective leadership). The building resentment in the populace has led to events such as the Southport riots , which the BBC described as “some of the worst unrest the UK has seen in over a decade.”

In contrast to the New York Times’ speculations, there is no reason to believe that a “less doctrinaire leader could emerge” in Vietnam. Writer for Luật Khoa Tạp Chí Trần Phương noted that even in the years spelling Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s declining health, the “burning furnace campaign” (đốt lò) continued fiercely. Joshua Kurlantzick even hypothesized that the death of Trong may open the way for an even more dictatorial leader who will assume Nguyễn Phú Trọng 's “ de facto one-man rule .”

I do not believe historical sins or current bad governments should reflect poorly on their people. I enjoy modern Vietnamese-language platforms like Vietcetera and Fonos that shift the social conversation on mental health and youth culture in a positive direction. But as we connect with a new generation in Vietnam, we cannot allow the smokescreen of progressive buzzwords from Vietnamese hipsters about ESG (environmental, social, and governance investing) and cultural liberation to minimize the country’s continuing dismal record on freedom and human rights.

Perhaps I sound too right-wing, though, and should put this in the language of progressive identity politics, which Western leaders and corporations kowtow to.

In economic matters, they highlight the importance of befriending globalized economies in developing countries, only rallying for international pressure when the victims (e.g., Julian Assange) or perpetrators (e.g., the Israeli government) are what one might call “white.”

They deem the censorship and repression of colored people as “local issues” while continuing to shake hands and sign business contracts with dictators. In doing so, they give tacit permission to repressive governments to continue the abuse of political dissidents in the global view. They are fools to believe that convenience Christianity will not burst democracy’s membrane from both sides.

‘Convenience Christianity’ Will Destroy Democracy

Theodore Minh Phụng Phạm

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