Việt Nam’s War on Words: Arrests, Banned Books, and the Fear of ‘Liberal’ Arts 

The Vietnamese government and major educational institutions have recently engaged in a frantic game of censorship, desperately scrubbing the word “liberal” from existence. 

Coupled with the recent arrest of a prominent tech executive over a supposedly controversial book about Hồ Chí Minh, the message being broadcast from Hà Nội is not one of confidence and unshakable authority. 

By aggressively banning literature and pressuring institutions to sanitize their vocabularies, the state is projecting fear and insecurity.

When a Word Becomes a Weapon

On June 19, 2026, the Ministry of Education and Training released a national high school literature exam answer key suggesting that Việt Nam should “build a liberal, creative education.” Pro-government commentators and online agitators were quick to weaponize the phrase, branding “liberal arts” as a tool for “peaceful evolution” and a “color revolution.”

Embarrassingly, the government capitulated to the noise from figures like Phan Trung Can and anonymous groups such as the “Electronic Warfare Unit.” State media and official agencies quietly erased the word from remarks made by Deputy Prime Minister Lê Tiến Châu, and private institutions quickly followed suit.

VinUniversity rebranded its Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences as the less threatening “Institute of Social Sciences and Natural Sciences,” while Fulbright University Vietnam—often accused by government zealots of being an institution that “nurtures dissent”—awkwardly scrubbed and then restored the “liberal arts” label on its website.

The irony displayed in these situations is undeniable and blatantly obvious; by treating the word “liberal” as an existential threat, authorities have inadvertently transformed a standard educational philosophy into a forbidden weapon.

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If the state’s ideological foundation were truly secure, a simple exam answer key would not provoke such panic.

The Criminalization of Dissent

This same insecurity is evident in the arrests of FPT co-founder Nguyễn Thành Nam and Spiderum director Trần Việt Anh. They were detained under Article 117 for allegedly opposing the state by publishing Chuyện với Thanh, a 2026 book reimagining Hồ Chí Minh’s earlier years through a dialogue between a teacher and a Gen Z student. 

The fallout from this debacle was swift and cowardly; despite its long-standing ties to Nam, FPT University rushed to distance itself from him less than an hour after his arrest took place.

Arresting a tech executive and government supporter over a fictionalized historical dialogue exposes striking state fragility. Aggressively policing alternate narratives is an admission that the official history cannot withstand scrutiny or creative reimagining. The state seemingly operates under the delusion that banning a book erases the ideas found between its pages. 

In reality, turning a book into contraband only adds to its allure and infamy, inflicting far more damage to the state’s credibility than a fictional Gen Z conversation could.

Global Parallels 

Across the Pacific, U.S. President Donald Trump deploys identical tactics with different vocabulary, using “communism” as the same boogeyman that “liberalism” represents in Việt Nam.

During a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence, Trump eschewed traditional praise of American exceptionalism, instead warning that communism is “a deadly threat” and the “enemy of free people everywhere.”

Trump is not actually fighting the Soviet Union; he uses “communism” to label domestic rivals and mobilize his base. Similarly, Vietnamese hardliners inflate the threat of “liberal education” to purge alternative thought and test political loyalty. Both maneuvers stem from the same impetus: inventing a terrifying ideological enemy to mask domestic vulnerability.

However, true power does not flinch at adjectives. A confident government does not need to arrest authors for historical reimaginings or strong-arm universities into renaming departments. 

By declaring a war on words, Vietnamese censors and American populists reveal a sad, pathetic truth: they are terrified of ideas. Until either one of them realizes that ignoring a concept is more powerful than banning it, they will continue projecting weakness and chasing ghosts of their own making.