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by whimsicalism 504 days ago
the US literally industrialized the process of burning alive people in vietnam who didn’t support the colonial government. would love a source on the mayor claim
1 comments

You're a perfect example of why reporting about Vietnam was horribly broken. We all know about the atrocities committed by the Americans, but nobody understands how horrendous the VC were, and the direct threat they presented to those conquered.

I've already given you the source for the mayor story, but you're not actually interested in it, are you? You'll stay blissfully ignorant with false plausible deniability.

do you have a source that’s written aka not a podcast? googling the mayor burning claim just brings me to your comment

even just a transcript of the episode you’re discussing. generally i find if someone responds with ire rather than a link, the event usually did not happen as they remembered it

Wikipedia has an article, with links to sources. I think the main source is Douglas Pike's The Vietcong Strategy of Terror[0]. Another Vietnam Expert, Bernard Fall, documents some of it in Vietnam Witness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_...

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230405095258/https://vva.vietn...

there is no mention of this 'mayor burning alive' story in either of these sources. nor do i really trust this book, written during the vietnam war, while the US propaganda efforts were mounting up.