One main reason America overthrown socialist country with coup or military intervention is because those countries would nationalize their resources (communism for the people) and stop the privatization of those resources for American corporation.

Another reason is because of the Soviet Union. America's industrial might was intact after WWII , after considering the devastation of Industries in Europe and East Asia. If those socialist country nationalize their resources, they would get sanction like Cuba; however, if they are capitalistic (free market), then the American's economic might would be powerful due to the capital/wealth advantage that would allow American corporation to suck out the wealth from the resources of that particular capitalistic (free market) country's economy.

This would benefit America's corporation at the expense of that country's wealth and productivity, but America have Capital/wealth to invest as they came out of WWII as the richest nation with intact industries unlike Europe and East Asia.

Advanced economies (led by the U.S.) appropriated from the South commodities worth $2.2 trillion in Northern prices — enough to end extreme poverty 15 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $62 trillion (constant 2011 dollars), or $152 trillion when accounting for lost growth. Here is the abstract, and here is a free PDF in case you encounter a paywall: https://t.co/1WGPwkbxm9

The more woke you get, the more you understand that anti-authoritarianism is just an excuse for the US to open the country up for Neo-colonialism through powerful western corporations / institutions and bribery.

The Ken Burns documentary was good, but a bit too positive on the Americans. Many second & third-gen Vietnamese American been pro Ho Chi MInh for a while now, but when they were younger, they also swallowed the BS propaganda and was anti communism. Ho Chi Minh did what he had to do to rid the country of foreign influence - that included getting rid of pro-American, pro-French, and pro-Christian sentiments. Otherwise those people who had been heavily brainwashed after a lifetime of colonialism would become a 5th column (and sponsored by the US) and try to subvert the government.

I knew many South Vietnamese refugees who were anti the current Vietnamese government - these parents probably brainwashed their kids into being anti-Vietnamese and pro-American. Whites are the best at divide and conquer - pitting brother against brother, women against men - all based on ideals that conveniently benefit them.

Also because Americans are among, if not the, most propagandized people on the planet. They look absolutely deranged to most ever other country. And once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere. The federal government pumped a ton of effort and resources during the Cold War into systematically infiltrating and dismantling any actual leftists political organization. Arresting organizers on trumped up charges (that's a major part of the origin of the war on drugs, convenient excuse to arrest hippies, civil rights leaders, whoever for smoking pot), harassing their families, or straight up assassination. Look up COINTELPRO sometime.

#COINTELPRO was rebranded as the "War on Drugs" and the Clinton-era Crime Bill. And we all know where the drugs were coming from.

LISTEN: COINTELPRO to Drug War: New Strategies of Repression - Ward Churchill (1990) Our Hidden History on Twitter

It's why they don't have a functional political left nowadays, and people think the center right Democrats are left wing just because they're not outright fascists like the Republicans. Why Bernie Sanders, a social democrat who would be right around the center of politics in most European democracies, is treated like some kind of radical socialist. Why "Marxist" gets thrown around as a pejorative by people who have no idea what it means.

One of the most honest statements ever made was this by former Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman.

The public education system, along with the bulk of news media, is part of a larger system that has a vested interest in pushing things as they are as the only way they could possibly be. Therefore, Capitalism and Democracy, rather than being corrosive to one another as any examination of money in politics will show, are somehow inextricably linked to one another while socialism = authoritarian repression of freedom, even though socialism is literally just the expansion of democracy into the economic sphere, where the people have a say in the direction of the economy to serve public interests.

It's not that every teacher is in on the conspiracy, sometimes you get a cool one who actually teaches real history outside the propagandized curriculum, it's just that so many of them also grew up within the propaganda, and deviating too hard from the curriculum will have angry equally brainwashed parents crashing down on them and an administration and school board that sure as hell won't have their back. Many can remember way back among all the boilerplate paperwork, there was still some loyalty oath bit to sign about not currently being or ever having been a part of the communist party.

Said system also has a vested interest in pushing strict non-violence and unobtrusive protest as the only legitimate means of political action. Which is why if the topic of Indian independence comes up, you get a narrative focusing on Gandhi instead of the bloody history of independence movement and the militarism of the INA. Why the Civil Rights movement frequently gets boiled down to MLK's "I have a dream" speech and a narrative focusing on how polite and peaceful he was and that he was so moving the government just decided to enact Civil Rights legislation. Left out are his "riots are the language of the unheard" along with all the more militant groups like the Black Panthers and Malcom X, who unabashedly pushed for black communities to engage in armed self-defense from the KKK and racist cops (whenever there was any distinction) coming in to harass and murder them. Who served as a "bad cop" to MLK's "good cop". Now ask your teacher who really killed MLK. The King Center links to a giant transcript of the 1999 Civil Trial that found local, state, and federal agents in a conspiracy against him. He would have radically changed this country with his Poor Peoples Campaign.

Reminder that California's "common sense gun safety laws" didn't start with some progressive desire to curb gun violence, it started when the police lobbied the government to restrict gun rights so that it would be easier to intimidate and disempower the Black Panther Party:

He got to be the reasonable and respectable moderate that you had best throw a bone to, lest his followers grow disillusioned and join the more radical groups. Also left out are the nationwide riots that came between his assassination and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and how later in his campaign, right before he was assassinated, he had started speaking very strongly against capitalism and for the need for socialism. Just like we never hear about the strong socialist leanings of Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, or pretty much any other kick ass historical figure who cared about making the world a better place. Because anyone with a humanitarian impulse with two brain cells to rub together who is actually paying attention and looking to solve problems can't avoid the conclusion that capitalism is a problem.

One of my favorite quotes is from Helder Camara, a Brazilian Catholic Archbishop from 1964 to 1985 (I've got nothing positive to say about the Catholic Church as an institution, but will give credit to individuals where it's due).

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."

Rich capitalists control the education of the voters. The voters are propagandized into thinking their economic system is perfect. The voters don’t realize that the billionaire capitalists are hoarding trillions of dollars and is what makes their life hard. The rich get richer, and the poor are too focused on making ends meet to learn about the source of and solutions to their problems to change their voting problems. The US is one of the most propagandized countries in the world.

"We will know our program of disinformation is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey former CIA Director

Clinton - Telecommunications Act 1996 - media consolidation

Obama - greatest use of Espionage Act on journalists & whistleblowers

Trump:

Yikes, that seems almost Orwellian, isn’t it? I mean...Orwell was literally a socialist so it makes sense that the "Orwellian" scenarios he wrote about would bear some strong resemblance to the highly anti-socialist propagandized reality Americans inhabit.

I wonder what they would have to say about Christians from the first century (Acts 2:44; 4:32-5:11)? Even if it was "voluntary" (in the sense that if you didn't want to relinquish your possessions you could simply refrain from converting), it was still a communal fundamental class process at odds with the wider slave-holding society. Also, the only recorded instance of Christ engaging in physical violence was with moneychangers and moneylenders; i.e. people who ran a bank out of the temple and made money through building up personal reserves of foreign currency and lending at exorbitant rates of interest. Usually, American Christians would emphasize that the early Christians freely chose to live this way whereas socialist governments "force" people against their will to give up their property to the state, either through taxation or wholesale confiscation. They'll also say that this way of life was intended strictly for the church and not society as a whole. But isn't it weird that they want to forcibly impose Leviticus/Deuteronomy on everyone though...?

Many supporters of capitalism practice caring every day for loved ones and strangers alike, their political/economic views notwithstanding. Their misguided objections to socialism are often based on deceptive right-wing propaganda, not personal moral or ethical deficits. Even Marx objected to the notion of an ethical justification for socialism.

In America, the bourgeoisie controls the curriculum of the schools. Theyre never going to teach reality as it is because reality as it is is a class struggle where the workers are being exploited by the rich. If every school all of a sudden started teaching reality as it is, capitalism couldn't perpetuate itself. They have to teach us the way they do in order for capitalism to reproduce itself, otherwise we'd just naturally become communist. Imagine if every school in the world for generations taught all the various strains of leftism as well as objective information about the material conditions of the world. We'd have achieved communism by now.

From 1949. Nothing ever changes really.

From the same book, how wire service correspondents were pressured by US newspapers to change their reporting on the post-war trials of Nazi collaborators in Yugoslavia

Source pdf: The People Don't Know : George Seldes : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Anti-socialist rhetoric has been part of American education since the Cold War, but the past few decades have also emphasized education less as a means of informing yourself and teaching critical thought and more as a workforce development program. Why bother teaching civics when the most important thing to teach is how to follow arbitrary rules and expectations?

The idea of individual rights being categorically American is the issue. America has provided an illusion of free expression through decades of war, foreign coups and regime changes, and targeting left wing ideology within America.

Red scare and yellow peril: challenging the New McCarthyism - Invent the Future

It's literally the entire basis of the Vietnam war. During the Mccarthyism era Americans were NOT free to express any political views. Hollywood was censored and forced to produce propaganda. News media was censored. Civil rights groups were targeted by the CIA and they even assassinated leaders like Fred Hampton. They went on a worldwide campaign to produce propaganda and lies about communism and socialism across the globe while literally committing genocide. They then used their wars to revitalize right wing conservative ideology back home in America (by lying about every aspect of their wars).

Former CIA Agent John Stockwell explains how the CIA controlled the press

Left wing ideologies like communism and socialism were not defeated in America through debate in the 'free market of ideas' but instead defeated through war and propaganda. At this point in America peoppe are free to criticize the government because the overwhelming majority of voices in America support the government and will happily self censor the public. When Colin Kaepernick called into question American prison industrial system and the racism in the criminal justice system, the governement didnt have to throw him in jail because they have effectively created a system where he would already be censored. The US governement and military runs advertisements with the NFL to promote right wing ideologies which meant that NFL kicked him out and he was vilified by half of the American public. What more could the US government want?

Also, if freedom of political expression are welcomed in America, why do their immigration services screen for communist ideologies? When people apply for green cards in America, they are not asked if they believe white people are the superior race, or if they think all muslims should be killed, or if women do not belong in the modern workplace, or if gays should be chemically castrated. All of those hateful views are welcome in America. But they specifically ask every applicant if they have ever supported a Communist party. Blocking people of certain one political view clearly shows that they dont believe in freedom of expression. Also, I guarantee that if there was a left wing movement like the labor movements of the early 20th century or the other left wing movements of the 1960s, their governement censorship would come back in an instant.

America’s current state of affairs has been in the cards since the 1980's. Its a internationalized and financialized economy with a high degree of rent extraction, "housing as an investment" with ever rising asset prices and a politically constrained supply, poor bargaining conditions for workers, a dominant ideolgy in which government does the most to do the least, debt-fueled growth and declining interest rates to keep the ball rolling. The so-called individual rights have been chipped away for decades.

Also, most Americans nowadays seem to be pretty ignorant about Vietnam. People in Vietnam use social media like reddit and facebook. They are allowed. Yes the governement does try to crack down on anti-government propaganda but the reason for this is obvious (if you are aware of our history). You think that government censorship limits personal freedom but that isn’t automatically true. It CAN limit your freedoms but it can also GIVE you more freedoms. Vietnam was literally enslaved by France by letting outsiders and outside propaganda in to our country.

One of the largest reasons for the division amongst Vietnamese during the Vietnam war was based on American propaganda and lies that sowed division across the country. The government that the US supported (the south) was in every way more authoritarian and dictatorial than the North. The North wanted transparent elections. The South didnt want elections and when they had their own they rigged them. If the South (and the west had their way), Vietnam would currently have a wealthy and corrupt right wing dictator who sells goods to America for cheap while keeping most of his country dirt poor .

The reality is that at any moment the US would be happy to overthrow Vietnam and it could destroy them in a war. The US governement and military are essentially untouchable. The US is one of the world leaders in war crimes, one of the biggest polluters in the world, they have a quarter of the world's prisoners, they constantly use their military to bully other nations (the U.S never signed the UNCLOS), and they have overthrown more democracies than any nation on earth. But no other nations call them out on their evil, or demand changes to their systems. This is why the US can have 'free speech'. Americans overwhelmingly support their governement and their will never be a revolution to their governement. And because of this their government allows 'free speech'. But if the American public shifted leftward (like if Bernie had won the nomination) or if China started to build military bases overseas like the US that actually posed a threat to the US, you can guarantee their free speech would disappear in an instant. It isn't true free speech.

It's similar to the freedom of speech in Indonesia. The Indonesian genocide (which the US supported) left possibly a million people dead for having left wing views. Left wing ideology was basically eliminated and only right wing conservatives existed. Anyone who has any connection to those who were killed is basically shunned and vilified by the public. If a child's grandparent was known to have been a communist, the child will be bullied I'm school. Businesses won't hire people because they are related to left wing people. The government actually put special symbols on the IDs of people who were related to communists and bans them from civil service. Yes, people are free to express left wing views today and arent typically thrown in jail for it but they will face discrimination from their neighbors. If a government has created enough propaganda to the point that only certain political views are able to develop in their country, it isn’t free. Here, Biden’s administration is classifying anti capitalist views as violent extremism during the current anti-China hysteria

Also does anyone remember this?

Simply put, you dont get to praise a country's 'freedom' when it is essential for that nation to destroy other countries to provide itself that freedom. That's like praising someone for being a good dad, because they buy gifts for their children using money that they stole from other people. Yes, giving gifts to your children sounds great on it's own but if they only reason you are able to do so is by doing evil acts to others, then you are not a good father. The US wouldn’t have its freedoms or wealth without its history of war, imperialism, or slavery. Their country is built upon the exploitation of others in order for them to live happy and carefree lives.

In a comparison between Vietnam's 'authoritarianism' and America's lack of good central planning, you might argue that Vietnam's system is immoral and evil by comparing it to Hitler and Mussolini. But the reality is that America is far closer to WW2 Germany and Italy in terms of evil. The US has a much greater history of persecution of people based on race, and they of course are million times more imperialistic than Vietnam. Also, US companies literally profited off of many of the Nazi businesses and war efforts.

Hoàng Phan's answer to Which has a more negative opinion from the US, Nazi or Communist?

The only way you can tarnish Vietnam is not by saying the evil things it has done but instead randomly comparing them to 2 countries that they are in no way similar to. The US doesn't have to be compared to any other nation to see how evil they are. Just look at the time they invaded a poor nation that was fighting for its independence from colonialism where they desperately wanted to rob us of our tin and tungsten and they faked multiple attacks to justify their invasion.