anti-nationalism English

Vietnam 2021, the mood in the air seems to be that of optimism. The government’s relentless pursuit of a Zero-COVID strategy has won them widespread approval both domestically and internationally. The economy managed to squeeze out positive growth whereas many of its neighbours suffered a decline from the pandemic. Yet underneath all this bravado, one could sense that something is amiss. There’s this nagging feeling that no one seems to be able to put a finger on. Almost as if, there is a spectre haunting Vietnam, the spectre of communism — the true kind without any bells and whistles.

Western leftists, communists, and anarchists alike routinely call for ‘unity’ with the authoritarian oppressors in their favourite ‘socialist’ states. They value a cheap, doomed-to-end-in-failure unity with the statists, the genocide deniers, and the red reactionaries, more than the well-being and liberation of marginalised groups.

There is a tendency in some post-colonial societies to blame all social ailments, such as queerphobia, sexism, and misogyny, on colonialism and Western imperialism. Whilst the evils and destructiveness of colonialism are indubitably pervasive, such reductive thinking is overly simplistic, and can be detrimental to marginalised groups in post-colonial societies.

The task of an archipelagic poetics in the current context would be to foment new, multivalent, archipelagic forms of identity and community, in ways which refuse and overspill the boundaries and terms of compartmentalised island space. Not only would it seek to spark new forms of sociality and ways of being in the world, but would also attempt to make explicit that which is already implicit.

An interview with Mèo Mun, an anarchist group archiving, translating, and dissemination anarchist texts to aid the anarchist movement in Vietnam.