Snopes says Vietnam is aiding pro-Trump propaganda

Quote:

As discussed in our earlier reporting, The BL has myriad ties to Vietnamese branches of the Falun Gong media empire, a diffuse group of related entities that includes The Epoch Times. The BL’s founder and director, Trung Vu, was once the CEO of the Vietnamese edition of The Epoch Times and later worked for NTD TV, another Falun Gong-associated property. One of the many items linking The BL to The Epoch Times is the fact that an IP server used by The BL is actually registered to Epoch Times Vietnam.

This Vietnamese influence can also be seen in many of the fake profiles controlled by The BL.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/11/12/ ... -profiles/

It seems geopolitics makes strange bedfellows and as part of Vietnam's rivalry with China, they allow the fiercely anti-Communist, Epoch times to operate in Hanoi, and even host pro-Trump troll farms.

I remember reading an Epoch times article on how Trump will be the one to finally end the last remnants of Communism, praising his tough line on China, Cuba, Venezuela. But then hypocritically it also praised his soft line on Vietnam as opening up and bringing them into the world system. The exact same thing they criticize as appeasement for any other socialist nation.

That's very interesting heiss93, I had no idea it was that bad. It's incredibly tragic that Vietnam has been moving in the direction of the US, less than half a century after being bombed into the stone age by them. But I understand the geopolitical bind they're in, too, since the USSR's not around anymore and they have that ongoing dispute in the South China Sea with the Chinese where, frankly, I think Beijing's claims are utterly unreasonable.

Actually Vietnam's problems (and search for alternative partners) started in early 1988, when, just weeks after Gorbachev announced a reduction in troop deployments on the Chinese border and a withdrawal from Afghanistan, China and Vietnam fought it out for the Johnson South Reef and Hanoi lost. Actually, in the Vietnamese-language article on that incident (which is quite thorough and pretty neutral), the USSR's traitorous behaviour is mentioned in some detail, including 1) the lack of broad condemnation of China's occupation of the islands, despite the Vietnamese ambassador's request to do so, 2) the non-intervention or mobilization of Soviet naval forces, 3) and Vietnam's subsequent move away from Moscow toward 'multilateralization' of its foreign policy.

https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xung_%C4% ... ng_Sa_1988

I don't have much to add. But on the topic of late Soviet-Vietnam relations, this was on the front page of wikipedia today and I found it interesting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_Monument