It was something along the lines of “the evil violent northern commies tried to disrupt the peaceful democratic south by attacking American ships and invading”. Also a bunch of pro-colonialist propaganda. It was used in a lot of schools in America. Luna Oi actually reviewed the book, and I had forgotten how bad it was until she did. I can’t seem to find the video on her channel, though.
I mean, that’s the truth of what happened, obviously, but the curriculum was still pushing the narrative that the Vietnamese people were the aggressors. I should note that this was back in 2001-2004 before the sanctions against Vietnam were lifted.
I want to say there was a recent-ish (maybe mid-00s) acknoedgement by the U.S. that the original story of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a complete fabrication. It basically went:
Original story (that a Vietnamese ship fired on an American one) came out in the 60s and was used as justification for a full U.S. invasion
Over time some suggestions came out that maybe thr story wasn’t entirely true, or might have been a misunderstanding, etc.
Small changes get made to the official version of events.
The U.S. eventually admits its ship was never fired upon.
Note that if you believed the truth at any point up until the final revelation you would have been called some crazy conspiracy theorist and asked why you hate America.
Yeah, I heard the same thing. We also had a history textbook that declared the ‘most oppressive states in the world’ were Vietnam and Laos.
EDIT: Later editions of the book added Afghanistan, and then Iraq, to the list of oppressive states.
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I remember when we received the ‘updated’ versions and that was literally all that was changed
It was something along the lines of “the evil violent northern commies tried to disrupt the peaceful democratic south by attacking American ships and invading”. Also a bunch of pro-colonialist propaganda. It was used in a lot of schools in America. Luna Oi actually reviewed the book, and I had forgotten how bad it was until she did. I can’t seem to find the video on her channel, though.
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I mean, that’s the truth of what happened, obviously, but the curriculum was still pushing the narrative that the Vietnamese people were the aggressors. I should note that this was back in 2001-2004 before the sanctions against Vietnam were lifted.
I want to say there was a recent-ish (maybe mid-00s) acknoedgement by the U.S. that the original story of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a complete fabrication. It basically went:
Note that if you believed the truth at any point up until the final revelation you would have been called some crazy conspiracy theorist and asked why you hate America.