Red Internationalism: Anti-Imperialism and Human Rights in the Global Sixties and Seventies

354 Pages·2023·8.21 MB·English

by  Salar Mohandesi

Red Internationalism
In Red Internationalism, Salar Mohandesi returns to the Vietnam War to
offer a new interpretation of the transnational left’s most transformative
years. In the 1960s, radicals mobilized ideas from the early twentieth
century to reinvent a critique of imperialism that promised not only to
end the war but also to overthrow the global system that made such
wars possible. Focusing on encounters between French, American,
and Vietnamese radicals, Mohandesi explores how their struggles
did change the world, but in unexpected ways that allowed human
rights to increasingly displace anti-imperialism as the dominant idiom
of internationalism. When anti-imperialism collapsed in the 1970s,
human rights emerged as a hegemonic alternative channeling anti-
imperialism’s aspirations while rejecting systemic change. Approaching
human rights as neither transhistorical truth nor cynical imperialist
ruse but instead as a symptom of anti-imperialism’s epochal crisis, Red
Internationalism dramatizes a shift that continues to affect prospects for
emancipatory political change in the future.
Salar Mohandesi is the Marvin H. Green, Jr. Assistant Professor
of History at Bowdoin College. He is the co-editor of Voices of 1968:
Documents from the Global North.
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Human Rights in History
Edited by
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, University of California, Berkeley
Samuel Moyn, Yale University, Connecticut
This series showcases new scholarship exploring the backgrounds of human
rights today. With an open-ended chronology and international perspective, the
series seeks works attentive to the surprises and contingencies in the historical
origins and legacies of human rights ideals and interventions. Books in the series
will focus not only on the intellectual antecedents and foundations of human
rights, but also on the incorporation of the concept by movements, nation-states,
international governance, and transnational law.
A full list of titles in the series can be found at:
www.cambridge.org/human-rights-history
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Red Internationalism
Anti-Imperialism and Human Rights
in the Global Sixties and Seventies
Salar Mohandesi
Bowdoin College, Maine
Published online by Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316513798
DOI: 10.1017/9781009076128
© Salar Mohandesi 2023
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2023
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall
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Congress
ISBN 978-1-316-51379-8 Hardback
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or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
Material from Chapters 1, 2, and 3 was previously published in Salar Mohandesi,
“Bringing Vietnam Home: The Vietnam War, Internationalism, and May ’68,” in
French Historical Studies 41, no. 2, pp. 219–251. Copyright 2018, Society for French
Historical Studies. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the publisher.
www.dukeupress.edu.
Published online by Cambridge University Press
To
Amir Houshang Aryanpour and Assadolah Aghazadeh Mohandesi
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contents
List of Figures page viii
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Translations xiv
Introduction 1
Overture: Lenin’s Shadow 18
1 Internationalism 48
2 Anti-Imperialism 80
3 Revolution 111
4 Repression 159
5 Crisis 195
6 Human Rights 228
Coda: Return of the Repressed 258
Notes 268
Index 324
vii
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Figures
1 Far from being an isolated US affair, opposition to
the Vietnam War was widespread, with antiwar
demonstrations taking place across the globe, such as
this one in Paris organized by the National Vietnam
Committee in 1966. (Getty) page 141
2 The escalation of US involvement in Vietnam radicalized
international antiwar opposition, turning many to Leninist
anti-imperialism. (La contemporaine, Mémoires de 68) 142
3 In February 1968, anti-imperialist radicals from across
the North Atlantic met in Berlin, where they resolved to
support the Vietnamese revolution by opening new
fronts at home. 143
4 The events of May ’68 in France seemed to prove that
revolution was possible in the capitalist North Atlantic,
energizing radicals everywhere. (Tamiment Library and
Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Black Dwarf) 144
5 In their campaign to bring Vietnam home, radicals in
Paris planted the flag of the National Liberation Front
on the spire of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
(Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor
Archives, Liberation News Service) 145
6 US radicals imagined themselves as fighting
alongside revolutionaries in what was then called
the “Third World.” (Temple University Special
Collections, Liberation News Service) 146
7 Similarly, French radicals envisioned their efforts as just one
front in a united international movement against imperialism.
(La contemporaine, Vive la révolution) 147
8 Like many anti-imperialists, the Black Panther Party believed
that the best way to change the world was to unite diverse
struggles across the globe against US imperialism. (Tamiment
Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Black Panther) 148
viii
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List of Figures ix
9 Radicals in the North Atlantic tried to translate “Vietnam”
into a domestic idiom, drawing parallels between struggles
at home, such as those led by women of color, with Vietnamese
struggles abroad. (La contemporaine, États-Unis, New Left,
Mouvements de résistance à la guerre du Vietnam) 149
10 North American and Western European anti-imperialists
and Vietnamese revolutionaries forged durable relationships
through meetings such as this one in Cuba. (Tamiment
Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives,
Liberation News Service) 150
11 When the turn to revolution sparked widespread state
repression, groups like the Proletarian Left embarked on a
“democratic turn,” building a united front with famous
intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre,
who exposed the French government’s selective repression of
radicals by illegally selling copies of the banned paper
La Cause du peuple. (Getty) 151
12 In the early 1970s, antiwar activists connected their
experiences with incarceration to state repression abroad,
working with human rights activists to organize demonstrations
such as this one in Paris, which drew attention to the many
political prisoners tortured in “tiger cages” in South Vietnam.
(Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor
Archives, Liberation News Service) 152
13 Antiwar activism continued even after the United States
withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, with radicals organizing a
massive international convergence in Milan to protest
repression in South Vietnam. (La contemporaine,
Solidarité Indochine) 153
14 The communist seizure of Saigon in April 1975 electrified
anti-imperialists everywhere, including many Vietnamese
living in Paris, who celebrated the victory on May Day.
(Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives,
Liberation News Service) 154
15 In the 1970s, anti-imperialists believed that the many diverse
struggles in Southeast Asia were part of a single united
international force against US imperialism. (Archives
nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Sein, Collectif intersyndical
universitaire d’Action Vietnam Laos Cambodge) 155
16 Despite a veneer of unity, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam
went to war in 1979, shattering faith in anti-imperialist
internationalism. (La contemporaine, Rouge) 156
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