THE GROWING SALIENCE OF ONLINE VIETNAMESE NATIONALISM 11 2021

As Vu points out: Since the latter part of the nineteenth century to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Vietnamese nationalism had been conceptualized simply as anti-colonialism.10 During the struggles against the French and Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, Vietnam spearheaded a state- sanctioned attempt designed to “desinicize the [Vietnamese] past”, featuring the country as a well-established,. [...] Those lessons, in one way or another, serve “the purpose of justifying communist rule and the leading role of the [Communist Party of Vietnam]”.20 The end goals of the state actors in exploiting and harnessing anti-China sentiments in contemporary Vietnam have barely changed: (i) to boost the legitimacy of the regime;21 (ii) to shore up national unity; and (iii) to stoke and maintain nationalism.2. [...] To put things in perspective, in the wake of the dramatic events unfolding in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, a handful of activists also tried to capitalize on that pretext and used Facebook to call for an Arab Spring-style uprising in Vietnam,49 a move that elicited lacklustre public attention.50 Also, the role of the authorities could not be discounted in accounting for the mass mobilization and phy. [...] In a post dated 7 June 2019,76 the group floated the possibility that Prime Minister Lee made the comments in the context of the US- China trade war continuing to affect Singapore’s economy.77 According to the post, in dismissing Vietnam’s “righteous” actions in Cambodia, the Singaporean prime minster was seeking to curry favour with both China and the US, which had also supported and bankrolled t. [...] On the other side of the spectrum, the authorities have repeatedly harped on the need to crack down on what they perceive to be anti-state content, which in their view has been chiefly one that is detrimental to the reputation of the leaders and the regime.100 Against that backdrop, how to justify cracking down on “anti-state content” without alienating the online vigilante force they need to enli.