From Anti-Imperialism to Human Rights: The Vietnam War, Internationalism, and the Global 1960s

Few historical periods were so defined by international solidarity as the 1960s and 1970s. Not only did young radicals in North America and Western Europe learn from one another, many saw their struggles as interconnected. At the center of this revived internationalism stood the liberation movements of the Third World, and above all, Vietnam. As citizens of countries with strong imperial pasts, many young radicals in North America and Western Europe felt responsible for the carnage in Vietnam and searched for ways to support the Vietnamese struggle.

In the 1960s, many activists embraced a vision of radical anti-imperialism. But when internecine wars, genocide, and a refugee crisis in Southeast Asia threw the notions of national liberation, collective self-determination, and anti-imperialism into question in the late 1970s, activists turned to another, competing vision of international solidarity: human rights. Although a testament to the resilience of North American and Western European activists in the face of enormous political challenges, the shift from the nation to the individual, from revolution to ethics, and from anti-imperialism to human rights carried ambiguous consequences.

In tracing how Vietnam functioned in the imaginary of the North American and Western European transnational Left – from the image of the “heroic guerrilla” in the early 1960s to that of the victimized “boat people” in the late 1970s ­– this paper deepens our knowledge of how decolonization transformed movements in North America and Western Europe, explains how ideas of internationalism changed, and uncovers the roots of today’s mainstream political culture.