Not really, the Vietnamese Americans community tend to glorify Diem alot. They think that if the US hadn't overthown him, he could have smashed the communists.
What other countries could rewrite their history with a 'Lost Cause Mythos' akin to the (Southern) US
- Thread starter ennobee
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While downplaying or totally ignoring Ho Chi Minh's and his successors own tyranny.
A while back, as an American living in Scotland, I was struck one day: "Oh, this is what the lost cause would look like if it wasn't racist garbage." The feeling is very similar, no offense to Scotland. And I always felt, due to the presence of a lot of Scots and Scots-Irish in the South, that it was probably drawn directly from the earlier Scottish independence romanticism.
And since the Scottish romanticism probably owes more to the Walter Scott-driven revival of about 60 years after 1745 (rather than direct nostalgia for 1745 itself), it even shares a not dissimilar timescale and time displacement phenomenon.
And since the Scottish romanticism probably owes more to the Walter Scott-driven revival of about 60 years after 1745 (rather than direct nostalgia for 1745 itself), it even shares a not dissimilar timescale and time displacement phenomenon.
Orangecar
Banned
I have seen people spouting Rhodesian nostalgia on this board. So there is definitly a myth around that regieme. Even among old Rhodesians there seems to be nostalgia for the past. I once had a teacher, who was talking about his service in the military in Rhodesia and said that politics would be better if South Africa adopted the Rhodesian voting system( basically trying to say that blacks don't deserve the vote). I cannot stress enough that this was in a classroom in an elite mostly white South African achool where at least a 1/4 of the kids that day were not white.
One thing I always find fascinating about SA and Rhodesia is that Britain leveled sanctions and denounced them any chance they got. When the father country and the one with some of the most horrid crimes against humanity under its belt decides that you've gone too far for too long, how can you possibly defend yourself?
Orangecar
Banned
In the case of Rhodesia there a bizzare form of denial about what the British were doing. When the first democraric election took place many of them felt "betrayed" and "stabbed in the back", they couldn't comprehend why Britian might sanction a white minority ruled country because for them they couldn't comprehend why their way of life was problematic and thats why racism is so sinister.
I mean to us it seems obvious why those governments were satanically evil and vile but to them seeing blacks as their social and biological inferiors was a way of life, it was almost in the background of their lives, it was just the way things were. It was their way of life.
I don't know about A Lost Cause myth, but in Britain it's said "We won the war but lost the peace". We didn't lose the peace, we threw it away through union greed, managerial incompetence, governmental stupidity and a refusal to accept the world had changed. We didn't win the war either, we "Held until relieved".
Basically this.
I'd phrase it as the "Gentlemanly Capitalism " elite being more focused on finance and other "invisible " services rather than Trade or Industry. With the government and civil service making these the priorities rather than fixing the structural problems that hindered industrial productivity. Management in industry (private or public sector) was incompetent and the Unions unwilling to accept changes to working practices as much as greedy. But the fundamental problem was the failure to tackle issues known about for 50 years or more.
Cultural as much as political. And, without going into current politics, there is something of a Lost Cause feel about the nostalgia for WW2. Spitfires and Vera Lynn, great though both were, are a bit too prominent in British symbolism.
I don't think any people downplay Ho Chi Minh rule. The goverment "acknowledge" the mistakes of the land reform. And Ho Chi Minh is basically a figurehead after that. If he (or Vo Nguyen Giap ) was in charged, the war would diverge significantly from OTL. Not only that, but most western documentaries that I have watched never try to downplay it, so I don't know where you get that idea from (unless you've read Vietnamese history books)
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Rhodesia had a nonracial qualified franchise reminiscent of 19th century Britain except that women could qualify.
So they were a century out of step with much of the rest of the world. Got it.
The closest we have in Portugal is the idea that portuguese colonization was benign and could have led to a multiracial "super Portugal" in Europe and Africa.
This is used to justify the colonial war in a revisionist narrative in which the liberation movements are puppets of foreign imperialism.
This is used to justify the colonial war in a revisionist narrative in which the liberation movements are puppets of foreign imperialism.
With that I honestly had a hard time telling if it was that a backhanded compliment or not.
That basically means nothing, since wealth was so entrenched in the white minority rule that it was still racial barriers
Germaniac
Donor
You can argue that so did the Jim Crow south in America...
Technically not meant to block people from voting based on race, but in practice exactly why it existed.
Looks like the DDR apologism i also encounter here sometimes. Same hollow legal arguments.
You could also call the DDR (or in general 1917-1992 Communism) a lost cause myth.