By John Catalinotto, managing editor, Workers World newspaper

Adapted from the author’s presentation at a May 4 webinar organized by the International Manifesto Group, “50 years since the liberation of Saigon: How Vietnam defeated the US empire.” A video of all the speakers is available, see end of article for link.

It was mid-April 1975. Our children were astonished. Our tiny black and white television, usually confined to a closed cabinet, sat on the breakfast table every morning. Our excitement doubled each day as we watched reports of the unstoppable march of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces toward Saigon, the capital of the puppet regime in South Vietnam.

We were far from being alone. Tens of millions of people in the United States ached for this war to end. Millions had demonstrated against it. A smaller group, but still hundreds of thousands, who considered the liberation fighters their heroes, saw them marching toward victory. We rejoiced. 

Not only was a long and brutal war ending, but the right side was winning. The oppressor was losing. We could hardly believe it for the two weeks as we watched the puppet army disintegrate. Once the soldiers in this army realized they were doomed to lose, they surrendered. Or they got out of uniform and fled. 

The U.S. government and media called it “the fall of Saigon.” I can still read that absurd phrase on the 50th anniversary of the victory. It was the rise of Ho Chi Minh City, it was the liberation of Vietnam, of a people who had sacrificed so much for decades to free their country from imperialism. And the ruling class that dragged U.S. youth into a criminal war was humiliated.

Starting in 1962 we watched the U.S. superpower send advisers, then helicopters, then massive numbers of troops. The U.S. Air Force and Navy dropped bombs, napalm, then Agent Orange herbicides on Vietnam and its people in a genocidal war. 

Maybe our first response was horror, maybe pity. But our understanding evolved quickly. The feeling became anger at the U.S. rulers. And at the same time admiration of the courage of the Vietnamese, awe at their determination. 

We saw the strength and ability of their leaders. We learned to appreciate the socialist countries that aided the Vietnamese, the newly independent African countries that showed solidarity. And we joined a worldwide movement of solidarity. 

The courage of the Vietnamese and their communist leadership inspired thousands of us to devote our lives to the worldwide class struggle. This was not “our war” to apologize for, it was the war of the U.S. ruling class. We learned not only to fight to bring the war to a halt. We learned to wage a battle against the imperialist ruling class that had unleashed aggression. 

From the belly of the beast, we sided with the oppressed peoples and working class. We championed the National Liberation Front. We respected their organizations of the working people of the world and the states they had erected to defend themselves.

Mass opposition grew

Mass demonstrations kept rallying ever more of the public to express opposition to the war. In November of 1969 a half million people demonstrated in Washington, from which 10,000 revolutionary youth put the Department of Justice under siege, and — according to later reports — caused Attorney General John Mitchell to imagine the revolution had come for him.

This movement had its sharpest political expressions in two areas: One was the Black Liberation Movement, especially its most revolutionary organizations like the Black Panthers. The other was within the Armed Forces itself, which of course included the participation of African American and other oppressed communities.

The troops showed opposition in many ways. They malingered. They refused to go into battle. Entire units refused to follow orders. Incarcerated troops burned down the stockades. 

Troops eliminated hundreds of racist or overly aggressive officers and non-coms. They added a verb to the language: to frag. It meant to kill an officer with a fragmentation grenade. Some 900 fragging events were officially recorded between 1969 and 1972. 

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of youths refused conscription, going underground, emigrating to Canada or going to jail. And those underground, exiled or imprisoned continued to organize and struggle.

Class struggle within the military

Rank-and-file soldiers formed the American Servicemen’s Union. This was my personal focus. The idea behind this union was that the imperialist armed forces mimicked the structures of civilian class society. The rank-and-file soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force personnel were the workers. The non-coms, the officers, were the management. They gave the orders. They served the big capitalist bosses.

The troops soon began to show their class opposition to the officers and to the orders of the imperialist rulers. The goal of the union was to break the chain of command and disobey the order to go into battle. To end the war on the Vietnamese. And if possible, to bring the struggle home.

This military resistance had its impact. General William Westmoreland in 1968 asked President Lyndon Johnson for another half million troops. Johnson refused. The White House knew that to escalate the troop count to a million might cause the military to implode. 

By 1969, the Richard Nixon administration instead began to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam from its peak of 540,000. By early 1973, conscription (the draft), which civilian youth also resisted, had ended. The U.S. turned instead to an air war.

The South Vietnam People’s Liberation Armed Forces, who understood the importance of U.S. soldier resistance, issued a document on April 26, 1971. One paragraph of it ordered its officers and men: “To welcome and give good treatment to those U.S. servicemen who cross over to the South Vietnam people and the People’s Liberation Armed Forces; to stand ready to help them go home or seek asylum in another country if requested by them.” 

Let’s give no false impression. It was the Vietnamese people and their courageous fighters who won the battle. And theirs was also a political and diplomatic battle, which they waged skillfully, rallying the socialist camp to their side, winning support for all who wanted peace. But the refusal of U.S. troops, of the youths who refused the draft, of all in the U.S. who threw a wrench in the war machine, accelerated that victory. 

Lessons for 2025

Now in 2025 on the 50th anniversary of that victory of the Vietnamese people, humanity faces the same worldwide class conflict, even if it has taken a different form. 

The center of struggle in terms of open war is the atrocious assault by the settler state of Israel — fully armed and backed by U.S. and West European imperialism — against the Palestinian people. The world has seen the genocide against Gaza streamed on social media. 

In the United States we have watched a massive change in the popular attitude toward the criminal Israeli state and toward the U.S. because of Gaza. This change has taken place despite the ongoing ruling-class propaganda campaign demonizing the Gaza leadership and all the forces in what has been called the Axis of Resistance — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houtis or Ansrallah in Yemen and the Iranian government. 

The current decline in U.S. imperialist hegemony has been discussed in other webinars of the International Manifesto Group. It is clear that neither the establishment ruling-class Democrats nor the Trump MAGA group has a program that can reverse the decline of U.S. imperialism. By dismantling 80 years of U.S. diplomacy, the Trump faction may even be accelerating this decline.

As anti-imperialists were regarding Vietnam, we are now in awe of the Palestinians for their determined resistance despite all the suffering, despite the genocide. We are in awe of their resilience and of the persistence of their leaders.

What is a lesson from Vietnam? Vietnam won. Palestine can win. Palestine will win sooner if a worldwide movement of solidarity can continue to grow, develop and be able to take actions that disrupt the imperialist, Zionist war machine.

Billions of people around the world now consider Israel a genocidal state — and a pariah state, as they once did apartheid South Africa. They consider those states that arm Israel — the United States and Western Europe — the criminal facilitators of genocide. 

Those who understand that U.S. imperialism is the center of the oppressive world system realize that the U.S. leaders are themselves guilty of genocide as much as their cronies in Tel Aviv. This is true whether these leaders are named Obama or Biden and are Democrats or if they are the MAGA Trump open chauvinists. 

Last year students in the United States waged a battle on campuses against the genocide. Facing repression this year, they continue. This year’s May Day demonstrations — mainly directed at the Trump outrages — showed a mass movement in birth.

The challenge to those of us in the United States who identify as anti-imperialist, as communist, who are in solidarity with the liberation of Palestine, is to mobilize that mass sentiment and turn it into effective struggle. 

Just as in that earlier struggle, which Vietnam won, Palestine can win now. There is no lack of courage in Gaza, no lack of determination throughout the Axis of Resistance. But it is up to the most conscious elements in this developing movement to find the way to make the movement a force that can aid the Palestinian people in winning their liberation. This is a task for all who want peace and liberation for humanity. 

Vietnam won. Palestine can win. Palestine will win!

Link to the full webinar:

50 years since the liberation of Saigon: How Vietnam defeated the U.S. empire

Catalinotto is author of “Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions.”