The Dissident Intellectuals

Although I oppose Communism because of its inhumanity and because it contradicts the basic values of Asians and Vietnamese, I wonder if our people should continue to kill each other over an alien doctrine.

Those anguished words were written by Nguyen Lau, a softspoken, London-educated Vietnamese journalist who until three months ago published Saigon's English-language Daily News. After the authorities discovered that he had discussed his views on peace with a Viet Cong agent, Lau was arrested. Last week, in a dimly lit Saigon courtroom, a military tribunal sentenced him to five years imprisonment for "actions detrimental to the national security."

Lau's predicament is not unique. He is a member of South Viet Nam's educated elite, which has long opposed any and all regimes in Saigon. These days, the country's intellectuals are on particularly bad terms with the government of President Nguyen Van Thieu over the issue of peace and how to achieve it. Thieu regards men like Publisher Lau with unconcealed loathing. Not long ago, he told a group of hamlet officials: "You are more patriotic than these intellectuals who drink four glasses of whisky a day. Although they are well educated, they are slaves of the Communists."

Deflowered Autos. Two months ago, after returning from his summit with Richard Nixon, Thieu again warned "socalled intellectuals" who dally with notions of coalition that they would be "punished severely." The threat was hardly novel: Pham Van Nhon, the publisher of Le Vietnam Nouveau, is serving a five-year sentence for associating with Communists. Truong Dinh Dzu, who recommended negotiations with the Communists when he ran for the presidency in 1967, has been in jail for a year. Considering that the Saigon regime has been at war for years, abridgment of some democratic freedoms is entirely natural, up to a point. Still, the situation makes it difficult to create a liberal opposition to Thieu's government, says Tran Van Tuyen, one of Lau's three defense laywers, and "into this vacuum the Communists may be able to move."

The intellectuals continue to make their voices heard. A group of 42 journalists, lawyers, professors and five lower-house deputies have formed the Committee for the Establishment of the Progressive Nationalist Force. Their professed aim is to set up a "reconciliatory government composed of nationalists and acceptable to all sides concerned"--which does not imply coalition with the Communists, the group insists. Several members of the committee have been questioned by police, however.

Thieu's government feels that given the current political confusion, anything that can be interpreted as corrupting either morale or the war effort must be suppressed. Thirty newspapers, including Lau's Daily News, have either been suspended or permanently shuttered for publishing statements regarded as "unpatriotic." Songs that dwell longingly on peace are banned. The police sometimes rip flower decals off autos and motor scooters in the belief that these are symbols of a peace movement. Says one intellectual angrily: "Thieu thinks the army is everything. But you can't have a world without intellectuals, any more than you can have a world without women. They both make trouble, but you need them."

Long Fingernail. Who are the intellectuals? The Western image of the intellectual as a man primarily concerned with the quest for knowledge is almost irrelevant. Some Vietnamese regard anyone who does not work with his hands as an intellectual. Thus clerks and even taxi drivers affect the long fingernail on the little finger, mandarin-style.

South Viet Nam's true intellectual elite consists of no more than a few thousand people. Its members include doctors, lawyers, journalists, Buddhist monks, professors, artists, students and occasional businessmen. Some, like Lau, own property, but most live modestly on monthly incomes that range from $80 to $600. They are inveterate organization joiners. Being a member of the alumni associations of the Lycee Petrus Ky or the Lycee Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both in Saigon, is a mark of special distinction among the elite. There are other ties of common background. Many intellectuals fled the North in 1954 when the Communists took over there. Lawyer Tran Ngoc Lieng, one of the leaders of the Progressive Nationalist Force Committee, was a schoolmate of North Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap at the University of Hanoi.

In Viet Nam, as in most of Asia, the intellectual is heavily influenced by the Confucian tradition, which ordains that the scholar has an obligation not only to disseminate knowledge but also to participate in the rule of his country. From this concept, the mandarinate emerged, and down through Viet Nam's history the mandarins provided the administrative core for the nation. In the 19th century, with the arrival of the French, the mandarinate split: some scholars resisted the invaders, others collaborated.

The Attentistes. With the aid of the latter, the French took over Viet Nam's educational system, producing a new elite that was profoundly influenced by French culture. Until the early '60s, when the Americans moved in, French was the only Western language spoken in Viet Nam. Egotism and arrogance came to be associated with absorption in "la culture franc,aise"; not a few in the intelligentsia were far more concerned with the study of Voltaire and Montesquieu than with the realities in their country. What is more, this elitism has produced a view of the world that is cynically self-centered and, currently, virulently anti-American. The younger group, educated in Europe and the U.S., have managed to free themselves from lycee culture. But to this day, French influence runs deep among the older generation of Vietnamese intellectuals--Camus and Sartre seem to be their favorite authors.

Despite such Western overlays, the influence of Buddhism on the intellectuals remains strong. It holds that temporal life is only an "ocean of sorrows" and that the intellectual should avoid involvement in it. As a result, attentisme (waiting) is a popular posture. It is a detached resignation at least partly rooted in the belief that the nation's destiny is controlled by outside forces--the French after World War II, the Americans and the North Vietnamese in the present conflict--and that the individual is powerless to bring about change. It also reflects despair over the lack of alternatives and deep disenchantment with both the Saigon government and the Communists.

Indeed, the intellectuals have few clear-cut loyalties. They oppose the Saigon regime partly because it is military. But few are seriously committed to Communism. To most Vietnamese intellectuals, Communism was mostly the means of creating a revolutionary political force against French colonialism. Those few who were attracted are out in the jungle now: among them are Lawyer Nguyen Huu Tho, president of the National Liberation Front, and Architect Huynh Tan Phat, president of the Communists' recently proclaimed provisional revolutionary government.

They are, by and large, exceptions; attentisme is the order of the day. Many intellectuals seem overly ready to criticize, but are reluctant to act on their convictions. A prominent woman lawyer in Saigon notes that "the attentiste maintains a certain amount of honesty without enduring the rigors of outright resistance." Now, she says, "many intellectuals know what they should do, but do not have the courage to do it." She does not--perhaps typically--recommend what it is they should do.

Two Currents. Well aware of the importance of South Viet Nam's intellectuals, the Viet Cong have long tried to recruit them--with some success. Many intellectuals have come to believe that the Viet Cong are nationalists first and Communists second, that they can be peacefully assimilated into the political fabric of the nation once the war ends. "When peace comes," says one naively optimistic Southerner, "South Viet Nam will be rich. We will have no problems, and when there are no problems, there will be no Communists." Other intellectuals, so far a minority, now back the government after years in opposition--mainly because they feel that it is the best possible regime under the present circumstances. They may not particularly like it, but they prefer it to the Communists.

For men like Lau, opposed to both the war and to the Communists, the best hope seems to lie in bringing about a rapprochement between Saigon and the Communists in the interest of Vietnamese nationalism. At his trial, Lau retracted his earlier confession that he had known his contact to be a Viet Cong agent, then added: "I did not serve the Communists. My only work was journalism. Everyone knows that I am a nationalist." Says a Saigon police official: "Lau thought he saw a ceasefire and a coalition government coming. He was trying to swim between two currents. He thought he could talk to the other side and still be considered a patriot by the present government."

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