House of Mirrors:
How Mis- and Disinformation Amplify Imperialist Histories to Shape Asian American Political Participation in California’s 45th Congressional District
Table of Contents
Written by Shengxiao “Sole” Yu between March 2024-January 2025
Published on January 24, 2025
Chapter 1: The Frozen Image in the Mirror
Introduction
I completed this project in 2024 as the activist-in-residence hosted by the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
My research questions began with the desire to more deeply understand the role of mis- and disinformation and their impacts on Asian America. In many Asian American activist and movement spaces, we are seeing tensions, conflicts, and fractures partly caused by the spread of mis- and disinformation. We are witnessing narrative trends that contribute to tensions within, across, and about Asian American communities. I was interested in deepening our understanding of how these fractures have been formed and what is the role of healing justice in mending these fractures.
In particular, I focused on California’s 45th Congressional District (CA-45) as a case study to shed light on these broader questions. CA-45 was most recently redistricted in 2020 and contains over 756,000 people with a significant Asian American population. It is a demographically diverse district with 37% identifying as Asian, 30% Hispanic, 27% white, 2% Black, 8% multiracial, and 0.9% other. CA-45 contains Little Saigon, located in Garden Grove and Westminster in Orange County, which is home to the largest ethnic Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.
In 2024, CA-45 was represented by Michelle Steel (R), who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020 when she defeated then-incumbent Harley Rouda (D) in CA-48. Steel ran on a campaign opposing COVID masking, abortion, same-sex marriage, and pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Steel also accused Rouda of being a communist sympathizer in hopes of winning support from a largely anti-communist Vietnamese electorate. After redistricting, Steel decided to run in CA-45 in 2022 against Democratic nominee Jay Chen, a Taiwanese American veteran and school board member. Steel ran a heavy red-baiting campaign that spread mis- and disinformation about Chen’s affiliation with communism and won the election with 52.4% of votes. In 2024, Steel once again used red-baiting tactics to stage a campaign against her Democratic challenger, this time, a Vietnamese American candidate named Derek Tran. Steel also focused her campaign rhetorics on fighting inflation, restricting reproductive rights, ending immigration sanctuary cities and states, increasing border security, and other conservative positions promoted by the Republican Party. The CA-45 race was the most expensive 2024 house race in the country, with over $50 million spent, and was the third-to-last to be called in the country. On November 27, 2024, Tran was leading by just 613 votes when Steel conceded and the Associated Press called the race for Tran, bringing one of the most watched House races in the 2024 election cycle to a conclusion.
The CA-45 House race is a story about a Korean American politician spreading mis- and disinformation to her Vietnamese American constituents in order to run against a Taiwanese American and later, a Vietnamese American candidate. It is a story about the weaponization of community trauma for one’s personal and political gain, and in the process, fracturing Asian American communities. It is a story set in a house of mirrors: mirrors that refract narratives, showing clarity while also creating distortion. This house of mirrors is set against the backdrop of imperialism, war, trauma, displacement, grief, healing, identity-building, identity politics, electoral power, and most of all, our shared desire to be seen as who we are.
The CA-45 race is a story set in a house of mirrors: mirrors that refract narratives, showing clarity while also creating distortion. This house of mirrors is set against the backdrop of imperialism, war, trauma, displacement, grief, healing, identity-building, identity politics, electoral power, and most of all, our shared desire to be seen as who we are.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful for the activist-in-residence program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for making this entire project possible. I have had the honor of being hosted by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center (AASC) as their activist-in-residence in 2024. Big thank you to Karen Umemoto, Melany De La Cruz, Grace Hong, Natalie Masuoka and all the faculty and staff at AASC, Luskin, CityLab, and Streisand Center for the Study of Women for bringing the residency program to life. I also want to thank the residency for supporting my visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and my attendance at the Association of Asian American Studies Conference, National Women’s Studies Conference, and the Facing Race Convening.
I am grateful to Nancy Yap for shedding light on the history of CA-45 and for her keen eye in identifying key questions in this district. Without the many conversations with Nancy, the birth of this project would not have been possible. I am grateful to my auntie and friend, Diep Nguyen, for so many enlightening conversations about Vietnamese American history, electoral politics, Asian America, and beyond. Thank you also for connecting me to interviewees in CA-45.
I am so deeply indebted to the many folks who spent countless hours participating in interviews with me. I talked with organizers, activists, students, nonprofit leaders, candidates, campaign strategists, researchers, and CA-45 residents who share a deep love for their community and a belief in building towards a more just future. Some of these names will be mentioned below where I discuss their particular insights for this project, unless they chose to remain anonymous.
I also want to say thank you to Meg Sullivan for sharing so many deep insights about our society with both sharpness and humor, and for introducing to me Naomi Klein’s book Doppelgänger, which contains concepts that shaped this project. Thank you to Allen Linton II for always reminding me of the importance of electoral politics in power-building and for being so committed to fighting for our communities, often against all odds. Thank you to John A. Lucy for always pushing for deeper analyses and perspectives unseen and for your forever commitment to getting it right. Thank you to Rameya Shanmugavelayutham for lovingly holding space and bearing witness to my growth and transformation for decades, for nuanced conversations on trauma and identity, and for sharing insights on structuring a long-term project. All these folks have also spent countless hours in intellectually stimulating conversations with me, and these will always be among my most treasured memories.
In no particular order, I want to give a big shout out and express so much gratitude for my friends and chosen family who have held space for various pieces of this project: Eden Allegretti, Ruby Kang, Olive Juniper Rose, Briseida Pagador, Carolina Escobar, christina ong, Pattie Lin, denim chang, Richard Lim, Sunnie Liu, ‘Alisi Tulua, Michelle Lee, and Bianca Mabute-Louie. Thank you to Linh Chương for your professional connections, insights, as well as personal help when I had a flat tire during a research visit. Thank you to Jimmy Cerone and Kristin, Bryan, and Emi Posner for your help and care in the final stretch of taking this project across the finish line.
Thank you to my therapist who has held me through so much and helped me to build the tools I needed to process racialized trauma in order to complete this project, and more broadly, to navigate my own experiences and identity as an Asian American woman.
Approach and Methodology
I primarily relied on theoretical frameworks, electoral data, and ethnographic interviews for this project. I obtained theories and data from books and online resources, all of which are linked below where they are referenced. I conducted 15 in-depth ethnographic interviews with organizers, activists, students, nonprofit leaders, candidates, campaign strategists, researchers, and CA-45 residents. I attended seven community events, including city council meetings, political rallies, campaign events, nonprofit gatherings, and conferences, and spoke with more than 50 people at these events to varying degrees about this project. Some of their names are mentioned below where I discuss their particular insights, unless they chose to remain anonymous.
Background and Context
Before diving into this house of mirrors to analyze the role of mirrors in refracting narratives and identities, we must situate ourselves in the context of the house, located in the 45th Congressional District in Southern California (CA-45).
The current boundary lines of CA-45 came as a result of redistricting efforts following the 2020 Census and enacted for the 2022 election cycle. The district is based in Orange and Los Angeles counties and includes all of Garden Grove, Westminster, Cerritos, Buena Park, Placentia, Hawaiian Gardens, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Artesia, Los Alamitos, Midway City, Rossmoor, and La Palma, as well as parts of Brea, Lakewood, Fullerton, and Yorba Linda.
Image source: congress.gov, California district 45 map
Little Saigon
CA-45 was created to give Asian Americans a voting bloc, specifically helping to boost the political power of the Vietnamese American community in Southern California. The district contains Little Saigon, a Vietnamese American community centered in Westminster and Garden Grove of Orange County.
Little Saigon was created by the Vietnamese American community in the 1970’s and 80’s, especially after the Fall of Saigon in 1975 when the number of arriving Vietnamese boat refugees surged. Though the U.S. government intentionally dispersed Vietnamese refugees to various parts of the country to prevent the establishment of ethnic communities and to dilute their political power, many Vietnamese refugees found each other, reunited, and established a strong presence in Orange County. In 1988, then California governor George Deukmejian (R) made the first governor’s visit to Little Saigon. That year, the community successfully lobbied to place “Little Saigon” freeway signs and received a special tourist zone designation for their community.
Though the U.S. government intentionally dispersed Vietnamese refugees to various parts of the country to dilute their political power, many of them found each other, reunited, and established a strong presence in Orange County.
Today, approximately 189,000 Vietnamese Americans call Little Saigon their home, making it the largest ethnic Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. Prior to the 2020 redrawing of district maps, the neighborhoods that made up Little Saigon were split into three different congressional districts. Vietnamese American community leaders strongly advocated for Little Saigon to stay together, calling the Redistricting Commission daily, resulting in today’s CA-45 where Little Saigon is in one district and Vietnamese Americans’ voting power is more consolidated.
CA-45 Demographics
Based on the U.S. Census Bureau and its American Community Survey (ACS) estimates, CA-45 has over 756,000 people, and its top three most populous racial and ethnic groups are non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic white, and Hispanic. In the district, 36% of residents are foreign-born, far exceeding the country’s average of just 13.6%.
CA-45 is also a linguistically diverse community with Spanish, Vietnamese, and Korean being the most widely spoken languages in non-English households, which make up 53% of the district.
Image source: Data USA 2022 American Community Survey data
CA-45 Electoral History
California’s 45th Congressional District is located in the heart of Orange County, a place made known in popular culture by the early 2000’s WB series The O.C., depicting a group of wealthy white people from Newport Beach. Though long before the airing of that show, Orange County was known to the politically-minded as a place that gave rise to conservative giants like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. It is a place that Reagan famously described as where “good Republicans go to die.”
Understanding of Orange County’s conservative, anti-communist roots is the key to understanding the CA-45 of today.
President Ronald Reagan launching his reelection campaign in 1984 in Orange County with First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Image source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Orange County’s political history might seem incongruent with the contemporary reputation of California as a liberal blue state, but it was well aligned with the Southern California of the 1960-1980’s. Understanding of Orange County’s conservative, anti-communist roots is the key to understanding the CA-45 of today. Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s, wealthy Republican donors invested heavily in Orange County, learning lessons from Barry Goldwater’s loss to Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and supporting Ronald Regan’s run for governor in 1966. In the same decade, Walter Knott, founder of Knott’s Berry Farm, the nation’s first theme park, established the Orange County School of Anti-Communism, training students and recruiting citizens to fight against the “red threat.” By the early 1970’s, Orange County was home to 38 chapters of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, an anti-communist organization known for spreading conspiracy theories and opposing civil rights. The Atlantic recently argued that John Birch Society’s ideologies, though once seen as part of the Radical Right, now fit well within the conservative mainstream under Donald J. Trump.
It was to this political environment that Vietnamese refugees started arriving in large numbers after the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Many of them were temporarily resettled in Camp Pendleton, a U.S. Marine base in north San Diego County. Local newspapers and radio stations in Orange County called on their citizens to step up and sponsor the newly arriving “anti-communist refugees.”
Asian Americans for Reagan Bush
Image source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library research archives
Vietnamese refugees arrived in Westminster and Garden Grove and started building homes and businesses, mostly in neglected and dilapidated parts of the cities. Although the Vietnamese refugees seemed to share a strong anti-communist political ideology with residents in their new homes in Orange County, many of them faced racial discrimination and experienced xenophobic sentiments. White residents in Westminster and Garden Grove saw the rapid changes in their neighborhoods and signed petitions urging their cities to stop issuing business licenses to Vietnamese people. Still, Vietnamese refugees continued to arrive in large numbers, attracted by community ties and the good weather of Southern California. By 1987, the first large shopping center, the Asian Garden Mall, known as Phước Lộc Thọ (Fortune, Prosperity, and Longevity), was built by developer Frank Jao at the Bolsa Avenue business corridor. The Asian Garden Mall continues to be a center of shopping, dining, family gatherings, and political rallies today.
The installation of the three deities, Fortune, Prosperity, and Longevity, during the construction of the Asian Garden Mall in 1987.
Image source: OC Register via arcgis
Although many Vietnamese refugees shared a strong anti-communist political ideology with residents in their new homes in Orange County, they nonetheless faced racial discrimination and experienced xenophobic sentiments.
This is the political backdrop that frames the 45th Congressional District of today.
In August 2019, Democratic registration (547,458) in Orange County surpassed Republican registration (547,369) for the first time in its history. That year also saw the fastest growth among no-party preference registration at 449,711 voters. Just one year prior, during the 2018 midterm election, California saw a blue wave with Democrats gaining seven congressional house seats, including in CA-48 where Democratic challenger Harley Rouda defeated longtime Republic incumbent Dana Rohrabacher, who had been serving in the House since 1989. However, Rouda’s time in Congress would be short-lived. In 2020, he was unseated by Republican challenger Michelle Steel, a Korean American candidate who ran on a platform to lower taxes and to secure the border. This was only the second time in more than two decades that a Republican candidate had defeated a Democratic incumbent in the state of California.
During the course of this campaign, Steel accused Rouda of being a “sleeper agent” for communist China. She used red-baiting tactics and weaponized sinophobic sentiments to discredit Rouda by portraying him as communist, Marxist, Stalinist, and a sympathizer of the Chinese government.
Mailer sent out by Michelle Steel for Congress asking voters to not support Rouda, accusing him of being a sleeper agent in Congress. Image Source: Michelle Steel for Congress.
Prior to her 2020 election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Michelle Steel was active in Orange County politics, having served as a member of the California State Board of Equalization and a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Steel was part of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for both Donald J. Trump and George W. Bush’s administrations. Michelle is married to Shawn Steel, a longtime member of the Republican National Committee who also served as the California Republican Party Chairman from 2001 until 2003.
After serving one term as the representative of CA-48, the district maps were redrawn for the 2022 election cycle and Steele announced her intention to run in the newly created CA-45 district. Her opponent, Jay Chen, secured the Democratic nomination in June 2022, where CA-45 had a 5% Democratic registration advantage. In a Zoom interview I conducted with Jay Chen in October 2024, Chen shared with me that he was inspired to run by his experiences growing up Asian American. Born in Kalamazoo, Chen grew up as the only Asian kid in his class. But in elementary school, Chen got to live in Singapore and after moving to Los Angeles, he gained a more multiracial perspective of the world. Chen was inspired by President Barack Obama’s campaign and volunteered in Nevada and joined the military. “I joined the Navy because I wanted Obama to be my commander-in-chief,” said Chen. He was initially planning to run in a more heavily Chinese and Taiwanese American district in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles, but pivoted to CA-45 in Orange County after redistricting. “My campaign in 2022 focused on reproductive rights, and I emphasized my military background in the Vietnamese American community,” recalled Chen, “if I was in uniform at a community event, I was always very well received.”
In this 2022 race, Steel replicated and amplified the red-baiting tactics she used in 2020. She sent out mailers photoshopping Jay Chen among posters of communist figures in front of a classroom, insinuating that Chen was indoctrinating children into communist ideologies.
Image 1: Mailer sent out to Vietnamese Americans stating “Jay Chen invited China into our children’s classes” on the blackboard. Image source: Michelle Steel for Congress | Image 2: Sign seen in October 2022 outside of a shopping mall in Westminster, California. Image source: Jenna Schoenefeld/The Washington Post/Getty
“I knew she would use those tactics against me because she used them against Rouda,” reflected Chen during my interview with him, “but I was truly shocked by how much and how ugly it was.”
Chen’s supporters, along with many members of the Asian American community, called out Steel’s racist tactics. Controversial remarks from both candidates were highlighted numerous times by the LA Times, the LAist, the OC Register, Next Shark, The Yappie, among other publications.
Supporters at a Jay Chen rally calling out Steel’s red-baiting. The leftmost sign reads “Stop communist labels” in Vietnamese. Image source: Jay Chen for Congress Flickr
Steel also took her red-baiting online. She created an ad with actors in a smoke-filled room, pretending to be operatives for the Chinese Communist Party. They praised Chen for his ideology and drew a through line from Chen to Senator Bernie Sanders to Chairman Mao Zedong.
Reposted video and screenshot of Steel’s ad against Chen featuring actors claiming Chen to be “perfect for China”. Source: Jay Chen for Congress Campaign Youtube Channel
“However, [Steel] never advertised her red-baiting tactics on English social media” recalled Chen, “I think because she knew how ugly and racist it was, so her red-baiting was only focused on the Vietnamese community and was in-language.” Steel’s ads were aimed primarily at Vietnamese-speaking voters, and Chen believed they were effective in swinging undecided voters who did not pay close attention. Chen faced barriers in accessing that community since he did not speak Vietnamese, but Steel, despite having the same language barrier, had tapped into her and her husband’s relationship network with influential Vietnamese politicians in Little Saigon and cultivated surrogates who could speak for her in Vietnamese. “Her surrogates support her and defer to her,” said Chen, “Republicans have dominated at the local level [in Little Saigon] for some time, and they have built community centers that give folks a place to go outside of campaigns. They have worked very hard to build lasting infrastructure. Democrats don’t have an equivalent.”
This infrastructure context, combined with Steel’s targeted campaign ads eventually led to her victory over Chen. Despite Democrats’ five point registration advantage, the extremely low turnout in the 2022 race significantly impact the outcome. Over 217 thousand ballots were cast, compared to almost 415 thousand in 2020 (though the district map was different) and 316 thousand in 2024.
This latest race in November 2024 was highly contentious. It was a presidential election year, and after Derek Tran emerged as Steel’s challenger after California’s nonpartisan primary in March 2024, it became clear that Michelle Steel would have to face her first Vietnamese American opponent. In early 2024, most political data trackers, including the Cook Political Report and FiveThirtyEight were showing CA-45 as leaning Republican. Ballot data from the primary showed that Derek Tran was still behind by almost 14 thousand votes even if he took all the votes won by Democratic candidates in the primary.
Results from the March 2024 nonpartisan primary for CA-45. Image source: Ballotpedia
Throughout 2024, the gap between Steel and Tran closed and CA-45 became increasingly competitive. September 2024 was the first time a poll showed a 2 point advantage for Tran over Steel. Two subsequent polls split the lead, with Steel +4 in one and Tran +3 in the other.
In the first half of 2024, Steel primarily focused her campaign on stopping inflation and lowering taxes. She also ran heavily on border security and crime as top issues that have consistently polled highly among the electorate.
Mailers in support of Michelle Steel highlighting issues of crime and border security, paid for by the California Republican Party. Image source: CA-45 resident | Lawn sign seen near a mall in Westminster, California in March 2024 in support of Michelle Steel, highlighting her platform to stop inflection and lower taxes. Photo taken by author.
As the race became more competitive, Steel felt that she needed to change her campaign strategies. Late in the game in October 2024, just one month before the election, Steel pulled out an old page in her campaign playbook and deployed red-baiting and sinophobic tactics.
Sinophobic mailers claiming China to be a key threat to the U.S. and highlighting Steel’s legislative efforts to block funding to universities linked to China. Image source: CA-45 resident | Steel campaign signs seen in Garden Grove, with the left one stating “Vote for Michelle Steel, Down With Communism” written over the yellow flag of South Vietnam. Image source: Mother Jones.
Though Steel’s campaign signs were catering to the Vietnamese American community, not everyone in the community has responded positively. In fact, these tactics have only amplified an existing and already growing divide within the Vietnamese American community.
In an interview with Mother Jones, Christina Dao, a host and commentator for Nguoi Viet Daily News in Little Saigon said “to us, Steel is misusing the flag for her own political gain…We would never put any political slogans or anyone’s names on the flag. Michelle Steel is not really a part of its history.”
Throughout 2024, I spoke with Orange County political commentator and organizer Khải Dao numerous times. Dao is committed to his anti-communist political ideologies but says Steel does not actually care about fighting communism. “Steel is using my community for her own political agenda,” Dao passionately criticized, “she has been really effective at recruiting a few Vietnamese crony politicians to speak for her, but she has no commitments to political ideologies.” Dao explained how painful it has been to watch some members of his community fall victim to Steel’s lies. “But I believe it is our chance this year,” Dao said with great hope during an October 2024 interview with me, “I have been working with allies to expose Michelle Steel’s lies and more and more people are waking up to her lies. I have been persuading Vietnamese people to vote Vietnamese, to vote for Derek Tran. Because we have to vote for our own people.”
The CA-45 race was the most expensive 2024 house race in the country, with over $50 million spent, and was the third-to-last to be called in the country. On November 27, 2024, Tran was leading by just 613 votes when Steel conceded and the Associated Press called the race for Tran, bringing one of the most watched House races in the 2024 election cycle to a conclusion.
Doppelgängers and Refractions
The house of mirrors analogy that structures this writing was inspired by Naomi Klein’s latest book Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World, along with her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, as well as other central themes found in her larger body of work.
Naomi Klein has looked at many moments of social crises throughout global history. From natural disasters to political coups, from wars to pandemics, Klein focuses on power vacuums that are often created during moments of crises. She discusses how governments, corporations, and those with power often take advantage of those moments of collective shock to impose drastic policies that would normally face intense opposition. This often results in accelerated implementation of neoliberal reforms, including privatization of public resources, deregulation of corporations, and cuts to public services.
Governments, corporations, and those with power often take advantage of moments of collective shock to impose drastic policies that would normally face intense opposition.
Building on these ideas, Klein also discusses vacuums of ideas that are often created in the wake of shocks, when important political topics are not seriously taken up by public discourse. Klein defines shock as “the gap that opens up between event and existing narratives to explain that event.” In a podcast interview with On the Nose, hosted by Jewish Currents, Klein states that in the wake of shocks, such as wars, political topics not taken up by the Left create a vacuum in public discourse, and those vacuums are often weaponized and exploited by the Right.
Since the end of the Cold War, we in the U.S. have not created large scale collective spaces to process the trauma of the war or to study the political ideologies that were said to be at war in the first place. As a result, the word “communism” is often understood as a bad word by many in U.S. American society without any serious grasp of its meaning. Even among those who feel neutral or positive toward communism, many still lack understanding of its basic tenets. This vacuum has been extensively weaponized and exploited by the Right in the U.S., with Fox News grossly misusing the term and labeling almost anyone with opposing views as a communist, including President Barack Obama and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, even though the political ideologies and policies championed by them are far from communism.
The word “communism” is often understood as a bad word by many in U.S. American society without any serious grasp of its meaning. There is little access to supportive spaces to study the true ideological underpinnings of communism. This ideological vacuum has been extensively weaponized and exploited by the Right.
This is only one example of so many political traumas that have been weaponized and polarized. Trauma requires time and space to metabolize, and collective trauma requires nuanced conversations that can hold a multitude of stories and perspectives. Internally, all of us who experience trauma need access to nuanced spaces. But the weaponization of trauma leads to binary thinking, where individuals are often compelled to publicly take sides and disagree with all those seen as on the other side. This leaves many of us with no room to address the internal need for nuanced trauma processing, and in the process, creates what Klein calls a doppelgänger, a split self, a shadow self, that creates distorted images and narratives about who we are and the stories we hold. When the majority of people in society have doppelgängers, we find ourselves in a huge house of mirrors, uncertain of what is a true reflection and what is a distorted refraction, creating chaos.
Klein cites José de Sousa Saramago’s novel The Double where he wrote “chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.” In taking up the work of deciphering, Klein maps our doppelgänger culture, with its maze of projections. The point of mapping, Klein writes, “is not to stay trapped inside the house of mirrors, but to do what I sense many of us long to do: escape its mind-bending confines and find our way toward some kind of collective power and purpose. The point is to make our way out of this collective vertigo, and get somewhere distinctly better, together.”
This, too, is the purpose of my project.
“Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.” - José de Sousa Saramago
“The point of mapping is not to stay trapped inside the house of mirrors, but to do what I sense many of us long to do: escape its mind-bending confines and find our way toward some kind of collective power and purpose. The point is to make our way out of this collective vertigo, and get somewhere distinctly better, together.” - Naomi Klein
Chapter 1
The Frozen Image in the Mirror
How a Story Gets Frozen in Time
“Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you, as a result of what happens to you.” — Dr. Gabor Maté
Through evolutionary forces, we all have inherited a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system that manage our wake and sleep, motivation and rest. The sympathetic nervous system is also what gets activated in times of crises, in what is typically known as the “fight or flight” response, though more recent research has complexified it to be the “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.” This is an important survival mechanism that has maintained the human species.
However, the human body was not evolutionarily designed to endure periods of prolonged crises and trauma, such as what happens during war time. Prolonged activation of the sympathetic nervous system can lead to a freeze state, where the body is unable to process or express the trauma endured, and response with a crisis mechanism even when the immediate threats pass.
Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician and expert on trauma and mental health, emphasizes that trauma doesn’t reside in the event itself, but rather in how the individual experiences and processes it. When people experience overwhelming pain, such as the pain that arises from war and displacement, their bodies and minds may enter a state of freeze. When people don’t have access to the space and resources to process and metabolize this trauma, they don’t have access to release and heal. Rather, they become stuck, with their trauma frozen in time, repeating their story of trauma over and over, as if reenacting war and displacement.
In their article, “learning to mourn is a love practice”, acupuncturist and cultural worker chiara francesca writes, “pain, when unprocessed, festers and seethes, begging to be acknowledged and surfaced…unprocessed mourning can close our hearts to each other, and maybe most importantly, to ourselves.” They go on to emphasize the importance of community and collectivity in building systems that support the processing of trauma. “We need to cultivate collective wisdom for grieving and teach each other tools to feel, to move through, to hold space, to communicate with our bodies, and to listen…Mourning is a collective endeavor…building systems fit for mourning is building systems fit for loving too.”
The key people relevant to the story of CA-45, including Michelle Steel, Jay Chen, Derek Tran, the Vietnamese American refugee community, and many other residents of CA-45, have all experienced the intergenerational trauma of war, loss, and displacement. The community is holding grief. Holding grief requires us to have an ongoing, active relationship with it. Grief requires us to have time, space, and resource to process the things that happened to us and to our communities. When we build a collective identity based on shared trauma but without accessible and meaningful space to process the collective grief, we create a frozen story. Once a story is frozen and fixed, it is applied over and over again to different contexts as-is, without regard to the context.
In the majority of community conversations and ethnographic interviews I conducted with Vietnamese Americans, the story I heard over and over was: We experienced extreme political repression and suffered from poverty and displacement. Communism was the reason this happened to us. We must stay vigilant and discern who is and is not communist. The lens of communism is applied to different contexts over and over, regardless of relevance. The frozen story is that communism is bad, anti-communism is good, and we must stay vigilant in order to know the difference.
Trauma comes from war.
Retraumatization comes from reenactment of war.
“We need to cultivate collective wisdom for grieving and teach each other tools to feel, to move through, to hold space, to communicate with our bodies, and to listen. Mourning is a collective endeavor. Building systems fit for mourning is building systems fit for loving too.” - chiara francesca
Wait, Back Up, What is This Shared Trauma?
As with any story, there are many versions of this story of trauma.
The Second Indochina War, often called the "Vietnam War” in the U.S and the “American War” in Vietnam, was a prolonged armed conflict fought in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1955-1975. Like all wars, it was a devastating and brutal conflict that resulted in millions of deaths and injuries. More than 4 million civilians and 1.2 million combatants died during the war. The war caused extensive emotional trauma for people who lost loved ones, especially given the high civilian death toll. The war also left significant psychological traumas, with survivors having to cope with bombings, violence, and displacement. The trauma was compounded by the fact that many civilians were forced to live in constant fear, hiding from bombs, landmines, and military operations. The U.S. military also used chemical weapons, such as Agent Orange, that caused long-term health problems for millions of Vietnamese people. The chemicals not only harmed those exposed directly but also caused birth defects, cancers, and environmental destruction that still persist to this day.
The war ended in 1975 with the Fall of Saigon, with Vietnam reunified under North Vietnamese rule. An estimated 2 million Vietnamese refugees left their homeland, facing dangerous conditions at sea, becoming known as “boat people,” and formed a large Vietnamese diaspora, especially in Orange County, California. Boat people endured additional trauma on their journeys, losing their friends and family, separated from their communities and ancestral lands, and arriving in new lands with uncertainty and little resources to support them. The experience of displacement is an experience of fundamental rupture in refugees’ lives and meaning systems.
South Vietnam is a country that lasted from 1955-1975. With a lifespan of 20 years, it is now a country that is younger than the people who have fled from it. Most refugees have spent more time as South Vietnamese diaspora than in South Vietnam as a nation state. In his book Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory, Long T. Bui, professor of Global and International Studies at University of California, Irvine, writes about the concept of a “ghost country,” whose stories endure in the memories of refugees. South Vietnam is “a Cold War-constructed nation that only existed for twenty years [and] is being kept alive by its dispersed stateless exiles.” The term "ghost country" evokes the sense of a place that no longer exists, bringing us haunting memories of loss and displacement.
Refugees who fled left their community and ancestral land behind. Post-1975 Vietnam faced immense challenges in rebuilding its community, economy, infrastructure, and social safety. The devastating trauma of war, compounded by separation, disconnection, poverty, repression, and more, mark a significant portion of the identity of Vietnamese people in home country and in the diaspora.
As with any story, there are many versions of this story of trauma.
South Vietnam is a “Cold War-constructed nation that only existed for twenty years [and] is being kept alive by its dispersed stateless exiles.” - Long T. Bui
Derek Tran tells the story by uplifting the fact that his parents fled the “Communist regime" and invested in the “American Dream.”
Image source: Derek Tran for Congress campaign website
Michelle Steel tells the story by focusing on Vietnamese refugees fleeing “oppressive communism” and risking their lives in search of “freedom and a better life.”
Video source: Rep. Michelle Steel Youtube Channel, Recording of House floor speech
Jay Chen tells the story by showcasing similarities between the Vietnamese and Taiwanese diaspora communities, saying both are “victims of communist dictatorships” and refugees came to the U.S. “with the desire for freedom and democracy.”
Image source: Việt Báo report on Jay Chen’s visit, reposted on Jay Chen for Congress campaign website
The Vietnamese Veterans Association, founded in 1979 in California, tells their story about their desire for “the rebirth of a free Viet Nam.” Their association serves as a forum to “support anti-Communist Vietnam’s endeavors to restore basic human rights and dignity to former military and civilian personnel of the Republic of Vietnam.” (South Vietnam).
Image source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library research archives
Richard Nixon, in 1969, framed the story of Vietnam around the concept of “self-determination and freedom and a just peace.”
Image source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library research archives
Pat Buchanan, White House Communications Director in the Ronald Reagan administration, advised Reagan to focus the story on the “tyranny” of the communist government of Vietnam, labeling New Vietnam under North Vietnamese rule as a “militaristic, aggressor nation.”
Image source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library research archives
While these are snapshots of stories told by these individuals and groups, they reflect the collective agreement to use communism as the lens to see this story of war and trauma. They all contribute to the repetition of the frozen story - the frozen story is that communism is bad, anti-communism is good, and we must stay vigilant in order to know the difference.
[See a different version of this story in chapter 3, Behind the Glass, There Are Other Versions of the Story]
It’s About the Feeling. Not the Party.
I interviewed over 60 people to varying depths for this project. I asked approximately half of them to define for me, in their own words, what communism is. I heard repetitions of a similar refrain - the frozen story.
How would you define communism in your own words? Below are a sample of answers that came up over and over again:
“Communism is political repression”
“Communism is lack of freedom of speech. You cannot protest.”
“Communism is why we had to flee. We lost everything”
“We became boat people because of communism.”
“Communism is re-education camps.”
“Under communism, there is no opportunity to advance.”
“We lost a lot of people at sea. Because we were fleeing communism.”
“I have family that died in reeducation camps because of communism.”
Among all the folks I interviewed, only one person, a Vietnamese American journalist living in Orange County, gave a distinctly different answer when asked to define communism:
“Communism did not exist before the emergence of capitalism. Capitalism is an organic growth of society, from Adam Smith’s ideas. But when it got to be very exploitive, workers started to organize and the fight was between free market and socialist ideologies. I think the socialist system is an idealistic fantasy of a more just world, but I don’t think it will be achieved because we humans cannot get rid of greed. Communism is a response to the bad parts of capitalism. People in my community, Vietnamese Americans, often think communism is only about political power and control, because they experienced a lot of repression and violence during the war. The war is often framed as the fight between communists and anti-communists, but it is actually more complicated than that. It is about nationalism, struggle of power between the USSR, US, China, and more.
Communism is a sociopolitical ideology that centers on the belief of common ownership of the means of production and the manner of distribution based on need, rather than based on one’s ability to accumulate capital. In several historical examples of its implementation, governments in power have used repressive tactics, including controlling speech and press, reducing access to education, ordering arrests and incarceration without due process, and forcing dissents into exile or disappearance, to achieve their stated goals. While transition to communism has been the justification to deploy these tactics, communism as an ideology does not, in itself, advocate for political repression.
Yet, for many Vietnamese people during the war, the experience of political repression was in tandem with communist slogans, which helped to cement the most often repeated refrain, the frozen story of trauma: “everything bad that happened to us is because of communism.” Communism was cited as the reason for death, displacement, loss, repression, relocation, exile, and the irreparable rupture of communities and meaning systems.
Upon arrival to the U.S., many Vietnamese refugees felt seen by the anti-communist, pro-military rhetoric championed by the Republican Party throughout the 1970’s-1990’s. Leaving one’s ancestral land and country causes deep trauma and pain, but their flight, along with the challenges and loss they experienced at sea, might feel slightly less heavy if they are welcomed by people who see and validate their suffering and share their anti-communist ideology. Their feelings and experiences were seen and validated, which is a fundamental step in healing traumas.
In October 2024, I spoke with Linh Chương, Policy Chair, Board Co-Secretary, and Southern California Chapter Lead at PIVOT, a progressive Vietnamese American organization. We discussed the experience of Vietnamese refugees and Chuong shared nuanced insights on the common association of Vietnamese American voters with the Republican Party. “We don’t have very accurate historical disaggregated data, but I don’t think it is accurate to portray Vietnamese Americans as Reagan Republicans in terms of sharing Reagan’s interpretation of the law and favoring small government,” Chương reflected, “In fact, a lot of older Vietnamese American voters identify as Independent.” Notably, in both 2020 and 2024 surveys, 42% of Vietnamese Americans identified as Democrat or lean Democrat, compared to just 37% who identified as Republican or lean Republican. In October 2024, 77% of surveyed Vietnamese Americans reported that they would vote for Kamala Harris if the election were held today, compared to only 20% who would vote for Donald Trump, which declined from 38% when the survey was done in April and May 2024.
Chương also pointed me to the results from the 2024 Asian American Voter Survey, which contains disaggregated data by ethnicity. The survey shows that 31% of all Asian Americans surveyed and 25% of all Vietnamese Americans surveyed identified as Independent. Among Vietnamese Americans who identified as Republican, 47% reported that their Party identification is not very strong, while 41% of Vietnamese Americans who identified as Democrat said the same.
Data source: 2024 Asian American Voter Survey conducted by AAPI Data (slides and crosstabs)
“A lot of Asian Americans, including Vietnamese Americans, are not super loyal to either Party,” said Chương, “What we have noticed is that a lot of Vietnamese Americans actually share the same values. Party identification obfuscates that and makes us appear very polarized. But our community is not actually that far apart.”
When Chương and I discussed Vietnamese Americans being seen by anti-communist rhetorics, she shared, “being seen and validated is important. It’s about the feeling. Not the Party. I think healing is not just between Democrats and Republicans, but it is about the deeper rifts in the community that come from trauma, displacement, and forced relocation.”
“Party identification…makes us appear very polarized. But our community is not actually that far apart.” - Linh Chương
The truth is, to varying extents and in different ways, Michelle Steel, Jay Chen, and Derek Tran all allowed Vietnamese Americans to feel seen, addressing the same underlying desire to give voice to their suffering and trauma, even though Steel chose to use extremely racist and deceptive tactics that caused great harm to the community.
On October 20, 2024, I conducted field research at a Michelle Steel rally and a Derek Tran rally. They were on opposite and opposing sides of a busy intersection in Orange County, marked by Bolsa Avenue and Saigon Street and more visibly, by the famous Asian Garden Mall. What I immediately noticed was that both sides were prominently flying the U.S. American flag and the yellow South Vietnam flag as well as claiming their anti-communist ideologies. Without explicit candidate signs, it was difficult to immediately tell which side someone was on. Notably, on the Steel side, there were numerous Trump and Vance flags and signs, whereas Harris and Walz campaign materials were not at all prominent on the Tran side.
Rally photos and video taken by author
Through conversations with rally attendees, I heard three dominant narratives emerge, all bound by their shared anti-communist ideology. Below are composite quotes that I grouped together based on three main positions on the candidates:
Michelle Steel supporter: “Steel is fighting against communism. She really understands what we suffered during the war and she is fighting for us. Steel will fight to protect our freedom of speech that we did not have during the war. She is fighting authoritarianism and repression, and we escaped from that and we have to make our sacrifices worth it.” [Author’s editorial note: Steel portrays herself as anti-communism because she is anti-authoritarianism, yet she aligns herself with the modern day Republican Party and the Trump administration, the most authoritarian regime in modern U.S. history].
Michelle Steel opposer: “Steel is full of lies. She is not fighting the real threat of communism but is only using the word communism to stoke fear in our community. Her actions are disrespectful to us, people who actually fought communism. She has called Derek Tran a communist, and it is such a deep insult to call us boat people communists. She does not understand us at all and consistently lies.”
Derek Tran supporter: “Derek Tran’s father came as a boat refugee just like us. His family actually fought communism and had to escape. Tran is a military veteran and knows what it’s like to fight for our freedom. He is a son of Vietnam and as a Vietnamese person, he should be the one to represent Little Saigon.”
These narratives, though supporting different candidates and parties, all speak to the underlying story of trauma. When we analyze the values, the community appears to be aligned in their political ideologies even when their candidate and Party choices drastically differ.
Chapter 2
Refracted Light is Distorted Light
On Mis- and Disinformation
The usage of the terms misinformation and disinformation has surged in the past decade. Yet, in most dominant narratives, the terms are typically used to simply describe the incorrect nature of information, instead of contextualizing the spread of information in an ecosystem of power. In a 2022 landscape report, the Asian American Disinformation Table asserted “disinformation is not just about lies, it is about power…Disinformation exposes frictions, fault lines, and tensions within and across our various diasporic communities.” In order to do serious work combatting mis- and disinformation, “we must connect the process of monitoring Asian American disinformation to power building and healing justice to redress harms and return trust, consensus, and accountability to our communities.”
Below are quoted texts from the landscape report that provide a power analysis of mis- and disinformation, followed by select pages from the original report. [Disclosure: I am currently a member of the Xīn Shēng Project, an organization serving as a co-chair of the Asian American Disinformation Table, and I am also a member of the Table. I was not a member of the Table in 2022 when the referenced landscape report was written and did not contribute to its content.]
Misinformation: Misleading, incorrect, or false information; could be caused by human error, faulty fact-checking. Not intended to deceive.
Disinformation: Misleading, incorrect, or false information presented with the intent to mislead an audience.
The problem of mis- and disinformation in Asian American communities is not just a problem of what constitutes ‘true’ or ‘false’ information, but rather how we understand misleading, manipulative, and deceptive information practices as facilitating political, social, cultural, economic, and material harms in our communities.
To research and legislate on mis- and disinformation as a race-neutral phenomenon is not only misguided, but does a disservice to solution-oriented efforts because it ignores the complex and often emblematic issues that people of color experience online. These approaches go far beyond differences in platform moderation by language. Cultural competency and a deep contextual understanding of racialized disinformation is necessary if we are to adequately address the myriad of issues that contribute to the spread of harmful information.
Racialized disinformation perpetuates and gives rise to inequalities, seeks to consolidate power among ruling classes, and sustains white supremacy. Communities of color globally face the brunt of the persecution and violence underpinned by mis- and disinformation on platforms that continue to reward and benefit monetarily from incendiary content. [emphasis added by author]
Organizing and conducting research on the spread and impact of disinformation within our communities requires a careful and thoughtful application of our political lines and commitments—discerning in context what constitutes harm is not and can not be politically neutral. This means that mapping disinformation in our communities entails an active commitment to seeking the end of intersecting structural oppressions, including white supremacy, caste oppression, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, sexism, homophobtransphobia, ableism, and misogyny. This political landscape requires attention to the specific contexts in which this information circulates, including geopolitical histories; transnational news, information, and social networks; political and economic interests of particular actors; and more.
Disinformation is explicitly designed to expose the frictions, fault lines, and tensions within and across our various diasporic communities while also working to deplatform us from democracy and create divisions with other communities of color. That is why we must connect the process of monitoring Asian American disinformation to power building to return trust, consensus, and accountability to our community narratives. This also cannot be done without acknowledging the tremendous harms and trauma our communities have endured in this time of unabated racialized disinformation and that healing justice must be at the core of all of our strategies. [emphasis added by author]
Refracted Narratives and Identities:
Derek Tran’s Historic Victory in CA-45
Anti-communist propaganda and disinformation were heavily used to manipulate public opinion during the Cold War. The U.S. government would often label any kind of progressive or leftist movements as "communist" in order to discredit them. - Naomi Klein
In her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein writes about the relationship between corporate power and capitalism and how people with access to power often weaponize disinformation to maintain and increase their control. In her larger body of work, Klein also has written and spoken extensively about the ways in which political systems and powers use disinformation to manipulate public perceptions.
Klein has discussed how anti-communist propaganda and disinformation were heavily used to manipulate public opinion during the Cold War. The U.S. government would often label any kind of progressive or leftist movements as "communist" in order to discredit them. Dominant narratives in the U.S. often falsely equate anti-communism with anti-authoritarianism, and uses anti-communism as a guise to justify what are actually authoritarian policies, including political repression and forced neoliberal economic reforms.
Often carrying anti-communist loyalties, Vietnamese refugees arrived in the U.S. with the daunting task of not only rebuilding homes and communities, but also rebuilding narratives and identities. Many of them and their descendants now make up the electorate in CA-45.
In a key election year such as 2024, in a political landscape that is littered with mis- and disinformation about communism, in order to win over the CA-45 electorate, Derek Tran needed to navigate competing forces, thread the needle, and emerge with a clear narrative. Tran and his team ran a strategic campaign that allowed him to do just that.
Acknowledging home country history: A frozen story is one that gets repeated over and over and applied in a multitude of contexts. The frozen story here uses communism as the lens to see the Vietnamese story of war and trauma. This frozen story perfectly fits with the refracted image of Vietnamese refugees that the U.S. empire sees. In fact, anti-communist sentiments were widely used after the Fall of Saigon to justify accepting Vietnamese refugees.
Throughout his campaign, Derek Tran leaned into his and his family’s anti-communist ideologies. He often starts his story by acknowledging and giving gratitude to his parents who fled from communism in Vietnam. In many of my interviews with Vietnamese Americans in CA-45, I often heard folks talk about how Tran’s father fled as a boat refugee with his first wife and their children, but they lost their lives at sea, and Tran’s father was the only one who survived. He later remarried to Tran’s mother and they gave birth to Derek. Folks frequently cited this story as an example of the tremendous sacrifice and loss the Tran family experienced in their escape from communism.
In a campaign video on his Youtube channel Derek Tran for Congress, Tran offered narration to commemorate and grieve the Fall of Saigon. He highlights the brutality of the Communist Regime in Vietnam and frames fleeing as a search for freedom and democracy.
“Black April commemorates April 30, 1975, the Fall of Saigon to the Communist Regime, which forced the mass Exodus of millions of Vietnamese. Black April is significant because it's the darkest day in the history of Vietnam. Millions had to flee their homes, their country to escape the brutal Communist Regime. Over 500,000 perished at sea. Black April honors our past and preserves the memories of those that we've lost. As a Vietnamese American born in the United States, Black April is a time to recognize and reflect on the sacrifice and trauma my parents, and so many other refugees, had to endure, the devastation millions felt, the sacrifice of 58,000 American service members and over 260,000 former Vietnam Republic service members. Because 50 years later, Black April is a time to honor and pay tribute to those who served and sacrificed, to remember those who perished at sea in search of freedom and democracy. It serves as a reminder for the ongoing fight for justice, human rights, and democracy. What I see during Black April is the resilience of the Vietnamese Community, how the devastation of losing our country did not stop us from contributing and serving today. We want the world to never forget the atrocities committed and the sacrifices made. We want April to be a time when we honor the past and build towards the future. We will not let our past be rewritten or our future be defined.”
Video source: Derek Tran for Congress Youtube Channel
Claiming stake in the U.S.: To claim a stake in a place like the U.S. empire, it requires immigrants and refugees to prove their allegiance. The scope and significance of the ideologies fought during the Cold War left a big impact on U.S. Americans’ self-narrative. “Anti-communist” essentially became synonymous with “pro-America.” This is an advantage that helps Vietnamese refugees with anti-communist ideologies to claim a stake in this country.
Yet, this process must be viewed in the context of the larger anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and racist forces that shape the U.S. Oftentimes, nonwhite Americans, especially Asian Americans, have their belonging and allegiance questioned as a form of racialization. In this house of mirrors, Vietnamese Americans are not only perceiving to understand their new lands, they are also being perceived through refracted lenses shaped by the country’s larger history.
A natural reaction to having one’s allegiance questioned is to double down and show how much you love and appreciate this country. Therefore, a display of anti-communist ideologies is also a display of pro-America commitments. Derek Tran did not shy away from using this as a campaign strategy. In many interviews and speeches, Tran talked about his military service as evidence of his commitment to this country. In an interview with local channel Fox 11 Los Angeles, Tran shared his story. “My parents were refugees who came here from Vietnam…Growing up, I just always had this deep appreciation for this country. At age 18, I enlisted in the military - the army reserves - to give back to my country…With this run, it really is my way to continue to give back to my country and community.”
Video source: Fox 11 Los Angeles YouTube Channel
Dominant narratives in the U.S. on diplomatic relations with China are always fraught with tensions and conflicts. China is often framed as one of the biggest threats to the U.S. Furthermore, China is also connected to communist ideologies from the Cold War, and being anti-China is also falsely equated with being pro-America. This conflation has only been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Being anti-China both aligns with and amplifies sinophobic sentiments.
Michelle Steel and to a lesser extent, Derek Tran, both took advantage of harmful sinophobic sentiments. In an ad titled Michelle Steel’s Communist Business Dealings, Tran accused Steel of cooperating with China and selling out America.
Though Steel’s sinophobic ads were much more racist, harmful, and inaccurate, both of them nonetheless embraced a fundamentally racist premise that equate anti-China with pro-America. These tactics, though harmful to the larger Asian American community, still serve to help immigrants and refugees claim a stake in this country.
Nuanced Understanding of Identity Politics: The concept of Asian America is a constructed identity intended to consolidate and amplify the sociopolitical power of previously separated ethnic Asian communities in the U.S. Since its inception in 1968, the definition and boundaries of the community has shifted as much as the community itself. Even though Michelle Steel, Jay Chen, and Derek Tran all fit within the commonly accepted definition of Asian America, they are not all perceived as community members by the Asian American electorate. Specifically, among many Vietnamese American voters that I interviewed, they all reported Derek Tran as the only candidate who is truly from their community. Many related to his story of being the child of boat refugees and think of him as a son of Vietnam.
When campaigning for Derek Tran in October 2024, Bill Clinton proclaimed at the podium “it’s inexplicable why the congressional district with the largest number of Vietnamese Americans in the country has never had a Vietnamese representative.” Applause and cheers of resonance erupted in the audience. Many older Vietnamese American voters I interviewed emotionally shared that they believe Derek Tran is their only chance of electing a Vietnamese representative to the U.S. House. Folks were invested in the possibility that they would have their own Vietnamese representative for Little Saigon.
Knowing this ethnic nuance and the stakes in this election, Michelle Steel also tried to address identity politics. In an October interview with VietFace TV, Michelle Steel stated “my opponent might have a Vietnamese name, but I understand the Vietnamese community.” She went on to claim that she is “more Vietnamese than [her] opponent.” This comment backfired and angered many in the Vietnamese American community, inspiring many to show up to protests and to polling places.
While uplifting his Vietnamese heritage and connecting to his electorate in Little Saigon, Tran also threaded the needle in relating the needs of the Vietnamese American community to all people in CA-45 and in the country. When asked about what Asian American voters in CA-45 would want, Tran said “At the end of the day, just like any other voters, they want a representative that’s going to really work for them: bring back opportunities and funding for them. That’s not what we are seeing with Michelle Steel…They want a representative who doesn’t have corruption tied to them, like Michelle Steel. They want someone that’s really going to be there for them, that’s really going to show up.”
“We Saved You People” - A Glimpse into White U.S. Veterans’ Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans
The year 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. The lives of so many Vietnamese people have changed significantly in these 50 years. In these 50 years, the makeup of the Orange County has also shifted significantly.
On March 13, 2024, I attended a city council meeting in Westminster in Orange County. It gave me a glimpse into the complexity of refracted narratives and identities in this house of mirrors. During the Cold War, The Republic of Vietnam, aka South Vietnam, and the United States were ostensibly on the same side fighting against communism. Yet, the sense of solidarity and community among them is tenuous at best. It is colored by larger forces including differences in race, culture, and citizenship status as well as the historical context of the U.S. reactions to and protests against the war in Vietnam.
On the Westminster City Council, there are five elected members, including one mayor and four council members each representing one district. Currently, the council member for district 2, Carlos Manzo, also serves as the vice mayor. With the exception of Manzo, the remaining four members of the city council are all Vietnamese Americans.
Photos taken by author in Westminster, CA. Located on All American Way, the Westminster City Council hosted a meeting on March 13, 2024, which the author attended with Orange County political commentator and organizer Khải Dao.
In early March 2024, council member Amy Phan West proposed a resolution that was passed by the city council to host a joint recognition and observance ceremony for U.S. American and South Vietnamese veterans of war on March 29, the nationally designated Vietnam War Veterans Day. This drew fury from U.S. American veterans who wanted their own special ceremony just for them. On March 13, 2024, these veterans showed up in numbers to make public comments opposing this resolution. There were approximately 12 speakers and each speaker was given up to three minutes, resulting in more than 40 minutes of an all white group of U.S. Veterans and family members raising their voices and, at times, shouting at an 80% Vietnamese American city council. The veterans repeated, over and over, their frozen story about the war. Some of the most common refrains include:
How dare you forget your own history? We went there and saved you people. This is how you honor us?! By taking away our one day of recognition?
When we vets came home, we were met with anti-war protestors. We literally had garbage thrown in our faces. We never got the recognition we deserved. And now you are taking away the one day we have.
Many of you cowardly blame America for the fall of your own country, but it would’ve happened a lot sooner if we weren’t there.
I worked on Operation Baby Lift. I probably airlifted some of your parents out of Vietnam and this is how you pay us back?!
You Vietnamese people are the most successful minorities in America. You have assimilated so well. So you should celebrate us, because we helped to make this possible.
Amy Phan West, you are a fake patriot. You have “land of the free because of the brave” at least 25 times on your website yet you don’t act based on these values.
My father was a vet and how dare you disgrace his memory and legacy by taking away a dedicated day of celebration.
Due to this overwhelming pressure, the city council eventually rescinded their previous resolution and decided to dedicate March 29 just to U.S. American veterans.
The remarks at the city council meeting made by the white U.S. veterans were not only extremely racist and harmful, they also show us the fact that these veterans never saw their Vietnamese allies as members of their community. Tenuous alliances during war time stopped at racial difference, and even now that they occupy the same community space in Orange County, the white veterans still see Vietnamese Americans as the racialized “Other,” using phrases such as “you people” that mark their deep attitudes about who belongs in these communities. These veterans still feel bitter about the anti-war protests from the 1960’s and are upset about their “unrecognized” services. They felt themselves deserving of, and even entitled to, the forever, unquestioned gratitude from Vietnamese Americans. In the frozen story of the white veterans, they portray themselves as the unsung heroes who helped to save the Vietnamese people, while ignoring the decades of trauma and destruction the war brought to Vietnam.
Chapter 3
In Case of Emergency, Break Glass
Our Current State of Emergency
The evening of November 5, 2024 remains a vivid one in my mind’s eye. I was fortunate enough to spend the evening outdoors among friends and community, over a bonfire and an abundance of good food. Watching the evolution of the fire throughout the night seemed like a fitting analogy with the election results. Feeling mostly numb, I arrived home in the wee hours of the morning, and fired off this text to several of my friends:
I think my feelings are going to change so much and so frequently in the next few days so I want to document with y'all a particular feeling I’m having right now, even if it doesn’t come back for a while.
Right now, I truly believe that we have the capacity to build up our organizing power. And this might be the last big push from the empire right before its downfall, and the organizing conditions are ripe for lasting, revolutionary change.
Right now, I really believe this. In the darker days ahead, when we lose hope, let's remind each other of this moment 😊
It felt like we entered a state of emergency on November 5, 2024, and again on January 20, 2025. But we also know that we have been in a state of emergency for a long time. “Protracted state of emergency” sounds like an oxymoron, but it is a description of the reality of living in empire at this time. It is the reality that activates our sympathetic nervous system. It is the reality that is prone to producing frozen stories.
In late November 2024, with the support of my UCLA activist-in-residence program, I got to attend the Facing Race conference, a large racial justice convening hosted by Race Forward. Just a couple of weeks after the election, the air at the convening was tense.
For the keynote address, Alicia Garza, political strategist, organizer, and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, was in conversation with Joy-Ann Reid, MSNBC political analyst and host of “The ReidOut.” Together, they appropriately sounded the alarm about the state of emergency that has arrived and is arriving. “This time is absolutely not like in 2016,” Reid warned about the 2025 presidency, “and if anyone tells you that, they are distracting you from the work that needs to be done.” This time, they said, the executive branch will be managed by people committed to destroying departments instead of run them. This time, they are coming for retribution, with a Republican party behind them that they have completely obliterated and redefined.
“The truth is, blue states are all one election away from becoming red states,” said Reid. The best thing for us to do is to be as prepared as possible, to fight where we are, because the fight is coming for us. “We must also remember that people have fought before and won,” said Garza, grounding us in the power of our collective ancestors. Reid added, “we have gone through the worst and we survived. Our indigenous siblings survived genocide. America enslaved Chinese people to build the railroads and they survived. We have survived and we will continue to survive.”
Throughout the convening, I held a big set of seemingly conflicting feelings that existed all at once. I felt dread, anger, sadness, and at times, defeat. I also felt renewal, nourishment, joy, and the possibility for radical transformation for our world. I constantly refreshed my browser page set to the Steel vs. Tran election results and watched Tran’s numbers creep up as more ballots were counted. I held my breath when they were tied. I let out a careful exhale when Tran surpassed Steel. Tran’s lead would hold, until November 27, 2024, when his victory became official.
Of course, I am under no illusion that Tran’s victory would save us from this state of emergency. But his victory affirmed and reaffirmed for me that all of this matters: every single vote matters, every action we take to care for ourselves and our community matters, and every ounce of effort we gather to contribute to the collectivity matters.
We break the glass to get access to more tools to help us manage the emergency - the protracted emergency that will take all of us to get through, together.
Behind the Glass,
There Are Other Versions of the Story
Under the guise of the Cold War, under the false banner of freedom and democracy, the United States had an agenda of maintaining and expanding control over political and economic systems worldwide. The U.S. sought to solidify its imperial powers and suppress any challenges to its position in the global hegemony.
Glass, especially the one found in a house of mirrors, serves to distort. Through refraction, they present a specific set of images and narratives. Mirrors serve as lenses, offering us reflection through a particular framework. When we shift the frame, we shift the story. Behind the glass, we can find other versions of the story.
The Cold War is often framed as an ideological battle between communism and capitalism, but when we apply the lens of U.S. imperialism, the mirror reveals to us that the struggle was also about preserving and expanding the U.S. global empire. Under the guise of the Cold War, under the false banner of freedom and democracy, the United States had an agenda of maintaining and expanding control over political and economic systems worldwide. The U.S. sought to solidify its imperial powers and suppress any challenges to its position in the global hegemony. Through both direct military action and covert operations, the United States intervened in sovereign governments and often supported authoritarian regimes, resulting in the suffering of millions of people and fundamentally changed the trajectory of geopolitics of the 20th and 21st centuries. Holding up a mirror to U.S. history, here are a few imperialistic actions that we see in the reflection:
After World War II, the United States emerged as the world's dominant economic and military power, with its global influence expanding significantly. The U.S. saw the Soviet Union as its primary rival, but the U.S. also had to confront growing movements for national liberation and anti-colonial struggles in former colonies, many of which were inspired by socialist and communist ideologies. This posed a direct threat to U.S. imperial interests, which included securing access to global markets and maintaining control over resources. In 1947, the U.S. adopted the Truman Doctrine, committing itself to an anti-communist ideology, justifying American intervention and imperial expansion under the guise of protecting democracy.
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the U.S. quickly moved to intervene in regions where left-wing movements or socialist governments gained power. In Greece and Turkey, the U.S. provided military and financial support to fight communist insurgencies, ensuring that these nations remained under capitalist, pro-U.S. governments.
In the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. participated in a brutal, destructive conflict that entrenched the division of the peninsula to this day and cemented long-term U.S. military presence in East Asia. In Iran, the CIA orchestrated a coup to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister, who had nationalized Iran's oil industry to U.S.’s dismay, and replaced him with the Shah, a pro-America autocrat.
Closer to home in Latin America, the U.S. drastically expanded its imperial powers through violence and repression. By the 1950’s, many Latin American countries had already suffered tremendously under colonialism and U.S. economic control, which made them fertile grounds for movements that sought social justice, economic equality, and independence from U.S. intervention. This drew an even more repressive response from the U.S. In Guatemala, the U.S. backed a military coup to overthrow President Árbenz, whose land reform policies were seen as a threat to U.S. corporate interests, particularly the United Fruit Company. In Chile, the U.S. government supported a coup that overthrew President Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist president, after he initiated land reforms and nationalized industries. Allende’s replacement, Augusto Pinochet, led a brutal military dictatorship that killed and disappeared many, while aligning his government with U.S. interests. In Nicaragua, the U.S. backed the Contras, a paramilitary group fighting against the Sandinista government. The Sandinistas pursued land reforms and social policies aimed at correcting social inequality, which were seen as threats to U.S. influence. The United States was on the wrong side of history in so many cases that in 1997, due to intense pressure from and lawsuits filed by advocacy organizations, Congress passed the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) to retroactively grant asylum to people who had to flee from brutal regimes backed by the U.S. government. Despite its geographically limited name, NACARA actually covered citizens from Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia..
The United States was on the wrong side of history in so many cases that in 1997, due to intense pressure from advocacy organizations, Congress passed the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) to retroactively grant asylum to people who had to flee from brutal regimes backed by the U.S. government, covering citizens from many Central American and the former Soviet Bloc nations.
Perhaps one of the most appalling and hypocritical aspects of U.S. imperialism in the Cold War was its willingness, and in many cases, commitment, to supporting brutally oppressive authoritarian regimes in the name of fighting communism, which the U.S. labels as “authoritarian.” The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Shah of Iran, as well as monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, all of which were repressive toward local social movements, but the interest of U.S. control of oil reserves was prioritized. In Africa, the U.S. supported military dictatorships in places like Uganda and Ethiopia, under the false flag of freedom and democracy. The U.S. knew these dictatorships were blatantly violating human rights and oppressing popular movements for freedom and democracy.
With this framing, our new mirrors help us to see under new light what happened in Vietnam. Vietnam was another U.S. imperial project, among many. And like all imperialist projects, it is the community that ends up carrying decades of pain, suffering, and trauma that forever shapes their stories and identities.
Perhaps one of the most appalling and hypocritical aspects of U.S. imperialism in the Cold War was its willingness, and in many cases, commitment, to supporting brutally oppressive authoritarian regimes in the name of fighting communism, which the U.S. labels as “authoritarian.”
The Only Way Out is Through
The forces of imperialism and capitalism, the forces that separate us from each other and from ourselves are the forces that got us here, to this protracted state of emergency. The seeds of these forces were planted long ago and many of us living today are not directly responsible. Yet, those of us who are conscious are still taking responsibility. We claim responsibility for each other, because that is what it means to be alive.
The only way out is through - going through means taking responsibility. Our movement ancestor Grace Lee Boggs taught us, “you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”
The only way out is through. The only way through is together.
“You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.” - Grace Lee Boggs
The World Keeps Ending,
and the World Goes On
By Franny Choi
Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of the bombed mosque. There was the apocalypse of the taxi driver warped by flame. There was the apocalypse of the leaving, and the having left—of my mother unsticking herself from her mother’s grave as the plane barreled down the runway. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of planes. There was the apocalypse of pipelines legislating their way through sacred water, and the apocalypse of the dogs. Before which was the apocalypse of the dogs and the hoses. Before which, the apocalypse of dogs and slave catchers whose faces glowed by lantern-light. Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses. Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in the textbooks’ selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and the jars of scalps; there was the bedlam of the cannery; the radioactive rain; the chairless martyr demanding a name. I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.