Sony Thăng

They said no one could stand against empire. But Vietnam did. And we didn’t fight with words alone. We fought with steel in our spine and fire in our lungs. We fought barefoot in the mud, with rusted rifles, against superpowers who thought the world was theirs to rule. We made them bleed until they crawled back across oceans—beaten, broken, and no longer so sure of themselves. And we built what they said could never rise—a nation that never forgot the cost of freedom. Empire is not eternal. Resistance is.

The imperial mind cannot understand anti-American hatred because it cannot process consequences. It can understand "disinformation." It can understand "extremism." It can understand "authoritarian manipulation." It can understand anything except the simplest truth on earth: If you bomb people, they will hate you. Not because they are irrational. Not because they envy your freedom. Not because some foreign ideology hypnotized them. Because you bombed them. And empire finds that explanation intolerable, because it strips away the fantasy that America is hated for its "virtues." No. It is hated for its behavior. And that is a much harder thing for a narcissistic civilization to admit.

Impunity does not only corrupt the state that holds it. It corrupts the language used to describe the state. After enough impunity, "self-defense" can mean anything. After enough impunity, a military offensive that kills tens of thousands of civilians can be described as "the most moral army in the world" operating with "unprecedented care." After enough impunity, starving a civilian population can be described as a "security measure." After enough impunity, destroying every university in a territory can be called a "response to military threat." After enough impunity, the language bends so far that it no longer connects to the reality it is supposed to describe. And then the debate is no longer about what happened. The debate is about what words mean. And the side with the most powerful media ecosystem, the most diplomatic allies, the most institutional presence in the bodies that define international norms, that side wins the word debate. While losing, in the real world, every argument that depends on anyone looking directly at what is happening.

There are men alive right now who have never been charged with anything. Who give commencement speeches. Who sit on hospital boards. Who are photographed at charity galas in cities where the poor sleep in doorways two blocks from the venue. Their names appear in the right places. Their calls are returned. Their crimes are managed by lawyers whose fees alone could feed a village for a year. And somewhere, a nineteen-year-old who threw a stone at an armored vehicle is in a cell with no lawyer and a file that says "terrorist." The difference between those two men is not what they did. It is who they did it to and how much money stood between them and consequences.

"The world is bad and we're not going to change it." This sentence has never been said by anyone who changed anything. Not once. Every person who ever moved the world in any direction started from the opposite sentence, said it out loud, and got called naive by someone more comfortable. Comfortable was always the other side of the argument. Comfortable has never been right.

Let's be precise about what propaganda can and cannot do. Propaganda can shape the information environment. It can make certain questions unsayable and certain assumptions invisible. It can manufacture genuine belief in false things. It can make violence look like protection and extraction look like generosity. It can do all of this and do it effectively across generations. What propaganda cannot do is remove the capacity for doubt. Every society under heavy propaganda produces dissidents. People who noticed the gap between the official story and what they could see with their own eyes. Who asked the question that wasn't supposed to be asked. Who followed the evidence past the point where comfort stopped. These people existed in Nazi Germany. They existed in apartheid South Africa. They existed in the antebellum American South. They exist in every heavily propagandized society in history. They were a minority. But they existed. Which means the propaganda did not make critical thought impossible. It made it costly. There is a difference between impossible and costly. The difference is called courage. And a framework that erases that difference, that says "propagandized population, therefore no accountability, therefore no courage required," is a framework that has decided in advance that courage will not be asked of anyone. That is a very gentle framework. It is also a framework in which nothing ever changes.

"Conquered, not stolen." This distinction. This very important distinction. Because if it was conquered, if there was resistance, if there was a fight, if the losers had their moment, then it was fair. It was a competition. The best team won. This is the logic of the person who breaks into your house, and when you pick up a kitchen knife to defend yourself, says: "See? You resisted. You accepted the terms of contest. I won the contest. This is my house now." The resistance of the colonized does not retroactively legitimize the colonization. The fact that indigenous peoples fought back does not convert their dispossession into a sporting result. The fact that Vietnam resisted does not mean America had a legitimate claim to determine its political future. Resistance is not consent to the terms of the contest. Resistance is the refusal of those terms. The person who converts resistance into consent is not making a legal argument. They are revealing that they believe superior violence is self-justifying. Which is true as a description of how power often works. It is not a moral philosophy. It is the confession that they don't have one.

They will tell you the people resisting are being manipulated. By Russia. By Iran. By China. By radical clerics. By socialist ideology. By algorithms. By "misinformation." The one explanation that is never on the list: By memory. The memory of what happened to their parents. The memory of what happened to their country. The memory of which foreign power backed which dictator. The memory of which sanctions killed which children. The memory of which promises were made and which helicopters left the rooftop. Memory is not propaganda. Memory is the most anti-imperial force that exists. Which is why the empire works so hard to replace other people's memories with its own version of events. And why it calls the people who refuse to accept the replacement "radicalized."

The empire is always "responding." To terror. To aggression. To threats. To the destabilising actions of "bad actors." Always responding. It is never the first cause. It is never the thing that produced the condition that produced the event it is now responding to. The invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11. The sanctions on Iran are a response to the nuclear program. The nuclear program is not a response to the U.S. overthrowing Iran's elected government in 1953. The coups in Latin America were responses to "communist infiltration." The "communist infiltration" was not a response to decades of U.S.-backed oligarchy and resource extraction. The story always begins at the moment of American action. Everything before that is not history. It is background noise. It is the irrelevant prehistory that the fanatics use as an excuse.

Here is what the main-character syndrome cannot process, the thing that produces genuine short-circuit confusion in the imperial mind: The possibility that people resisting American power are not reacting to America at all. That they have their own histories that predate America's arrival. Their own political traditions. Their own revolutionary inheritances. Their own concepts of dignity and sovereignty and what a person is owed by the society they live in. That Hồ Chí Minh had read the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and found them genuinely inspiring, and then watched the countries that wrote those documents support French colonialism in Vietnam and concluded that the documents meant something the authors never intended to share. That is not anti-Americanism. That is a political analysis more sophisticated than most American politicians have ever applied to their own country. That is a person holding America to its stated values more rigorously than America has ever held itself. The main character cannot process this. Because it would mean the people resisting are not reacting to the main character's greatness or the main character's failures. It would mean they are agents of their own story. It would mean the main character is not, in fact, the main character of their story. Has never been. Was always a secondary figure. An obstacle. A foreign power that arrived, caused damage, and eventually left. A plot device in someone else's narrative. That is the sentence the main-character syndrome exists to prevent. Not because it is false. Because it is true. And the empire has never found a weapon effective against that particular truth.

There is a concept in psychology called the fundamental attribution error. It is the human tendency to explain other people's behavior through internal, personal characteristics: he did that because he's aggressive, irrational, unstable. But you explain your own behavior through external, situational factors: I did that because I was provoked, because the circumstances required it, because I had no choice. Empire runs the fundamental attribution error as foreign policy. The enemy resists because he is "fanatical." Because he is "indoctrinated." Because his culture produces "violence." Because his religion is "extreme." Because his political tradition is "authoritarian." Because something in him, internal and prior to any encounter with us, generates this behavior. We intervene because we were "provoked." Because the situation "required it." Because our security was "threatened." Because we had "no choice." Because we "tried everything else first." Same behaviour: violence. Attributed in opposite directions depending on who is committing it. This is not a coincidence. This is the cognitive architecture of every dominant power in human history. What makes the American version distinctive is the sincerity. Previous empires knew they were empires. They had kings who said the quiet part aloud. The American empire genuinely believes it is not an empire. Which means the fundamental attribution error is not calculated propaganda. It is a real perception. And that genuine sincerity, that complete, unironic, well-funded bewilderment at the hatred of people who have been bombed, is the most dangerous form of it. Because you can negotiate with a cynic. You cannot reason with a true believer who cannot see the bars.

The word they always reach for is "provocation." When North Korea tests a missile, that is a provocation. When Iran enriches uranium, that is a provocation. When Venezuela nationalizes its oil, that is a provocation. When Cuba maintains its political system for more than six decades, that somehow, still, is a provocation. The word "provocation" implies that there is a "neutral baseline" that is being disturbed. What is the neutral baseline? American military bases in 80 countries. The largest naval force in history patrolling every ocean. The dollar as global reserve currency enforced by financial architecture that extracts value from the periphery to the center. The IMF and World Bank imposing structural adjustment programs that have, for more than forty years of documented evidence, consistently transferred wealth from poor countries to rich ones. That is the baseline. A country asserting its sovereignty within that baseline is called a "provocation." The baseline itself is never called a provocation. Because the main character does not provoke. The main character simply exists. And the people who respond to the main character's existence are, by definition, the ones causing the problem.

They called the Vietnamese resistance fanatical. They called the Iraqi resistance fanatical. They called the Afghan resistance fanatical. They called the Iranian revolutionaries fanatical. They called the Palestinian resistance fanatical. They have called every organized resistance to American military and political power, in every country, across eight decades, fanatical. At what point does a pattern this consistent stop being a description of the people being labeled and start being a description of the labeler? Fanaticism means: belief so extreme it has disconnected from rational motivation. But the rational motivation is always there. It is always visible. It is always documented. It is: you are here, in my country, with guns. I want you to leave. That is not fanaticism. That is the most basic political logic in human history. The word "fanaticism" is what power reaches for when it refuses to follow that logic to its obvious source. Which is: the guns. Which is: the presence. Which is: the empire itself.

Listen. If you wanted to know what was happening in France, you'd read French news? Probably? Right? Well, if you want to know what's happening in China you MUST read Chinese news. The Economist, WSJ, NYT, FA, Bloomberg, the BBC, CNN, and FOX write article after article about China, which are laughable garbage. I live in China and its distressing how plain-wrong they are on just about EVERYTHING they publish. Instead of informing, they are misinforming. We shouldn't leave understanding the most important rising power in the world to people who only have half a clue. Therefore, if you want to understand China, you need to read CHINESE news. It's not that hard to understand. Here are some sites you should check in on to see what's true, and what's not: globaltimes.cn radio.cgtn.com cgtn.com chinadaily.com.cn People who live, full-time, in China, who are on X, who know what they are talking about include, but are not limited to: @XH_Lee23 @SpoxCHN_MaoNing @zhang_heqing @AndyBxxx @BenjaminNorton @DanielDumbrill @dominictsz @Jingjing_Li @commiepommie @BarrettYouTube @96Stats @Jerry_grey2002 @XueJia24682 @AngelicaOung @ShangguanJiewen

Every generation of Palestinians has been offered the same choice presented as a new "peace process." Accept less than the last offer. Sign a document legitimizing what was taken. Call it a "state" when it has no army, no contiguous territory, no control of its borders, no sovereignty over its airspace, no capital in the city that was promised. Call it "peace" when the settlements continue to expand during the negotiation. Call it a "partner" when that partner is chosen by the occupying power based on their willingness to police their own people on the occupier's behalf. And when the answer is no, when the people being asked to sign away the remainder of what was taken from them say no, the world nods gravely and says: They are "not ready for peace." They have never been offered peace. They have been offered the administrative language of peace wrapped around the continuing material reality of dispossession. The difference between those two things is not subtle. It is the difference between a door and a painting of a door. You can talk about a painting of a door for decades. You cannot walk through it.

They don't ask for context when Americans die. On September 11, 2001, nobody on American television said: "Before we process this, can we discuss U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since 1953? Can we talk about the support for the Mujahideen? Can we contextualize the sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children in the 1990s? Can we ask whether American actions created the conditions?" Nobody said that. It would have been considered monstrous to say that. The dead deserved mourning, immediate and unconditional. But when you show them the dead on the other side, suddenly context is everything. Suddenly you need to condemn the right people first. Suddenly grief requires paperwork. The rule is not "context matters." The rule is "context matters for their dead." Yours just need to have filled out the form correctly before they were allowed to bleed.

They talk about corruption like it arrives from outside. Like it floats in on a boat from somewhere "less civilized." Like it is a pathogen that healthy Western institutions catch from contact with the developing world. But follow the money. The hedge fund manager who crashed the housing market in 2008 and received a bailout is not corrupt in the way a Nigerian customs official is corrupt. He is too big to be corrupt. His corruption has been institutionalized, legalized, given a office in lower Manhattan and a speaking fee and a podcast. The revolving door between the Pentagon and defense contractors is not corruption. It is a career path. The pharmaceutical company that buys the patent for a drug it did not develop and raises the price four thousand percent is not corrupt. It is "maximizing shareholder value." The corruption of the periphery looks like a brown envelope passed under a table. The corruption of the center looks like a lobbying budget, a regulatory capture strategy, and a former senator on the board. One of these corruptions gets prosecuted. One of these corruptions writes the laws that define what corruption is.

The "strength in strength" philosophy is very old. Thucydides recorded it in 416 BC. The Athenians, negotiating with the people of Melos before massacring them, said: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." The Athenians were at the height of their power when they said it. Within thirteen years, Athens had been defeated by Sparta, its empire dismantled, its navy destroyed in Sicily in one of the greatest military catastrophes in ancient history. The Melians, whose entire male population Athens had killed and whose women and children Athens had enslaved, were eventually resettled. The Athenian empire is gone. The philosophy of strength in strength has been restated, with fresh confidence, by every dominant power in the history of human civilization. Every one of them is gone. The people they applied it to are, in most cases, still here. This is not a coincidence. This is the central pattern of history that the "strength in strength" philosophy is specifically designed to make you unable to see. Because if you could see it, you would notice that the philosophy has an almost perfect track record. Of eventually being wrong.

The person who celebrates organized violence as the highest human achievement has told you something important. Not about power. About themselves. They have told you that they have found no other source of meaning. That the hierarchy their side sits atop is the only thing that makes them feel located in the world. That without the domination, without the ability to point at the subordinated and say, "See, we are above them, therefore we matter," they would have to locate their worth somewhere inside themselves. And they have looked inside. And they have found the looking uncomfortable. So they point outward. At the conquered land. At the defeated enemy. At the gap between their currency and yours. "This is what I am. This is what we built." A person who has fused their identity with their civilization's capacity for violence is not describing strength. They are describing the specific terror of a person who suspects, somewhere beneath the noise, that without the violence they would have nothing to say about who they are. The loudest celebrations of power are always the most frightened. The genuinely strong do not need you to be weak. Only the hollow do.

@FissileFinance x.com/nxt888/status/…

Conquered land. Not stolen. The losers did attempt to resist. They had a few highlights, but the results were inevitable… Must suck to be a member of the loser caste: nothing will ever change meaningfully except through hard power. And the masters of hard power continue to pull ever further ahead. You think there’s strength in numbers…hahahah…there’s strength in strength. Example: tiny Israel developed an aptitude for imposing her will. Has defeated the entire remnants of the Arab Empire, even though outnumbered 480m to 9m - 50-1 wasn’t enough…the Arabs are now either western vassals or in ruins. The U.S. decapitates Venezuela in seconds; largest energy reserves on earth now a U.S. vassal state. The best Chinese and Russian weapons reduced to nothing but expensive curiosities by Anduril robotics… The rich get richer. You fall another lifetime behind. The Anglosphere clearly excelled at organized violence. Just better at it than anyone else. And getting better every day… So shake your fist at the sky and cry some more? Enjoy the scraps…

Co-victim. Fine. Then let's talk about the "co-victim" who inherited the house built on stolen land, who receives the dividend from the extracted wealth, whose passport works, whose currency is accepted, whose debt is manageable because other countries' debt was made unpayable. And who is also, genuinely, exploited by his own ruling class in real ways. Both things are true. Holding both things true without letting the first cancel the second is the work. "Whole humanity is victim" lets the first cancel the second every time. That is not analysis. That is comfort. Very cheap comfort. Paid for, as always, by someone else.