Michael G. Vann is a professor of history at California State University, Sacramento, and the coauthor of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.
The Freedom 250 mixed martial arts event at the White House will be a new low for the UFC and its president, Dana White. After campaigning for Donald Trump in 2024, White is now turning the sport he runs into a propaganda prop for Trump’s 80th birthday.
The International Criminal Court has scheduled the trial of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte for November this year. It’s an overdue reckoning for the mass killings under his rule that should worry other leaders guilty of major atrocities.
Last month, Vietnam marked the 58th anniversary of the Mỹ Lai massacre, when US soldiers killed hundreds of defenseless civilians. US public memory largely ignores the history of atrocities like Mỹ Lai, making it easier to repeat them in the future.
The Chapo Trap House comic book, Year Zero #1, is a collection of horror stories with a clear political message: liberal capitalism is not failing accidentally — it is functioning as designed, producing horror as a by-product of stability.
Sixty years ago today, the Indonesian army seized power and began a campaign of mass murder to annihilate the country’s left. Relatives of the victims are still fighting against a culture of amnesia about one of the century’s bloodiest massacres.
The Indonesian president, Prabowo, would like to turn the clock back to the dark days of the Suharto dictatorship. But he’s been confronted with an unexpected wave of protest after the killing of a young man by police in Jakarta, the country’s capital.
In the 1960s, the Indonesian dictator Suharto was responsible for one of the twentieth century’s bloodiest political massacres. Under the rule of Prabowo, the country’s government is suppressing the memory of Suharto’s crimes while vilifying the Left.
Thailand and Cambodia shocked observers by going to war last month. The destructive border conflict doesn’t stem from an upsurge of popular nationalism: the political elites in both countries needed a distraction to shore up their flagging legitimacy.
The US invasion of Vietnam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese people, resulting in millions of deaths. Fifty years ago today, the US-backed regime finally collapsed as North Vietnamese forces took control of Saigon.
Fifty years ago today, the Khmer Rouge took power in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. Instead of rebuilding the country after a destructive US bombing campaign, Pol Pot’s movement plunged it into one of the last century’s most horrifying catastrophes.
Paul Chambers, an eminent US scholar of Thailand, has been arrested on charges of criticizing the Thai monarchy. Chambers is one of the most high-profile targets of a clampdown on dissent against the world’s richest king.
Indonesia’s right-wing president Prabowo was elected with a commanding share of the youth vote in 2024. This year, a new youth protest movement is challenging Prabowo’s spending cuts and the role of the military in Indonesian politics.
Indonesia’s new president has a gruesome track record of human rights violations and hostility to democracy. But a slick campaign successfully presented him as a harmless grandpa.
Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo, has a gruesome track record of human rights violations and hostility to democracy. But a slick campaign successfully presented him as a cuddly grandpa figure, with crucial assistance from outgoing president Jokowi.
From The Host to Kingdom, Korean filmmakers have used the horror genre as a vehicle for political critique and reached a huge global audience. They’re building on a long international tradition of socially conscious scare stories.
Grad student workers in the UC system have been on strike for the last month, and they’re now facing a crucial moment in their battle for decent pay. The biggest academic strike in US history needs all the support and solidarity we can provide.
Street protests have rocked Indonesia’s main cities since the country’s president, Jokowi, announced a cut to gasoline subsidies. With global energy prices soaring, the Indonesian protests are sure to be repeated elsewhere in the months to come.
From its Hawaiian origins to the postwar surf craze, surfing has been a defiant challenge to the Calvinist work ethic and the commercial pressures of capitalism. But those malign social forces may now finally succeed in extinguishing the spirit of surfing.
After the fall of Indonesia’s US-backed tyrant Suharto in 1998, many Indonesians hoped that their country was on a path to genuine democracy. Two decades later, wealthy crooks and war criminals from the Suharto era are still deeply entrenched in power.
Under the leadership of Sukarno, postcolonial Indonesia was an optimistic country finding its place on the world stage. Suharto’s 1965 coup drowned that experiment in blood, with US politicians and media cheering on his campaign of mass killings.