Freedom is a Vietnamese Word, by some surrealists (1947)
A tract protesting against French imperialist aggression in “Indochina” (Vietnam), dated April 1947
Is there war in Indochina? It can scarcely be doubted. The newspapers of ‘free’ France, subjected more than ever to censorship, are quiescent. They timidly print abbreviated accounts of military successes, and even these are confused. That the relatives may be comforted, they are assured that the soldiers are being ‘economised’. (Bankers likewise reveal their hand by this style of reporting.) Nothing is said of the fierce repression perpetrated over there under the mantle of democracy — everything is done to hide from the French people a scandal that alarms the world.
There is indeed war in Indochina — imperialist war, fought in the name of a people who have themselves been liberated after five years of oppression, against another people who are of a single voice in their wish for freedom.
The aggression has grave significance.
Made clear is that nothing has changed. Having bled white the noblest slogans of liberty in the name of ‘patriotism’, capitalism seeks as it did in 1919 to perpetuate the imperialist policy — grabbing for its old power, reinstalling its financiers, its army, its clergy.
Made equally clear is that working-class officialdom, notwithstanding a certain ambivalence of conduct, shares responsibility for this oppression. In contempt of the anti-colonialist tradition that has long been an impelling force of the workers’ movement, in flagrant violation of the oft-proclaimed right of national self-determination, these functionaries have capitulated, corruptly or cravenly, to a strategy imposed from on high.
Appealing to those who retain some lucidity and some sense of honesty, we say it is impossible to maintain freedom here while imposing slavery there. A war so odious cannot be waged in the name of the French people without inviting a dire train of consequences.
Adroitly contrived by an admiral monk, the carnage serves only to prop up a cruel capitalist tyranny of bureaucrats and priests. And let there be no illusions as to this. There cannot be the pretext that the French fight to prevent Vietnam from falling to a rival imperialism. For where has French imperialism, in this quarter of a century, done anything except give up and sell out? What protection does it flatter itself as giving any of its slaves?
Surrealists, whose great objective as always is the liberation of mankind, can hardly remain silent at such senseless and revolting criminality. Surrealism can only be against a regime which as a unit views this bloody spectacle with pleasure; a regime which, almost as soon as it is born, collapses in the mire of compromise and extortion, and which is but a calculated prelude to the construction of the next totalitarianism.
On the occasion of this new heinous crime, surrealism renounces none of its demands, and least of all the demand which purposes a radical transformation of society. But it knows how illusory are appeals to conscience, to the intelligence and even to the interests of men; how very easy come the lies, errors and inevitable divisions. This is why the domain surrealism has chosen is at once larger and more profound, in proportion to a true human fraternity.
Surrealism therefore vigorously protests the imperialist aggression and addresses its fraternal salute to those who incarnate, at this very moment, the becoming of freedom.