In this episode of Friday Night Semites, we sit down with Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen, acclaimed for his book The Sympathizer (now a brilliant show on HBO Max). We discuss his experience of being canceled for speaking out for a ceasefire after October 7 and his thoughts on boycotting other artists—even those he strongly disagrees with. Viet opens up about the backlash he’s faced for standing in solidarity with Palestine, and we explore the myths, propaganda, and language shaping public perception of the Middle East for The Friday Night Semites
He dives into his political differences within the Vietnamese-American community, how the U.S. treats immigrants versus refugees, and offers advice to young writers on creating political art during times of war and crisis. We also cover the broader themes of decolonization, anti-Semitism, and the colonial origins of how we talk about the Middle East. This is a no-holds-barred conversation on solidarity, history, and speaking truth to power when the stakes are high. Whether you’re interested in the politics of Palestine, anti-colonialism, or how to navigate controversial conversations in the literary and academic world, this episode is for you.
Read below for transcript.
Viet Nguyen:
People have spoken about the Palestinian exception, free speech, liberalism, all this kind of stuff. Human rights, except for Palestinians.
Sammy:
We are exceptional.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah. Well, that means one of two things, right? You’re the target or you’re the token.
Josh:
Welcome to Friday Night Semites, where we support the right of return as long as somebody else covers the shipping and handling.
Sammy:
Because we canceled our Prime membership.
Josh:
There you go. No more Amazon BDS all the way. We got a great show for you all tonight. I’m very excited. We have a special guest. But before we bring them on Sammy, we’re going to be talking about something that is, I know you’re a math guy, a little bit.
Sammy:
I dabble.
Josh:
A little bit, but we’re going to start by talking about my favorite subject from school, which is geography.
Sammy:
It’s another form of math, but Yeah.
Josh:
But more important how it relates to the mess we’re in today and how the words we use are part of the problem. The question I want to ask you, Sammy is, do you know where the term Mideast came from?
Sammy:
It was a colonial term. I know that.
Josh:
Okay.
Sammy:
I believe it was used by the Europeans as a reference to the point they need to cross in order to get to the east where all the goodies were, they had to stop in the Mideast first.
Josh:
They had to go to the east East. My understanding is, it was to differentiate for the British, for the French, for all those nice colonialists back in the day between the Far East, China, Japan, other places. Then they called Arabia, they called it the Near East. Then it became known in the 1850s, the British started calling it the Mideast, but it didn’t get popularized until around 1900 by the American Navy. That’s when they started calling it the Mideast.
Sammy:
Really?
Josh:
Yeah. There’s that colonial term. But then the one that I did not know until recently was the Levant. The Levant is usually referred to the smaller region of what’s now Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel, maybe a little bit of Turkey. Do you know the origins of Levant?
Sammy:
Does it come from leavening of the bread?
Josh:
It does not come from the leavening of the bread, although I appreciate that. Shout out to the early Passover reference. Levant, which I thought was, because it’s used by a lot of people in the region. I thought that was a term that was native to the region. But Levant is another European invention.
Sammy:
Oh man, shocker.
Josh:
But this one, not the French originally. Not the British, not even the Germans who I love to hate on, but the Italians.
Sammy:
What?
Josh:
Yeah. Levant comes from
Sammy:
[foreign language 00:03:01].
Josh:
Exactly. Levant. Levant. Levant.
Sammy:
Levant. Levant.
Josh:
It comes from Italian.
Sammy:
Oh, Levant, that’s a Latin. What does that mean? That’s like a Latin root. Isn’t that like a Spanish version of that?
Josh:
All right. You’re trying to take my Italian and bring it back to the original root.
Sammy:
We need to get some research.
Josh:
You’re trying to one-up my colonialism with bringing it back to all the way to the root.
Sammy:
Does anybody here speak Spanish?
Josh:
No. In our crew, in California, nobody speaks Spanish for sure. But no, it comes from Italian merchants in the 1500s who are sailing to the eastern side of the Mediterranean. They called it Levant because Levant is rising and the sun was rising in the East.
Sammy:
Yes. Levant rises. It is like leavening of the bread.
Josh:
It is.
Sammy:
The bread is rising. It’s all the same root man.
Josh:
Man. It is maybe origin story from there.
Sammy:
May the Levant rise up.
Josh:
May the Levant rise.
Sammy:
And resist colonialism from the Mideast.
Josh:
That’s what’s happening. But then the French, when they colonized after World War I, and they took over Syria and Lebanon, they called those the Levant states. That was where that term came from.
Sammy:
Levant.
Josh:
But now I’m hearing, do you ever hear SWANA?
Sammy:
Yeah, I hear SWANA a lot.
Josh:
Break it down what’s SWANA for me. That’s like the alternative to-
Sammy:
I forget. I honestly, I forget. There’s MENA and there’s SWANA.
Josh:
There’s MENA. All right, so what’s MENA? I’ll break down SWANA. You got MENA?
Sammy:
I believe Middle East North Africa.
Josh:
SWANA is Southwest Asia, North African. That’s the-
Sammy:
That’s more PC.
Josh:
That’s the PC. We’re conflicted on that.
Sammy:
No. Although it’s more accurate. Obviously it’s part of Asia.
Josh:
That’s the point.
Sammy:
I’ve always said, it’s like people don’t know that the Mideast is part of Asia. It’s the west coast of Asia. It’s like the California of Asia. There should be a Tupac song for that.
Josh:
They should have Tupac and Dre and Snoop. Snoop would do good.
Sammy:
He would do really good.
Josh:
But the reason I want to bring this all up is not just as a geography lesson, but because these terms are colonial terms. They’re imposed terms. Like a lot of the borders, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, they’re all imposed.
Sammy:
Right.
Josh:
Of course, Israel-Palestine, slightly imposed borders.
Sammy:
I would say so.
Josh:
I got to give a shout-out to my crew and my soccer fans here. If you look at things like-
Sammy:
Football.
Josh:
Football, excuse me, excuse me. That’s right. Israel likes to play any international competition, whether it’s soccer, FIFA, world Cup, whether it’s Eurovision, they always are associated in the leagues with Europe.
Sammy:
War crimes.
Josh:
War crimes. They like to go to Hague. They like to go to The Hague, just hang out there.
Sammy:
Oh, they’re gold medal, brother. They’re gold medaling at the war crimes.
Josh:
They’re taking it to the top. Whereas Palestine plays and associates with Asia. I think that Israel, that is in the Mideast, that lives in the continent of Asia, but still associates with Europe. I think this is how the roots of what happened and how things get labeled for a conflict that’s about land. These fools don’t know where they are on the map.
Sammy:
Yeah.
Josh:
How’d I do?
Sammy:
That was good, man.
Josh:
Oh, man.
Sammy:
That was good.
Josh:
I got worried. I got worried my professor was going to give me a bad grade.
Sammy:
No, your professor ain’t even here yet, bro.
Josh:
Speaking of professors, should we bring on our guests?
Sammy:
Let’s do it.
Josh:
All right. Our guest tonight is a real professor and one of my favorite authors. For real. He’s a New York Times bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize. I’m not going to list all his damn awards because we’d be here all day. But he wrote one of my favorite books, The Sympathizer. This man has been really outspoken on Israel-Palestine and has dealt with some of the consequences over the last year. We’re excited to have him on Friday night Semites. Viet Nguyen, please come to the garage. Viet, come on over, bro. You’re the next contestant on whatever the fuss this is.
Sammy:
Speaking of consequences, welcome to our garage.
Viet Nguyen:
Thanks for having me, man.
Josh:
Good to see you.
Viet Nguyen:
Great to be here.
Josh:
How are you feeling?
Viet Nguyen:
I’m feeling great, man.
Josh:
All right. Well, it wouldn’t be Friday night. It wouldn’t be our Semitic show or Palestinian Jewish show our a little cuisine. Today we have for you, yeah, Friday night we got some challah, some baklava, and of course some olives.
Viet Nguyen:
Nice.
Josh:
We always like to literally break bread. Challah is Friday night.
Sammy:
It’s an Asian, right?
Josh:
This is our Asian food. This is our Asian food. This is our Asian Hebrew food. It’s so exotic. It’s so exotic. You wrote this essay earlier this year called Palestine is in Asia. You see how I led you in with that beautiful geography lesson?
Sammy:
Wow. You basically just stole all that from him. I thought you were original.
Josh:
No, I was definitely co-opting our guest tonight. Palestine is in Asia an argument for Asian-American solidarity. It was brilliant. It was in the nation. Why you wrote that and would it help bring us closer to a ceasefire if we started referring to all Israelis as Asiatic Hebrews?
Viet Nguyen:
Why I wrote it was because we’re here in Oakland in the Bay Area, and this is the place where I got radicalized. I grew up in San Jose, very multicultural San Jose in the ’70s and ’80s. But I didn’t know I was Asian. I knew, but we weren’t called that. We were called Orientals, of course, late ’70s and early ’80s.
Josh:
Wow.
Sammy:
People would call you that to your face.
Viet Nguyen:
Well, my parents had a little business called the Oriental funding Corporation. They was called Orientals.
Josh:
Wow.
Viet Nguyen:
But some part of me, I was like, I don’t think this is right. I didn’t know how to put it into words. But then I got to Berkeley. I like to call it the University of Communists at Berkeley.
Josh:
Nice. The People’s Republic.
Viet Nguyen:
People’s Republic.
Josh:
Yeah. Go comrades.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah. I started taking Asian American studies classes there, and that was the first time I ever heard the term Asian American. Got me immediately radicalized. Being an Asian American is about being radical because we’re making bonds with people who may not be like us. Even though everybody’s saying you’re an oriental, the Orientals are saying, no, wait, I’m Vietnamese. That person’s Chinese. We hate each other. Or that’s persons Japanese. That person’s Korean. They hate each other back there.
Josh:
It’s just the Mideast.
Viet Nguyen:
Just like the Mideast.
Josh:
Nice.
Viet Nguyen:
But here we discover we have something in common. We’re all Asians so become Asian Americans. All good. Asian Americans back then to think that they were always radical. But I grew up with a lot of conservative Asian people and now we live in a day and age in which it’s very clear that all Asian Americans are not radical and not even all liberal. We got a lot of conservative Asian Americans out there doing stuff like trying to destroy affirmative action. Or being married to JD Vance, for example.
Being Asian is great. It’s great. We got BTS. We got Boba. We claim all that stuff. But it only gets you so far. I think that honestly, when October 7th happened and Israel’s war on Gaza began, I already had very ambivalent feelings about Israel, but it really helped to sharpen my thinking about why should Palestine be in Asia and why should there be Asian-American alliances and solidarities with Palestinians? Actually for me, it goes back to Edward Said because part of the way I got radicalized at Berkeley was through reading Edward Said’s, Orientalism, and so did a lot of Asian Americans.
But for a lot of people it just stopped by saying, oh, we’re Orientals, but we’re not Orientals, we’re Asian Americans. We forgot that Said was Palestinian. That a lot of his work about Orientals was actually based on all the stuff you said at the beginning. That for him, the Orientals, he wasn’t thinking about Vietnamese people, I think for the most part. He was thinking about Palestinians. He was thinking about Syrians and Arabs and all of this. That was the orient for the British and the French in the 19th century. That’s what I was starting to think about when I wrote that essay.
Sammy:
Beautiful. That’s how you became radicalized, Edward Said?
Viet Nguyen:
I am not going to get into it, but yes, I struggled through it, Orientalism, and that was the intellectual part for becoming a radical Asian American.
Sammy:
Wow.
Viet Nguyen:
But the fun stuff was just hanging out with other Asian American people my age and discovering we had stuff in common. That we could have this cool Asian-American politics. Which again, only gets us so far. Asian-American politics is good, but representation matters. But what does it mean if we have conservative Asian-Americans representing us, or Asian-Americans who support the military-industrial complex? That’s when things get much more complicated than we share the same food.
Sammy:
Like Kamala Harris. What were you going to say?
Josh:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned it because you said going to Berkeley and everything. But I was curious because Vietnamese-American politics tends to be a little more conservative.
Viet Nguyen:
A lot more conservative.
Josh:
I’ll let you say it.
Sammy:
Why is that?
Viet Nguyen:
Well, because the whole Cold War was fought in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, obviously it was very hot. Three million Vietnamese people died. Hundreds of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians and Hmong died, and all these populations were split. There were pro-American, anti-American, pro-Communist, anti-Communist. I happened to be not by any choice, part of the anti-Communist Vietnamese world because my parents were Catholic.
The Vietnamese Catholics are really anti-Communist. But then our side lost the war, so we fled as refugees to the United States. The Vietnamese brought their anti-Communism with them to the United States. All the Communist Vietnamese stayed in Vietnam. They went to France. But the anti-Communist ones came to the United States and they gravitated immediately to the Republican Party in the ’80s because they associated with Republicans.
Josh:
Reagan.
Sammy:
Reagan.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah. With capitalism and anti-Communism and religion. I think these are some of the major factors. I’ve just been completely out of step with the Vietnamese community since I was born, I think. Because I was raised to be an anti-Communist, but it didn’t work. Recently I was on book tour and this young Vietnamese American woman comes up to me, she’s in her 20s and she’s a fan of my work. But she says to me, “You are the second most hated person in my parents’ household.”
Josh:
Wow.
Viet Nguyen:
The most hated person?
Josh:
Can we guess? I don’t want to guess.
Viet Nguyen:
The most hated person, Joe Biden.
Josh:
Wow.
Viet Nguyen:
But that was then, now is probably Kamala Harris.
Sammy:
The old Joe Biden.
Viet Nguyen:
The Joe Biden of November or whatever it was.
Josh:
Right. Wow. Who’s number three?
Viet Nguyen:
I don’t know. The next Democrat in line. I don’t know who that would be.
Josh:
Man, you’re in the top two. How do you feel about that?
Viet Nguyen:
I think it’s okay.
Josh:
Some people want to be in the top five, but you’re in the top two.
Viet Nguyen:
I’m actually good with being top two. Top one, number one is maybe a bit too much for me.
Josh:
Yeah, too much pressure.
Viet Nguyen:
I grew up in the Vietnamese refugee community. I love Vietnamese people, all this stuff. I believe that we should tell stories about our people, whatever it happens to be. But if you disagree with your people, as I often do, whether they are Vietnamese or Asian Americans or Americans, you got to speak the truth. You got to represent your community, but if you think your community is wrong, what are you going to do? I think all the politics that we’re witnessing today, including Palestine and Gaza, this is a real test for a lot of people.
Josh:
No, as a Jewish American, I don’t ever face that issue about having to speak out and disagree with my community, especially on Israel-Palestine. It’s all just safe. When I do speak out there, they just applaud. They just applaud. Thank you for finally telling them to shut the fuck up.
Viet Nguyen:
I’m actually happy. I teach at the University of Southern California and I teach a Vietnam War class. I have a lot of Vietnamese students in there. They’ve come up to me and said, “My parents don’t want me to take this class because they think you are a communist.”
Josh:
Wow.
Viet Nguyen:
I’m like, “What’s wrong with that?” But besides that, it’s interesting that some of the older Vietnamese really I think don’t like me because their kids will listen to me more than they will listen to them sometimes.
Sammy:
Do you identify as a communist?
Viet Nguyen:
I identify as a Marxist atheist.
Sammy:
Okay. Difference being?
Viet Nguyen:
The difference being, I think that for me, I haven’t quite worked myself up to being a communist yet or an anarchist, but I might get there someday. But I’m comfortable saying Marxist atheist, because I grew up in the Catholic community. My parents are very devout Catholics. I just completely reject that. I feel comfortable. Marxism, I’ve read a lot of Marxist theory. I went to UC Berkeley, and I think you need Marxism because it’s the only valid critique of capitalism out there right now. You can’t trust capitalists to critique capitalism.
Josh:
See, I don’t understand why you’re only number two now. I feel like you’ve got to be number one, like Joe Biden, Comrade Kamala, they’re faking it, and you’re the real deal.
Sammy:
Well, they’re-
Viet Nguyen:
Let’s not spread that around too much.
Josh:
Yeah, for sure. Don’t worry, we’re not filming this or anything.
Sammy:
He’s still Marxist. They’re full on communist.
Josh:
Yeah.
Sammy:
Yeah. Allegedly. No, I’ve always been interested in that take. Obviously I went to Berkeley too, so I received the communist pamphlets every day on my way to class as well. I’m just wondering on your end, you’ve obviously faced a lot of backlash for being associated with it. Like you said, people don’t want to take your classes. But sorry, this is a little off track.
Josh:
Why are you apologizing to me, bro? I’m just going to eat my food.
Sammy:
I always ask people who either identify as Marxist or as communist. What is your sales pitch for communism?
Viet Nguyen:
I don’t really have a sales pitch for communism because I still wrestle a lot with the actual realities of communism. What happened in these countries. Obviously we’re talking about Cambodia or Vietnam and so on. Yeah, millions of people died. But let’s be fair, yes. When people get into power, millions of people die because they have authoritarian genocidal regimes and things like this, or they killed their opponents and all of that.
It’s very personal. Because I fled from Vietnam when I was four years old. I was taken, I didn’t really have much choice when I was four. My 16-year-old sister, we left her behind. The victorious communist regime made my 16-year-old sister join a volunteer youth brigade, which is a euphemism because obviously she didn’t volunteer to go be sent to the jungle to help rebuild the country. It’s complicated. But to be honest, when you talk about the usual mind is Communists killed millions of people. Well, capitalists did too. They killed tens of millions of people. Let’s just be honest about that.
Sammy:
Outside of our country.
Viet Nguyen:
Inside of our country, and outside of our country. What is slavery? Slavery is a form of Capitalism. Genocide is a form of capitalism and inflicted on indigenous peoples. But somehow all those millions of deaths don’t count. But we’re only going to talk about the deaths that communism has committed. This makes everybody uncomfortable because they’re like, “You got to pick a side.” You got to condemn capitalism, or you got to condemn communism. As a writer, I feel like I want to be able to try to speak the truth. When human beings do terrible things, you have to be critical of them no matter what side they’re on. That’s why I’m ambivalent about both of these perspectives.
Josh:
Well, speaking of authoritarian governments and illegal wars and all the things that go with it, let’s talk about the Mideast.
Sammy:
SWANA.
Josh:
SWANA, the Levant, what do you call it?
Viet Nguyen:
Thanks for explaining that. I never knew. It just sounded very exotic.
Sammy:
The teacher has become the student.
Josh:
What do you call it? What do you call that region? Or what do people call it these days?
Viet Nguyen:
Well, when I was growing-
Josh:
You’re teaching the kids. You’re at USC. What are the kids calling it?
Viet Nguyen:
I grew up as an American. In the ’70s and ’80s, that meant I was not reading Edward Said as a kid in San Jose, I was watching TV. The most intellectual I got was reading Newsweek or Time Magazine at the dentist’s office. I just absorbed whatever was being said by every other American or mainstream media. I just called it the Mideast. I was just very confused. Of course, I was reading it, the news about what was happening. I think I was aware that there was the Israeli siege of Beirut, for example, in 1982, but I was 11. What are you supposed to make out of that? You would see the Marines getting killed in the Beirut Barracks, for example. It’s all this weird politics and stuff. I think my only education into these politics was watching Exodus. Have you guys ever seen it?
Josh:
Charleston Heston?
Viet Nguyen:
Close.
Josh:
No.
Viet Nguyen:
Another white guy.
Josh:
Which one? Which are the old white guys?
Viet Nguyen:
Two more guesses.
Josh:
No, it’s
Sammy:
Marlon Brando.
Viet Nguyen:
He’s also Jewish.
Josh:
No.
Viet Nguyen:
He’s also Jewish.
Josh:
Oh, god! You’re putting me on the spot. My own people.
Sammy:
Seriously.
Josh:
He played Moses?
Viet Nguyen:
No, he didn’t play Moses.
Josh:
It’s Exodus.
Sammy:
Larry David.
Viet Nguyen:
Very good.
Josh:
Who is it?
Viet Nguyen:
All right, I’ll put you out your misery. Paul Newman.
Josh:
Paul Newman. Oh, man.
Viet Nguyen:
Exodus is not about the biblical Exodus. It’s about Jewish refugees fleeing from Europe, and they want to make it to Israel and colonize Palestine. Paul Newman plays this very handsome, obviously-
Josh:
Good-looking.
Viet Nguyen:
… Jewish officer of Haganah. Is that how you pronounce it?
Josh:
That’s good enough for me. I’ll take it.
Viet Nguyen:
He was trying to get these Jewish people to Palestine in the face of this hostile British army. Then of course, when they get there, they have to fight the Arabs who are terrorists. That was just a part of my life growing up, that this was the only exposure that I had was basically what I call propaganda. That was a major Hollywood blockbuster from 1960. I was watching it in 1980. I’ve said that Hollywood is our unofficial ministry of propaganda. This is how we absorb these kinds of ideas, not because someone’s necessarily forcing us to learn about the Mideast in this way. It’s just pop culture. That’s what I absorbed growing up.
Josh:
You’re pushing back now against some of that propaganda in your essays and your writing. I know that after October 7th, you had some speaking engagements that were canceled. I can’t remember the exact locations. I think it was the 92 Street.
Viet Nguyen:
92NY is what they call it. Yeah.
Sammy:
Where’s that?
Viet Nguyen:
It’s in New York City. It’s a self-identified, explicitly Jewish institution. It’s a very story-
Sammy:
Oh, 92. It’s upper Upper West?
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah, they renamed themselves and everything. But they also have a really famous art series, speaker series. A lot of famous novelists and artists go there and give talks.
Josh:
When you get canceled, what was their explanation for why you got canceled? What was your response? Looking back, how do you feel about it?
Viet Nguyen:
October 7th happened, it’s a tragedy.
Josh:
Right.
Viet Nguyen:
Obviously anytime where civilians are being murdered, it’s a tragedy no matter who’s doing it. But at the same time, that’s a whole history, as you guys have obviously talked about, before that. My immediate reaction was, this is going to be like 911 all over again. Because when 911 happened, Americans freaked out and then committed to a forever war that killed millions of people who had nothing to do with 911. This paroxysm of paranoia and revenge and violence. I felt that the role of the artist is not to participate in that. The role of the artist, the writer, the intellectual, the comedian, is to draw attention to those moments when societies freak out and do the wrong thing.
Josh:
You see, he looked at me. He looked at me when he said, comedian.
Sammy:
I looked down. I was like, I definitely participated in that.
Josh:
You got intellectual, but I got comedian.
Sammy:
I remember when October 7th happened, and politicians were like, “Well, if you scale it to the population of Israel, it was like 100 911s. It’s like, let’s not count 911.
Josh:
Yeah, no, that’s never a good thing.
Sammy:
That’s never a good thing.
Viet Nguyen:
It’s not about quantity or anything like that, but it was really for me, very clear that nothing good was going to come out of this, out of what was probably going to happen. Then what did immediately start to happen? I signed a letter along with 750 or so other artists and writers from all over the world saying, “We need a ceasefire.” I think I probably compounded it by going on my Instagram and saying, “Yes, I signed this letter calling for a ceasefire, but I also affirm my commitment to BDS.”
Josh:
Right.
Viet Nguyen:
Okay. I’m not sure which of the two things was the trigger for-
Josh:
Oh, BDS for sure.
Viet Nguyen:
The 92nd Street Y. But other people who signed that letter got canceled in different ways, eventually doing different things. How did I find out? I found out the afternoon of my event at the 92nd Street Y, when I got a message from my publicist saying, “They’ve indefinitely postponed the event”, which we interpret as cancellation. Then I got a message from the 92nd Street Y’s poetry coordinator. It’s a poetry series, who’s himself Jewish, as are a lot of people who work for the 92nd Street Y. He was completely outraged. He said, “We have to make this event happen because we cannot censor or cancel events simply on this basis.”
Josh:
Right.
Viet Nguyen:
Anyway, I was canceled, but a lot of the staff quit.
Josh:
I remember.
Viet Nguyen:
From 92nd Street Y. That fallout has continued to happen. Even more staff have quit at the 92nd Street Y in the months afterwards, Jewish and non-Jewish. There’s a lot of internal tension, as you know.
Josh:
Well, and just in all these arts and cultural organizations and of course universities of these questions of free speech and where are those lines? Because now what you’re seeing happen a year later is it’s gotten the free speech wars have gotten worse. In New York last month, there was a progressive ish Rabbi who was supposed to speak-
Sammy:
Rabbi Shmuley.
Josh:
Not Rabbi Shmuley. Not that guy. That’s a real guy, not my fan. He was supposed to speak, and he got canceled because he was a Zionist. The bookstore said, “We don’t let Zionist speak.” This is a guy who’s been critical of Netanyahu, who wants a ceasefire, who still identifies as a Zionist. That’s not exactly my line. I don’t understand all those contradictions, but people are full of contradictions. How do you balance the boycott, the investment sanctions like boycotting Lockheed Martin, boycotting Warmongers, boycotting Airbnb, who has apartments that are in settlements in the West Bank? But I’ll be honest, when you’re boycotting artists and writers, it gets a little more tricky for me. I don’t have a definitive line. I was curious what your opinion is on boycotting or not boycotting on Israel-Palestine on all sides.
Viet Nguyen:
I feel some of the same ambivalence. I signed onto BDS because I think we should boycott Israel and have divestment in sanctions against the country, against institutions and things like that. I have a lot more ambivalence about canceling individuals. That particular Rabbi, I believe is affiliated with 92nd Street Y.
Josh:
Probably.
Viet Nguyen:
I think he directs some of their arts and literature stuff. I wasn’t happy about that. Look, this is a part of a larger conversation in the country about who can speak and who can’t about certain issues, and when should we cancel and when shouldn’t we? It’s true I think that all sides do it. The left has been responsible for some of this cancellation and boycotting of speakers and writers and books they don’t disagree with. But we also have to talk about it as not simply being like both sides are the same.
Josh:
No.
Viet Nguyen:
Because the left is not in general arguing we should burn books or ban books or anything like that. It’s still radically different. But I’ve always been hesitant about canceling individuals. Just let them speak. If you disagree, go and protest and get a dialogue with them. The dialogue may not be productive, but at least you’re going to have that conversation. People can make up their own minds. But just shutting people down on the basis of their beliefs is not productive.
Sammy:
I disagree. I think canceling individuals makes for a good controversy. For instance, the YouTube title for this show will be canceled, professor.
Viet Nguyen:
Thank you.
Sammy:
I think it’ll get us a lot of views. A little more dirt.
Viet Nguyen:
See him before he’s canceled again. See the episode that got him canceled.
Josh:
Yeah. No, it’s tough. Then at the same time, because all these fine lines, you’re at USC.
Viet Nguyen:
Okay, but wait, let me ask you guys, have either of you been canceled?
Josh:
Yes.
Viet Nguyen:
Okay.
Sammy:
This guy more than me.
Josh:
No, this… No, I can’t-
Viet Nguyen:
I’ve seen some of your stuff. I’m surprised.
Sammy:
I don’t know. But people don’t want to cancel me for some reason. I guess I bring too many sales in.
Viet Nguyen:
You were canceled?
Josh:
Yeah, no, I’ve been, basically what happens to me is every two or three years I get invited to a Jewish institution, like a JCC, a museum or the Jewish Studies Department, and they’re like, “We want to reach more young people.” They think I’m still relatively cool. They’re like, “Come in and help us reach young Jews.” I come in, I do my thing, I do my performance, I do my shtick. At the end, usually that’s when I go in on Israel-Palestine. I get dis-invited, I get kicked out. Then I get put on a list and blacklisted from events for another three or four years. Then a new program officer comes in and is like, “Hey, we need to reach young Jews. Who’s that guy in the Bay Area who wears those dumb hats?” That’s the thing.
Sammy:
He is not talking about Yarmulke, he’s talking about the baseball cap.
Josh:
Thank you.
Sammy:
Want to clear the anti-Semitism accusations.
Josh:
Yeah, no, my self hating is not about the hats. It’s just about everything else. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the middle of a thing where they try to take the mic from me. But it’s been a pandemic. I’ve had some kids, so it’s been a little while. But this guy gets, he gets heckled.
Sammy:
Yeah, I get heckled, but I’ve never actually been canceled myself. The closest is there was a Jewish teacher at a Jewish school.
Josh:
Why are you looking at me, bro? It’s not my cousin. He’s my cousin.
Sammy:
Because he’s your friend.
Josh:
Not is my cousin.
Sammy:
He played-
Josh:
Oh, this is a true story.
Sammy:
Yes. He played my-
Josh:
This is his family story.
Sammy:
He thought I was looking at you.
Josh:
No, this is my fucking cousin.
Sammy:
He’s your cousin. He played my standup clip for his class. It was a clip about Zionism. Very, very moderate take. Not really too incisive at all. He got fired.
Josh:
My Jewish cousin got fired in Chicago for using a piece of his.
Sammy:
Yes.
Viet Nguyen:
Oh, wow. That’s collateral damage.
Josh:
Bro.
Sammy:
Oh, man.
Josh:
You’re a good ally.
Sammy:
I am. I really am.
Viet Nguyen:
Your cousin got fired. But the other thing about cancellation is that hey, it’s actually beneficial sometimes. People are like, “Oh, you got canceled, your book sales are going to go up.”
Josh:
Oh, for sure.
Viet Nguyen:
Because of that weird contradiction about the cancellation. Obviously one side hates you, but your side, it’s like, we’re going to support this person.
Sammy:
Being a professor, you’re not canceled. You actually are teaching at USC, and we’re back here in the fall semester now. What have you noticed the differences are this semester compared to spring semester when you had the protests and the encampments really going on heavily? Has anything changed with the whole free speech movement? Does it feel the same?
Viet Nguyen:
Well, I think all of academia was just caught flat-footed, didn’t know what to do. You saw a whole spectrum of reactions from different university presidents and police officers and all that kind of stuff. Obviously the worst of it was at Columbia and UCLA. To a certain extent, my university USC, like 100 students were arrested and campus was shut down. Graduation was mostly canceled.
Josh:
The valedictorian wasn’t allowed to speak.
Viet Nguyen:
Completely silenced. I think now what everybody’s recalibrating, it’s like making adjustments. Now there’s much more strict campus speech codes. At my university, all that stuff has been implemented. You can supposedly have free speech as long as you don’t go too far or take over the campus. Now on my campus, the whole center of the campus is still gated off. Where the protests were being held. It’s so ironic that in defense supposedly defending free speech, you make the campus look like a prison to replicate what’s happening in Palestine un-ironically.
Josh:
Whereas before they just had the gates on the outside to keep out the rest of south LA.
Sammy:
South LA.
Viet Nguyen:
They still have that. They still have that.
Sammy:
Now gates on the outside and the inside.
Viet Nguyen:
Now you’ve got to swipe a card to get in.
Sammy:
Checkpoints.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah, there’s checkpoints. There’s checkpoints to get in, multiple checkpoints.
Josh:
What does it feel like?
Viet Nguyen:
It feels like, I don’t know if people get it. It’s like whatever we are doing to Gaza and to Palestine, through our support of Israel leading to this militarized environment and everything like that. We are just seeing these ripple effects through our own society, whether it’s through prevention and free speech or locking down campuses or making people go through security checkpoints. The ripple effects are real and we’re just feeling a touch of it. But I just hope the students get it. That when they see these checkpoints, it’s not because of student protesters being at fault. It’s the university administrations not having an adequate response.
Josh:
What’s been the faculty response like? I’m not trying to get you to sell out your colleagues, but how’s the economics department doing with your-
Viet Nguyen:
Let’s not name specific departments or specific people. You don’t become a university-
Josh:
How’s the math department?
Sammy:
Yeah, that part is probably true. That part is true, right?
Viet Nguyen:
Your specialty? They’re just so radical.
Josh:
Geography is on point though, good, right? They’re good?
Viet Nguyen:
I don’t think we even have a geography.
Josh:
I’m starting it.
Sammy:
Welcome to upper division. Here is how you look at what countries are.
Josh:
Come on. All right.
Viet Nguyen:
You don’t become a university professor by being radical. It’s not the way it works.
Josh:
You dirty.
Viet Nguyen:
Well, so there are a few.
Sammy:
At Berkeley.
Viet Nguyen:
At Berkeley. Some places are different than others. Berkeley actually had a pretty good response to the student protest. They didn’t arrest people, they didn’t crack down.
Sammy:
Of course.
Viet Nguyen:
Everything was cool.
Sammy:
We’re the home of the free speech program.
Viet Nguyen:
There was a handful of universities that reacted that way. But there were faculty who were standing up for the students. A couple of my colleagues got arrested with the students. Some of us protested outside the president’s office, but that was a few dozen people out of 1500 faculty. That’s probably fairly indicative of not just universities, but of the country as a whole. Most people are not out there protesting or getting arrested.
Josh:
Let me ask you a different question that I’ve seen has come up this fall as a reaction. Which is now the universities not just putting up the checkpoints as you say, but these new free speech regulations and how they’re using diversity initiatives and DEI language as a way to squash some of it. Because what they’re saying is Zionists are a protected class. They’re saying not Jews, but Zionists. That to me makes no sense because that’s an ideology. That’s like saying socialists are protected class or capitalists are protected class. Your beliefs are not protected. People should be protected. But they’re using that as a way to supposedly fight anti-Semitism. Of course, we want to fight anti-Semitism, but-
Sammy:
90% of Zionists are evangelicals. We have to protect them.
Josh:
We got to protect our white Christian friends for sure. Is that what they’re doing at USC? Is this a secret thing as a reverse affirmative action to get more evangelicals into USC?
Viet Nguyen:
I don’t know what it is, but you’re right. Our communists are a protected class, for example, when we’re talking about free speech. Beliefs and things like that.
Josh:
No, because you still have to sign that card that’s in California.
Viet Nguyen:
I think I did do that when I went to Berkeley. I think I did have to do that.
Sammy:
You have to sign a card that says you’re not communist?
Josh:
McCarthyism rules are still on the books in California for state choice.
Sammy:
You just put mark to Atheist. Next question.
Viet Nguyen:
People have spoken about the Palestinian exception, free speech liberalism, all this kind of stuff. Human rights except for Palestinians.
Sammy:
We are exceptional.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah. Well, that means one of two things, right? You’re the target or you’re the token. One of these two things when you’re the exception token. Now we have the reverse exception. It’s the reverse now. We’re going to protect the Zionists. Hypocrisy just seems so absurd to anybody who’s cognizant of the situation. But again, the reflex to condemn anti-Semitism is so deeply embedded by now in this country that it is like that McCarthyist thing. Of course, we’re going to be against anti-Semitism, and of course that means we’re going to be against people who are against Zionism. There’s a distinction between being committed to being against anti-Semitism and turning it into something so sacred that anything that’s affiliated with it has to be condemned as well.
Josh:
Right. How do you explain the difference to your students? Say there’s an 18-year-old college kid who comes on campus and is like, “I don’t want to be against Jews. I’m pro-Zionist.” Like how do you explain that difference? Also, if you want to use that impression.
Sammy:
Yeah, that’s good.
Josh:
That’s my 18.
Sammy:
I didn’t know you could do that impression.
Josh:
That’s my Stoner. That’s my Stoner southern California freshman impression.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah, stoners don’t make it to USC. We’re so elite we don’t have stoners anymore at USC.
Josh:
We save it for you guys at Berkeley.
Viet Nguyen:
That is true, huh?
Josh:
No comment.
Viet Nguyen:
You know what? I just try to reverse things. Because I’ve said a lot of things that are very critical of the United States.
Sammy:
Why would you do that?
Viet Nguyen:
Why can’t we do that? Why would I do that? Well, because I’m an American and I’m a Vietnamese and I know American history and I know what the United States did in Vietnam and in many, many other countries. You can be critical of the United States without hating Americans. There’s a huge distinction between what the country and the government and the state does as a whole entity versus who the people are because we know Americans are diverse.
Sammy:
You love all the people in the United States.
Viet Nguyen:
Do I love all the people in the United States? That’s like saying, do I love my entire family?
Josh:
Oh, shots fired. Shots fired.
Sammy:
Okay. Okay.
Viet Nguyen:
My extended family. I’m not talking about-
Josh:
I know you’re not. I know you’re-
Sammy:
Everyone has a cousin they hate.
Josh:
You said you were a recovering Catholic, but the question is, do you love everybody, including the people who put you in the top two hate lists?
Viet Nguyen:
In my most Zen moments, I do love everybody. I wish peace and love upon everybody.
Josh:
You’re definitely a recovering Catholic. You’ve been in California too long.
Viet Nguyen:
Obviously, in reality, yes, there are antagonistic feelings.
Josh:
There are other feelings.
Viet Nguyen:
You can separate your feelings. I don’t want to kill people.
Josh:
Okay.
Sammy:
That’s good.
Viet Nguyen:
But I should be critical.
Sammy:
Sound bite that part.
Viet Nguyen:
Honestly, I’ve been in recovery so I can honestly say I don’t hate Donald Trump. I spent 2016 to 2020 hating Donald Trump, and I realized that just makes me a worse person. That man made me a worse person because he made me hate him.
Josh:
You’re trying to… Man, we have so much to learn. He’s trying to be a better person.
Sammy:
I like that. He’s true. He’s a better person than us.
Viet Nguyen:
I’m trying. I’m trying.
Josh:
Yeah, for sure.
Viet Nguyen:
I’m going to go home and hate Donald Trump in my closet by myself.
Josh:
Quietly. Just scream it out in the back.
Sammy:
Well, no, I like that philosophy. When you hate someone, you actually lose. You’re giving them your attention. You’re giving them your anger. You’re giving them your frustration. It’s actually like they win if you hate them, right?
Viet Nguyen:
I think that’s true.
Sammy:
You said you came here when you were four years old?
Viet Nguyen:
Mm-hmm.
Sammy:
Do you identify as an immigrant?
Viet Nguyen:
I identify as a refugee.
Sammy:
As a refugee.
Viet Nguyen:
They’re very different.
Sammy:
Can you tell us the difference between immigrant and refugee?
Viet Nguyen:
Well, in our xenophobic moment, we dislike immigrants, but we really hate refugees. There is a difference. Because even if you’re xenophobic and you’re an American, you still think, well, of course immigrants want to come here and they want the American dream. They want their success story. If you meet an immigrant, even if you don’t like immigrants, you want the immigrant to say, I love America. I came here and it gave me all these opportunities and look how successful my family is.
You can make sense out of the immigrant. Because at least you understand that your grandparents or great-grandparents came here as immigrants. Refugees are different. Refugees are, I called them the zombies of the world. They’re the ones that are swimming across the ocean or marching through the jungles and forests that come and invade our land in human assault waves and everything like that. I think we are really scared of refugees. Because number one, we don’t want to confront how we might be responsible for making refugees. We say there’s a refugee crisis as if the refugees are the problem, instead of asking whether we’re the problem.
Josh:
Why did they have to become refugees?
Viet Nguyen:
That’s right. Our capitalism, our militarism, our coups, all that kind of stuff. But then the other thing is I think we’re afraid of being refugees ourselves. Like, oh, we look at all of these unsettled populations and they’re so frightening what’s happened to them and everything, and we just don’t want to be contaminated by that specter of the refugee. Now look, with climate catastrophe, we could all be climate refugees at this point. That’s really coming home to so many people. But I think those of us who are comfortable in our lives, whatever that means, we don’t want to think that that comfort can be blown up at any moment. Whether it’s by a bomb that the US drops or whether it’s by a hurricane or an earthquake or a fire.
Josh:
There’s that phrase I’ve heard talking about US imperialism and the relationship to immigration. Which is immigrants and refugees, they’re over here because we went over there. We bombed. It’s like you said, we talk about all the crisis is the people, but never the causes and the issues and the reasons why. Obviously, for Palestine, refugees is a huge issue. You’ve got refugees all over the Middle East. You’ve got new wave of refugees coming in now.
My opening line today, which was a mediocre tongue in cheek joke about the right of return for refugees back to not just 1967, but 1948 Israel is one of the biggest controversies. One of the hardest points in negotiations over the year. Because Israel says if all the Palestinians come back that we will lose our, what’s the phrase? Our demographic majority.
Sammy:
They didn’t say that out loud, did they?
Josh:
Oh yeah. This is the part that I can never get with. When you say we’re a Jewish democratic state. You can’t be an ethnocratic and Democrat. It’s just not possible. As someone who’s been a refugee from one country to another, when you look at the refugee situation and that question of the right of return, what do you think about it?
Viet Nguyen:
What I think about it is that, number one, the reason why I call myself a refugee, and I still call myself a refugee. I don’t look like a refugee. I’m not physically or legally a refugee, but part of me will never forget the refugee experience, the flight and all of that. It’s important for those of us who are refugees to insist that we’re refugees, not immigrants. That allows me to identify with anyone who is a refugee. Whether they were Jewish refugees at a certain point in history, or whether they’re Palestinian refugees now.
Josh:
We had a lot of our own.
Viet Nguyen:
The whole idea, just because you’re the victims of something that doesn’t give you the justification to do the same thing to somebody else. Whether it’s a genocide or whether it’s making them into refugees. Undoubtedly, the situation you said, you described, is incredibly difficult situation. It should make all of us reflect, like Israel and Israelis, Jewish people, Palestinians, they all face a very difficult situation. But we in the United States, we face the same thing.
What do we owe our Indigenous peoples? What do we owe the problem of colonization and settler colonization in this country? I think we should hold Israel responsible and say, look, if you’re a democracy and we’re going to support you with billions of dollars in aid, and this is a real political and moral problem, you have to confront it versus trying to colonize and occupy and do apartheid on people. But we as Americans, I think we also are confronted with the same moral and political situation that we also don’t want to confront.
It’s a very valid critique. That’s why for me, I started off at Berkeley being a radical Asian American thinking about representation and inclusion and equality and all that. I’m like, well, that’s all important, but now, much more, my politics are about decolonization. Because I think that’s, for me, that’s a bigger problem that has led to these other issues of racism and anti-Semitism and things like that. They’re all tied up together. But if I had to put one word on the politics I’m engaged in now is decolonization. Yeah, decolonization in Israel could also decolonization in the United States too.
Sammy:
You’re not Arab, right?
Viet Nguyen:
I don’t think so.
Sammy:
You’re not Jewish, right?
Viet Nguyen:
I don’t believe so.
Sammy:
You’re not Arab or Jewish. Why do you care about Israel, Palestine?
Viet Nguyen:
That’s a great question. I think I care a lot about it, partly because I’m a human being. I think about the fact that when the Vietnam War happened, for example, in the course of that war, three million people died. Sometimes I wonder, what did people all over the world think? Most of the people all over the world were not Vietnamese or Laotians or Cambodian. They were seeing this stuff happening literally in their living rooms on their TV.
It was the first TV war, living room war. They were reading about it in the newspaper. They were seeing the photographs. It was the first war in which all these horrible images were being distributed all over the world, really graphic, terrible stuff. I wondered a lot, people knew this was going on. There were anti-war movements obviously, all over the world. But most people, I think were just doing their thing. They were just living their lives.
Because they’re human beings. They got to take care of their family and whatever. I wonder about that a lot. That war meant a lot to me. Obviously, it totally changed my life and the lives of everybody I knew. I would have liked to imagine that there were people all over the world who were not Vietnamese, had no connection to Vietnam in any way, shape or form, and they still cared. Because it was a human issue of human pain, of morality, of justice. They could recognize hopefully, that they were all implicated in some way. Either by inaction, they could see it happening, but they didn’t do anything. Or in certain countries, as in the United States, they were all implicated because they paid the taxes that paid for the bombs and paid for the soldiers and all that kind of stuff.
Josh:
And the draft.
Viet Nguyen:
And the draft. Likewise, it’s a human problem. It’s a human tragedy that we’ve all seen, and we can’t deny that it’s happening. Now we can pretend it’s not happening, but-
Sammy:
But which we do.
Viet Nguyen:
Yeah. But in our minds, everybody knows it’s happening. If we’re Americans, we are paying the taxes that are paying for the bombs. We are supporting American regimes that support the Israeli regime. I’m also personally and politically implicated in that. I think there’s always that test. The test is if something horrible was happening to you and your people, how would you want other people to respond? Take that answer and then apply it to every other horrible situation that you see taking place. If the answer to this problem is its intractable, we don’t know the solution, that’s just not the right response. If that’s our feeling, then we have to educate ourselves more. I’ve taken it upon myself to learn more and read more about what’s been going on over the past century and a half.
Josh:
It’s a really simple history like Vietnam.
Viet Nguyen:
It is simple and it’s difficult all at the same time. Because people snow you with all kinds of details. What about this detail? What about that detail? What about this and what about that? We’re confused. I was confused, then you got to start to read. For me, it’s not just because I’m a professor and a writer, but I really believe that answers are out there. Then when people say, we don’t know what to do, they’re saying, I’m either too lazy or I’m too busy to find out the answers. That’s just not an acceptable response for me.
Sammy:
How did they end up solving that whole Vietnam War?
Viet Nguyen:
Well, one side won and one side lost. Look what happened. For the United States, that was the end of the world. Literally, it actually didn’t start in Vietnam. John F. Kennedy, when he was a senator, said, “Look at Laos.” Laos is where the first domino is. That’s how we got started.
Josh:
The domino theory.
Viet Nguyen:
Right. But it wasn’t even Vietnam. It was Laos. Who talks about Laos now? But then, okay, the dominoes fell in Southeast Asia and nothing happened. The world is the same in that way, and now we’re worried about other dominoes instead. I take that historical perspective that this was human, horrible tragedy. My side that I didn’t choose lost and all these people died. Yet now, if we go to Vietnam, it’s a country of almost a hundred million people. Because we like to reproduce a lot. It was only like 30 million back then. Now we’ve got a hundred million people.
Josh:
Okay. Like the Palestinians. Like the Orthodox Jews. The secular Jews were slipping.
Viet Nguyen:
Well, if we were really committing a genocide, how come there’s so many Palestinians?
Josh:
Yeah, that’s the worst line.
Viet Nguyen:
Such a stupid.
Josh:
Worst line.
Viet Nguyen:
It’s a communist country, but it’s a capitalist economy. It’s in business with the United States. The United States sends diplomats and ships and everything, and it’s trying to pull Vietnam into an alignment against China. When I take that long view, I’m like, this is so ridiculous. Yes, the war, it seemed so apocalyptic back then for everybody who was involved. That all this time later, everything worked out for the United States, and it worked out for Vietnam.
There’s human tragedies to be taken into account. My sister went to that youth brigade. Hundreds of thousands of people were sent to reeducation camps. Recriminations were taken, blood feuds were carried out. We have to deal with all of that. But I don’t hold it against the Communist party. I think the Communist party, they won the war. They’re legitimately the government of Vietnam. By me saying this, I’m going to be the most hated person now in that household.
Josh:
For sure. You made it to number one.
Viet Nguyen:
Guaranteed.
Josh:
Made it to number one.
Viet Nguyen:
Guaranteed. But I don’t oppose the Communist party because they’re communists. I am critical of the Communist party because they commit human rights abuses. They put dissonance in jail for criticizing the environmental policy of the government and stuff like that. It’s a long-winded answer to say that I hope that what seems so apocalyptic now with Israel and Palestine will in a hundred years not seem apocalyptic if we’re able. If not we, but if they are able to address what seems to be an impossible situation. Everything always seems impossible when you’re in the middle of a war.
Sammy:
But you’re saying, if we’re drawing parallels here, the way to end this war is by the US staying in it so long that we lose.
Viet Nguyen:
You know what? When you go back to the example of Vietnam, what the US believed was that we are the greatest and most powerful country on earth. There’s no way this little guerrilla army is going to win.
Josh:
You’re not making any parallels here. I can’t see where you’re going with this.
Viet Nguyen:
We’re going to bomb the crap out of them.
Josh:
No, where are you going with this?
Viet Nguyen:
In fact, the United States dropped more bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in an eight-year span than all the bombs that were dropped in Europe during World War II.
Josh:
Right.
Sammy:
Did the Viet Cong wear sandals too?
Viet Nguyen:
They wore rubber tires. If you go to Vietnam, if you go to the tourist sites where they show you where the Viet Cong were doing. They were carving rubber sandals out of rubber tires.
Josh:
Wow. I wanted to ask you, with the sympathizer. One thing I loved about the book and the show is you make clear that it’s anti-war. It’s clearly anti-imperialist. Anti-war against the US aggression. Yet, what you’re saying, you do show the complexity and the nuance on both sides and atrocities committed on both sides. Whenever we talk about Israel-Palestine, when you say the word complex or the right wing often uses the phrase, “It’s too complex” as a way to shut down debate.
But there is nuance, there is complexity. How do you hold both the big picture politics of solidarity and anti-imperialism without falling into this, the worst thing you can do is both sidesism. But there are things on both sides without, there are also power dynamics. There is one side that has sandals and the other side that has nuclear weapons. How do you hold that? What would you say to writers today who are writing about Gaza, Israel, West Bank in the way that you wrote about North and South Vietnam?
Viet Nguyen:
For me, art and politics are not the same, but they overlap.
Josh:
Right.
Viet Nguyen:
When you’re doing politics, it’s hard to do both sides. You’ve got to pick a side. For example, in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, Jimmy Carter, the president, Democrat, said the destruction was mutual on both sides. That’s basically both sides issue. That’s factually wrong.
Josh:
Yeah. Thanks, Jimmy.
Viet Nguyen:
This is wrong. It’s like three million Vietnamese people died. 58,000 Americans died. You bombed Vietnam. Vietnam never bombed the US. It’s not the same. Politically, you got to take a stance and you have to mobilize and do all that kind of stuff. But as a writer, if I’m writing a tract, if I’m writing an op-ed, I can take a side. But if I’m writing a novel, you could write a novel just on one side. That’s fair too. But in this case of this novel, I did want to take into account the fact that there were legitimate feelings on both sides.
I’m not saying both sides were justified. I’m saying if we recognize that people are human beings, that they have complex feelings and so on and so forth. We could recognize, for example, that our loved ones could be on the wrong side of an issue, but we still love them. They could still be really good people, and yet they’ve chosen a side that we disagree with.
Josh:
That’s me and Sammy all the time. I love him. But I’m like, why they shirt? What are you really thinking today?
Sammy:
You chose this shirt, bro.
Viet Nguyen:
Both of you will write your own memoirs some day. talking about all the backstory and everything like that.
Josh:
Mine’s called, this side of the couch by Josh Healy.
Viet Nguyen:
I think an interesting art has to deal with that human complexity. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be political. But we’re living through that as a country now. We love our uncle, and our uncle supports Donald Trump. What are we going to do? That’s one just minor example.
Sammy:
That’s everyone’s uncle.
Josh:
Yeah, it’s always the uncle. Auntie’s good, but It’s always the uncle. Well, I just want to say thank you for coming on the show. We appreciate you.
Sammy:
We hope it doesn’t get you canceled too much.
Josh:
Or we hope it gets you canceled at just the right amount.
Viet Nguyen:
Just the right amount. That’s the key, Josh. Just the right amount.
Josh:
We look forward to having you back on.
Viet Nguyen:
As long as you guys don’t cancel me then I’ll be back on.
Sammy:
No, we won’t.
Josh:
We’ll discuss it.
Sammy:
We don’t have that kind of power.
Josh:
We’ll have the Semitic Caucus-
Viet Nguyen:
I’d have to say that guys are terrible comics. Is that going to get me canceled?
Josh:
No, that’s great.
Viet Nguyen:
Is that across a line?
Sammy:
You would not be wrong.
Josh:
Student observation and to be determined.
Viet Nguyen:
I’m just trying. How far can I go before I get canceled on the show.
Josh:
Yeah, cancel professor is a good title I would say anyways. Thanks for coming on. We appreciate you and good luck with the rest of the semester. Good luck with the next book. Help us write our way out of this crisis, all these crises so that people can stay where they want to stay and not be forced to leave. Those who want to come home, they can come home. I think that’s what we’re going for.
Viet Nguyen:
Thanks Josh and Sammy, it was a great conversation.
Sammy:
Appreciate you. Thank you very much.
Josh:
Cheers. Happy Friday night.
Viet Nguyen:
Yes. Always do a cheers.
Josh:
Yeah. [foreign language 00:56:41]. Look in the eyes for all the reasons we know. Happy Friday night. We out.
