November 1 is always an uneasy day in the Vietnamese-American community, politically speaking. The day marks the anniversary of an event whose meaning still divides the community.
Forty-five years ago, on November 1, 1963, a group of South Vietnamese generals and colonels staged a coup and captured President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother the Special Advisor Ngo Dinh Nhu. 
The two were killed in the armored car that was bringing them to the coup leaders. Later a low-ranking officer was sentenced to death for the unauthorized killing, in a court martial that became viewed as a cover-up.
Another brother of Diem and Nhu, who had ruled half the country as his own fiefdom, was tried and executed. Another brother was an ambassador and never returned to the country. The family’s oldest brother, Catholic Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, went on exile and eventually died in a Vietnamese monastery in Missouri.
The coup was long in coming. Diem had come under intense internal opposition and international pressure to reform and allow more democracy and religious freedom. It was in opposition in President Diem that Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc famously self-immolated.
Until the end of the war, November 1 was celebrated as the National Day of the Republic of Vietnam.
A stamp series commemorating the National Day shows it as “Revolution Day” and compares the event to the breaking of chains.
A large segment of the prominent figures in the Viet community in the U.S. came from the opposition camp.
Most prominent in OC is, of course, the leadership of Nguoi Viet Daily News. The shareholders of Nguoi Viet all met each other through protests against President Diem.
The late publisher Yen Do was put on trial (and expelled from Saigon’s most prominent high school) for leading a protest against the Diem government, demanding universal education.
Senior Editor Do Quy Toan (a.k.a. Ngo Nhân Dung) became famous as a poet with the poem “Fire” – how the fire lit by Thich Quang Duc would rouse up the Vietnamese people.
Another Board member, at the time a new pharmacy grad, provided a sick bay where student-protestors injured by riot police could get medical care.
It is fair to say that if it weren’t for all the anti-Diem protests, there wouldn’t be any Nguoi Viet Daily News.
Poet Tran Da Tu is a co-owner of Viet Bao, the other prominent Viet newspaper. His first job in the U.S. was also at Nguoi Viet, and he spent most of the Diem years either getting arrested for saying something the Diem regime was unhappy about, or barely getting out of jail and hiding from the secret police.
Another poet, Vien Linh, runs the most successful monthly magazine out of a little corner of a Westminster print shop — he too spent a lot of time hiding from Diem’s secret police.
As the war ended and Vietnamese refugees came to American shore, however, the perception of President Diem began to change.
Diem loyalists believe, and propagate the the notion that President Diem was the only true democrat, the only true reformer, and the only true anti-communist of all the South Vietnamese leadership.
And that view came to dominate — as in: most posted on the internet, most published on newspapers and magazines, most stated on TV and radio, etc. — political discourse in the Viet community in the U.S.
It is never clear what percentage of the community adheres to this revisionist point of view. The community’s divided opinion of President Diem can be seen in one Bolsavikland media giant: Writer Nhat Tien, whose family holds a sizable share of Little Saigon Radio, was a prominent speaker at the July 1963 funeral of Nhat Linh, an event that galvanized popular opposition to the president. But the company’s president Vu Quang Ninh, on the other hand, is an ardent supporter of the late president and promoter of all things Diem-related.
It is also not clear how this revisionist view came to be so dominant in the public square. Some would claim that the Vietnamese-American Catholics forced this view. Diem was a devout Catholic often accused of favoring the country’s Catholic 10% minority over the Buddhist 90% majority in his personnel decisions.
The Bolsavik, however, tends to believe in a different explanation that has been put forward, and that is the influence of the former South Vietnamese paratroopers.
These rangers, together adding up to one brigade in the South Vietnamese armed forces, stayed loyal to President Diem throughout the war. Their first commander had led a failed coup against Diem, but all subsequent commanders of the paratroopers are Diem loyalists.
The paratroopers were the first to form well-organized and vocal groups in the U.S. – the “Red Beret Family” – named after the headgear in their uniform. (In Vietnamese: Gia Dinh Mu Do.) The point of view of the paratroopers often becomes some sort of “official” “patriotic” political views of the Vietnamese.
For years, they commemorated the former National Day of the Republic of vietnam not as a day of celebration but rather a day of remembrance of President Diem. A number of Catholic groups also joined in the ceremonies.
In 2007, Diem loyalists upped the ante and held their ceremony honoring President Diem at the Vietnamese-American War Memorial in Westminster. It created rumblings of opposition from people who thought one faction in the community shouldn’t push their agenda at the memorial. One Buddhist temple even went so far as to threaten to hold an exhibition of President Diem’s “crimes” against Buddhism.
This year, they did it again, but opposition was mute.
And the announcement of the ceremony was only snuck in on the day of the event itself.
“In Saigon, meanwhile, President Ngo Dinh Diem’s popularity had declined. The Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai and Hoa Hoa religious sects opposed his favoritism towards Catholics, and so chaos erupted. In protest, a Buddhist monk doused himself with gasoline and immolated himself. Malcom Browne, an Associated Press (AP) reporter, captured the shocking image later seen worldwide. In November 1963, President Diem and his brother Nhu were murdered in a coup widely believed by the Vietnamese to have been backed by President Kennedy. A number of VNAF fighter planes attacked the presidential compound in Saigon in support of the coup. Three weeks later, former Marine Corps marksman Lee Harvey Oswald fatally shot Kennedy in Dallas. Both shooters, Oswald and an ARVN major who killed Diem, were murdered soon after their crimes. Later, after Senator Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1968, talk spread among superstitious South Vietnamese for years about an evil curse cast upon the Kennedys for the murders of Diem and Nhu: two brothers for two brothers, one president for another, the spooky incantation was uttered. Increase in violence against the government and civilians and subsequent coups in South Vietnam led to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to send combat troops less than eighteen months later. ”
Page 45-46, “A Sense of Duty”
Isn’t 1/1 South VN’s Quoc Khanh Day? So we should celebrate or mourn the death of Diem?
Diem was a dictator.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
President Diem died by corrupt generals. Communists lose if President Diem is still alive.
How does this relate to the local politics?
From Wikipedia :
Diệm’s rule was authoritarian and nepotistic. His most trusted official was his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, leader of the primary pro-Diệm Can Lao political party, who was an opium addict and admirer of Adolf Hitler.
He modeled the Can Lao secret police’s marching style and torture styles on Nazi designs.[18] Ngô Đình Cẩn, his younger brother, was put in charge of the former Imperial City of Huế.
Although neither Cẩn or Nhu held any official role in the government, they ruled their regions of South Vietnam, commanding private armies and secret police.
Another brother, Ngô Đình Luyện, was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom. His elder brother, Ngô Đình Thục, was the archbishop of Huế. Despite this, Thuc lived in the Presidential Palace, along with Nhu, Nhu’s wife and Diệm.
Diệm’s rule was also pervaded by family corruption. Can was widely believed to be involved in illegal smuggling of rice to North Vietnam on the black market and opium throughout Asia via Laos, as well as monopolising the cinnamon trade, amassing a fortune stored in foreign banks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B4_%C4%90%C3%ACnh_Di%E1%BB%87m
** Diem’s regime secretly sold rice to North Vietnamese communist, and smuggled opium into South Vietnam **
Nhu’s wife is a BITCH! Want to know what kind of BITCH she was, just go on you tube.
Your list of Diem’s victims is good but I would like to add a few more:
Writer/ dissident Nhat Linh committed suicide because he didn’t want to be put on trial by Diem
Composer Cung Tien was thrown in jail for being “pro-communist”
After the coup, poet Vu Hoang Chuong wrote a famous poem called “Lua Tu Bi” to celebrate Thich Quang Duc’s heroism.