I think the biggest threat to communism is authoritarianism. Who here knows the Vietnamese system well? Do they have robust checks and balances to reign in bad folk seeking power? I need to do some reading.
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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Unanimously, right.
I assume they are elected by parliament, not by general election. Not an uncommon practice.
It's the National Assembly that elected him. It's like a Parliament, but there are no Executive or Judicial branches that are independent from it.
The Assembly seats 500. A unanimous vote still shows that people are afraid to cross the leader. Like Republicans with Trump, only there are no Democrats. There are a handful of "Independents," with the vast, vast majority being Vietnamese Communist Party members.
"It's not democracy without the constant threat of the far right stripping my rights and destroying my economy"
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Oh good. Are we going to go back in? Or are we just going to choke them economically?
Nah, no oil. Trump has other toys he’s playing with.
dont worry, as soon as trump finds out about rice oil he'll "liberate" the small asian countries and make them "elect" an asian pinochet
Trump's son Eric is building a 1.5 billion dollar golf course there.
So it'll be a soft takeover.
"elects"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Vietnam
Elections in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam are held under a one-party political system led by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).
One party but different people to elect. Just like primaries.
Except that's where it stops (in both Vietnam and China). One-party rule is only slightly more democratic than a dictatorship.
You make it sound like democracy is a linear phenomena. There are likely tradeoffs
In ancient Greece there were no parties and it was the first democracy.
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Yah and? Do you consoder elections valid only when there is threat of far far right taking all your rights
If he's echoing China's power structure he's not a communist.
By that metric neither was the USSR under Stalin or even Lenin, Romania, or Yugoslavia.
The spread of communism was definitely not on my 2026 bingo card.
Vietnam has been communist for decades. This article is about the head of the communist party becoming the head of state, when previously they were separate roles filled by two different people, both from the communist party.
This isn't about "communism" per se, it's about consolidation of power under one individual, in a system where those two roles were traditionally separate.
Like, imagine if the president of the US was also the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader. Oh wait, he basically functionally is currently because of a spineless Congress doing his every bidding. So you can see the problem here, right?
I'm not saying it'll be just as bad, as I don't know anything about Lam. But at the very least, it sets a dangerous precedent. He might be a fine upstanding guy, but what's stopping the next guy from being worse? Or the guy after that? That's why tradition and precedent can be so important in politics.
This is not "spread of communism". Vietnam is a one-party communist state.
They just re-elected a guy or gave him a new title (with more power).
Normally the general secretary of the communist party, the president of the state, and the prime minister of the national assembly are different people. To Lam has been general secretary for a while, while others were president and PM. It gives a separation of state and party. Now, To Lam is General Secretary AND president, the first time those two posts have been held by the same person.
It's not that bad of a development, the Communist party of Vietnam is nothing like the totalitarian CCP. The Vietnamese still fuck people off when they are corrupt or inept. To Lam has beef doing a pretty good job of keeping Vietnam stable, peaceful, and developing at a sustainable pace. There's still lots of poverty, inequality and inflation, but it takes time to recover from decades of war with various other countries and keep up with modernization. It's a nice, peaceful country.
Ah. I was unaware.
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