Emperor Bao Dai (Public domain)
Hear ye, hear ye, good lords and lasses! The borderless Kingdom of Viet Dai has been officially founded and declared by Garden Grove Mayor Pro-Tem Joe DoVinh.
He describes it thusly: “A Constitutional Monarchy, with the line of succession of King Van Hue, to lead the fight for a Free and Democratic country, where all people are enthroned in the Great Vietnamese Family to bring about a new Golden Age. May we achieve Complete Victory!”
This, at least, is what it said on DoVinh’s city letterhead, in Vietnamese, as translated to English by the folks at the Orange Juice Blog, to the great bemusement of his city colleagues and many others as well.
The OJ Blog folks had a great deal of fun with all this, titling its story “All Hail Joe DoVinh, Emperor of Garden Grove!” and saying that, since the declaration some 7 weeks ago, DoVinh has said on a number of Vietnamese talk shows that “he views himself as a sort of interim ‘king’ or ’emperor’ until one of the surviving members of the Vietnamese royal dynastic lineages – some live in Southern California, for instance – steps in to take their ‘rightful’ place on the throne.”
Wow! He also said that just because Emperor Bao Dai abdicated the throne in 1945, it doesn’t mean that Vietnam can’t have a monarchical system of government. “(H)e also says that it will be up to ‘the people’ and ‘the will of the heavens’ to decide if the Vietnamese people will ultimately one day have a state governed by a constitutional monarchy.”
DoVinh claims he has this responsibility in part because he was elected to represent Garden Grove, which is the ‘real’ ‘capital’ of the anti-communist Vietnamese community of refugees – as opposed to Westminster,” the OJ blog writer said.
Screenshot of Orange Juice Blog’s copy of letter
Dukes up, Westminster!
Anyway, the online comments get colorful; “Joe has always been an eccentric dude” and “He definitely has the right to say whatever he wants.”
But when we reached out to DoVinh trying to understand what, exactly, he meant, he chose to remain silent. A spokesman for the city artfully passed as well, saying DoVinh issued the document on his city letterhead, and would defer to him for context.
‘No Kings’
Well! Things took a turn for the even more inscrutable when DoVinh sent us a new press release, musing on the “No Kings Day” protests. (He also posted the release in the comments section below the OJ Blog’s Kingdom of Viet Dai story on Oct.19.)
“As a free and democratic people who are responsible for the creation and preservation of our chosen form of government, we continue to exert our rights as defined and protected under the Constitution of the United States in ways that best suits (sic) our interests and aspirations at any time,” DoVinh wrote.
“No Kings” protesters in Dana Point on Oct. 18. (Photo by Teri Sforza)
“However, this does not mean that the 7 million or so who participated in the ‘No Kings’ protests represent the entirety of 340 million Americans nor can they speak for the 8.15 billion people on Planet Earth. The Peoples of the World are just as Free to chose their own government whether it is a Democratic Republic or Constitutional Monarchy or anything and all in-betweens based on their own unique cultural, historical, religious and political identities and inclinations…
“Right here at home in Garden Grove, we have seen the politicization of many Trumpian policies particularly immigration issues related to law enforcement at the local, state and federal levels. While we strongly support law enforcement, we also call for the Equal Protection of all immigrants, documented or not — this is basic human rights (sic) that need to be respected in a civil society like US.”
DoVinh then veers into a related controversy. Apparently, in the Vietnamese news media, he has asserted that the Garden Grove police chief should cooperate with federal immigration officials and, if he doesn’t, DoVinh could fire him (which, of course, no single councilmember can do, founder of a kingdom or no; that takes a majority vote).
“In this spirit we have called for our Police Department to cooperate with our City Council to assure that our population is fairly served and protected to which our Council collectively does have a vote of confidence to install and or to remove a Police Chief. This should come at no surprise to anyone. Fortunately, we have a compassionate Police Chief and a capable Police Department that serves us very well and doesn’t get baited into commenting on political opinions that is not their purview. We seek to unite our diverse communities in peace, harmony and mutual support. We resist anger, fear-mongering, divisiveness, provocation by way of misrepresentation, bias and distortion.”
And, at least to our befuddled mind, clarity as well. But we were jazzed to see DoVinh’s name in our inbox.
Pen pals
We thanked him for sharing his thoughts, said we were still trying to learn more about the Kingdom of Viet Dai, and asked if he was saying that people have a right to elect a monarchy here in America?
This photo made available by the U.S. National Archives shows a portion of the first page of the United States Constitution. (National Archives via AP)
“You can answer that question yourself: Is electing a Monarch here in America allowed under the US Constitution?” he wrote back.
I told him I avoid guessing what people mean — especially when it will be in print — and asked if we could chat.
“I know Youre (sic) an investigative reporter with Specialties… i (sic) can respect that but no interviews for now, thanks. The PR is in plain English and speaks for itself,” he wrote.
I suspect I may be dense then, I said, because it isn’t clear to me. The bit about the Peoples of the World being free to choose their own governments, “whether it is a Democratic Republic or Constitutional Monarchy or anything and all in-betweens”… are you saying that America has chosen its form of government, which is not a monarchy, but — as our people are among the Peoples of the World — they could choose a different form of government if they so desired? And, while I appreciate the Constitutional exchange, I am still eager to understand more about the Kingdom of Viet Dai, I wrote.
A gardener waters flowers outside the newly rebuilt Kien Trung Palace in the Imperial City within the Citadel of Hue, Vietnam, Feb. 21, 2024. (David Rising / The Associated Press)
DoVinh’s response: “And the unique identities and inclinations of Americans are to respect and uphold the US Constitution which doesn’t allow for a ‘Monarchy’ but neither you or I are constitutional scholars so maybe that question is best left to experts and my ‘dense’ pronouncements are left as-is without further elaborations,” he wrote. “Thanks for being a good sport.”
So, we tried. We also reached out to several university expert-types on the Vietnamese diaspora, who politely declined to read tea leaves, and we don’t much blame them. We reached out to city councilmembers as well, to similar affect. So we’ll attempt to provide context ourselves.
First, it’s important to understand that Little Saigon, as the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam, is home to many who vehemently oppose Communism. Their hearts broke as Ho Chi Minh’s forces marched into Saigon in 1975. Many escaped with barely the clothes on their backs and will always mourn the nation they loved. Many also do not accept the validity of the current government and react passionately to suggestions that fences might be mended or bridges built.
This passion has erupted into violence on more than one occasion.
About five hundred Vietnamese-American protesters congregate outside the HiTek video store in 1999 amid days of protests. Demonstrators were protesting store owner Truong Van Tran, who outraged the Vietnamese community by hanging a communist flag and a photo of Ho Chi Minh in his storefront. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Old war, new country
Five Vietnamese-American journalists, publishers and others accused of pro-communist views — or of criticizing anti-communist groups — were killed between 1981 and 1990. Magazine publisher Pham Van Tap was sleeping in his small Garden Grove office when someone set fire to the building. He was heard screaming before he succumbed to smoke inhalation on on Aug. 9,,1987, said a ProPublica/Frontline investigation titled “Terror in Little Saigon: An Old War Comes to a New Country.”
San Francisco journalist Duong Trong Lam was shot as he left his apartment building in 1981. Houston journalist Nguyen Dam Phong was killed at his home in 1982. Nhan Trong Do was killed in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1989, and Triet Le was killed in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, in 1990.
In 1999, Trần Văn Trường displayed a Vietnamese communist flag — and a Ho Chi Minh portrait — in his Hi-Tek Video shop on Bolsa Avenue. He said he just wanted to start a conversation about U.S.-Vietnam relations, but Little Saigon erupted with rage, leading to 53 days of tense protests that drew hundreds to the streets each day, and up to 15,000 on weekends.
In 2007 and 2008, a Vietnamese-language weekly in Little Saigon faced protests after publishing an editorial by a former Viet Cong (praising Ho Chi Minh and criticizing U.S. involvement in the war); while protesters descended on Little Saigon’s largest daily after it published a photo of a foot spa — in South Vietnamese flag colors — which was seen as insulting and disrespectful.
Holding flags and signs and shouting “down with communism, down with Ho CHi Mihn” more than 500 anti-communist demonstrators march outside the video store owned by Truong Van Tran, snaking their way around the strip mall in a line that stretched a city block. The store owner had been at the center of protests since he hung a picture of Hi Chi Mihn and the communist flag in his store, Hitek Video in Little Saigon. The protest lasted several hours as marchers circled the block again and again. (Photo by Chas Metivier/The Orange County Register)
Now, what to make of “King Van Hue”? Hue is Vietnam’s erstwhile imperial capital and was the seat of the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945. Bao Dai was its last emperor, though not without controversy. He was educated in France while France still ran the show, then took the throne and the name Bao Dai, “Keeper of Greatness,” in 1926. He sought to modernize the country but couldn’t win France’s cooperation. The history books say that the French colonial regime exercised firm control over the emperor until the Japanese invasion ended French administration in Indochina in 1945; Bao Dai remained as an essentially powerless ruler until the Viet Minh seized power a few months later.
We’ll take all this as DoVinh’s aspirational appeal to his compatriots to band together and, someday, return Vietnam to its former glory, free of its Communist government. But we could be completely wrong.
“As for KVD,” DoVinh wrote to us, “I chose not to comment further at this time.”