May 16, 2025
May 19, 2025, will mark the 135th birthday of the great Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Also referred to as “Uncle Ho,” he was the founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet Minh (1941). He was president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 1945 until his death in 1969.
The International Action Center salutes this legendary internationalist and people’s hero not only for the Vietnamese people, but for the workers and oppressed masses worldwide. The following excerpts come from an article originally posted on workers.org on May 18, 2017.
Born in 1890 in central Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was the Marxist-Leninist communist who forged and led a people’s movement and army that defeated the invading imperialist might, first of France and then the U.S. and ultimately liberated Vietnam from colonialism [50 years ago] on April 30, 1975.
Malcolm X acknowledged the centrality of the national liberation war led by Ho Chi Minh to [the] global rebellion, when he noted, “Viet Nam is the struggle of all Third World nations — the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism.” (1972 interview with Yuri Kochiyama)
In 1924, Ho Chi Minh made a presentation at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow during a session on the “national and colonial question.” He emphasized the importance of support for the Black liberation struggle in the U.S.
He stated: “It is well-known that the Black race is the most oppressed and the most exploited of the human family. It is well-known that the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the ‘New World’ had, as an immediate result, the rebirth of slavery. … What everyone does not perhaps know is that after 65 years of so-called emancipation, [Black people in the U.S.] still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings.” (“Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, Selected Writings, 1920-1966”)
