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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tonygumbrell (talk | contribs) at 16:47, 25 October 2013. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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National Liberation Front

Please rename this to National Liberation Front (Vietnam). Using this name is so subjective! Wikipedia should be neutral, not a propaganda place for planting the US point of view by even using propaganda names! The article CAN'T be called Viet Cong! Rename it now. --188.113.91.110 (talk) 20:08, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And now I see that the real name is even taken out of the infobox, as well as that it stays "Viet Cong, also known as National Liberation Front" in the introduction (and when Viet Cong stays first, it seems more like Viet Cong was the organization's prefered name, and NLF was another name used on them - exactly opposite of reality!) --188.113.91.110 (talk) 20:12, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, but what can we do to have it changed to NPOV? Revlurk (talk) 13:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I've started a formal request to have the article moved, see the bottom of the talk page. Revlurk (talk) 14:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This whole article examines the NLF from the perspective of their enemies, so it's not surprising that it use the name they used. It's still a travesty, though. 99.248.241.9 (talk) 20:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Grammatical error in second paragraph: 'ferment' should be changed to 'foment'

Suggest changing first sentence of second paragraph from:

North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front in 1960 to ferment insurgency

to:

North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front in 1960 to foment insurgency

Unless they were making alcohol.

Moving this page to National Liberation Front for South Vietnam

Adelson Velsky Landis converted this page into a redirect and performed a cut and paste move to National Liberation Front for South Vietnam. There are two problems with this;

Firstly, from a technical point of view, this is not how you move an article. Please read this and this. Unfortunately we cannot perform the move properly now, because the created National Liberation Front for South Vietnam article is now in the way. A request to a moderator will have to be made to delete this page first.

Secondly, this moving is likely to be controversial and should be discussed first. You should follow the procedure described here.

Thanks. --Escape Orbit (Talk) 22:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2013

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Clear consensus, also when the perennial sockpuppetry of a community banned user is ignored. Favonian (talk) 16:08, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Viet Cong → National Liberation Front (Vietnam) – Viet Cong is pejorative colloquialism for the NLF used by American soldiers and the Saigon regime and newspapers (see Viet Cong#Names and also History.com). It would be more NPOV to use the official name of the group as the article title as well as in the article itself. This is in line with point #2 of WP:POVNAME. The name could be either "National Liberation Front" (NLF) (short for "National Liberation Front for South Vietnam"), or it could be "Liberation Army of South Vietnam". I suggest "National Liberation Front" as that seems to be the most commonly used NPOV term (used for example on Encyclopædia Britannica and History.com), and is also precise, in line with WP:PRECISE. Revlurk (talk) 14:54, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support, WP:COMMONNAME should not be used to promote pejoratives. FNL was predominately labelled as 'Viet Cong' in American news media, but English Wikipedia isn't an exclusively American encyclopedia. Searching FNL OR NLF Vietnam gives 146,000 book results, so this is hardly a fringe name. Doing a quick glance of the results compared with googling 'Viet Cong', I'd say that the the former gives more academic and less US-centric results. --Soman (talk) 15:21, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The proposed title should be either Liberation Army of South Vietnam or National Liberation Front for South Vietnam. This is not the National Liberation Front for Vietnam, but for south Vietnam, the only part that needed liberating. Indeed, if we go with the proposed title, aren't we casually affirming American propaganda that the NLF was just an arm of the PAVN? If we go with the more formal titles I've suggested, aren't we affirming communist propaganda that the NLF was an indigenous southern insurgency? Let's just stick with the common term we've got: Viet Cong. Srnec (talk) 16:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Natural disambiguation is preferred over parenthetical. Viet Cong does that job just fine; I'd be happy with one of the suggested alternatives if they're actually backed by more strong sources and if we can resist the urge to glue some brackets onto the end of it. bobrayner (talk) 16:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Revlurk. Zocky | picture popups 19:36, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The term Viet Cong/Vietcong is certainly more common than "National Liberation Front", as you can see from this ngram. Britannica is being misrepresented in the nomination. Their main article on this subject is titled "Viet Cong". The NLF article describes the Viet Cong as the NLF's "military arm." I don't see any reason to consider the name "Viet Cong" to be pejorative, and Britannica certainly doesn't describe it that way. The name suggests that the group was communist, but that is hardly a controversial claim at this point. As far as what they called themselves, they had many names. When they were first organized in 1954, they were the "Saigon-Cholon Peace Committees". After 1969, they dropped NLF and switched to "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam." In military terms, there was a single communist army with commanders who reported to Hanoi. Modern Vietnamese writing normally drops the North/South distinction -- everyone is described as "PAVN" or whatever. Epaminondas of Thebes (talk) 21:53, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: This comment explains why the move is necessary. What by your standards is this mysterious 'Viet Cong'? In this comment the armed movement, united front movement and government structure are conflated into one and the same. Using the actual names of actual organizations/entities helps the reader to navigate and learn (as opposed to reaffirming popular misconceptions). --Soman (talk) 23:29, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Aren't we talking about what to call the military forces? Or do you see NLF/PRG as some offices in Hanoi and Cambodia? Epaminondas of Thebes (talk) 01:01, 6 October 2013 (UTC) [reply]
        • The current state of the article states "The Viet Cong (Việt cộng (About this sound listen)), or National Liberation Front, was a political organization and army in South Vietnam and Cambodia that fought the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War (1959–1975), and emerged on the winning side. It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled." In you scroll further down to the "Names" section the confusion is total (including the somewhat bizarre claim that "Although the NLF was not officially abolished until 1977, the Viet Cong no longer used the name after PRG was created". So what we perhaps, rather than a move discussion, should discuss would be to separate between the political organization (i.e. the united front, i.e. NLF/FNL) and the armed forces (Liberation Army of South Vietnam). In any case the label 'Viet Cong' is unhelpful as article title (like 'Khmer Rouge' which is another case...) as it is a derogatory label applied broadly to smear opponents (both military and civilians) of the Saigon government. --Soman (talk) 01:58, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • There already is an article for PRG, which is exactly the same organization as NLF, except that the name was changed. If you want to write a separate article on the NLF, that's fine with me. FNL? You think this group should get a French name? Epaminondas of Thebes (talk) 02:36, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • PRG was not the same 'organization' as NLF/FNL, PRG was a state that sought diplomatic recognition on the international scene (with ambassadors, ministers, etc.). NLF was a united front. FNL was the French name of NLF, and was commonly used internationally at the time. Having two separate articles for NLF and the Liberation Army would make some sense, but having separate articles for NLF and 'Viet Cong' would just confuse as VC was the label applied to both NLF civilian and military structures in the Saigon/US propaganda. --Soman (talk) 03:54, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Per Thebes, and if you wanted the US name, it'd be "Charlie" -- 76.65.129.3 (talk) 22:12, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. "Viet Cong" is the most common name in English, including British English, and we use the common name in English even when some consider it offensive; see the etymology of Apache or Slav. If you think that the subject shouldn't be called "Viet Cong", just convince English speakers to use some other name and Wikipedia will follow them. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 18:43, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Offensive or not, this is the common name amongst English speakers. If it's offensive to some, then that is a suitable topic for the article. But giving it a different name so that most readers end up going through a redirect to find it is silly. --Escape Orbit (Talk) 19:03, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Oh come on, WP:COMMONNAME makes it perfectly clear what the name should be. Common name. Whether this title may be offensive or not, it is overwhelmingly the common name throughout the English-speaking world. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:29, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral - although the South-Vietnamese/American title is problematic, the offical name is mainly restricted to academic sources and requires "of South Vietnam" not to be ambiguous. Irrespective, the lead sentence in article body does need to put the official name first, I have reversed the order as follows: The National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam), known to the South Vietnam government as the "Việt Cộng" . In ictu oculi (talk) 17:26, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – I think Viet Cong is common among English speakers, and the proposed name in this case would be overly pedantic. --Article editor (talk) 01:20, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Per WP:TITLECHANGES. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 10:46, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, the current title is the clear WP:COMMONNAME. The opening should of course be reverted to correspond with the title, assuming this article stays where it is. A six-pack of whupass (talk) 06:24, 12 October 2013 (UTC) !vote by sockpuppet of community banned user struck. Favonian (talk) 15:16, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

I am currently reading STREET WITHOUT JOY by Bernard Fall. I quote from the book; "...the National Liberation Front military forces —on our side they are being referred to as Viet-Cong, a disparaging term for "Vietnamese Communists"... [1] I consider Bernard Fall to be a definative, expert source, as he was in Vietnam as a journalist with first the French, and the then the U.S forces. He was an expert on all political and military aspects of the war. I have read elsewhere in the same book, and in sources by other authors, that the term "Viet Cong" was a propaganda term used as a pejoritive by the French, the Americans, and their minions in Vietnam. The term "Viet Cong" clearly represents a point of view, though it is probable that many who do so don't realise that. Anthony Gumbrell 16:24, 25 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonygumbrell (talk • contribs)

  1. ^ STREET WITHOUT JOY (First SCHOKEN PAPERBACK edition 1972 Third Printing 1975
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