How Manufactured Crisis, Programmed Rage, and Misguided Resistance Prolonged Human Suffering
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
INTRODUCTION
Wars do not erupt spontaneously. They are prepared — psychologically, politically, and mythologically — long before the first bombs fall.
The Vietnam War stands as one of the clearest modern examples of how domination-consciousness operates: fear is cultivated, events are distorted, and entire populations are mobilized against their own long-term interests. The cost is measured not only in lives lost but in generations traumatized and resources diverted away from healing, education, and shared prosperity.
Solomon Centers, a 53-year-old scholar and counselor, appeared in my class as a witness to show how war programming overtakes both rulers and resisters.
Solomon is blue-eyed, clean-shaven, with his wavy brown hair lightly threaded with white and neatly combed over his ears. He wears a simple white tunic and pandanus sandals — a visual reminder that wisdom does not require uniforms, medals, or weapons.
GULF OF TONKIN — THE SPARK THAT WASN’T
Solomon Centers stood quietly before a chalkboard marked with dates, naval routes, and arrows cutting through the Gulf of Tonkin.
Wars begin, he said calmly, when leaders decide the public must be frightened enough to accept them.
In August 1964, the Johnson administration claimed that North Vietnamese forces had attacked U.S. naval vessels. This allegation — especially the supposed second attack — was used to rush the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress, granting sweeping authority to escalate military action.
Later admissions from U.S. officials revealed that no such second attack occurred. Intelligence was misinterpreted, exaggerated, or invented. Covert U.S. operations against North Vietnamese coastal targets were already underway, undermining claims of unprovoked aggression.
Howard Zinn documented this episode as a classic example of how governments manufacture justification for war while concealing their own provocations. What the public was told bore little resemblance to what actually happened.¹
MEDIA, FEAR, AND THE SELLING OF WAR
Solomon reminded his students that wars are not only fought on battlefields — they are fought in newspapers, broadcasts, and classrooms.
Sensational headlines and selective reporting transformed uncertainty into certainty and suspicion into outrage. Context disappeared. Doubt became disloyalty. This pattern echoed earlier conflicts, in which exaggerated or fabricated incidents were used to mobilize public support for military action.
Chris Harman placed Vietnam within a broader global pattern: wars framed as moral crusades often mask struggles over power, influence, and economic control. Ordinary people are asked to sacrifice, while elites rarely bear the consequences.²
When fear becomes the organizing principle, Solomon said, critical thinking is treated as treason.
THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT — COURAGE AND CONTRADICTION
Resistance arose quickly. Students, veterans, clergy, and families challenged the war’s legitimacy. Many acted from deep moral conviction and genuine compassion for human suffering.
Solomon Centers had advised students during those years. He respected their courage — and he worried about their direction.
Opposing domination requires discipline, he told them. If resistance adopts the tools of domination, it risks reproducing the very system it seeks to dismantle.
Some factions within the anti-war movement drifted toward aggression, property destruction, and romanticized violence. In doing so, they alienated potential allies and allowed the state to paint all dissent as dangerous.
The tragedy, Solomon believed, was not protest itself — but the loss of ethical clarity under pressure.
HISTORIANS AND WITNESSES SEE THROUGH THE LIES
Howard Zinn insisted that historians must stand with those who suffer the consequences of policy, not with those who manufacture justifications for it. His analysis of Vietnam exposed how official narratives concealed deception, while ordinary people paid the price.³
Chris Harman reinforced this view, showing how Cold War ideology framed local struggles as existential threats, demanding military solutions that only intensified violence.²
Thom Hartmann, who himself participated in anti-war activism during the Vietnam era, later emphasized how media systems and political institutions repeatedly condition populations to accept war by suppressing historical memory and critical context.
Solomon Centers summarized their shared insight simply: When power tells the same lie often enough, it becomes the background noise of daily life.
RESISTANCE FROM WITHIN THE RANKS
One of the least acknowledged aspects of the Vietnam War was resistance by the soldiers themselves.
GI underground newspapers, refusals of orders, sabotage of equipment, and desertion revealed deep moral fractures within the military. Many soldiers recognized that the war they were fighting bore little resemblance to the one politicians described.
Solomon worked clinically with veterans whose experiences contradicted official stories. Their trauma was not only from combat, but from realizing they had been used.
When soldiers stop believing the story, Solomon reflected, the war is already lost — even if the bombing continues.
DOMINATION VS PARTNERSHIP — THE DEEPER PATTERN
The Vietnam War exemplifies an ancient pattern: domination consciousness demanding obedience, sacrifice, and silence.
In Enlil–Marduk terms, war functions as a control mechanism — dividing populations, exhausting resistance, and redirecting human creativity toward destruction rather than cooperation.
Solomon Centers concluded his reflections with a quiet challenge:
Peace is not passive. It is an active refusal to accept lies, rage, and false choices. The real revolution is learning not to mirror the violence we oppose.
The tragedy of Vietnam was not only the war itself, but how much human potential was consumed by it — potential that could have built schools, healed communities, and nurtured a partnership-based future.
VIDEOS
(Select 1–2 to embed)
-
Ken Burns & Lynn Novick – The Vietnam War (selected segments)
-
“The Gulf of Tonkin Incident Explained” – historical documentary analysis
-
“GI Resistance During the Vietnam War” – interviews and archival footage
-
Jane Fonda reflections on Vietnam (later interviews) – contextualized, reflective discussions rather than wartime propaganda
#VietnamWar #GulfOfTonkin #FalseFlag #HowardZinn #ChrisHarman #ThomHartmann
#AntiWarMovement #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #SDS #GIResistance
#DominanceConsciousness #PartnershipConsciousness #Enlil #Marduk
#Propaganda #PeaceActivism #WarCritique #ImperialHistory
REFERENCES
-
Zinn, Howard. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, 2nd ed., 2011, pp. 29–37.
-
Harman, Chris. A People’s History of the World, 2017, pp. 571–572.
-
Zinn, Howard. The Twentieth Century, pp. 213–254.
