Herro, Ho Chi Minh here. You probably thought I was the war hero and leader who saved Vietnam and won the last great guerrilla war. But in this timeline, the American Government invented digital surveillance and I never even got to leave my home.
The South Vietnamese police identified me as a political leader and critic of the government the moment I turned 21, and arrested me based on my internet history and speech, and instead of leading Vietnam to liberation I was tortured in prison for six months by the government and then released. Part of the conditions of my bond say I have to support the government, and claim it's possible for a political solution to happen in South Vietnam when it is actually impossible.
But because I was recognzied as a leader, Instead of forming the Viet Minh, I was ordered to create bogus kosher front groups like the Diem kids and save vietnam coalition for the DIem government to keep suckers believing they had a voice. Every single public appearance I have to say now is coreographed and screened by government censors, and my future is kept deliberately dark to make me fear for my life.
In this timeline, the corrupt Diem government dictatorship simply rules indefinitely. The country remains a failed vassal state, the population is kept in lies, and what mass resistance actually happens is totally leaderless and therefore sponatenous. Like the Intifada in palestine, short and bloody but not actually a war. Most of the population is in and out of prison, the concept of politics is tightly controlled by the ruling class, and of course nobody actually believes South Vietnam has a future but they all have to pretend it does. It's like a biblical parable, except I have to live it.
If I could go back in time, I'd never be so stupid as to believe a political solution was possible given the technology of the current age. I'd jump right ahead and tell my people to go underground and off the internet. Probably they'd have a fighting chance, probably the vietnam war would still happen and the outcome would be exactly the same. But I'd never tell you to trust myself once the government had captured and tortured me, or believe the lies the the colonial powers intended a bright future for Vietnam. In their eyes, we were simply slaves to be used as dumb unthinking tools till the day we died