"It wasn't a new idea. During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers"
About this Quote
“It wasn’t a new idea” is a disarming little phrase with a big agenda: normalize psychological warfare by framing it as routine, even boring. Hanoi Hannah is talking about propaganda broadcasting as if it’s just another repurposed tool in a familiar kit, not a morally charged act aimed at cracking human beings under stress. That casualness is the point. If you can make the tactic sound old, tested, and standard-issue, you strip it of scandal and turn it into administration.
The follow-up - “During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers” - quietly asserts institutional continuity. She’s not pitching a personal crusade; she’s positioning herself as a functionary in a long-running state practice. The subtext is almost corporate: we’ve done this before, we know how it works, and we’re simply scaling it to a new enemy. That matters because Hanoi Hannah’s fame rests on being a voice: seductive, taunting, intimate. Here she deliberately flattens that mystique into precedent, suggesting the “celebrity” is less star than instrument.
Context sharpens the intent. Vietnam inherited both methods and resentments from colonial conflict, then redeployed them against Americans who imagined the war as unprecedented and ideologically clean. By invoking the French war, she punctures that self-image and folds the U.S. into an older narrative of outsiders in Vietnam. It’s a reminder, delivered with a shrug, that empires change uniforms; the microphone stays on.
The follow-up - “During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers” - quietly asserts institutional continuity. She’s not pitching a personal crusade; she’s positioning herself as a functionary in a long-running state practice. The subtext is almost corporate: we’ve done this before, we know how it works, and we’re simply scaling it to a new enemy. That matters because Hanoi Hannah’s fame rests on being a voice: seductive, taunting, intimate. Here she deliberately flattens that mystique into precedent, suggesting the “celebrity” is less star than instrument.
Context sharpens the intent. Vietnam inherited both methods and resentments from colonial conflict, then redeployed them against Americans who imagined the war as unprecedented and ideologically clean. By invoking the French war, she punctures that self-image and folds the U.S. into an older narrative of outsiders in Vietnam. It’s a reminder, delivered with a shrug, that empires change uniforms; the microphone stays on.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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