More generally, through 1956 “the press insured that the reading public would view the war as a struggle between Communism and the Free World,” Susan Welch observes on the basis of her survey of several leading journals. Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh were presented as “merely agents of Moscow and Peking whose primary means of gaining support was through terror and force (although occasional mention was made of their nationalist appeal),” while France was “a gallant ally … fighting alongside the United States to preserve liberty and justice in Asia,” a cause carried on by the United States
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