Viet Cong (old version)

Viet Cong is a contraction for the Vietnamese phrase Viet Nam Cong San, or "Vietnamese Communist."

This (originally) deragatory phrase was used by the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) government of South Vietnam under President Ngo Dinh Diem to describe his political opponents, many of whom were communists, starting after the partition of Vietnam in 1954. Later, during the Vietnam War, the RVN and the United States government used this expression to refer to the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (NLF) and it's guerrilla army, the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). (The NLF and the PLAF themselves never used this expression to refer to themselves, and always asserted that they were a national front of all anti-RVN forces, communist or not.) It is this use of Viet Cong that most people in the United States and Europe are most familiar with.