*Sigh.*
No. Not at all in the least. Even factoring in the fact that not all of those were strictly illegitimate, the statistics for the Communists were never pretty, even just looking at the duration they were in power in a divided Vietnam, dealing with the South. Now factor in the fact that it's been close to forty years and they haven't changed.
Part of the reason might be because the North and its' puppets in the South weren't all that big on actual trials or properly documenting their executions while the South was under some obligation to do so, but I fail to see how that is even remotely a defense.
Because they bothered/were pressed to holding more elections than the North ever even pretended to (and yes, the North was guilty of horrible amounts of voter fraud and intimidation on its' own turf in the leadup to the thrown out elections, it's just that few people ever cover it).
Ehhhhhhhh....
*Measures in hands* Probably, if we're just talking about the usual, more veneal corruption (like skimming money off the top). But overall, I flatly disagree. Tyranny and totalitarianism are corruptions unto themselves, and even factoring in the numerous ways the Southern government was a petty tyranny and was corrupt I find it hard to grade them worse than the North was.
Especially now, since the legal descendent of the Northern dictatorship has become at least as venial and corrupt as the South ever was, but without losing that much of its' former brutality.
Weaker? Absolutely. More brutal overall? Absolutely Not. The Viet Minh and Cong were absolutely atrocious both in the South and the "near abroad", as well as at home in the North. This is blindingly obvious if you ever look at what happened when they won, when they promptly killed more civilians in a few years than the South ever did in its' entire existence (even if we pre-date it to the establishment of a Viet government by the French). When we factor in the border conflicts and how both sides abetted their parties in Laos and Cambodia, that number just gets more and more atrocious, and the ratio gets more and more in favor of the South (as much as I despise admitting it).
Understatement of the year. These are the people who trained the effing Khmer Rouge, and who upon deposing the KR and occupying the country proceeded to withhold crucial food shipments and confiscate what was left in a starving country. Keep in mind that was just one of their more *tangential* crimes. Their behavior in the North and South constitutes multiple counts of mass murder, mass torture, war rape, use of all of the above as weapons of war, political oppression, ethnic cleaning-slash-genocide (depending on who you l listen to).
The South was never, Ever angelic. But this is like claiming the South Koreans were the worse Korean government in the Korean War. And this looks like a poor, transparent attempt to come across as nuanced or "balanced" and thus accurate. It doesn't work.
No, they just waged cruel and total war on their supposed countrymen for decades, in a thoroughly nasty campaign where they were the major parties ripping up the countryside, willfully ruining food sources (at least up until the deployment of the chemical agents), and killing anybody and everybody who did not conform in a manner that wouldn't be unfamiliar to those that lived in the Thirty Year's War.
I'm pretty sure that compared to that, carpet bombing looks absolutely saintly and limited. I know if I were a poor German peasant, I'd much rather have the USAAF and RAF rain bombs on my head than I would deal with the hordes of illiterate, rampaging thugs going up and down the country.
Which only proves how little many, many people understand the current Vietnamese regime, or the history of the Indochinese Wars. I am sorry, Do your research again.