My last boss is probably one of the few people I know I would consider an actual genuine hero. He singlehandedly rescued his family from the Khmer Rouge and smuggled them out of the country through China, then to Britain and finally Canada. He started a business from nothing here and is probably the best employer i've ever had. His nephew was the manager while I worked there and is one of the greatest people i've met and became a good friend. Him and the rest of my boss' family wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for him. He lost a lot of friends and family because of the genocides.
Yeah, I didn't appreciate this until I read about the survivors, but it's freaky to imagine that one day you go from living relatively normally, to being marched out of Phenom Penh at gunpoint by teenagers, separated from your family, and forced to become rice farming slaves.
And they were slaves, one story is about a person who was starving, just like everyone else, who dared to catch a fish that swam between their legs to eat. They were shot for that.
They also practiced eating the rich in the literal sense. For whatever odd cultural reason, they enjoyed eating human livers from people who were executed.
When the civil war ended, the king asked the people to return their guns. The Khmer Rouge kept theirs and intercepted shipments thereof, easily taking over the disarmed areas.
I grew up in a town that received many Cambodian people displaced by this from Thai refugee camps. It's hard to imagine what my friends parents went through to keep their children alive. I have fond memories of their temple festivals and foods. I'm so grateful for societies that can include refugees and let people live a peaceful life.
>As described in PBS’s Frontline documentary series,
“Instead of becoming pariahs, the Khmer Rouge continued to play a significant role in Cambodian politics for the next two decades.The Khmer Rouge would likely not have survived without the support of its old patron China and a surprising new ally: the United States. Norodom Sihanouk, now in exile after briefly serving as head of state under the Khmer Rouge, formed a loose coalition with the guerillas to expel the Vietnamese from Cambodia. The United States gave the Sihanouk-Khmer Rouge coalition millions of dollars in aid while enforcing an economic embargo against the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government. The Carter administration helped the Khmer Rouge keep its seat at the United Nations, tacitly implying that they were still the country’s legitimate rulers."
Chomsky hosts a transcript on the forum those quotes were taken from, and that article ignored any context for the remarks and edited their content to make them seem more objectionable than they are. Saying China does not deserve blanket condemnation as part if a broader discussion is hardly praising Mao's policies.
The butchering of the second quote is is even worse, omitting the line "But, as I said before, I don’t think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved."
The article later moves on to defend the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory bombing, which is fittingly right after discussing Cambodia.
What is your own overall view of the Khmer Rouge, and ditto Mao? And have your views changed over time?
Let me say where I am coming from here. The Khemer Rouge and Mao had in common certain ideas. They were for socialism, and they were for achieving it through violent revolution. They believed in the Leninist ideas of vanguardism and party centralization. And they believed that it was possible to take a preindustrial country directly to industrialization and then anarchistic socialism without first having to go through a liberal, capitalist phase.
I think these ideas are mistaken, and whenever they have been tried the result has been a horror. And it is for that reason the Pol Pot and Maoist regimes were so brutal. So my question to you is, what do you think of these ideas?
Yes, they were. What I am saying is they were that because they were Marxist-Leninists. Pol Pot and Mao started out as Marxist-Leninists and that lead them to establish military dictatorships. That set of prior ideological ideas leads inevitably to that sort of situation.
One reason I think it is important to stress this is that defenders of Marxism-Leninism say that regimes like this went bad because they fell away from Marxist-Leninist values, which implies it could have gone better, but I say the ideology always leads to that result.
So let me ask you, do you disagree? Do you think it is possible for a Marxist-Leninist regime to turn out good?
It's not clear. It may be a problem with Democratic centralism, but basically every example of it being attempted is immediately countered with extreme hostility from most of the world. Like in China, within two years of the end of the civil war the US had marched an army to the Chinese border with the ability to drop nukes on them. That kind of threat leads to a military dictatorship, no matter what economic policy you hope to try.
Thank you for giving an answer. But you know, the original idea of Marxism was that the revolution would take place in the advanced industrial states, which have the greatest military power and so would not face this sort of threat.
But when that failed to happen Lenin switched to the idea of revolution in preindustrial nations, which would lack that military strength. He predicted this would be safe for Russia because imperialism had run out of options and would collapse in the great war, and then revolution in the advanced nations would take place and protect Russia. And then when that failed to happen he was stuck with socialism in one country, but decided to go ahead anyway, with the predictable result that it came under military threat first from the fascists and then the capitalist countries.
In the case of China and Cambodia, military threat was predictable from the beginning.
So what is your scenario? Is it to wait around for the revolution to finally takes place in the advanced nations? And what about Trotsky's argument that Democratic centralism inevitably leads to dictatorship?
Also, since you defended Chomsky, does he ever directly discuss Marxism-Leninism? My impression is that he is not one, and if that is the case why did he think that M-L regimes might turn out good?
>And then when that failed to happen he was stuck with socialism in one country, but decided to go ahead anyway, with the predictable result that it came under military threat first from the fascists and then the capitalist countries
With Russia, within roughly a year every major player involved in WWI had declared war on the Reds. Threats from the facists came much later, when I'd argue the entire revolution was over.
In general though, Lenin's personal ambition had seemed to be his driving force for most of his revolutionary career, which is why I'm skeptical of it's ideal outcome as well.
>In the case of China and Cambodia, military threat was predictable from the beginning
I agree, but I think the hostility from capitalist countries has an overbearing influence on the kind of atrocity filled resulting states.
>Is it to wait around for the revolution to finally takes place in the advanced nations?
I don't really support a violent revolution anywhere, and have moved into the "slow change" side of revolution.
As for the rest, I also suspect that Democratic centralism is a flawed premise, and view Lenin's disbanding of the soviets as proof he was aiming for a dictatorship. As for Chomsky, I don't think he is one. This discussion was how he doesn't think the revolution was wholly bad, as the propaganda makes it out to be, but he was hardly praising it either. I'm not really sure why you started this conversation about Marxism-Leninism if I'm honest.
I started this discussion about Marxism-Leninism because I believe that Marxist-Leninist countries invariably turn brutal, for various reasons (and you seem to basically agree with me). That being the case, Chomsky should have assumed from the beginning that reports that Cambodia was brutal were probably accurate, and I assume he didn't because he has some mistaken ideological beliefs. And that being the case people should not be defending him.
I think this is part of a much larger problem. I think everyone should have an understanding of Marxism-Leninism and what is right or wrong about it. One of many reasons everyone needs to understand Marxism-Leninism is that China continues to be considerably influenced by it.
I am in my 70's, and it used to be a fair amount of the population had this understanding, but nowadays very few people do. This has happened partly because the left, both pro-and anti-communist, has basically stopped explaining it to people. One consequence is mistakenly defending people like Chomsky when they go wrong due to poor ideological understanding.
I think there are various reasons the left has stopped explaining Marxism-Leninism, but I think it is very unfortunate and am angry at them for this, and I take every opportunity to explain it, and in fact I am planning on someday writing an article on it.
Let me add it's nice to talk to someone who understands these issues far better than most people do.
>That being the case, Chomsky should have assumed from the beginning that reports that Cambodia was brutal were probably accurate, and I assume he didn't because he has some mistaken ideological beliefs
From Chomsky's viewpoint, the drop in population had two likely causes. Cambodian atrocities, or the lingering effect from the known US atrocities/possibly still ongoing ones. When the only reports pinning it on Cambodia comes through refugee statements made to the US, Chomsky thought independent verification was necessary.
As for the rest of your post, I've made myself clear that I'm not a proponent of Leninism. That said, Marxism-Leninism never had the strong or lasting influence you claim. It was used to foster the revolution, and then pulled out for various political uses.
Any violence inherent in the ideology is shared by most revolutionary creeds. During the nineteenth century, it was assumed that any "liberal" revolution would also inevitably turn brutal as well.
And as for wanting the "left" to explain Marxism-Leninism, most of the left experience the same twelve years of propaganda on the subject as the right. I don't see this drastic difference between the sides.
Thank you for replying. I think a lot about these issues, but I haven't really talked with someone on the left about them.
Let me see if I understand what you are saying. First of all, I get the impression you are a democratic socialist. Is that right? And I take it part of the reason is that you see violent revolution as at least very often leading to oppressive regimes. On that I agree.
Ok, now that being the case, I say Chomsky should have predicted this for Cambodia, but he didn't. And that would seem to indicate that he disagreed with people like you on the idea that violent revolution leads to oppression.
And if that is true, then I think people on the democratic left who respond to Chomsky ought to make clear that he was wrong on the question of violent revolution and oppression. But I have read lots of things by leftists about Chomsky, and I don't think I have ever seen one that said that.
Maybe they are out there, but the left is sure not communicating this idea to people in the public who don't read leftist literature, but do run across lots of things by leftists in forums that reach a larger public.
So first let me ask you, am I right that Chomsky apparently disagrees with you on the strong connection between violent revolution and political oppression?
And if I am, would agree you that when the democratic left is communicating with the larger public about Chomsky, one of the things they should do is make clear that he is wrong about this? And if you disagree, then why not?
Democratic socialist is probably broadly what I would be, but I don't have much certainty on if it's the best choice, and I don't hold much stock in those kinds of ideologies.
On Chomsky, no matter how certain you are that violent revolution will lead to oppression, you need sufficient proof that it is happening before you condemn the government. Chomsky had, in my mind, legitimate reason to doubt the evidence coming through the US, and wanted independent verification. I doubt he thought Cambodia would never do such things.
Even when a state is run by a terrible tyrant, that does not mean they are guilty of every crime imaginable. Wanting sufficient proof of their misdeeds before any potential punishment is sane. Waiting may cause more oppression, but brazenly punishing may hurt more people overall.
To me, the Iraq War largely proves Chomsky's point. Hussein was a tyrant, and as he had used weapons of mass destruction in the past there was plenty of reason to suspect he had them. He did not have them though, and the Iraq War has ruined millions of lives.
Going to add one more thing. I did a little research on what Chomsky's stated position on violent revolution is, and he feels it should be a last resort avoided if possible, as the welfare of the people often suffers. He generally advocates against all forms of violence.
Ok, with respect to your views, I think I can narrow it down to a single question. I said that Marxism-Leninism has goals that can be achieved only through a great deal of violence against the population, and as a consequence whenever Marxist-Leninists come to power, this is what they practice.
That means that even if a Marxist-Leninist party came to power that was headed by a basically good person, and was not threatened externally, it would still behave quite oppressively toward its population.
My question is, do you agree that due to the nature of its basic goals, Marxist-Leninist regimes must be so oppressive?
I keep saying this, but I have strong doubts in Leninism. I don't think someone would push for that system unless they cared more about seizing power than the wellbeing of the people. That will likely lead to oppression, without any policy changes. I'll address some points, though for the most part I am nor considering a Leninist central party.
>The problem is that invariably a large portion of the population is opposed to this, to the bottom of their souls.
I don't agree with this. The bourgeoisie would be opposed to it, but they can't be described as a large portion of the population. Ideally, everybody else benefits from the change, they have no reason to oppose what's going on and there should be no reason to opress them.
So yes, any such revolution must involve some manner of getting rid of the bourgeoisie. They would likely feel oppressed, though they would just be losing privileges unique to them. They would also likely turn to violence, but wide scale lasting oppression you describe.
Leninism has always lead to great oppression. But that doesn't mean that the people who supported it understood that. Lot of bright, well-meaning people have philosophical, political and religious beliefs that are very wrong. Also, remember, we are not just talking about Lenin's own motives and beliefs, but many if not most of the thousands of party members who supported Leninism. Most of them were sincere idealists (which is why Stalin got rid of them all in the Moscow purge trials).T
I strongly disagree that only the bourgeoisie would be opposed. Leninist revolutions take place in preindustrialized societies. That is because Lenin believed that peasants were naturally cooperative and so would eagerly adopt socialism (he got this from the Russian philosophy of narodnikism).
But that is simply mistaken. Peasants are deeply conservative and traditional, including being completely embedded in extended kinship networks, raised to value life as a farmer, and extremely religious.
Communism in a preindustrial society means tearing that whole culture completely apart, and that requires enormous state violence. Yes, a lot of them got fooled by propaganda for a while, especially before the revolution was over, but many more in Russia were never won over, and many of the ones who had supported it changed their minds once they saw it in practice.
And in fact I have read that once the Communists came to power in Russia, Lenin regularly denounced, in private, the peasants for their resistance.
So what I am saying is that leninists are generally well-meaning, intelligent people who sincerely believe it will lead to a socialist paradise, but leninism's ideas, when you try to put them in practice in a preindustrial society invariably lead to massive state violence.
>I strongly disagree that only the bourgeoisie would be opposed. Leninist revolutions take place in preindustrialized societies
I made myself very clear that I was not discussing a Leninist system. As I said, that system prioritizes obtaining power over the wellbeing of the people.
Many Leninists thought their seizure of power could then be used to help the people, but prioritizing anything over the wellbeing of the people is going to end in some form of oppression. Plenty of Russian Socialists agreed with this take, it was at least part of the reason for the Bolshevik/Menshevik split.
I don't understand what conversation you're trying to have. You've abandoned your attempted condemnation of Chomsky, and seem to be trying to get me to defend an ideology I oppose.
Ok, we agree that Leninism leads to oppression. My point is that, as far as I can tell, Chomsky doesn't agree, and the same is true of many on the left. And that this is why he took the position he did on Cambodia, and why so many defend him.
Let me say some about where I am coming from. I have been interested in these issues since the late 1950's. At the time the left was split over Stalin and the Soviet Union. Many of them said they were wonderful. Many others said they were terrible, and this was the inevitable result of leninist philosophy.
Later like with Solzinitzen, it became impossible to defend Stalin. So many on the left switched to arguing that leninism could turn out fine, and it had gone badly in this case because the leaders had fallen away from good communist principles. It seems to me that this is Chomsky's position, and many on the left who defend him.
But you seem to be a lot more familiar with Chomsky than I am. So let me ask you, what is his position on leninism?
>Leninist doctrine holds that a vanguard Party should assume state power and drive the population to economic development, and, by some miracle that is unexplained, to freedom and justice. It is an ideology that naturally appeals greatly to the radical intelligentsia, to whom it affords a justification for their role as state managers. I can't see any reason -- either in logic or history -- to take it seriously. Libertarian socialism (including a substantial mainstream of Marxism) dismissed all of this with contempt, quite rightly
Ok, I'm back. I've been thinking about this, and I think it would be best if I presented my own ideas in a more organized form, and then said what I think you are saying, and ask some questions.
So here is how I look at things To start out, dictatorships vary greatly in how cruel and oppressive they are. And how oppressive they are is greatly determined by whether or not they are ideological. The non-ideological dictatorships are often less violent, while the ones that are ideologically revolutionary invariably are very oppressive.
The reason is they have different sorts of goals. Non-ideological dictators just want to stay in power and make use of the state for their own benefit. To achieve this they only need to eliminate and suppress any political opposition, through means such as jail, execution, and controlling the media. The rest of the society they leave as it is.
On the other hand, revolutionary ideological dictatorships want to radically change the whole culture and society, top to bottom. The problem is that invariably a large portion of the population is opposed to this, to the bottom of their souls.
So the regime has to resort to extreme measures, like endless propaganda, and violence such as execution, imprisonment, labor camps, and starvation, and aimed at large portions of the public. The idea is to eliminate opponents (Stalin: "Man is a problem. No man, no problem") and terrorizing everyone else.
Now Marxism-Leninism is such a radical philosophy, and so whenever Marxist-Leninists come to power, they invariably resort to all these extreme measures. Yes it matters that they come to power generally through violent revolution. And yes it matters that they face military threats. But the heart of the matter is that they have ideological goals that can only be achieved by great violence against their people.
And this means that the personality of the leader, like Lenin's ambition, is not what is key here. A leader who was basically a good person but believed in Marxism-Leninism would still have to follow similar policies. Most radical Islamic terrorists for instance, sincerely want to do what they think is good for the world, the problem is their ideology and what it clearly requires.
One more point. Marxist-Leninist regimes differ in how extreme their ideologies are, and that considerably effects how violent they are.
Now I apply all that to the case of the Pol Pot regime, and it was Marxist-Leninist, and so I think one could have predicted with certainty from the begining that it would be violent. And it had an extreme form of Marxism-Leninism, so one would expect it to be very high in violence.
For me this comment has no up vote or down vote button, and I have not already up/down voted it (there is no unvote/undown button) . Is this the result of moderator action?
Perhaps the worst bit is where he dismisses the testimony of thousands of Cambodian refugees as 'refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries', arguing one should put more weight to the testimony of an anonymous European in Phnom Penh who apparently did enough cycling around to know that the only people being executed were 'prominent politicans' and 'hated bomber pilots'.
Meta: Chomsky certainly wasn't the loudest or most committed defender of the Khmer Rouge on the Western left and obviously the left didn't make US policy and probably wouldn't have influenced it much if they'd been united on the evils of the Khmer Rouge from the very beginning. But this article and his continued insistence it was reasonable at the time [whilst others have admitted to being blinded by their biases] doesn't reflect well on him.
Yeah doesn't reflect well on him. His ire is always pointed in one direction. That's what you get with Chomsky. Flipside the Khmer Rouge avoided deserved annihilation because of direct support from China and the United States. Chomsky has no responsibility for that. As you said his influence on policy is nil.
> "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered."
They wrote that the refugee stories of Khmer Rouge atrocities should be treated with great "care and caution" because "refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear."
It's quite ironic that it was Chomsky himself who was dismissing evidence that didn't fit with his own world view.
Not really. He made these comments when the genocide had become common knowledge, and the facts had been accepted by anyone conversant with the situation in the region. His continuing denial was based on the flimsiest scraps of evidence, and people were generally dumbfounded by his obtuseness in this matter. When you deny a genocide, it’s not merely a difference of opinion, it has a moral dimension, as when people deny the holocaust.
I see no denial in his quote. Instead, I see warnings not to take US-centric accounts of the events without a ton of salt, because the US had interests in portraying them in a specific way in order to further an agenda.
Was the US the only one reporting on the situation in Cambodia at the time? Surely Chomsky had the means to compare the US-centric version against other accounts and verify the atrocities going on.
He was engaging in literal whataboutism for genocide and trying to cast doubt on its abundantly clear evidence. If he brought up a "that is what they accused Germany of in the first world war" or said "Well of course the Jews would claim that after the expropriation, they have interests against Germany!" nobody would try to argue in good faith that he wasn't denying the Holocaust while justifying it.
As a Vietnamese, one of the sad thing about this whole ordeal was how Vietnam's involvement in this was viewed under a very negative light by the world.
The year was 1978. Vietnam had just came out of the country's great war 3 years earlier, and was extremely exhausted to put it lightly. The last thing it wanted was getting in another war. But it had no choice. The Khmer Rouge crossed the Cambodian - Vietnamese border, looted nearby villages and massacred the people. You can read up on the details, but be warned the atrocities will ruin your day.
Under the circumstances which can be argued as an existential threat, Vietnam had no choice but to launch attack on the Khmer Rouge and swiftly got rid of them and liberated the Cambodian people, ending the genocide.
Yet the world's view on this has been incredibly negative. Even now, Vietnam is often seen as the invader, the aggressor in the conflict instead of the Cambodian people's liberator.
Vietnam's removal of the Khmer Rouge was certainly necessary and ultimately spared a lot of people further suffering, but Vietnam's 'good guy' status in the conflict is somewhat dented by the fact that they'd provided the military support to help install the Khmer Rouge in the first place [see also a lot of other 'world policing' actions...] before the Khmer Rouge decided that Vietnam was an enemy due to a mix of ethnic and ideological hatred and being on different sides of the Sino Soviet split.
The Sino Soviet split was also a big deal for international and especially Western perceptions of Vietnamese involvement at the time: China at the time not only viewed Vietnam as an enemy but also the Khmer Rouge as an ally, and even pressured other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian exile factions to involve the defeated Khmer Rouge in their government in exile.
The regime the Vietnamese installed was less spectacularly genocidal but certainly very dubious, although it says a lot about the weirdness of Cambodian realpolitik that Hun Sen, the former Khmer Rouge cadre the Vietnamese installed as deputy PM, has held continuous office since then through years of decreasing Vietnamese influence and then a transition to notional multiparty democracy and capitalist oligarchy including coalitions with his former enemies. And that's even before we get into how many times the Cambodian king switched sides...
I can tell you that from at least this Canadian's perspective, using military force to eliminate the Khmer Rouge was no less necessary than using military force to eliminate the Nazi control of Germany. I think you'll find that among people who have extensively studied asian and southeast asian history and military topics, it's almost universally agreed upon how evil their regime was.
The full weight of the evidence for how many people they killed, which only surfaced by the mid to late 1980s, only further reinforces this.
Mind you, the Vietnamese government went to war with the Khmer Rouge because the latter attacked Vietnam, not because the killing fields became unacceptable.
It's true, and it's sad but that's just how it works. Unless a country is attacked, it's very hard to find justification to intervene in the internal affairs of another country. That said, once war is inevitable, the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge made Vietnam understand that such a regime cannot be allowed to be left alone, both for the sake of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people.
As I'm sure you know, there is a lot of history between the Vietnamese and Cambodians. I understood that Cambodians hold a lot of animosity when the Vietnamese took the Mekong delta from Cambodia in 1698. They ended up as 2nd class citizens and the Khmer Rouge figured it was a good time to take it back.
And one can't ignore North Vietnam's support of the Khmer Rouge early on.
On 29 March 1970, North Vietnam launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. Documents uncovered from the Soviet Union's archives reveal that the invasion was launched at the Khmer Rouge's explicit request after negotiations were held with Nuon Chea.[33] A North Vietnamese force quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching within 15 miles (24 km) of Phnom Penh before being pushed back....After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese turned the newly won territories over to the local insurgents.[1]
About North Vietnam's support of the Khmer Rouge early on, it's worth viewing things in historical context. During the Cambodian coup of 1970, Vietnamese ethnic was massacred:
> Paranoia flourished and this set off a violent reaction against the nation's 400,000 ethnic Vietnamese.
> Lon Nol hoped to use the Vietnamese as hostages against PAVN/Viet Cong activities, and the military set about rounding them up into detention camps. That was when the killing began. In towns and villages all over Cambodia, soldiers and civilians sought out their Vietnamese neighbors in order to murder them. On 15 April, the bodies of 800 Vietnamese floated down the Mekong River and into South Vietnam. [1]
Under the circumstances, the North Vietnamese allied with the Khmer Rouge and the ousted Sihanouk to take back the government from Lon Nol. In the beginning there was no sign of a genocidal regime, and the Khmer Rouges were just "comrades" supported by the Cambodian prince trying to take back his government. It was not until later that ethnic and ideological hatred turned the Khmer Rouge against their Vietnamese allies.
You gotta see it from the other sides too. Vietnam had a strong standing army and took over a sovereign country, not that they had many choices, but that made the whole South East Asia uncomfortable. Who would be next? Thailand? Malaysia? Singapore? In fact, ASEAN was formed originally to fight communism.
I attended a university-based martial arts class in the late 1990s. A somewhat-elderly Asian lady (probably mid-50's) began attending classes and progressing through the ranks. She was kind of. . . well, a goofball. Transgressive sort of humor. Made jokes about people's girlfriends. Laughed through demos.
The only time I saw her utterly serious is when the instructor showed off some knife-defense techniques he learned at a seminar. She got a weird look on her face at the overly-styled techniques we were being show and very clearly said, "We did it like this in Cambodia." She grabbed the rubber knife from the sensei, seemingly teleported behind his back, clamped a hand over his mouth, and drew the knife across his throat. "So they no hear any noise," she explained. As a bunch of 20-something kids, we looked on in horror. She seemed to remember herself and looked embarrassed. Left early from class and never came back.
My parents survived this awful tragedy. They shared stories of how they dealt with the intense hunger, exhaustion, and living in a state of perpetual terror. More often, they'd speak of the family that were taken from them-- uncles, aunts, and grandparents that I'll never meet. My grandpa was a musician that composed much of the popular Khmer music of the 60s influenced by American rock. Nothing has been more devastating than not knowing the whereabouts of loved ones. One of the most brutal legacies of the Khmer Rouge is the separation and destruction of families and communities.
Through a DNA testing site, we recently matched with an unknown relative, leading to a joyful reunion between my mom and an aunt who cared for her before the war.
DNA analysis has helped identify the unknown remains of Pearl Harbor service members[1], bringing closure for families. I'm certain this technology could do the same for many Cambodian families.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, I recommend watching The Killing Fields. Obviously it's from a very British/American perspective. Since I doubt that the film production companies that made it are earning much, if any revenue from it these days, I don't feel bad about linking to a torrent of it:
Highly recommended. Haing Ngor won the Best Supporting Academy Award for his portrayal which also may have offended Pol Pot/the Khmer rouge enough to get him killed. [0]
"Defense attorneys suggested the murder was a politically motivated killing carried out by sympathizers of the Khmer Rouge, but offered no evidence to support this theory.[13] Kang Kek Iew, a former Khmer Rouge official on trial in Cambodia, claimed in November 2009 that Ngor was murdered on Pol Pot's orders, but U.S. investigators did not find him credible."
"Some criticized the theory that Ngor was killed in a bungled robbery, pointing to $2,900 in cash which had been left behind and the fact that the thieves had not rifled his pockets."
My grandfather was a victim (he was educated and a well-to-do farmer). They beheaded him in front of the village. My mother and her family were forced to watch and clap.
My mother-in-law lost her parents and six siblings all on the same day... she was the oldest and the only one to have moved out of the family home already. She had also recently had a baby and lost the child, because she herself was starving from the forced labor and could not produce breast milk.
It's enlightening to contemplate the impact of such a thing, all the way out to the song "Holiday in Cambodia." Imagine seeing a tree with a plaque on it stating that this was the place where they used to smash infants' heads against the trunk. They were always just one murder away from achieving perfection, and in light of such a goal, what is a single life?
I was recently remarking to someone on their Year Zero, their willful destruction of all that had gone before. Certainly we have seen it with ISIS and Mao encouraged it for that revolution, but this was much more thorough. Pagodas were turned into warehouses and statues were of course destroyed. It certainly seem to be a common thread in communist revolutions: all that has gone before must be destroyed.
Now I am going to see if I cannot find Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia.
History is a series of bad remakes that should never have been made. The US seem to be going on a very good direction, toppling Washington and Jefferson's statues lately.
I take the Spike Lee approach, if people are going to violently vent their anger its better they destroy some object than end someones life. We can always make another statue.
So much of the tragedy of our times has been along those lines. Reading this book (amongst others) about the atrocities committed in service of the British idea of utopia in India evoked similar feelings: https://www.amazon.com/Inglorious-Empire-What-British-India/....
In comparison, the turn towards soft power in the 21st century on the macro (political) and micro (personal) levels is much appreciated, despite all of its ills.
My fianceé's mother was one of those children who was seperated from her parents in Cambodia during this time. What became of them is unknown, but it could have been any of the gruesome fates covered by this exposé. I learned a portion of the story from what she could share through tears, and thanks to this article I now understand more.
Thanks for sharing. One day I will need to go there and see some of these sites for myself.
I still get chills hearing about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. This article struck me in a different way: the farmers vs urbanites. I never saw it this way before.
The Khmer Rouge weren’t dumb. Pol Pot came from a wealthy family and was educated at the top French-Cambodian schools.
Similar to the North Vietnamese massacre of 3,000 civilians during the Battle of Hue, it’s the doctors, teachers, professors and other elite who have the power to oppose you. The rural folks have little power or money to resist.
A bit off topic, but I was curious about the 3000 number and went to read about the Hue massacre on Wikipedia. Then I switched to the Vietnamese version of the article and the event was portrayed in a completely different light. Both versions are well sourced and well cited, yet they offer two completely different versions of the events as well as the overall conclusions of who was responsible and what happened.
It's interesting to say the least to see how a supposedly neutral source like Wikipedia can be manipulated to drive different view points.
Interesting! I actually found the article (about the battle) pretty balanced all things considering.
The massacre is where things go sideways:
The so-called "massacre" was just a psychological blow.that the US erected, in fact American bombs caused many civilians to die mixed with soldiers on both sides. The Liberation Army buried the civilians who died from American fire, so the United States discovered civilian corpses in mass graves.
Considering many of the bodies had their hands bound behind their back and gunshot wounds to their heads, this is a pretty fantastical explanation.
I have read both versions. My personal interpretation is the killings definitely happened, however there are a lot of grey areas and unknowns around what exactly happened there: who did it (the VCs/the armed civilians/the South Vietnam army/the US), who died in those graves (militants/civilians), the circumstances of the killings (military executions/mob justice/lynching/casualty from fighting/bombing), etc. Perhaps the truth is a bit of everything.
This will unfortunately remain as one of the tragedies of war that we will never know the full picture of.
Similar, to some of the stuff in the late 60's, America is being subjected to a textbook Marxist action. However, instead of using economic class stratification to sow societal collapse, Marxists are using race and identity.
However, I don't think they will succeed. If Trump loses the election, the media narrative will flip and things will settle down fairly quickly. If Trump wins the election, I think the weak-bonded BLM/Antifa/Black-bloc coalition will breakdown too.
It’s no coincidence this is happening now. The seeds of Marxism were planted long before the Soviet Union died.
One of the most fascinating lectures by Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector, described 30+ years ago exactly what the long-term plans of the USSR were. It is eerie how much of it applies today: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1FElIhOh_KI
Race and Identity are being flogged hard because any actual economic changes aren't happening -- real Marxist revolution in the US died in the 70s, and utterly vanished after the USSR crumbled and the Chinese embraced capitalism (aka "Communism with Chinese Characteristics" a la Deng).
Many hot button SJW issues are driven by conservatives, such as how Blacktivist was getting paid by conservative groups (and probably Russian intelligence) before Trump's election. This isn't new -- anyone remember how the W Bush era GOP was just hammering gay marriage? This creates instability and empowers extreme POV's, and changes the discussion from "let's implement Basic Income" and "let's not invade Iraq" to "gays and immigrants are ruining America!" and "which statues should go down?!".
I don't think it is paranoia and they are not hinting, when one of the founder, of one of the prominent moments proclaims proudly that "We are Marxist". That is just paying attention to what people are saying.
Lots of the South Vietnam Viet Cong leaders/organizers were upper class and educated in Paris as well.
Most them were kept out of power after the Communists took over. Many believed they were fighting for some kind of socialist democratic state -- they were duped by the northern Communists.
It's just the same that is happening today. If you want to create a socialist, send your son to Paris/London/Seattle. Send him to Cuba or Venezuela and you'll create the founder of the Next UBER.
It doesn’t matter who. The mechanism is always divide and conquer with the help of “useful idiots” in their parlance who are usually very enthusiastic members who believe the dogma a little too much and thus get in the way of “progress” and get “ditched” so to speak.
These were not "useful idiots", and I don't think this oversimplification will help anyone understand what really happened in Cambodia. The mostly teenage-aged members of the Khmer Rouge had legitimate grievances of their own and Pol Pot capitalized on this, the extreme brutality of the US government, to oust the Lon Nol government on the basis of its alignment with the US.
Well there is the useful and the purge when they are no longer useful makes them the idiots because they brought about the means of their downfall. They are no different than the brownshirts as their intentions didn't matter in the end. Stupid is as stupid does and given the sheer list of victims they deserve no sympathy.
Russia exhibited the opposite phenomena. In part it was urbanites vs farmers. The "kulak" was the source of all evil and had to be brought to heel through collectivization.
The most effective technique the Soviets found to accomplish this was mass starvation.
"In Washington, then-Representative Christopher Dodd of Connecticut averred: ``The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now.''"
"In the news columns of The New York Times, the celebrated Sydney Schanberg wrote of Cambodians that ``it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.'' He dismissed predictions of mass executions in the wake of a Khmer Rouge victory: ``It would be tendentious to forecast such abnormal behavior as national policy under a Communist government once the war is over.'' On April 13, 1975, Schanberg's dispatch from Phnom Penh was headlined, ``Indochina without Americans: for most, a better life.''"
The events are very tragic. I know people whose families were in danger of being sent to the camps —they escaped though laborious trudging through jungle at night, escape to Vietnam and then HK as boat people before moving on to better places.
How does idealism end up in such a dark ditch like this where your own neighbor thinks the horror is so bad they have to go in a clean things up, despite nominally being “on the same side”
I'd hesitate to say there was anything idealistic about the Khmer Rouge: you'll find more idealism in the actions of Stalin or Hitler. It wasn't even a sincere outbreak of angry hatred: the leadership were all members of the educated classes they condemned to hard labour and pogroms.
Almost any country which tries full on communism sadly ends up in a similar scenario. See USSR, Mao's China. In Mao's China, it was well apparent that the communal farms weren't working and even the people's daily wrote a story on it. The then high ranking party officials also opposed them. But Mao still got rid of them all and continued, causing several famines.
The USSR at least pushed hard for science, engineering and technology education. Political party type and organization aside, the rapid growth of their electrical grid and large-scale engineering projects (hydroelectric dams, airports, nuclear power, hospitals etc) in the post-1945 era was quite rapid.
The Khmer Rouge and its strongly anti-intellectual stance was quite the opposite. You can't return an entire country to an agrarian subsistence agriculture system and literally kill off every educated person that can be found, and expect good results...
Much of the "progress" in the USSR was based on slave labour [1]. And it was not limited to just physical labour. Many intellectual feats were also the product of people working in, what essentially amounts to, a prison [2].
According to this study [0] the gulag deaths were approximately 830,000 from 1934 to 1953. It is important to know however that 70% of the deaths occurred between 1941 and 1944 (included) so they can kinda be attributed to difficulties from War Period. Also, it's important to note that antibiotics didn't become available until after WW2.
To put things into perspective, I have an interesting comparison for you. Using the same source as above for the USSR, and this report [1] from the Bureau of Justice Statistics we can say that Mortality in the gulag in 1953 (236 deaths per 100,000 prisoners) was lower than mortality in US prisons today, both in state prisons (303 deaths per 100,000 prisoners) and federal prisons (252 deaths per 100,000 prisoners).
A close friend's father was one of the persons to return from Gulag. He was one of the few people that buried the rest of the camp, due to him being immune to whatever disease that killed everyone else. Survived, came back and conceived my friend, all thanks to a lucky mutation somewhere.
that atrocities are not the domain of any particular political or economic ideology or system, but rather a danger that we need to fight against actively everywhere, and now.
According to the BJS data sheet linked in grandparent, the leading causes of death in prison for 2016 are:
- Cancer (1,128)
- Heart Disease (1,025)
- All Other Illnesses (525)
- Liver Disease (260)
Cancer and Heart Disease are also the leading causes of death for people not in prison. I don't think this is at all convincing evidence of an "atrocity."
Taken as categories, 44% of people in prison die as a result of illness, 31% as a result of suicide. (both sourced from BJS still) Both avoidable with the right funding, and yes, atrocities. If we're going to have a justice system that lives up to what it claims, a side effect of a prison sentence shouldn't be death.
As far as I understand it they also in many cases virtually held scientists or their families hostage to the outcome. Fail and you or your family gets sent to the gulags. One example is Yuri Gagarin's cosmonaut partner and his getting burned on re-entry due to rushing things to get under a deadline to avoid “consequences”.
Or if not sent to the gulags, sent back to a much lower standard of living. People with the equivalent of masters degrees in electrical engineering, aerospace, structural engineering etc could expect to have a fairly decent apartment, chance to get in the waiting list to acquire a family car, and other "high standard of living" compared to persons working in a manual labor job. Fail at whatever scientific or engineering endeavor your project was working on, and expect to lose your nice apartment and benefits...
They were particularly encouraging of scientific endeavors that contributed to national posterity over other nations and disregarded the rest. Intellectual pursuits in politics and really any criticism of government or social norms could get one easily disappeared.
> the rapid growth of their electrical grid and large-scale engineering projects (hydroelectric dams, airports, nuclear power, etc) in the post-1945 era was quite rapid.
In the 1920s and 1930s, 2,000 writers, intellectuals, and artists were imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and concentration camps. After sunspot development research was judged un-Marxist, twenty-seven astronomers disappeared between 1936 and 1938.
[...]
Official figures put the total number of documentable executions during the years 1937 and 1938 at 681,692,[1][92] in addition to 136,520 deaths in the Gulag;[3] whereas the total estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million
The Soviet universities also had Marxist agriculture departments that guaranteed year after year of food shortages due to "bad weather". Anyone who disagreed was purged until only Marxists, whom they defined as the only true "intellectuals", remained.
True anti-intellectualism is when you don't allow intellectual debate. It doesn't require emptying the universities entirely. It is sufficient to empty them of anyone who doesn't sufficiently support the mandated opinions. You can then define those politically pure supporters as the "intellectuals" and anyone who doesn't go along with them as, by definition, "anti-intellectual". You then have an anti-intellectual system where intellectual debate has been silenced, but the universities remain open and anyone who disputes their pronouncements is on the outside and is called "anti-intellectual".
And when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and stopped the genocide in two weeks, this happened:
> Although Sihanouk distanced himself from the human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge, he accused Vietnam of using aggression to violate Kampuchea's sovereignty. As such, he demanded all UN countries suspend aid to Vietnam and not recognize the Vietnamese-installed regime. Subsequently, seven non-aligned members of the UN Security Council submitted a draft resolution calling for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Kampuchea, which was endorsed by China, France, Norway, Portugal, the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the resolution was not approved due to opposition from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.
Your link says "Allegations". What is proven? Not much. The article suggests the U.S. was not too keen on Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and when they did actively support a group it was the non communist groups. China and Thailand actively supported the Khmer Rouge.
American/Western leftists supported and celebrated the Khmer Rouge revolution. In 1975, President Ford tried to resist the de-funding of anti-Khmer Rouge pro-American regime but the Democratic controlled congress stripped every nickel of US support. Chris Dodd and many other prominent leftists celebrated the move and welcomed the new future for Cambodia.
> People usually refer to the bombing of Cambodia as if it had been unprovoked, secretive U.S. action. The fact is that we were bombing North Vietnamese troops that had invaded Cambodia, that were killing many Americans from these sanctuaries, and we were doing it with the acquiescence of the Cambodian government, which never once protested against it, and which, indeed, encouraged us to do it… Why is it moral for the North Vietnamese to have 50,000 to 100,000 troops in Cambodia, why should we let them kill Americans from that territory… and why in all these conditions is there a moral issue?
Henry Kissinger on the bombing of Cambodia in 1969
Yes, and if you want an example of American political hypocrisy in things like international war crimes courts, I'm honestly astonished that people like Slobodan Milosevic were prosecuted, but Kissinger hasn't spent the past 30 years in a prison cell.
I’m sure there is some hyperbole in your comment - no part of it is even faintly surprising I don’t think. The idea of an American soldier being prosecuted by that court just seems so far fetched.
The wiki is worth a read, and some of the US concerns certainly make you think, however the opposition overall is rather lame.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Intern...
> I'm honestly astonished that people like Slobodan Milosevic were prosecuted, but Kissinger hasn't spent the past 30 years in a prison cell.
In your opinion what did Kissinger do that amounts to genocide of his own people, not to mention the string of assassinations of his domestic opponents?
I don't know enough about Kissinger to have a strong opinion about him, but I think the idea is that Kissinger got away with a lot of awful stuff because he was responsible for a lot of horrendous things done to other peoples. If Hitler had left the Jews in Germany and Austria alone and just killed the Jews in Poland would that have made things any better?
Again, I am not taking a stance since I haven't done enough research, just explaining why theoretically someone could think that Kissinger committed crimes against humanity without killing any Americans or even violating American laws.
You're the one who decided to explicitly compare Kissinger with Milosevic. Milosevic was trialed for his role in he Bosnian genocide, among other war crimes. If you cannot understand why Milosevic was on trial but Kissinger wasn't then please explain, in your own word, what did Kissinger do that was worse than genocide of his own people.
Milosevic was tried not for genocide against his own group of people, but an opposing ethnic/religious group in a civil war. Are you trying to say that because the area where the conflict took place was within the boundaries of the former state of Yugoslavia, the people his forces killed were "his own people"?
Perhaps you may wish to familiarize yourself with the ethnic and religious differences between the Serbian forces commanded by Milosevic and the persons they killed.
"In his diary in March 1969, Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, noted that the final decision to carpet bomb Cambodia 'was made at a meeting in the Oval Office Sunday afternoon, after the church service'.
In his diary on 17 March 1969, Haldeman wrote:
Historic day. K[issinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P[resident].
And the next day:
K's "Operation Breakfast" a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive. A lot more secondaries than had been expected. Confirmed early intelligence. Probably no reaction for a few days, if ever. "
> Milosevic was tried not for genocide against his own group of people, but an opposing ethnic/religious group in a civil war.
Wrong. Milosevic was trialed for his role on the Bosnian genocide, which included the assassinations of Bosnian serbs.
Even if you believe that although Milosevic was president of Yugoslavia then no breakaway Yugoslav republic can be counted as his people, you can't turn a blind eye to Bosnian serbs.
I will talk about one in particular which hits close to home, since I have people in my extended family which were killed there. The genocide in Timor-Leste, which killed 150,000 to 200,000 people. If that doesn't seem that much at first glance, the population of Timor in 1975 was 688,000. That invasion was: approved or even suggested by the US (Kissinger and Ford met with Suharto on the eve of the invasion to give the OK), financed* by the US, with troops trained by the US and armed by the US.
The reason? The people of that small, freshly liberated country were on the verge of holding their first democratic elections, and dangerously close to choosing a left-wing party to govern them, of their own free will.
That being said perusing his wikipedia page should give you many things to read about.
I am not sure how many Americans are even aware of how extensively the USA supported Suharto militarily, no matter what he did, because he was supposedly anti communist.
This isn't in good faith; just look up Kissinger's foreign policy controversies and explain how he was just following orders or being rational, rather than waiting for other people to name them one at a time and saying "Just that? That's your biggest complaint?"
Especially to a person who personally had family members murdered because of those decisions.
It's not flamebaiting or anything of the sort. Your origin thesis is that Kissinger is worse than people who engaged in genocide. I've asked you to substantiate your claims, and the best example you've managed to come up with is Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, which was not perpetrated by the US, let alone ordered by Kissinger.
Don't you agree that even the best example that you've managed to come up with amounts to no action at all from Kissinger?
Kissinger's documented order was "anything that flies on anything that moves".
While the Nuremberg trials had a lot of evidence, they never had such direct documentary evidence of a call for genocide like that.
(or is that overblown? Perhaps only for the Cambodians fighting against the CIA backed coup of Lon Nol should shirts be torn in accusations of genocide).
> So your counterpoint is that the call to genocide was one he relayed directly from the president of the USA?
I presented no counterpoint, I've pointed out the fact that you're basing your accusations on claims that are patently wrong, if not intentionally false and disingenuous.
And while on the topic of disingenuous statements, please revise your sources because the Cambodja bombing campaign does not come close to fit the definition of genocide.
That may strengthen their stand, but far from a key factor. Khmer Rouge was China's puppet and would not be able to come to power and carry out the genocide without China's support:
> In April 1975, Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January, 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. During the Cambodian genocide, the CPC was the main international patron of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid. It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$1 billion in interest-free economics and military aid and US$20 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". In June 1975, Pol Pot and other officials of Khmer Rouge met with Mao Zedong in Beijing, receiving Mao's approval and advice; in addition, Mao also taught Pot his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat（无产阶级专政下继续革命理论）". High-ranking CPC officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help [0]
Khmer Rouge was also North Vietnam's ally since they both fought against US-backed governments in South Vietnam and Cambodia. They only became enemies after winning their respective wars [1], caused by in no small part the deteriorating China-Vietnam relation.
It was a proxy war, a point which you've just made half of the case for.
The US bombing of Cambodia was without a doubt a defining factor in this event. It killed between 100,000 and 400,000 Cambodians, how could it not be? I have met people in Kampong Thom, right in the middle of the country, that talked about living in complete destitution for years due to the effects of the bombing, before Pol Pot's takeover. There is also quite a bit of shrapnel and unexploded ordinance laying around there still too.
There is just no doubt that this would not have happened if not for the Vietnam war. You can blame China as well of course, but don't forget that the US government began aiding the Khmer Rouge at a later point in time again too.
Try reading "My War with the CIA" by Norodom Sihanouk if you want a different perspective on all this.
Source on the 100,00 to 400,000 deaths from bombings? The bombings were in border areas with little to no population. The US even sent troops in for damage assessment and they often found nothing not even North Vietnamese soldiers or even dwellings.
Not to saying thousands didn't die, or even tens of thousands, but 500,000? That's like 7% of the entire population of Cambodia.
"Another impact of the U.S. bombing and the Cambodian civil war was the destruction of homes and livelihood of many people. This was a large contributor to the refugee crisis in Cambodia with two million people—more than 25 percent of the population—displaced from rural areas into cities, especially Phnom Penh which grew from about 600,000 in 1970 to an estimated population of nearly 2 million by 1975. The Cambodian government estimated that more than 20 percent of property in the country had been destroyed during the war."
The bombings along with the landmines made it impossible to farm in many areas, which caused famine that then lead to the migration mentioned above. That's what I have heard from Cambodians that lived in those places at the time.
Also, similar events played out in Laos but the story is not as well known. More bombs were dropped on Laos even, and apparently in 2016 Obama allocated money to clean up a remaining 90 million pieces of unexploded ordninance.
"From 1964 to 1973, U.S. warplanes dropped more than 270 million cluster munitions on the communist country, one-third of which did not explode, the Lao National Regulatory Authority for UXO says."
Of course it was a proxy war, and of course US bombing was brutal, not only to Cambodia but also to Vietnam.
> The US bombing of Cambodia was without a doubt a defining factor in this event.
Which event? US bombing was between 1970-1973. The genocide didn't start until after Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, two years after US withdrawal as per Paris peace accords. On the other hand, China was the main sponsor of the regime throughout, not unlike their role to North Korea today.
They also actively involved with their "advisers" on the ground, from 1975 to 1979 when the genocide happened. So tell me what the defining factor was?
Talking about Sihanouk, he was hardly an innocent party so forgive me if I don't trust his effort to clear his conscience. He started cooperating with Khmer Rouge in 1973, giving them credibility given his enormous popularity. He became their head of state in 1975, albeit briefly. After Vietnam's army ousted Khmer Rouge, he again cooperated with Khmer Rouge at China's urging, knowing full well of their atrocity.
> You can blame China as well of course, but don't forget that the US government began aiding the Khmer Rouge at a later point in time again too.
As did all then-ASEAN's countries, all western countries, as well as China, when Khmer Rouge was no longer in power. They were against Vietnam's invasion, at the height of the cold war with the Soviet. Hypocrisy in the name of strategic goals.
Note that Vietnam wasn't an impartial party either. They invaded Cambodia with "volunteer soldiers", not because they cared about suffering Cambodia people but because they couldn't afford to have two enemies ready to wage wars at their border.
Before Covid I was living out in Phnom Penh. I adore Cambodia and its people who are some of the friendliest people I've ever met in the world!
The Khmer Rouge were a mixture of Marxism and Khmer nationalism. Black lives matter is a mixture of Marxism and Black nationalism...
It's very apt to have this article here. I'll always challenge Marxism because I've seem the results and what it does to people. My landlord was a child solider his mother a lovely elderly women who's only English was "hello" with a very toothless grin. But if children walked past she would go silent because when the Khmer rouge were in power if children heard you say anything which could be construed as wrong you'd be murdered.
The Khmer don't talk of post traumatic stress they call it 'broken courage'.
I've met so many people who's parents did amazing things. My ex girlfriends grandfather fled to Thailand as he was a teacher and considered educated. Her father worked the field during the Khmer rouge period afterwards who got an education where he could and put himself through medical school and became a doctor. He's one of the most incredible people I've ever met. My ex keeps a picture of him in her purse on the back in written my hero my father.
You do walk around and see old people and the thought does wonder in your mind are you a victim of genocide or a war criminal. The Khmer have forgiven though and should be an inspiration to us all.
Black lives matter terrifies me because I look back in history and I've seen what racial Marxism does!
They will argue that true communism has not been given it's fair shake, the US intervention prevented it, and that this time they will get it right. They could not package traditional communism in a palatable manner so the Marxist went back to the drawing board and packaged it with social issues. Anytime the government get's involved in social issues it becomes a mess, personal liberties get infringed on and it turns out bad.
Does this skip over any bits or did it really go from "royal hanger on learns colonialism is bad in Paris" to "let's teach the kids how to torture people" really quickly in reality?
A family member who was there provided me these points:
As the civil war ended, the armed population was told by the king to give their weapons back to the government. The Khmer Rouge kept their arms and 1) easily overtook disarmed areas, and 2) intercepted the shipments of arms which were collected.
It significant skips over pretty much the entire biography of Pol Pot and his early life, which can be found on the wikipedia page and linked citations.
Please don't post generic ideological boilerplate to HN. An internet forum is incapable of treating this material in any way other than predictable, tedious flamewar.
> The Khmer Rouge believed that parents were tainted with capitalism, so they separated children from their parents, indoctrinated them in communism, and taught them torture methods with animals. Children were a “dictatorial instrument of the party” and were given leadership in torture and executions.
This sounds like it’s taken straight out of Orwells 1984.
I came back here in a hurry, having just read that part... where did they get this from? Why on earth would they be interested in forcing ‘confessions’ out of people, just to execute them later?
Maybe my initial comment should be that this is taken out from [a book] that both Orwell, and the Khmer Rouge has read; which book would this be?
That's how the Inquisition worked, it's not an uncommon pattern. It's a twisted sense of justice.
Also, confessions include names which extend the inquisition. It's the same thing the Indonesians did when exterminating communists in 65-66, or South Korea did during the Bodo League massacre, or Chile under Pinochet, or Guatemala when slaughtering the Maya.
The US tends to play word games to where they never armed the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the same manner its easy to play word games to where after years of screaming headlines about genocide (which I guess does not include the US carpet bombing of Cambodia), as soon as the Khmer Rouge, whatever that is supposed to be, gets pushed out of power in 1979, the US begins aiding the KR in a myriad of ways, including in 1985 when it began somewhat openly, somewhat clandestinely, arming the Khmer Rouge. ( This marks the start of the heavy armament
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/10/world/u-s-may-help-2-rebe... - note all the denials that any of the arms are going to the KR - later reports showed they indeed were).
It's kind of amusing to watch Americans in hysterics claiming a group is committing genocide, then arming that group for victory in their civil war, then going back to tearing their shirts about this genocide they claim happened. If it happened, then the good old USA armed the KR after all the period it supposedly happened.
You’re playing word games too. The US never armed the Taliban. Yes, the US armed anti-Soviet fighters in the 80’s and many of those fighter ended up joining the Taliban years later, but to say “the US armed the Taliban” is being dishonest.
They didn't, he's oversimplifying it greatly. The US armed the Mujahadeen throughout the 1980s (through the Pakistani ISI and Pakistani state), leaving behind a vast amount of unused weaponry in Afghanistan. This was during the period prior to the soviet ground forces' withdrawal from Afghanistan and prior to the ending of the Najibullah government, and the killing of Najibullah.
It definitely is a fact that during the 1980s the US pursued a policy of "the enemy of my enemy...", in which the hardcore fundamentalist/sharia law politics and religious ideology of some of the mujahadeen they supported (Bin Laden included), were seen as secondary or tertiary to the primary mission of killing soviet soldiers, and bringing about the end of the soviet-backed government.
Some of the former Muj, predominantly the very fundamentalist Pashtun factions, later became the Taliban which seized Kandahar in 1994, and then Kabul in 1996. At that point the US had not been supporting them for at least 4 years. After the Taliban became an actual "thing" the US shifted its support to the northern alliance/northern warlords such as Dostum and Massoud.
Please elaborate on how this comment is a political or ideological battle? A person asked a specific question about US history, and I replied with relevant historical documentation.
How could I have answered their question in a way that does not destroy HN?
First, just to clarify: if I say "Please stop using HN for X" it means that there's a pattern rather than just an isolated comment, and the request is to stop the pattern. If it were a one-time violation I'd say "Please don't".
With this particular comment: it's taking the thread into a generic ideological tangent, away from the topic, on a classic flamewar theme. Also, "the US supporting gangsters" is flamebait. Please avoid denunciatory rhetoric on HN generally. It kills curious conversation, which is the purpose of this site. And it usually triggers people on the other side of the issue into doing worse.
Also, although you used the words "lots of evidence", the comment is shallow and uninformative.
Also, the link you linked to doesn't support what you said, so calling it "relevant historical documentation" is misleading.
From what my coworkers tell me, it's certainly better than it used to be. My old coworker would often fondly describe how he had to take a packed and miserable bus for almost a full day to get to Beijing when he was a kid, while now he can take an air conditioned high speed train in a fraction of the time.
There are mass abuses which you are no doubt aware. China is an opressive totalitarian state, and it's only getting more repressive as the years go by. A million Uygurs in concentration camps. Etc etc.
You cannot wave that away with "well at least they have nice trains".
You can find quotes from prominent western leftists pontificating that the Khmer Rouge may finally get communism right. Their praise continued even as they watched the death marches out of Phnom Penh.
At the height of the cold-war, the US government supported the Khmer Rouge. On the other hand, the actually socialist (at the time) state of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. There might be a reason for that.
Is Black Lives Matter actually a Marxist movement, or is this a slur from their opponents? Perhaps there are some Marxists who support the movement, but that doesn't itself make it Marxist.
‘ Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a newly surfaced video from 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists” – making clear their movement’s ideological foundation, according to a report.
Cullors, 36, was the protégé of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization, and spent years absorbing the Marxist-Leninist ideology that shaped her worldview, Breitbart News reported.
“The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers,” she said, referring to BLM co-founder Alicia Garza.
“We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk,” Cullors added in the interview with Jared Ball of The Real News Network.’[0]
[0] https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herse...
Why in the world is this comment down-voted? The poster provided a factual statement that was made directly from the person that made it, a quote of what was stated, the context of how it was stated and a link to support their information. Directly answering a question that was postulated by the grandparent post. They did not even offer their personal opinion or conjecture on the subject.
Do we hate reality and facts on HN now? It's absurd that factual information, no matter how much we don't like the implications is down-voted.
Marx on the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat, 1850:
"When the Democrats propose measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the workers must press them to the point of turning such measures into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and factories the workers must demand that such railways and factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the workers must demand State bankruptcy.
Thus the demands of the workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and measures of the Democrats.... to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes, self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be ‘the revolution in permanence.’”
The phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" used to trip me up. It is the will of the people: a true democracy.
As much as we call what we have a "democracy", we don't live in one; it's an illusion. What we have is a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie that ignores the masses.
And this tended to be the beginnings of violence in communist revolutions. It typically ends when the distinction between proletariat and bourgeoise dissolves into revolutionary and imperialist or party member and non-party member.
Take China for example. The country became relatively peaceful internally once it became acceptable to merely not oppose the communist party, compared to the "revolutionary times" of the civil war and cultural revolution.
I feel like good research on how and why revolutions arise, communist ones specifically, is lacking. We do not understand their initial conditions. Maybe we must turn to Marxists or communists directly for this understanding.
The will of some people. Of course the people that oppose you are against “the will of the people” and over the course of the “revolutionary struggle” it would be a shame if those people dissappeared.
While Marx surely thought his program was in the best interests of the proletariat, the dictatorship was a dictatorship not a democracy:
"The most effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat." — Marx, Letter to the German Social Democracy, 1875
The Khmer Rouge was that "political transition period" Marx spoke of.
Marx considered the Paris Commune to be a good example of what he had in mind.
"The Commune itself–the government formed by the workers–was made up of representatives of the various wards of Paris, elected by the citizens and recallable from office at any time. The majority of its members were workers or acknowledged representatives of the working class. Rather than a parliamentary body (such as the Congress in the U.S.), the Commune both made decisions and carried them out." — https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/rcp-paris-commun...
"...to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes, self-determination, etc.”
He's saying don't be fooled by people picking up our talking points, a revolution in Germany will be hard pressed to prevent the country from fragmenting. Federalization in Germany, a nation just forged from a patchwork of feudal estates, would invite an immediate return of society to a feudal configuration.
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