Official Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea government films

[milk]

Yes, it's my niche interest, but the following might also be of interest to a few here. They're video clips of film footage I managed to get hold of from another site, edited and then uploaded to YouTube, mainly for embedding in posts written at my blog.

Firstly, here's a staged war propaganda film, although I'm unsure of the exact date it was made (if actually from the Cambodian civil war or afterwards). It features Khmer Rouge child combatants, who fight, chase and capture Lon Nol soldiers.

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[milk]

Film and photography taken inside the FUNK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War#FUNK_and_GRUNK) liberated zone during the Cambodian civil war.

Notable Khmer Rouge personalities include Ta Mok, shown at the beginning, addressing villagers.

As well as footage and stills of male and female Khmer Rouge troops, we see another scene where, in a forest hideout, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan pose for the camera while perhaps pretending to discuss military strategy/tactics over a map of Cambodia. We also get to see what looks to be a makeshift congress or meeting hall, complete with a display including the Communist Party of Kampuchea flag and the old three-towered temple design of the Khmer People's National Liberation Committee flag of non-ICP Issarak guerrillas (later adopted as the Democratic Kampuchea national flag). Also, there are portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and a book of Lenin's writings also rests neatly on a desk. Lastly we see another meeting of villagers addressed by Communist Party cadres.

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[milk]

The July 1975 rally in the capital, Phnom Penh, to mark the (officially at least) unification of all the Khmer Rouge regional armed forces into a national army. The rally was held at the city’s Olympic Stadium in the presence of Pol Pot. He’s the one holding the fan. Other notable personalities include So Phim, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. A bespectacled Son Sen and Ney Sarann greet assembled girls.

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[milk]

Apart from young girls, too small almost to operate the large road rollers, we see high-ranking Khmer Rouge ministers Ieng Sary and Vorn Vet inspecting railroad repairs. Includes other scenes of reconstruction and development.

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[milk]

The next video shows workers at a reopened textile factory, a little different to the popular image of DK, and the (overriding) anti-modern tendencies of the Cambodian revolution. There was the discarding (but not always) of old-society knowledge, skills and technology, but modern technology and machinery was used, in an ad hoc fashion or otherwise. The clip is the second part of a film that firstly shows cotton-growing in the rural cooperatives, followed by its use in textile manufacturing.

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[milk]

Lastly, here's some footage of the September 1977 Congress of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, held at Pochentong airport, near Phnom Penh. An event that included Pol Pot's long-winded speech, the one which publicly unveiled the existence of the Party. Pol Pot and Nuon Chea are seen addressing the audience assembled in the Congress hall.

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[Chimurenga.]

These are interesting. Thank you for uploading and sharing!

[Rêve Rouge]

Ah, the red checkered scarves. I own a few of those. So sad the KR put a bad name in Communism. If they just oriented their ideology towards true socialism, they would've had good potential, I think.

[Mood]

great stuff, thanks for sharing.

[milk]

Glad you like them. All I ask on this thread, however, is that if people reply, then not to quote the posts with the videos embedded in them, as that will just ruin the look of the thread, with videos repeated all over the place. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

[milk]

In 1978 a skeptical press delegation from socialist Yugoslavia made a visit to DK, enjoyed a tour of what amounted to a Potemkin Village version of the Khmer Communists’ cooperative system, and were treated to a question and answer session with Pol Pot himself. The Yugoslav visit was also recorded in a film, Kampucija 1978, make by Nikola Vitorovic, and a short clip can be seen here (http://padevat.info/2010/04/05/kampucija-1978/). The clip is actually taken from a French television programme from 1980, Question de Temps, which used footage from the film. It features a revolutionary dance performance, which seems to be along the lines of traditional Khmer dance but with a theme inspired by the Cultural Revolution.

[Volcanicity]

Thank's for uploading these clips,you mentioned your blog could you post a link to it?

[milk]

It was linked to in the post above yours, but it's also here (http://padevat.info/).

[Kiev Communard]

Ah, the red checkered scarves. I own a few of those. So sad the KR put a bad name in Communism. If they just oriented their ideology towards true socialism, they would've had good potential, I think.

Weell, considering the fact that believed that urban life was unconducive to "socialist construction" and that all intellectuals are "tainted by foreign influence", I strongly doubt such a possibility.

[milk]

Weell, considering the fact that believed that urban life was unconducive to "socialist construction" and that all intellectuals are "tainted by foreign influence", I strongly doubt such a possibility.

Those "facts" you mention are a misunderstanding.

[Ismail]

One of the funny things is that a lot of anti-Khmer Rouge propaganda* centered upon their "primitivist" aspects (which are mostly false) came from their direct enemies; the Vietnamese. When the border disputes intensified both countries pretty much used every Chinese-tinged or Soviet-tinged assault on each other. Vietnam equated the Khmer Rouge with "pure" Maoism, claimed it initiated a "holocaust" against its own people, and that the Khmer Rouge basically consisted of crazy modern-day barbarians.

During the 1980's the US covertly supported the Khmer Rouge as part of an exiled coalition government between the Rogue and the rather impotent forces of Prince Sihanouk and the right-wing KPNLF whereas most foreign observers tended to side with the Vietnamese-backed government. Since the pro-Vietnamese line basically won out in the end and the Khmer Rouge was isolated from its former coalition partners, practically all the information we get about the Khmer Rouge comes from the very source we'd generally expect to be the least objective about them. Then of course the Cold War ended and the US took the Vietnamese line on the Khmer Rouge without any problems.

Whatever their domestic policies, when it came to theory and foreign affairs they weren't very much different from other pro-Chinese groups.

* Not that I'd consider the Khmer Rouge to have been great Marxist-Leninists or anything. Enver Hoxha called Pol Pot a "fascist."

[Os Cangaceiros]

Those "facts" you mention are a misunderstanding.

What's your position on the KR in general?

[Bright Banana Beard]

What's your position on the KR in general? While I know you are not referring to me, they did do total destroy in Cambodia. Doesn't it suits you?

[milk]

What's your position on the KR in general?

Modernisers with a blinding hubris.

[milk]

The Khmer Communists were never primitivist in their goal of rebuilding and reshaping Cambodian society. There was a romanticism among the intellectuals projected onto the peasantry they lived among, but they weren’t just a bunch of crazies caught up in their own agrarian-utopianism, but rather agricultural modernisers. There was an overriding irrationalism, hubris and puritanical tendency in carrying out their ill-fated development (think Louis Marie Babeauf in black pyjamas), but agriculture was the base on which to build future industry.

They did diverge, but not completely, from the Marxian notion of economically generated classes, for they, like the Chinese Communists, placed emphasis on social background rather than the actual relations people had to the means of production, creating artificial social divisions which helped to ensure a support base from among a certain section of the population (the poor peasantry). In power, and by the fiat of the regime, they had a formal system of hierarchy involving a trichotomy (is that even a word?): of full-rights, candidate and despositee statuses, which the state was to use in according each designation a certain type of general treatment, access to political participation and an unequal share of resources (the state would come to have a monopoly on the distribution of food). In practice however, and in general throughout the various regional administrations, or zones the country was divided into, there was the visible two-part distinction of ‘old,’ and ‘new’ people. The former were the revolutionary constituency, the base peasantry, particularly the poorest. Those who had suffered and bled for the revolution were to be its main beneficiaries as it entered a new stage. The latter were either genuine urbanites, or peasant refugees who had sought protection in the urban areas the Lon Nol government controlled during the war. And I think it would be worthwhile in matters of rural-urban antagonisms, to know just how urban Cambodia operated, who and what urban people actually were, and before the war too, to understand why the poor peasants indulged in a bit of schadenfreude from 1975.

[thejambo1]

interesting stuff,many thanks for posting them here.

[milk]

I'll get round to posting some more.

[hardlinecommunist]

One of the funny things is that a lot of anti-Khmer Rouge propaganda* centered upon their "primitivist" aspects (which are mostly false) came from their direct enemies; the Vietnamese. When the border disputes intensified both countries pretty much used every Chinese-tinged or Soviet-tinged assault on each other. Vietnam equated the Khmer Rouge with "pure" Maoism, claimed it initiated a "holocaust" against its own people, and that the Khmer Rouge basically consisted of crazy modern-day barbarians.

During the 1980's the US covertly supported the Khmer Rouge as part of an exiled coalition government between the Rogue and the rather impotent forces of Prince Sihanouk and the right-wing KPNLF whereas most foreign observers tended to side with the Vietnamese-backed government. Since the pro-Vietnamese line basically won out in the end and the Khmer Rouge was isolated from its former coalition partners, practically all the information we get about the Khmer Rouge comes from the very source we'd generally expect to be the least objective about them. Then of course the Cold War ended and the US took the Vietnamese line on the Khmer Rouge without any problems.

Whatever their domestic policies, when it came to theory and foreign affairs they weren't very much different from other pro-Chinese groups.

* Not that I'd consider the Khmer Rouge to have been great Marxist-Leninists or anything. Enver Hoxha called Pol Pot a "fascist." When and where did Enver Hoxha call Pol Pot a fascist

[Ismail]

When and where did Enver Hoxha call Pol Pot a fascisthttp://www.snap.archivum.ws/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/3-9-81.shtml

Hoxha went a tad overboard in defending Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea (though it was based on the prevailing situation and the then-recency of China's invasion, although Hoxha himself always had good ties with Vietnam for some reason), and he seemed to realize this in 1981 (http://www.snap.archivum.ws/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/3-11-28.shtml):

With regard to Kampuchea, our party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Kampuchean people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any "guardian."

[Jazzhands]

This is actually a really good thread. Shocking, considering all the previous shitstorm threads on this topic. Since I don't want to lower the quality per post ratio:

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[turquino]

I began reading your site a few months ago and thought it was very informative. Thank you for the footage you've gathered.

[milk]

http://www.snap.archivum.ws/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/3-9-81.shtml

Hoxha went a tad overboard in defending Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea (though it was based on the prevailing situation and the then-recency of China's invasion, although Hoxha himself always had good ties with Vietnam for some reason), and he seemed to realize this in 1981 (http://www.snap.archivum.ws/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/3-11-28.shtml):

Democratic Kampuchea did trade with Albania - in exchange for timber, rubber and coconuts, the Albanian government sent tractors and other agricultural equipment.

The Vietnamese Communists, in their bid to rebuild the Cambodian state and the revolution to their own liking with the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, needed to distance themselves from the Khmer Communism of Pol Pot, calling it at times fascism. Its excesses could never have come from Marxism-Leninism, and the wary population of Cambodia were not to mistake it for such, being as they were, saved from it by 'true' Communists. But, the Vietnamese did not stretch the fascist tag too much though (and given the context, such a label is meaningless). They much more preferred to blame the excesses of the DK regime on the Khmers' elaboration of oversimplified and extreme 'Maoist' policies.

[milk]

This is actually a really good thread. Shocking, considering all the previous shitstorm threads on this topic.

The Forum Trolling entry at Encyclopedia Dramatica features RevLeft, and advises would-be trolls to mention Pol Pot for the lulz etc. I think that is perhaps one reason why we see a new poster appearing every so often, trying it on. We had one such idiot appearing last week with the username Ke Pauk (who was a Khmer Rouge militarist and Pol Pot ally), trying to be a smart arse. But, as you know, I pwned the fuck out of him/her.

[Ismail]

Democratic Kampuchea did trade with Albania - in exchange for timber, rubber and coconuts, the Albanian government sent tractors and other agricultural equipment.Yes. From 1976-1978 Albania was still officially aligned with China (though relations were quickly deteriorating at that point) and maintained fairly good ties with Kampuchea including receiving delegations, and as the RFE article notes even after the Sino-Albanian split the Khmer Rouge sent congratulations to the PLA for the anniversary of their National Liberation War. A lot of Khmer Rouge officials did seem to admire Albania, probably for its militantly anti-Soviet stand (which I presume they hoped would translate into siding against Vietnam) and because it liberated itself in 1944 primarily with its own forces (rather than through the Red Army).

In fact according to one anti-communist source (Studies in Comparative Genocide p. 169, citing a Feb. 1975 author's interview with Kong Aun, Minister of Refugee Affairs of the Khmer Republic), "The Pol Pot regime was in fact very conscious of its position in the world, describing itself as 'the Number One Communist state'. (In the early 1970s, the CPK had ranked Albania in this position, followed by China and the CPK, while Vietnam then as 'Comrade Number 7'.)"

[Dimentio]

I think that when detractors call them "primitivist", they mean the end-results rather than the ideology.