Pol Pot - Another Side

[Victory]

An interview with Pol Pot before his death, including his confessions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMyX80jCF8

Check the video out, it's quite interesting.

[ComradeMan]

There is no other side to Pol Pot- FFS. He was a psychotic murderer and the Khmer Rouge were yet more lackeys of you know who, who did nothing but further drag the name of the left in the mud, ruin any prospects of communist-democracy in S.E. Asia and in the meantime murder hundreds of thousands of people. I don't care what he may have said on his deathbed to be quite honest. Pol Pot was a piece of shit.

[RGacky3]

This is stupid.

Are you really making the arugment "well he's a sweet old man, look how cute he is, how could he be responsible for the killing fields." I'm sure if you interviewed Pinoche before his death he'd be a sweet cute old man and have some justification or whatever, but both him and Pol Pot (based on facts on now how sweet they seam in their old age) were genocidal dickwads.

[Noinu]

People can say a lot of things when they're going to die, doesn't make it true.
And have you not heard that sociopaths are usually the ones that you would never suspect of being evil?

[Redliberation]

Thanks to the vietnamese comrades for liberating cambodia from this fascist sociopath.

[Victory]

Wow, why don't you actually watch the video instead of responding to the topic first. Nobody is denying that he is reasonable for mass-deaths, but stop being a fucking stupid prick and watch the video before you comment.

How I hate all these privileged middle class rich kids criticising other people when they do absolutely nothing to warrant having a valued opinion.

[Noinu]

Wow, why don't you actually watch the video instead of responding to the topic first. Nobody is denying that he is reasonable for mass-deaths, but stop being a fucking stupid prick and watch the video before you comment.

How I hate all these privileged middle class rich kids criticising other people when they do absolutely nothing to warrant having a valued opinion.

Excuse me, but I actually watched the video. Doesn't bloody well mean he's telling the truth. And I'm seriously not saying anything one way or another, just this; what people say is not always the truth. Doesn't matter who says it, where it's said, it's not necessarily true.

And I really don't think that you have something to 'warrant having a valued opinion' when you most likely weren't there either, living with Pol Pot and being able to corroborate his story. I mean, pleeeaaase.

[Bright Banana Beard]

The US bombing campaign on Cambodia and the Vietnamese Invasion certainly play a role in massacring Cambodians and KR members, which also contributed to the growing revisionism that leads to royalist/pro-western faction in KPNLF within a decade.

[ComradeMan]

Wow, why don't you actually watch the video instead of responding to the topic first. Nobody is denying that he is reasonable for mass-deaths, but stop being a fucking stupid prick and watch the video before you comment.

How I hate all these privileged middle class rich kids criticising other people when they do absolutely nothing themselves to warrant having a valued opinion.

Allow me...

Your words:- He certainly doesn't seem like the murderous genocidal baby killer which he's made out to be.

Right- he isn't made out to be a murderous genocidal maniac- he was one. Deal with it.

You post a message with those words and expect anyone from the left to take it seriously- it's probably one of the few things that would have most people on the left, Trots, Stalinists, anarchists, primitivists etc all have one big group-therapy session hug and jump for joy in agreement.... that POL POT WAS A PRICK.

How I hate all these privileged middle class rich kids criticising other people when they do absolutely nothing themselves to warrant having a valued opinion.

And who the fuck do you think you are? Subcomandante Victory? The circumstancial ad hominem reveals the fact that you haven't an argument or any leg to stand on whatsoever. The next time maybe you should think about it before you post about genocidal maniacs who collaborated with reactionary forces to commit mass murder against the workers, against the PEOPLE.

Fuck. Hitler was an animal lover, I'm sure he was quite sorry about Blondie before he shot himself.... please.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Please, ComradeMan, tell me his true intention. He wanted to kill all Cambodian? Jesus Christ, you sound like another bourgeois who also claimed that Stalin/ Trotsky/ Mao was murderous genocidal baby killer.

[Victory]

Excuse me, but I actually watched the video. Doesn't bloody well mean he's telling the truth. And I'm seriously not saying anything one way or another, just this; what people say is not always the truth. Doesn't matter who says it, where it's said, it's not necessarily true.

And I really don't think that you have something to 'warrant having a valued opinion' when you most likely weren't there either, living with Pol Pot and being able to corroborate his story. I mean, pleeeaaase.

I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the two morons above you that according to the number of their posts, sit in front of the computer and talk shit about other people all-too-often, as if they ever did anything worthy enough to have a valued opinion of somebody else.

There’s nothing more sad and pathetic than people from advanced Capitalist countries who talk about other people or movements, when they do absolutely nothing to warrant being considered anything more worthy than the people they are talking about.

It's easy to sit in front of a computer posting thousands of times on a message board, when clearly, the only struggle the people in question have ever had to overcome, is exercising their keyboard muscles and talking about others on the internet.

[ComradeMan]

Please, ComradeMan, tell me his true intention. He wanted to kill all Cambodian? Jesus Christ, you sound like another bourgeois who also claimed that Stalin/ Trotsky/ Mao was murderous genocidal baby killer.

I suggest you do some research and find out about who was backing Pol Pot and why- and think about 2 million dead people while your doing it....

Here's a link I found- decide for yourself.

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=156593.0

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/pilger4.html

http://wn.com/us_support_of_pol_pot_and_cia_secret_wars

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/KiernanCambodia30thAnniversaryEssay.doc


Edit to Victory

There’s nothing more sad and pathetic than people from advanced Capitalist countries who talk about other people or movements, when they do absolutely nothing to warrant being considered anything more worthy than the people they are talking about.

Well they were the ones who were supporting Pol Pot afterall!

There's nothing more sad and pathetic than so-called leftists who are too naive or stupid to realise that not everyone who puts a red star on their flag is a socialist/communist and that many of those so-called socialist/communist groups were nothing more than counter-revolutionary lackeys of reactionary forces within the theatre of the Cold War.

[Noinu]

I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the two morons above you that according to the number of their posts, sit in front of the computer and talk shit about other people all-too-often, as if they ever did anything worthy enough to have a valued opinion of somebody else.

There’s nothing more sad and pathetic than people from advanced Capitalist countries who talk about other people or movements, when they do absolutely nothing to warrant being considered anything more worthy than the people they are talking about.

It's easy to sit in front of a computer posting thousands of times on a message board, when clearly, the only struggle the people in question have ever had to overcome, is how exercising their keyboard muscles and talking about others.

And this is different from you, how exactly?
At the moment at least, you're sitting in front of a computer, posting messages on a forum, yes? And how are you not from a capitalist country? (As in, I don't know a country that isn't).
Just wondering how you're so much better than someone who doesn't like running around all day long.

[Victory]

And this is different from you, how exactly?
At the moment at least, you're sitting in front of a computer, posting messages on a forum, yes? And how are you not from a capitalist country? (As in, I don't know a country that isn't).
Just wondering how you're so much better than someone who doesn't like running around all day long.

At the moment, but very rarely.

I'm actually physically active in movements, as opposed to being active posting on message boards and talking bad about other people on the internet.
There’s nothing wrong with criticising other people, if you aren't an ultra-active message board armchair revolutionary.

Now stop defending him.

[Bright Banana Beard]

I suggest you do some research and find out about who was backing Pol Pot and why- and think about 2 million dead people while your doing it....

Here's a link I found- decide for yourself.

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=156593.0

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/pilger4.html

http://wn.com/us_support_of_pol_pot_and_cia_secret_wars

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/KiernanCambodia30thAnniversaryEssay.doc


Edit to Victory

There’s nothing more sad and pathetic than people from advanced Capitalist countries who talk about other people or movements, when they do absolutely nothing to warrant being considered anything more worthy than the people they are talking about.

Well they were the ones who were supporting Pol Pot afterall!

There's nothing more sad and pathetic than so-called leftists who are too naive or stupid to realise that not everyone who puts a red star on their flag is a socialist/communist and that many of those so-called socialist/communist groups were nothing more than counter-revolutionary lackeys of reactionary forces within the theatre of the Cold War.

Show me the one before the invasion, not after the invasion. The one you had show is after the Vietnamese invasion. Show me the author of the one who use historical materialism rather than being all emotional duckweed about the death.

[Noinu]

At the moment, but very rarely.

I'm actually physically active in movements, as opposed to being active posting on message boards and talking bad about other people on the internet.
There’s nothing wrong with criticising other people, if you aren't an ultra-active message board armchair revolutionary.

Now stop defending him.


Just because someone has the time to write a lot of posts, doesn't mean they're not active in the 'real world'. I mean hell, what if that person didn't sleep much and posted messages during the evening, night and morning, and went out of their home during the day? You just can't know what a person's life is like, just by looking at their post count. Seriously.

And why on Earth would I stop defending someone who I think has often had very valid points? I don't know anything about you, I don't know you're views on anything else but this and this really doesn't make me want to defend you.

[ComradeMan]

Show me the one before the invasion, not after the invasion. The one you had show is after the Vietnamese invasion. Show me the author of the one who use historical materialism rather than being all emotional duckweed about the death.

Sorry for being "emotional" about mass genocide? I don't know- what's the world coming to?:rolleyes:

I don't have to show you anything, the facts are out there and easy to find.

Anyone supporting or advocating Pol Pot is, in my opinion, seriously mis-informed, misguided or a downright reactionary stooge.

Who gives a fuck about before the Vietnamese invasion? WTF were the Vietnamese who were invading? It doesn't change the fact that Pol Pot was about as socialist as Adolph Eichmann- as over 2 million found out to their costs.

Sorry for perhaps pointing out that people ought to do a bit more research about the people they advocate/celebrate other than the crappy level of high-school textbook propaganda that many base their theories on.

If I am wrong- I apologise- but show me evidence to the contrary of Pol Pot being nothing other than a mass murdering genocidal maniac supported by the very forces the left are supposed to be against.

Be my guest.....

[danyboy27]

Pol pot wasnt a psychopath, his theory was deeply flawed, and the result was the death of a ton of peoples. this whole ''lets come back to the land'' thing probably killed more people than the repression itself.

this is just the normal process of what happen when a handful of individual have nearly total control over a mass of peoples, every mistake, even the more insignificant could seal the fate of thousand of peoples.

IF out of those purges and horror, pol pot would have built a modern, functionnal society better in every aspect compared to the old regime, we wouldnt have a discussion like this today.

He is not a psychopath, but an exemple of what happen when you give unlimited power to a fews individuals.

[Bright Banana Beard]

You rather be hostile to my request, ComradeMan? Go on. You win! How does it feels?

[RGacky3]

How I hate all these privileged middle class rich kids criticising other people when they do absolutely nothing to warrant having a valued opinion.

Nothing to warrent having a valued opinion??? Oh maybe facts???

You have no idea what class anyone here on revleft is, or what race they are, so stfu, and even if you did, it would'nt make an ounce of a difference.

ANd yeah, I've watched the video, and its an old man trying to excuse shit away that that is unexcusable and discusting.


Please, ComradeMan, tell me his true intention. He wanted to kill all Cambodian? Jesus Christ, you sound like another bourgeois who also claimed that Stalin/ Trotsky/ Mao was murderous genocidal baby killer.

His intention was to consolidate his power and model society into what he thought it should be, just like any dictator, just like Hitler, just like various Kings, just like anyone with aboslute power, generally those sort of people are kind of sociopathic, power corrupts.

THink about it, why do Ultra Capitalists do what they do, leave millions in poverty, pollute the earth, screw tonds of people over, destroy peoples lives? WHy? Its power numbnuts.


Show me the author of the one who use historical materialism rather than being all emotional duckweed about the death.

If your gonna tell us to stop bieng emotional duckweeds about death, then I guess Capitalists can tell you to shut your mouth and stop being emotional about poverty, starvation, exploitation and oppression of Capitalism, stop being an emotional cry baby.

Maoists make me sick sometimes, you guys are just as bad as the ultra free market people, and have the exact same amount of respect for human life and dignity.


There’s nothing more sad and pathetic than people from advanced Capitalist countries who talk about other people or movements, when they do absolutely nothing to warrant being considered anything more worthy than the people they are talking about.


Using your logic you don't have a right to say anything about any movement ouside of where you live, which includes cambodia I'm assuming, so don't, hypocrite.

[Noinu]

Pol pot wasnt a psychopath, his theory was deeply flawed, and the result was the death of a ton of peoples. this whole ''lets come back to the land'' thing probably killed more people than the repression itself.

this is just the normal process of what happen when a handful of individual have nearly total control over a mass of peoples, every mistake, even the more insignificant could seal the fate of thousand of peoples.

IF out of those purges and horror, pol pot would have built a modern, functionnal society better in every aspect compared to the old regime, we wouldnt have a discussion like this today.

He is not a psychopath, but an exemple of what happen when you give unlimited power to a fews individuals.

The bolded text: Even if he had done this, I would still be against him, since I still am against purges.


Other than that, I agree with what you said completely.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Pol Pot was certainly not a 'genocidal maniac' or a 'fascist psycho'... The intention of Khmer Rouge was never to exterminate massive sectors of the Cambodian population - all though that is what happened in practice. This was a result of the revisionism of Khmer Rouge doctrine, which, when looked at, was hardly comparable to Orthodox Marxism.

[ComradeMan]

Nothing to warrent having a valued opinion??? Oh maybe facts???

You have no idea what class anyone here on revleft is, or what race they are, so stfu, and even if you did, it would'nt make an ounce of a difference.

ANd yeah, I've watched the video, and its an old man trying to excuse shit away that that is unexcusable and discusting.



His intention was to consolidate his power and model society into what he thought it should be, just like any dictator, just like Hitler, just like various Kings, just like anyone with aboslute power, generally those sort of people are kind of sociopathic, power corrupts.

THink about it, why do Ultra Capitalists do what they do, leave millions in poverty, pollute the earth, screw tonds of people over, destroy peoples lives? WHy? Its power numbnuts.



If your gonna tell us to stop bieng emotional duckweeds about death, then I guess Capitalists can tell you to shut your mouth and stop being emotional about poverty, starvation, exploitation and oppression of Capitalism, stop being an emotional cry baby.

Maoists make me sick sometimes, you guys are just as bad as the ultra free market people, and have the exact same amount of respect for human life and dignity.



Using your logic you don't have a right to say anything about any movement ouside of where you live, which includes cambodia I'm assuming, so don't, hypocrite.


Gack and I don't agree very often so note this in your diaries... LOL!!! ;)

There is no fucking redemption for Pol Pot.

The worst thing about it is these so-called Revolutionary Leftists are completely oblivious to the fact, or they don't care about, who was backing him and why!!!!!! FFS It's historical and empirical, no secret- it's out there...

As for that oh well, "he screwed up a bit but he meant well" kind of pitiful apologism- barring some kind of unforeseen natural disaster there is no excuse whatsoever. Every madass dictator there ever was always claimed they had the best interests of the people at their heart, so I guess all the dead ones can feel better about it, that makes it all right then.

What a truly depressing pile of crap.

Some more stuff...

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/polpotmontclarion0498.html

U.S. support of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is thoroughly documented in an article in CAQ magazine (formerly Covert Action Quarterly) by Australian journalist John Pilger, "The Long Secret Alliance: Uncle Sam and Pol Pot."* Some quotations from that article:

"The US not only helped to create conditions that brought Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January 1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pot's exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support -- $85 million from 1980-86 -- was revealed 6 years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation."

"In 1981, Pres. Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. The US", he added, "winked publicly" as China sent arms to the Khmer Rouge(KR) through Thailand."

"In 1980, under US pressure, the World Food Program handed over food worth $12 million to the Thai Army to pass on to the KR. According to former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke,'20,000 to 40,000 Pol Pot guerrillas benefited. This aid helped restore the KR to a fighting force, based in Thailand, from which it destabilized Cambodia for more than a decade.'"

"In 1982, the US and China, supported by Singapore, invented the Coalition of the Democratic Government of Kampuchea, which was, as Ben Kiernan pointed out, neither a coalition, nor democratic, nor a government, not in Kampuchea. Rather, it was what the CIA calls a 'master illusion.' ... Cambodia's former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was appointed its head; otherwise little changed. The KR dominated the two "non-communist" members, the Sihanoukists and the Khmer Peoples' National Liberation Front (KPNLF). From his office at the UN, Pol Pot's ambassador, the urbane Thereon Parish, continued to speak for Cambodia. A close associate of Pol Pot, he had in 1975 called on Khmer expatriates to return home, whereupon many of them disappeared."

[Jazzhands]

Wow...you have not made a single intelligent point, so you resort to ad hominem.




What exactly do you think you're doing right now?

[QUOTE]
There’s nothing more sad and pathetic than people from advanced Capitalist countries who talk about other people or movements, when they do absolutely nothing to warrant being considered anything more worthy than the people they are talking about.

You better drop that prolier-than-thou attitude. But I wouldn't want to talk about you or your "movement" because I'm one of them pesky First Worlders.:rolleyes:



It's easy to sit in front of a computer posting thousands of times on a message board, when clearly, the only struggle the people in question have ever had to overcome, is exercising their keyboard muscles and talking about others on the internet.

I have nothing to say here. You are doing nothing here except trying to start a dick-swinging contest between yourself and us. Also, last time I checked, the keyboard is not a muscle.

[Bud Struggle]

From another thread:


Also, when backed into a corner, Bud comes up with inane crap that borders on nonsense.

You have threads like this floating around here and I'm the one talking nonsense? :D :D :D

Seriously, this is the kind of stuff that makes Communism loose traction with the average populace quite quickey.

[Dimentio]

Pol pot wasnt a psychopath, his theory was deeply flawed, and the result was the death of a ton of peoples. this whole ''lets come back to the land'' thing probably killed more people than the repression itself.

this is just the normal process of what happen when a handful of individual have nearly total control over a mass of peoples, every mistake, even the more insignificant could seal the fate of thousand of peoples.

IF out of those purges and horror, pol pot would have built a modern, functionnal society better in every aspect compared to the old regime, we wouldnt have a discussion like this today.

He is not a psychopath, but an exemple of what happen when you give unlimited power to a fews individuals.

The best post I've seen here today. If you are planning to do reforms on a scale never before tested, try it on a smaller and more limited scale first before launching it nationally.

[ComradeMan]

From another thread:
You have threads like this floating around here and I'm the one talking nonsense? :D :D :D
Seriously, this is the kind of stuff that makes Communism loose traction with the average populace quite quickey.

Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge were not even fucking communists, not even bad ones.

They were anti-communist!!!!!!!

"We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina."
(Ieng Sary, 1977, quoted by Vickery, Cambodia: 1978-1983, p. 288).

Sounds a bit like fascism to me... but let's not go there...! :lol:

[Dimentio]

They were pretty Pro-Chinese, or rather, China was pretty Pro-Khmer Rogue, due to Mao's opportunism. Mao was also aligning himself with some anti-communist third world leaders.

If a dog turd laying on the street affirmed Mao as the leader of the Third World, Mao would have raised a golden temple for it.

[ComradeMan]

They were pretty Pro-Chinese, or rather, China was pretty Pro-Khmer Rogue, due to Mao's opportunism. Mao was also aligning himself with some anti-communist third world leaders.

If a dog turd laying on the street affirmed Mao as the leader of the Third World, Mao would have raised a golden temple for it.

If there's one thing more odious than an out-and-out rightwinger it's a fucking "dishonest socialist" in my opinion. Pol Pot took dishonest socialism to a point we can't even make jokes about.

I am completely astounded that people at RevLeft would not see just how reactionary a fuckwit he and his movement were.

[Jazzhands]

"We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina."(Ieng Sary, 1977, quoted by Vickery, Cambodia: 1978-1983, p. 288).

I think this pretty much settles it.

[RGacky3]

You have threads like this floating around here and I'm the one talking nonsense? :D :D :D

Seriously, this is the kind of stuff that makes Communism loose traction with the average populace quite quickey.


If I was forced into the terrible and nightmarish choice of standing with one of these lunatic Maoists, or God Forbid .... a slightly Liberal Capitalist like yourself, I'd have to bite my tongue, hold back a tear and step over.

But thank God there are other options than lunacy or nonsense :).


The intention of Khmer Rouge was never to exterminate massive sectors of the Cambodian population - all though that is what happened in practice. This was a result of the revisionism of Khmer Rouge doctrine

No it was'nt their intention, they tripped and it accidently happened. THis wa'snt doctrine, it was a ruling elite trying to build their dream society, and consolidate their power.

[Jazzhands]

No it was'nt their intention, they tripped and it accidently happened. THis wa'snt doctrine, it was a ruling elite trying to build their dream society, and consolidate their power.

Afraid that's incorrect too. They took what they thought were necessary steps to build said society by destroying everything else and trying to start from scratch. That's what they thought their doctrine required. So it wasn't an accident as much as a means to an end.

[ComradeMan]

Afraid that's incorrect too. They took what they thought were necessary steps to build said society by destroying everything else and trying to start from scratch. That's what they thought their doctrine required. So it wasn't an accident as much as a means to an end.

You're absolutely right- they took machiavellianism to new dimensions. They knew exactly what they were doing and why and didn't care.

But of course they put up a red-flag and so there are plenty of "useful idiots" who will be apologists and support their cause.

[danyboy27]

The bolded text: Even if he had done this, I would still be against him, since I still am against purges.


Other than that, I agree with what you said completely.


hell, i am against purges too, but my invdividual opinion dosnt mean jack shit about how mankind feel about a particular event or group of people.

Mankind remember the crimes of individual or nations mostly when the bad things comitted exceed the good ones.

If a chinese invasion of america happen today and that, fallowing this tragedy, the chinese discovers a methord to manufacture free energy, fallowing that discovery, the worldwide povrety level would disapear in 100 year, in 600 year, people would mainly talk about how great the chinese governement was for saving all those people in africa and giving to the world a new meaning, the invasion of america would be regarded has, a regretable incident, just like when people talk in school of how all those indiian died during the colonization of north america.

[danyboy27]

The best post I've seen here today. If you are planning to do reforms on a scale never before tested, try it on a smaller and more limited scale first before launching it nationally.

I am not an economist or a capitalist, but if democracies would do that more often, it would save million of wasted dollars in stupid ass reforms.

We had a school reform in my province a decade ago, and it was a total failure, the result? a lot of people right now are entering university and are ill prepared to receive a proper formation.

they are now in the process of reversing it back, after 10 year, its gonna cost a truckload of money, changing course programs, re-working on teacher formation, this whole thing is a damn mess.

testing the reform on a small group of children would have been less armful and less costly in time and ressources.

but hey, go figure, damn politician love instant result!

[ComradeMan]

Dannyboy? Do what---- kill 2 million people?

:laugh:

[danyboy27]

Dannyboy? Do what---- kill 2 million people?

:laugh:

Has i said, if the good thing outwork the bad, ''mankind,'' will not fucking care about those 2 million people killed.

but the good things have to be damn better,


not my personnal opinion, that how ''mankind'' view their history.

[ComradeMan]

Has i said, if the good thing outwork the bad, ''mankind,'' will not fucking care about those 2 million people killed.

but the good things have to be damn better,


not my personnal opinion, that how ''mankind'' view their history.

O dio mio... this is how dictators are made!

You saw it first here at RevLeft.

Seriously... get some sleep, come back tomorrow, read what you have written and think about it. Do you not wonder sometimes why people get scared of communism? Look at what you're saying and ask yourself this.

[Bud Struggle]

O dio mio... this is how dictators are made!

You saw it first here at RevLeft.
.

Comrade Man--you keep hinting that I should come on over to your side. Maybe it's time you thing about coming over to my side. ;) :D

[milk]

Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge were not even fucking communists, not even bad ones.

They were anti-communist!!!!!!!

"We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina." (Ieng Sary, 1977, quoted by Vickery, Cambodia: 1978-1983, p. 288).

Sounds a bit like fascism to me... but let's not go there...! :lol:

They would also contradict themselves several times, with regard to how Pol Pot front men presented the regime. It would be wise not to take Khmer Rouge statements at face value. The above quote can also be seen as an assertion that the Cambodian revolution was going to be independent of the others occurring under Vietnamese leadership in the region, given the history of enmity between the Khmers and Vietnamese.

Take Pol Pot's 1977 Congress speech for example:


In light of these experiences, the committee worked out a draft proposal for the Party’s political line, based upon Marxism-Leninism and the principles of independence, sovereignty and self-reliance, in order to be masters of our own destiny, applying Marxism-Leninism in the concrete realities of Kampuchea and Kampuchean society.

The book you have quoted from, was written by Marxist scholar of Cambodian history Michael Vickery, who has not only applied historical materialism to Cambodia's far-flung past, but also the DK regime. He used it to demonstrate the un-Marxist choices made by the Khmer Rouge, but his analysis has been much more sophisticated than yours: meaning that he has looked to the poor-peasant social forces, among other things, the peasant nature of the revolution, and that this ended up overpowering the Khmer Rouge, who also had a sincere desire to modernise and industrialise the country within a compressed time-scale.

As Michael Vickery demonstrated, the choices they made were based largely on keeping the support of their revolutionary constituency, the peasantry. These poor-peasant social forces and their narrow interests were not the only problem when it came to the objective material conditions the Khmer Rouge were met with.

Considering you have taken it upon yourself to decide what is and what isn't communist, you don't appear to be conversant with a materialist conception of history, and that theirs were choices to ensure support, and/or also reactions to the will of the labouring class. Communist lesson number one: life is not static, it is in a constant state of flux, and human history eventually belongs to those who aren’t in control of the means to life in each societal epoch, in the never-ceasing contest between competing, economically-generated social classes. Of course just because a revolution occurs, it doesn’t mean it is ‘socialist,’ in a Marxist sense (and how could it be, in a bombed-out pre-capitalist society?), and even if those who made the revolution (in the name of others) believed it to be so, they were dragged by the peasantry in their modernising ambitions. And when the peasants wouldn’t play ball, the Communists had to use force, in reaction to them.

The peasantry didn’t want socialism as Pol Pot and his comrades understood it. And they didn’t get it. The picture you paint is a simple one, and erroneous: of the Khmer Rouge somehow gleefully basking in some kind of un-Marxist and anti-Communist, even "fascist" attempt to create a society where people were just killed for the (what do the young people say these days?) lulz, rather than Communists who were attempting to create a new society in one of the worst situations imaginable, by way of a socialist revolution in a country that was not ready for it.

Sorry to plug my own site, but there are some very interesting articles to be found there which help to provide some context on what shaped the Khmer Rouge, and what ultimately saw them fail in their wider goal of building a strong, industrialised socialist state.

On Khmer Rouge extemism:

http://padevat.info/2010/11/11/outflanked-sihanouk-lon-nol-and-khmer-rouge-extremism/

On Khmer Rouge ambitions to industiralise the country:

http://padevat.info/2010/11/12/planning-the-impossible-pol-pot-forgotten-steel-mills/

On Pol Pot ally, Ta Mok:

http://padevat.info/2010/09/15/the-butchers-shadow-more-reflections-on-mok/


Students who look for traces of complex ideology in Mok’s actions will remain disappointed. Although Harris points to his “idiosyncratic environmentalist views” – “Whoever destroys the forest is not allowed to be a leader”, runs one pronouncement – Mok’s solutions seem entirely in character: “whoever burns the forest, if arrested, has to be burned alive”. The fact that such crudely ‘primitive’ men often make themselves indispensable to revolutions should not, however, lead us to assume that primitivism, agrarian or otherwise, is the revolution’s final goal.

Lastly, Vickery also made it clear in his book that the Vietnamese would call the Pol Pot regime fascist, both before and after toppling the DK government. He said, in fact, that given the context, such a label was meaningless. Although he didn't say it in his book, this emphasis on fascism was not used so much in later years by the Vietnamese as a way of explaining the Khmer Rouge disaster, and the "ultra-left" or extreme path taken by them was blamed on the influence of the Cultural Revolution. Vickery also demonstrated in his book, however, that the CR had little to do with what actually happened during the Cambodian revolution.

[L.A.P.]

Pol Pot, an authoritarian fascist who hid behind the hammer and sickle.

[milk]

Nope.

I refer you to my previous post.

[Dimentio]

If there's one thing more odious than an out-and-out rightwinger it's a fucking "dishonest socialist" in my opinion. Pol Pot took dishonest socialism to a point we can't even make jokes about.

I am completely astounded that people at RevLeft would not see just how reactionary a fuckwit he and his movement were.

Oh yes, but most of marxism-leninism has the same problem as the Khmer Rogue. Most socialist states have had those problems, though few as badly as Democratic Kampuchea, and it could not only be blamed on "bad theories", but on why the fuck you have such theories and an insufficient understanding of human psychology.

[milk]

Comrade man doesn't know what he's talking about.

[danyboy27]

O dio mio... this is how dictators are made!

You saw it first here at RevLeft.

Seriously... get some sleep, come back tomorrow, read what you have written and think about it. Do you not wonder sometimes why people get scared of communism? Look at what you're saying and ask yourself this.

people are not scared of communism, they are scared of violence and suffering, they see violence has an evil thing that we shall kick out of our lives, like a disease or something.

Every time someone, somewhere advocate for a radical change, even if its a democratic change, our society go after him and accuse him of being too ''violent'' or radical.

that why not much peoples protest or take a solid stance toward corporations or our governements, Beccause they been told all their lives that violence was a ''bad'' thing, that we should all embrace peace, that violence is not the answer etc etc.

Communism isnt ''unpopular'' beccause SOME communist advocate extremely violent mean to reach the goal, its beccause extremes ideals these day are seen has ''bad'' beccause even the mildest violence like protest is seen has evil in our current societies.

and for the dictator part comerademan, has i mentionned, i am not the one making the rules about what mankind remember and choose to forget.

mankind critera are simple, if bad things happen, the good thing must outdone them, so that mankind and society could progress.

[Dimentio]

My my... could I have your baby Dany?

[ComradeMan]

They would also contradict themselves several times, with regard to how Pol Pot front men presented the regime. It would be wise not to take Khmer Rouge statements at face value. The above quote can also be seen as an assertion that the Cambodian revolution was going to be independent of the others occurring under Vietnamese leadership in the region, given the history of enmity between the Khmers and Vietnamese. Take Pol Pot's 1977 Congress speech for example:
The book you have quoted from, was written by Marxist scholar of Cambodian history Michael Vickery, who has not only applied historical materialism to Cambodia's far-flung past, but also the DK regime. He used it to demonstrate the un-Marxist choices made by the Khmer Rouge, but his analysis has been much more sophisticated than yours: meaning that he has looked to the poor-peasant social forces, among other things, the peasant nature of the revolution, and that this ended up overpowering the Khmer Rouge, who also had a sincere desire to modernise and industrialise the country within a compressed time-scale.

As Michael Vickery demonstrated, the choices they made were based largely on keeping the support of their revolutionary constituency, the peasantry. These poor-peasant social forces and their narrow interests were not the only problem when it came to the objective material conditions the Khmer Rouge were met with.

Considering you have taken it upon yourself to decide what is and what isn't communist, you don't appear to be conversant with a materialist conception of history, and that theirs were choices to ensure support, and/or also reactions to the will of the labouring class. Communist lesson number one: life is not static, it is in a constant state of flux, and human history eventually belongs to those who aren’t in control of the means to life in each societal epoch, in the never-ceasing contest between competing, economically-generated social classes. Of course just because a revolution occurs, it doesn’t mean it is ‘socialist,’ in a Marxist sense (and how could it be, in a bombed-out pre-capitalist society?), and even if those who made the revolution (in the name of others) believed it to be so, they were dragged by the peasantry in their modernising ambitions. And when the peasants wouldn’t play ball, the Communists had to use force, in reaction to them.

The peasantry didn’t want socialism as Pol Pot and his comrades understood it. And they didn’t get it. The picture you paint is a simple one, and erroneous: of the Khmer Rouge somehow gleefully basking in some kind of un-Marxist and anti-Communist, even "fascist" attempt to create a society where people were just killed for the (what do the young people say these days?) lulz, rather than Communists who were attempting to create a new society in one of the worst situations imaginable, by way of a socialist revolution in a country that was not ready for it.

Sorry to plug my own site, but there are some very interesting articles to be found there which help to provide some context on what shaped the Khmer Rouge, and what ultimately saw them fail in their wider goal of building a strong, industrialised socialist state.

On Khmer Rouge extemism: Lastly, Vickery also made it clear in his book that the Vietnamese would call the Pol Pot regime fascist, both before and after toppling the DK government. He said, in fact, that given the context, such a label was meaningless. Although he didn't say it in his book, this emphasis on fascism was not used so much in later years by the Vietnamese as a way of explaining the Khmer Rouge disaster, and the "ultra-left" or extreme path taken by them was blamed on the influence of the Cultural Revolution. Vickery also demonstrated in his book, however, that the CR had little to do with what actually happened during the Cambodian revolution.

So... Pol Pot was not responsible for the genocide of up to 2 million people then?

As for industrialisation- where did that come from? Forced ruralisation was Khmer Rouge policy.

You know what?

Fuck your analysis and I'd say the families of up to 2 million people- some of whom who had done no more than commit the crime of appearing intellectual for wearing spectacles would probably say "Fuck you".:thumbup1:

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgerpolpotnus.pdf

http://library2.usask.ca/vietnam/index.php?state=browse&descriptor=CAMBODIA


They considered the hill tribes to be pure elements and, fascinated by their social organisation, decided to apply the tribal social model to all Cambodia. They sought to develop among Cambodians the spirit of mutual aid, to abolish the instinct for capitalist private property, to bring them to accept Spartan conditions and semi-nomadism, to teach them to live from day to day, to scorn all forms of education, and to swear an unconditional loyalty to leaders. Marie-Alexandre Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered Society (trans. Mark W. McLeod), 1994, p. 209-10.


Almost 2 million people – nearly one third of the population of Cambodia – died during the rule of the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Kampuchea) between April 1975 and January 1979. Under policies inspired by Pol Pot and the party’s inner circle, evidence suggests that 1 million people were executed and nearly another 1 million died of starvation and disease as a direct result of efforts to turn Cambodia into a completely agrarian communist state. Documented and oral evidence, still in existence, suggests that extermination policies were carefully planned and executed. The record points to a control structure linking high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge with rural guerillas who carried out many of the horrific international crimes. Three groups were specifically targeted on political and ideological grounds: 1) those associated with the previous Cambodian government, 2) non-communist members of the population, and 3) suspected “traitors” within the Khmer Rouge who had allegedly committed “crimes against the revolution”.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/index.aspx


PS- The Italian Fascists were also "revolutionary" you perhaps forgot the other details that are important too so stick your patronising tone up your ass.

[Weezer]

Why are there revolutionary leftists defending Pol Pot?

[Palingenisis]

We have a Pol Pot supporter on this forum.

[Weezer]

We have a Pol Pot supporter on this forum.

If they haven't been restricted yet, they should be.

Hell, they can be banned for all I care.

[ComradeMan]

Why are there revolutionary leftists defending Pol Pot?

They are not revolutionary leftists, they are idiots who do not know a lackey when they see one.

When you write off numbers, or say they have been exaggerated or perhaps it was a bit more or less, perhaps 800,000- perhaps 2,000,000--- think about the faces and not the numbers or in the Cambodian case the skulls.

[Bright Banana Beard]

We have a Pol Pot supporter on this forum.
Incorrect, we are defending the historical materialism on Democratic Kapuchea and take it as narrative rather than just calling him stupid fascist baby-killer murderous rapist dictator. What I do think is that Pol Pot is genuine in building society, but the ideas never took off because of the massive contradiction in DK.

[Palingenisis]

Incorrect, we are defending the historical materialism on Democratic Kapuchea and take it as narrative rather than just calling him stupid fascist baby-killer murderous rapist dictator. What I do think is that Pol Pot is genuine in building society, but the ideas never took off because of the massive contradiction in DK.

Im not talking about Scarletghoul or others you have pointed exagerations and lies about Democratic Kampuchea....There was someone who actually supported the lines taken his the Khmer Rouge which is different I think you would agree.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=595

This group is worth checking out.

[milk]

So... Pol Pot was not responsible for the genocide of up to 2 million people then?

As for industrialisation- where did that come from? Forced ruralisation was Khmer Rouge policy.

You know what?

Fuck your analysis and I'd say the families of up to 2 million people- some of whom who had done no more than commit the crime of appearing intellectual for wearing spectacles would probably say "Fuck you".:thumbup1:

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgerpolpotnus.pdf

http://library2.usask.ca/vietnam/index.php?state=browse&descriptor=CAMBODIA


They considered the hill tribes to be pure elements and, fascinated by their social organisation, decided to apply the tribal social model to all Cambodia. They sought to develop among Cambodians the spirit of mutual aid, to abolish the instinct for capitalist private property, to bring them to accept Spartan conditions and semi-nomadism, to teach them to live from day to day, to scorn all forms of education, and to swear an unconditional loyalty to leaders. Marie-Alexandre Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered Society (trans. Mark W. McLeod), 1994, p. 209-10.


Almost 2 million people – nearly one third of the population of Cambodia – died during the rule of the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Kampuchea) between April 1975 and January 1979. Under policies inspired by Pol Pot and the party’s inner circle, evidence suggests that 1 million people were executed and nearly another 1 million died of starvation and disease as a direct result of efforts to turn Cambodia into a completely agrarian communist state. Documented and oral evidence, still in existence, suggests that extermination policies were carefully planned and executed. The record points to a control structure linking high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge with rural guerillas who carried out many of the horrific international crimes. Three groups were specifically targeted on political and ideological grounds: 1) those associated with the previous Cambodian government, 2) non-communist members of the population, and 3) suspected “traitors” within the Khmer Rouge who had allegedly committed “crimes against the revolution”.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/index.aspx


PS- The Italian Fascists were also "revolutionary" you perhaps forgot the other details that are important too so stick your patronising tone up your ass.

Instead of childish insults, and lame googling, you perhaps need to engage your brain, and also you need to do a heck of a lot more reading on the subject.

Italian fascism is irrelevant to the Khmer Rouge. Indeed other forms of fascism, as Michael Vickery pointed out. Although you haven't actually read his book, have you? Just quoted a snippet.

[ComradeMan]

Incorrect, we are defending the historical materialism on Democratic Kapuchea and take it as narrative rather than just calling him stupid fascist baby-killer murderous rapist dictator. What I do think is that Pol Pot is genuine in building society, but the ideas never took off because of the massive contradiction in DK.

Well then have you not thought that the historical materialism was a complete and utter disastrous failure?

Stop building strawmen too.

Pol Pot was a vicious psychopath at the head of a movement that was abhorrent to the same extent the Nazis were.

If you look at Khmer policies too you'd see they were completely anti everything we stand for- nationalist, anti-intellectual, anti-progressive, racist, genocidal and contrary to industrialisation, ruralisation that they even managed to fuck up- refusing aid and allowing their own people to starve.

But oh no, he called himself a "commie" technically, so we stick up for him.
Completely forgetting that he was Washington's lapdog too.

Pathetic, useful idiots and morons!

[danyboy27]

Why are there revolutionary leftists defending Pol Pot?

i dont know, last time i recall he didnt achieved jack shit and caused useless pain and suffering to millions of peoples without giving them nothing in return.

i still cant call him a psychopath tho, i dont have any evidence that he routinely brutally tortured and killed thousand of civilians for its own pleasure.

i mean, he sure had a lot of psychopath working for him, maybe some of them even enjoyed all the killing he did.

he was an assole who hired psychopath to apply his scientificly and socialy unsound theories, He was a careless, stupid fool who played poker with the lives of million of people to bet that he could create a new utopian society.

i dont think he enjoyed the killing, but he sure loved to be the boss.

and this is why folks, if you lets a fews individual rules you, you got 50% chances of ending up like a kmer rouge, 50% living in a constructive dictatorship, do you feel lucky today? maybe you should start questionning your governement.

[Palingenisis]

Instead of childish insults, and lame googling, you perhaps need to engage your brain, and also you need to do a heck of a lot more reading on the subject.

Italian fascism is irrelevant to the Khmer Rouge. Indeed other forms of fascism, as Michael Vickery pointed out. Although you haven't actually read his book, have you? Just quoted a snippet.

Well there was an element of Ultra-nationalism within the CPK but Pol Pot more reminds me of Bakunin (the whole invisible dictatorship thing, the idolizing of peasantary as uncorrupted by capitalist or reactionary culture, the diffuse nature of the state he established). Bakunin also had racist ideas.

[milk]

Im not talking about Scarletghoul or others you have pointed exagerations and lies about Democratic Kampuchea....There was someone who actually supported the lines taken his the Khmer Rouge which is different I think you would agree.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=595

This group is worth checking out.

That is my group. And it is not pro-Khmer Rouge. It does and will continue to have material for those who want to understand the Cambodian revolution and its place in Cambodian history. Different to, say, ComradeMan's ill-informed nonsense.

[ComradeMan]

That is my group. And it is not pro-Khmer Rouge. It does and will continue to have material for those who want to understand the Cambodian revolution and its place in Cambodian history. Different to, say, ComradeMan's ill-informed nonsense.

Have I lied? Have I stated falsehoods? Have I not posted facts with sources.... ? Please show me where or shut the fuck up.


So sorry milk that this upsets your little nice view of how lovely "Democratic" Kampuchea was--- I notice on your usergroup you don't have the photos of the skulls and the killing fields, and the photos of the people murdered.

Stop trying to justify and sanitise what you can't justify or sanitise in any way shape or form.

Sorry if my sources don't seem to "agree" with your line.... oops, I suppose that's why it's lame googling.....

But anyway, why are you supporting a group that was backed by US imperialists and capitalists in a bid to wreck the prospects for communist-democracy and the empowerment of the proletariat in SE Asia?

Answer me that question smartass.....

[Palingenisis]

That is my group. And it is not pro-Khmer Rouge. It does and will continue to have material for those who want to understand the Cambodian revolution and its place in Cambodian history. Different to, say, ComradeMan's ill-informed nonsense.

I realize its not pro-Khmer Rouge.

[ComradeMan]

i dont know, last time i recall he didnt achieved jack shit and caused useless pain and suffering to millions of peoples without giving them nothing in return.

Basically the main point.



i still cant call him a psychopath tho, i dont have any evidence that he routinely brutally tortured and killed thousand of civilians for its own pleasure.

Hitler didn't throw the Jews into the gaschambers personally.... In fact, I don't think Hitler personally engaged in any anti-Semitism at all, oh just a few books and speeches, but those were his pychopath followers not him- he never raised his hand to a Jew, homosexual, communist, freemason or whoever else.



i mean, he sure had a lot of psychopath working for him, maybe some of them even enjoyed all the killing he did.

Probably--- just like Amon Roth... just like the Nazis, but sure, it wasn't dear old Adolph.



he was an assole who hired psychopath to apply his scientificly and socialy unsound theories, He was a careless, stupid fool who played poker with the lives of million of people to bet that he could create a new utopian society.

Most dictator authoritarian pricks usually fit that profile. But this one was being supported by the good old CIA too.... Yippeee


i dont think he enjoyed the killing, but he sure loved to be the boss.

Well I'm not sure Hitler did either, he preferred fresh mountain air and the company of Blondie... about being the boss, well I think Adolph liked that.


and this is why folks, if you lets a fews individual rules you, you got 50% chances of ending up like a kmer rouge, 50% living in a constructive dictatorship, do you feel lucky today? maybe you should start questionning your governement.

The OP was disingenously forming an apologetic for Pol Pot- the only apologetic for whom is probably "sorry you ever existed".

[Bud Struggle]

Why are there revolutionary leftists defending Pol Pot?

Maybe they are being funded by the Koch Brothers. :)

[milk]

Well there was an element of Ultra-nationalism within the CPK but Pol Pot more reminds me of Bakunin (the whole invisible dictatorship thing, the idolizing of peasantary as uncorrupted by capitalist or reactionary culture, the diffuse nature of the state he established). Bakunin also had racist ideas.

Their nationalism is much more rooted in local conditions and Communist relations within the context of Indochina during the Cold War, than an intellectual baggage from Bakunin, and there is little evidence, or none at all, to suggest that Bakuninism was an influence among the CPK leaders.

Instead of typing it up again, I posted this elsewhere, which is, I think, relevant:

As for poor relations with the Vietnamese, this goes back quite far, and the CPK after all evolved from a political party (Khmer People's Revolutionary Party) established with Vietnamese guidance in 1951, which was separate but dependant on them, and manned by an older generation of Khmer Communists. The problem of nationalism is also partly to do with the Vietnamese, for in creating separate national parties, 'socialism' could only be defined by them within national borders.

On the subject of a certain section of the Khmer Communist movement harbouring antipathy towards the Vietnamese, then we need to look back quite far, and at the concept of Communist unity among Southeast Asian Communists, and how this was interfered with by wider strategic matters concerning the opposition of powerful foreign enemies. The ideological roots of Indochinese ‘unity’ within a Communist context go back to the era of the Comintern, and the federation principle. That Bolshevist revolutions occur in countries in close proximity to one another, unifying into federated unions, until in theory there is a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the World, modelled on the Soviet example in Russia. The French colonial (political and administrative) structure of Indochina and the leading role the Vietnamese could play in resistance to them, gave Moscow reason to believe that the federation principle could be applied well. The Vietnamese interpretation of this idea, however, was very different and always remained an idealised vision only, when the three nations of Indochina would actually enter the stage of socialist revolution. The Vietnamese, when considering the cultivation of Communist movements in the other two countries, always worked (to steal words from Gareth Porter) within a shifting calculus: on how best to strategically oppose powerful foreign foes: firstly the French, then the Americans. And secondly, how they viewed the feasibility of Marxist-Leninist revolution in these two countries. This happening independent of Vietnamese influence was viewed with pessimism.

In relation to the above realities interfering with a concept of ‘unity’ between the three Indochinese peoples, and although there are different sources feeding into the Khmer Communists’ political outlook, particularly that of the Pol Pot group, Vietnamese support of Sihanouk as an effective bulwark against US imperialism is very significant. That a conservative government could be viewed as being a better partner for achieving the wider goals of ridding Indochina of foreign domination, than Communists. While North Vietnam was calling for Khmer Communists to be united with the prince in matters of national independence, while peacefully challenging his domestic polices, Sihanouk’s police were jailing and killing the left. Sihanouk was shrewd enough to see that Communism was in the ascendant in the region, and his friendly foreign policy was designed to ensure independence for him and his conservative coterie. External friendliness was matched in the aggressive assertion of this ‘independence’ by ruthless internal repression. So while Sihanouk was getting closer to Hanoi and Peking, wanting to keep his next door neighbour sweet, while also using China to check any potentially worrying future Vietnamese Communist policy, he was having Khmer Communists either beaten, shot or put behind bars. The younger generation of Khmer Communists who had never been members of the Indochinese Communist Party, and from which Salot Sar would emerge leader, rejected this line of peaceful opposition, as quite understandably it was unacceptable, simply a matter of life or death. The earlier 1950s Khrushchev line coming from Moscow, with emphasis placed on peaceful paths to socialism, was seen as revisionist by the younger Khmers, and disliked the Vietnamese pushing for this in Cambodia, when they had hypocritically rejected this for themselves regarding the southern side of the partition. The Khmer Party’s decision to leave for the maquis in 1963 had followed a period of intense repression and the development of the younger generation’s line: Cambodia was not independent, wore what they called ‘semi-colonial’ chains, that the traditional political system needed to be overthrown, and to do this all efforts be made to mobilise the peasantry for armed struggle. The war in Vietnam saw the massive build up of American forces, and Sihanouk was vital in the North’s war effort, for his country’s territory allowed the North Vietnamese and NLF to escape direct military pressures in the South. The late 1960s Khmer Rouge insurgency complicated this relationship between Sihanouk and the North Vietnamese, and while Pol Pot indeed went to Hanoi for high-level talks in 1969, he was in effect patted on the head, told to be a good little boy and lay low. Cambodian territory and Sihanouk’s cooperation was too valuable, and so what were several hundred inexperienced and tattered maquisards armed with a few rifles and farming implements playing at? In the years of his repression of the left, Sihanouk at this time wasn’t fully cognizant of the changes that had occurred within the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (or CPK), and so believed that the Vietnamese were behind the rural rebellion, and could be made to end it by threatening to cut off supply lines to the vital Cambodian border bases. For years, the two political lines, the Vietnamese/old KPRP, and that of Pol Pot/CPK had remained virtually the same and in opposition to one another. The Lon Nol coup, when the Sangkum became defunct in 1970 and their complexes of border camps crucial to the war effort were now exposed at the rear, changed the attitude of the Vietnamese, but the damage had been done, and by 1975 the new government in Phnom Penh consisted of Khmer leaders intent on less than cordial relations.

[milk]

Can ComradeMan please leave this thread? He's a disruptive idiot who clearly knows nothing about that which he speaks.

[ComradeMan]

Can ComradeMan please leave this thread? He's a disruptive idiot who clearly knows nothing about that which he speaks.

Ad nauseam- you are forming apologetic for reactionary tyrants.

I don't care about your pseudo-intellectual patronising bullshit... stick it.

I don't need to read a fucking book to form an opinion on Pol Pot and the wickedness and human misery that went on in Cambodia. I have known some Cambodians who lived through that shit and ended up as refugees... it would be interesting for you to talk your shit to them- backed up with a footnote reference or not.

You haven't answered one single point, you've posted blocks that spew out your ready-made opinion and answers like some kind of fucking ideological automaton with no capacity for independent thought.

I won't leave this thread...

In my opinion this is the face of the DK.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:F-B4HrvbEZ7EuM:http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0707/23d728ff33ec73521d46.jpeg (http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0707/23d728ff33ec73521d46.jpeg)
http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0707/23d728ff33ec73521d46.jpeg

[milk]

Again, I refer you to my earlier post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40).

I think if people here are communists (with a capital C too), or at least claim to be (I don't think you can ComradeMan, you're too dumb), then it would perhaps be worth viewing the Cambodian revolution through that historical materialist prism, or other radical analyses which don't merely regurgitate the vulgar anti-Communist position that Communists are bad, and therefore, unsurprisingly, Communists do bad things. Or denying that they were Communist at all. Both of these approaches will have little in the way of analytical value.

[ComradeMan]

Again, I refer you to my earlier post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40).

I think if people here are communists (with a capital C too), or at least claim to be (I don't think you can ComradeMan, you're too dumb), then it would perhaps be worth viewing the Cambodian revolution through that historical materialist prism, or other radical analyses which don't merely regurgitate the vulgar anti-Communist position that Communists are bad, and therefore, unsurprisingly, Communists do bad things. Or denying that they were Communist at all. Both of these approaches will have little in the way of analytical value.

Ad hominem- you wouldn't know what communism was if it bit you in the ass shouting "I'm communism".

It's not an anti-communist position to recognise that Pol Pot was a complete unmitigated disaster, so stop trying to poison the well- you're just adding to your fallacies. Stop trying to build strawmen too. You have no position on this one, you have no argument.

I don't even consider Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge to be communists, and I've given you the historical facts why- which you can't answer.
-nationalism
-anti-education
-racism
-statements saying "we aren't communists"
-anti-communist actions
-ruralisation as opposed to industrialisation
-destruction of the working class/proletariat
-forced "peasantification" of the population

Why won't you analyse these points instead of blandly pasting what you spew out from history books?

Why are you supporting a group that was backed by US imperialists and capitalists in a bid to wreck the prospects for communist-democracy and the empowerment of the proletariat in SE Asia?

Why are you supporting a regime that in its actions basically tried to turn back the clock in Cambodia instead of acting progressively?

Why are you skirting around the issue of up to 2 million people brutally murdered?

If you think communism is about masturbating over history books or some kind of bizarre fetish for dead tyrants or some historical re-enactment society then you are mistaken.

It takes more than a red flag with a star on it to make a "commie".:thumbup1:

[Burn A Flag]

Again, I refer you to my earlier post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40).

I think if people here are communists (with a capital C too), or at least claim to be (I don't think you can ComradeMan, you're too dumb), then it would perhaps be worth viewing the Cambodian revolution through that historical materialist prism, or other radical analyses which don't merely regurgitate the vulgar anti-Communist position that Communists are bad, and therefore, unsurprisingly, Communists do bad things. Or denying that they were Communist at all. Both of these approaches will have little in the way of analytical value. I don't think ComradeMan was implying all communists were bad. I believe he was simply stating that slaughtering the masses of one's country is not sound socialist strategy. Therefore, no matter how much of a socialist one claims to be, they should not be supported if they are murdering the people (not the bourgeoisie) on a massive scale.

[milk]

I don't think ComradeMan was implying all communists were bad. I believe he was simply stating that slaughtering the masses of one's country is not sound socialist strategy. Therefore, no matter how much of a socialist one claims to be, they should not be supported if they are murdering the people (not the bourgeoisie) on a massive scale.

Indeed, he was one, among others, on here who denied they were Communists (that second position I pointed out was going to block a decent analysis). I have been making my view clear, that it is important to understand the wider historical and political contexts in which that slaughter took place, rather than reducing it all down to Pol Pot being a psychopath or something, which he wasn't. It wasn't due to fascism, either, as he claimed.

[ComradeMan]

I don't think ComradeMan was implying all communists were bad. I believe he was simply stating that slaughtering the masses of one's country is not sound socialist strategy. Therefore, no matter how much of a socialist one claims to be, they should not be supported if they are murdering the people (not the bourgeoisie) on a massive scale.

It's not any strategy other than a crime against humanity.

You can't even defend Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge/S-21 from any kind of socialist perspective- their actions say it all.

Italian proverb- "Sono i fatti che parlano non le parole"- "It is the facts that speak not the words"- merely presenting an historical analysis of who said what and who met whom is a convenient way of avoiding the unpalatable truths of these types of people and groups.

Like I say, look at that little girl in the photo, and multiply those faces by 2 million or try to put a face to each one of those skulls, then think about their "words".

[ComradeMan]

Indeed, he was one, among others, on here who denied they were Communists (that second position I pointed out was going to block a decent analysis). I have been making my view clear, that it is important to understand the wider historical and political contexts in which that slaughter took place, rather than reducing it all down to Pol Pot being a psychopath or something, which he wasn't. It wasn't due to fascism, either, as he claimed.

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

Well- I have actually presented you with sourced facts that show how they were not communists in any true sense of the word.

I have also shown you how your puerile analysis of Pol Pot could equally be applied to Hitler.

I also did not state that he was a fascist, although if you actually knew what fascism was you might see a lot of similarities to it- that was the point.

I suggest you take up stamp-collecting or something because as a revolutionary you are inept, and we all know what happens with inept revolutionaries- we end up with people like Pol Pot, which is something I don't think we really need.:thumbup1:


Why won't you answer any of the points? The questions aren't that difficult are they?

[milk]

Why are you supporting a group that was backed by US imperialists and capitalists in a bid to wreck the prospects for communist-democracy and the empowerment of the proletariat in SE Asia?

Those points you made have been covered at my blog, and the posts linked to. Read them before deciding beforehand what my position on the Khmer Rouge is.

As for the above, there is nowhere on this site that makes clear that I have been supportive of them. And what is this democracy ('communist' or otherwise) you're talking about?

If we were to talk about democracy (social, liberal) even, in a western parliamentary sense, such a thing has never enjoyed a dominant tradition in Cambodia, no matter the political colouration.

[Burn A Flag]

Indeed, he was one, among others, on here who denied they were Communists (that second position I pointed out was going to block a decent analysis). I have been making my view clear, that it is important to understand the wider historical and political contexts in which that slaughter took place, rather than reducing it all down to Pol Pot being a psychopath or something, which he wasn't. It wasn't due to fascism, either, as he claimed. Honestly it doesn't matter very much the historical context of the slaughter. It was still a slaughter, (though not necessarily making Pol Pot some type of Satanic figure) Pol Pot was definitely very incompetent if not cruel.

[milk]

Honestly it doesn't matter very much the historical context of the slaughter. It was still a slaughter, (though not necessarily making Pol Pot some type of Satanic figure) Pol Pot was definitely very incompetent if not cruel.

Still of no analytical value then. It was just bad, because it was.

[milk]

I also did not state that he was a fascist, although if you actually knew what fascism was you might see a lot of similarities to it- that was the point

Stop back-tracking, pin-head. You said he/they were fascist. In the same post where you quoted Michael Vickery's book. The same book which contains his position that when the Vietnamese branded the DK regime fascist, given the context, it was meaningless.

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

I have a question, would Pol Pot's Year 0 theory be considered primitivist?

[milk]

Nope. It wasn't a "theory," either.

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

Wow, I seriously need to stop posting late at night...

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

I always though year zero was when pol pot killed the intellectuals and forced everyone out of the city to work on farms.

[Burn A Flag]

I always though year zero was when pol pot killed the intellectuals and forced everyone out of the city to work on farms.

That would definitely be considered primitivist IMO.

[Palingenisis]

That would definitely be considered primitivist IMO.

How can they have been primitivist when the whole effort was to increase rice production so that they could buy machinary from outside?

Their plan however idealistic and mad was to industrialize the country as fast as possible...Therefore they werent primitivists...End of story.

[danyboy27]

I think its dangerous to use worlds like sociopath or psychopath too often, beccause its tend to make believe to people that, things like the holocaust happen beccause some creazy sociopath just made it happen out of tin air while in fact the reality is much much more complex.

[danyboy27]

How can they have been primitivist when the whole effort was to increase rice production so that they could buy machinary from outside?

Their plan however idealistic and mad was to industrialize the country as fast as possible...Therefore they werent primitivists...End of story.

well, using intellectual to work on a field when the biggest effort they made in their whole life was counting number is somehow primitivist.

i didnt do half the studies pol pot did and i know that if tomorow i send 100 office worker do hard physical work for a fews year, 2/3 of them are more likely to die during the first 3 year.

if he really saw the intellectual that low in his priority, then he is a primitivist.

[Palingenisis]

I always though year zero was when pol pot killed the intellectuals and forced everyone out of the city to work on farms.

The cities had to be abandoned maybe because they were too easy targets for bombing. Also as I said they were trying to build up rice production in order to sell it on the international market to be able to industrialize.

Another thing to remember is that the state was so diffuse and local cadres of peasant or tribal fighters may well have had a rural hatred of urban intellectuals...However that wasnt a part of the Khmer Rouge's official idealolgy.

[milk]

That would definitely be considered primitivist IMO.

No, it wasn't.

Again to repeat words I've already used elsewhere, firstly, the term Year Zero was an analogy, an intellectual nod to the revolutionary calender used by the French from 1793 to 1805. Educated Khmers of a certain age will have known since their childhoods of the French Revolution from their exposure to the old and uniform French school syllabus, which citizens proper and subjects in the colonies alike were taught. And they would have been made to see it as not just a milestone in France’s history, but of the world. An object of reverence and redemption. Yes we can go on about the seemingly blank slate policies of the DK regime, but they were never primivitists who wanted to send the country back to a pre-civilised state, or even back to the time of Angkor, but rather under their leadership a prodigious leap into modernity would be attempted. And the utterance of Year Zero was an expression of the DK leaders superimposing the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary model on the old French one, where in the minds of Cambodia’s schoolchildren, as in France, it was viewed as the destruction of an archevil ancien regime. In 18th century France there would be a replacing of an old elite by the victorious bourgeoisie supposedly representative of the whole population, and in 20th century Cambodia under the Communists they would be put in its place instead as the country caught up with the rest of the Communist-rule world.

Secondly, a little more on this Year Zero. It has been misinterpreted as a desire to turn back, or re-set the clock to zero: for either creating a primitive agrarian society, or sending the country's people back to the social balance experienced during the time of Angkor. Which for Communists would go against historical materialist logic. Sometimes the two have been said in the same breath too. I guess this is because of the confusion or a lack of understanding of what was behind their rural focus. And as for the latter how can they have used Angkor as a model (there is no evidence of this) to somehow recreate the past, by forcing Cambodian society into a pre-civilised state, when Angkorean achievements rediscovered and researched since the 19th century have shown that it was once a great civilisation?


Pol Pot's revolution, in my opinion, was aiming to be something like this:

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/599/glfheavyindustry.jpg

It never got past first base, however (http://padevat.info/2010/11/12/planning-the-impossible-pol-pot-forgotten-steel-mills/).

Their rural focus (organised along the lines of a Khmer version of war communism) was for building the new country-wide infrastructure needed for the mass production rice and other agricultural goods, and this expansion of agricultural production was to not only stabilise the food situation inside the country and make it self-sufficient, but also to create large surpluses for export, in order to get the trade revenues needed for productive reinvestment: namely for the modernisation of agriculture and then related industrial development. Of course, the issues of ‘mastery’ and self-reliance; the arrogant self-regard and hubris; the fractured state power and factional divisions along with warlord rivalries; simplified and literal Maoist ideological positions; the rigid militarised regimentation of the population and the Communists’ poor-peasant focus, interfered with all this. It’s also a case of ‘what if,’ for it never happened. Lke I said, they never got past first base, the revolution rapidly degenerated. The regime collapsed, ate itself while all around starved. But primitivism is not what they were about.

[Bud Struggle]

No Lke I said, they never got past first base, the revolution rapidly degenerated. The regime collapsed, ate itself while all around starved. But primitivism is not what they were about.


If you don't mind me asking--was the collapse inherent in the structure of Communism that the Khmers tried to impose or was it the problem of Pol Pot really not having the opportunity to take the Revolution far enough?

It seems to me that if historical materialism it to be taken to its full extent a complete reimaging of the human condition must take place--and a complete break from the past much be achieved. I can see that that was Pol Pot's intention, and I think he had some excesses in his use of execution--but unlike some of the leaders in Europe he didn't stop half way--he seemed to instigate a real permanent Revolution.

[milk]

If you don't mind me asking--was the collapse inherent in the structure of Communism that the Khmers tried to impose or was it the problem of Pol Pot really not having the opportunity to take the Revolution far enough?

Well, it wasn't about the revolution going far enough, but that the Khmer Rouge inherited a devastated country, and their organisation was weak, incompetent, not uniform and was dragged by peasant masses uninterested in socialism as understood by Pol Pot and his comrades. To quote Serge Thion:


...at no time between 1975 and the end of 1978 were the central authorities close to having complete control over the national economy, the state power system, the army, the party, and possibly even the state security office, S-21. All of these were riddled with political factions, military brotherhoods, regional powers, personal networks, all contending for influence and the purging of rival forces. The state never stood on its feet.

As you probably know, the country was divided into administrative 'zones,' and as for Party influence and this weak organisation we've talked about, this lack of unity was a problem for the Pol Potists in the central government, who wanted to centralise all political and military power in the country. There were patronage links the cadres and military commanders of the zones cultivated for their own benefit and were an oppositional factor.

This regional aspect regarding power was there during the war, though, with a general line and coordination by the CPK, but relatively autonomous conditions for the zonal forces to operate in. In power, the central government, with the Pol Pot group in leading positions still did not have real power at the regional level, and had to find zonal allies in order to have countrywide influence in the way they wanted it, for at first they had little in the way of armed force backing compared to some of the zone secretaries. So, for example, the unification of all the zonal forces into a national army (officially at least) in July 1975, could be seen as a starting move in the prevention of any potential challenges to their power, by subordinating all the armed forces to one central authority. This was never achieved though.

This is one of the main reasons for the terror, or purge waves. To remove real or perceived challengers to the central government's power, and the replacement of rivals with people who would apply the Pol Pot line correctly. There was a never-completed process of centralising political and military power in the hands of the Pol Pot group. Other very important things feed into this, such as the poor-peasant social forces already mentioned in previous posts, and the conflict with Vietnam. What happened, at bottom, was a poorly organised and incompetent government, trying to implement profound changes in a terrible situation of incredible difficulty. Instead of rapid development, there was rapid structural collapse.

[RGacky3]

They took what they thought were necessary steps to build said society by destroying everything else and trying to start from scratch. That's what they thought their doctrine required. So it wasn't an accident as much as a means to an end.

Fine, but so did Hitler, so did any lunatic dictator.

[Noinu]

hell, i am against purges too, but my invdividual opinion dosnt mean jack shit about how mankind feel about a particular event or group of people.

Mankind remember the crimes of individual or nations mostly when the bad things comitted exceed the good ones.

If a chinese invasion of america happen today and that, fallowing this tragedy, the chinese discovers a methord to manufacture free energy, fallowing that discovery, the worldwide povrety level would disapear in 100 year, in 600 year, people would mainly talk about how great the chinese governement was for saving all those people in africa and giving to the world a new meaning, the invasion of america would be regarded has, a regretable incident, just like when people talk in school of how all those indiian died during the colonization of north america.

Who the hell thinks that that was just a 'regretable incident'? O___O

[Dimentio]

Incorrect, we are defending the historical materialism on Democratic Kapuchea and take it as narrative rather than just calling him stupid fascist baby-killer murderous rapist dictator. What I do think is that Pol Pot is genuine in building society, but the ideas never took off because of the massive contradiction in DK.

So you approve of the killing of segments of the population only because a group of philosophy students have deemed those segments "counter-revolutionary".

Human society is not some kind of fucking ant-hill. It seems like you people are so blinded by the idea of an ideal society that you forget about the people who are supposed (or I don't know) to live in that ideal society.

[milk]

No he isn't, that wasn't what was said.

Do you agree that using historical materialism to explain how DK came about is fruitful, or not?

All I'm seeing is talk of a few individuals, when it was heck of a lot more than that. It's another variation of the Great Man theory, nothing about the peasant social forces which drove the revolution and which also ended up rejecting it. Are you a communist or not?

[ComradeMan]

I'm just seeing more and more apologetics for a level of, at best, incompetence that would count as criminal negligence in anyone's books. The road for hell is paved in good intentions as they say.

Pol Pot was a fanatical lunatic. He didn't even care to look at what had happened in other countries, so so much for his historical materialism- or perhaps he didn't get that far before dropping out of university in France.

Let's look at the background. There had been historical tension between Vietnam and Cambodia in the past anyway. China had initially backed Ho Chi Minh in the Vietnam conflict against the US however in February 1979 China, which had withdrawn support for Vietnam- then part of the Comintern and striking an alliance with the USSR, declared a brief war against its former comrades- i.e. Vietnam. In the light of reconciliation between the US and China we ended up with a situation in which the US/CIA etc backing the state-terrorist Khmer Rouge.

Pot Pot: In a pamphlet titles 'Monarchy or Democracy' he writes, "(The monarchy) is a vile pustule living on the blood and sweat of the peasants. Only the National Assembly and democratic rights give the Cambodian people some breathing space. ... The democracy which will replace the monarchy is a matchless institution, pure as a diamond."

Under Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia had preserved neutrality during the Vietnamese civil war by giving a little to both sides: Vietnamese communists were allowed to use a Cambodian port to ship in supplies, the USA were allowed to bomb - secretly and illegitimately - Viet Cong hideouts in Cambodia. When US-backed Lon Nol took over, US troops felt free to move into Cambodia to continue their struggle with the Viet Cong. Cambodia had become part of the Vietnam battlefield. During the next four years, American B-52 bombers, using napalm and dart cluster-bombs, killed up to 750,000 Cambodians in their effort to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia.html

The Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement in 1970 was small. Their leader, Pol Pot, had been educated in France and was an admirer of Maoist (Chinese) communism; he was also suspicious of Vietnam's relations with Cambodia. The heavy American bombardment, and Lon Nol's collaboration with America, drove new recruits to the Khmer Rouge. So did Chinese backing and North Vietnamese training for them. By 1975 Pol Pot's force had grown to over 700,000 men. Lon Nol's army was kept busy trying to suppress not only Vietnamese communists on Cambodian territory but also Cambodia's own brand of communists, the Khmer Rouge.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia.html


Pol Pot wanted everything immediately. The collectivisation of agriculture, was a complete disaster. Mao had (wisely) developed the strategy over years- but Pol Pot- no. Private property was abolished immediately, something which neither Mao nor Stalin had risked in any way to such an extreme extent. Markets and shops were prohibited and money was abolished.

The Khmer Rouge then singled out their enemies as such. The first victims were the Vietnamese minority. A brutal policy of genocide/ethnic-cleansing was carried out targetting a specific ethnic group in which people were massacred and villages razed to the ground.

The next targets were people who lived in the city- regardless of political affiliation or nationality. The Khmer Rouge did not want anyone who could possibly know more than them about the wide-world. Intellectuas were targeted, despite the Khmer Rouge's own intellectual background in France of course, education was frowned on and there occurred an idealisation of "primitivism". This then led of course to the other targets. City dwellers were forced immediately to abandon the cities- their only provisions were a mat, a pot and the clothes they were wearing. They were marched to "villages" in rough terrain- of which Pol Pot said "Having them is no advantage and losing them is no loss".

So, at short notice and under threat of death, the inhabitants of towns and cities were forced to leave them. The ill, disabled, old and very young were driven out as well, regardless of their physical condition: no-one was spared the exodus. People who refused to leave were killed; so were those who didn't leave fast enough, and those who wouldn't obey orders.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia1.html

All political and civil rights were abolished. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps. Factories, schools and universities were shut down; so were hospitals. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professional people in any field (including the army) were murdered, together with their extended families. Religion was banned, all leading Buddhist monks were killed and almost all temples destroyed. Music and radio sets were also banned. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia1.html

Pol Pot basically "closed" the cities- something which in the height of the "brutality" of the Mao regime not even Mao had dared to do. Think about the differences too.

Pol Pot was probably the first and last person in "marxism" to have considered that city life was not a prerequisite to any form of progress and it was to be "abolished"- come what may. Pol Pot's intentions of then mechanising agriculture within 10 years in order to build an industrial base within 20 years and perhaps increase population by 100-200% were secondary to the immediate determination of placing the entire (remaining) population under he and his party's rule.


Pol Pot, after coming to power then even turned on his own ranks- purging and "re-educating" them with the notorious "lifestyle meetings".
A nine day working week was creating with a 10th day off - however the 10th day was for "poltical" education- attendance obligatory.
Everyone was obliged to do hard labour- the only exception were of course Pol Pot and the party leaders and apparatchiks. With collectivisation agricultural villages were subjected to fixed quotas of production- regardless of any extraneous factors. When the people began to starve as a result of his disatrous policies they turned to scavenging for insects, rats and mice in the fields and perhaps the odd-coconut. These acts were viewed dimly by the authorties as counter-revolutionary and so the they were made capital offfences. Trying not to starve to death was punishable by death.

We also need to take into account that the Khmer Rouge itself was for the most completely incompetent and had no experience in agriculture or economics however this may well have suited Pol Pot as anyone who could have challenged the sheer madness of his policies was conveniently a counter-revolutionary enemy of the state. Even with this so-called administration, nepotism and fear combined so that the reports passed on to command were often falsified. The brutality and violence of these so-called guerillas towards the general population (who had already experienced decades of brutal warfare and oppression) now reached new levels of sociopathic sadism.

Although there is dispute about the figures, from 800,000 according to Pol Pot- (just a few then) up to 2 million by others- it is estimated that 20% or 1/5 or perhaps 25% /1/4 of the Cambodian people perished- in proportion to the population it's not hard to see how this was probably one of the most devastating "revolutions" of the 20th century. In January 1979 this regime was overthrown by Vietnamese "communist" forces however Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge continued to exercise certain limited power thereafter.

http://www.frontline.org.za/IMAGES/SKULLS.JPG


The Khmer Rouge in retreat had some help from American relief agencies - 20,000 to 40,000 guerrillas who reached Thailand received food aid -and the West also ensured that the Khmer Rouge (rather than the Vietnam-backed communist government) held on to Cambodia's seat in the United Nations: the Cold War continued to dictate what allegiances and priorities were made.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia2.html

Note that these were the same Khmer Rouge who had refused outright any form of foreign aid when the Cambodian people were starving to death.

The Khmer Rouge went on fighting the Vietnam-backed government. Throughout the 1980s the Khmer Rouge forces were covertly backed by America and the UK (who trained them in the use of landmines) because of their united hostility to communist Vietnam. The West's fuelling of the Khmer Rouge held up Cambodia's recovery for a decade.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia2.html

Under international pressure, Vietnam finally withdrew its occupying army from Cambodia. This decision had also been forced by economic sanctions on Cambodia (the US's doing), and by a cut-off in aid from Vietnam's own backer, the Soviet Union. The last troops left Cambodia in 1989, and its name was officially restored. In the 1978-1989 conflict between the two countries (and their behind-the-scenes international string-pullers) up to 65,000 had been killed, 14,000 of whom were civilians.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia2.html

In Cambodia, under a temporary coalition government, it was once again legal to own land. The state religion, Buddhism, was revived. In 1991 a peace agreement between opposing groups was signed. Democratic elections, and a peacekeeping force to monitor them, were arranged for 1993, and the former monarch, Prince Sihanouk, was elected to lead the new government.
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia2.html

Chomsky: "In order to bleed Vietnam, we've [US] supported the Khmer Rouge indirectly through our allies, China and Thailand. The Cambodians have to pay with their blood so we can make sure there isn't any recovery in Vietnam. The Vietnamese have to be punished for having resisted US violence.": in What Uncle Sam Really Wants.

So from a number of sources, both left, right or "neutral" there is no way you can defend the regime of Pol Pot- not by its background and not by its actions, and like I have stated before-

Net results:-

Genocide/ethnic cleansing.:thumbup1:
Complete devastation of a country and people.:thumbup1::thumbup1:
Nationalism.:thumbup1::thumbup1:
Primitivism.:thumbup1::thumbup1:
No socialism.:thumbup1::thumbup1:
No chance that people in Cambodia would ever want to hear talk of "socialism" ever again- they've gone back to constitutional monarchy.:thumbup1::thumbup1:

and...


2 million dead people.


Analyse that.



Pol Pot interview with Nate Thayer:

"First, I want to let you know that I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people,"

"Look at me now. Do you think ... am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem. This needs to be clarified. ...

"My experience was the same as that of my movement. We were new and inexperienced and events kept occurring one after the other which we had to deal with. In doing that, we made mistakes as I told you. I admit it now and I admitted it in the notes I have written.

"Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese.

"For the love of the nation and the people it was the right thing to do but in the course of our actions we made mistakes."

It's like a sick joke...

[milk]

Pot Pot's pamphlet (or rather Saloth Sar, for he didn't adopt his pseudonym Politique Potentielle until 1969), Monarchy or Democracy, was written long before Pol Potism, as it could be termed, was fully-formed. Before he entered meaningful political activity in Cambodia, and when the Khmer Rouge insurgency, let-alone revolutionary movement and government had yet to start. You seem to think that DK and its horrors were pre-planned in the 1950s and early 60s.

Forced migrations of Cambodians have not been an unusual event in the country's recent history. The only difference from April 17 1975 with Phnom Penh, and earlier with provincial centres and market towns, was that it involved the comfortable classes.

As for what else you've said, I already know much of it, and much better than you do. Let's be honest here: your posts are a garbled mess of hastily googled articles with little or no thought to the sources, a repetition of points I have previously challenged, with no attempt on your part to go back and read my posts before responding, going round and round in a circle of ever-increasing idiocy. Add to that accusations that I support the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea (and I challenge you to actually find anything which supports these accusations) and we have one sorry-looking method of debating. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot, you are also potty-mouthed, which helps you come across as immature, and there is the juvenile use of smilies and different sized fonts making your posts even more unintelligible than they already are.

On a much more serious note, I've been thinking actually, along the lines of whether there is a nonpartisan treatment of: "who were the Khmer Rouge?"; "which regimes supported them"; "what were their stated policies"; "why did they want to take Cambodia back to the past" (answer: they didn't).

It should also be noted (I doubt you have) that there is and continues to be a fundamental issue of whether the regime was genocidal in intent, in terms of saying that there are two academic views: one (represented by anti-communists, and leftist academics like Kiernan) that it was, and a second (e.g. Vickery) that it wasn't, and 'excess deaths' occurred due to incompetence and structural breakdown, along with some as a result of internal political divides.

I tend to go for the last one.

[ComradeMan]

@milk

Pot Pot's pamphlet (or rather Saloth Sar, for he didn't adopt his pseudonym Politique Potentielle until 1969), Monarchy or Democracy, was written long before Pol Potism, as it could be termed, was fully-formed. Before he entered meaningful political activity in Cambodia, and when the Khmer Rouge insurgency, let-alone revolutionary movement and government had yet to start. You seem to think that DK and its horrors were pre-planned in the 1950s and early 60s.

- So what? He couldn't have called himself Mickey Mouse for all the difference it makes. A rose by any other name.... ? :rolleyes:

-No I don't think they were pre-planned, but quite frankly I don't care and I don't say what difference that makes objectively- the results were the results.

Forced migrations of Cambodians have not been an unusual event in the country's recent history. The only difference from April 17 1975 with Phnom Penh, and earlier with provincial centres and market towns, was that it involved the comfortable classes.

-What kind of justification is that? Mass murder and genocide have been going of for centuries, millenia. I thought the left was progressive- sorry if that is a mistaken idea.

As for what else you've said, I already know much of it, and much better than you do. Let's be honest here: your posts are a garbled mess of hastily googled articles with little or no thought to the sources, a repetition of points I have previously challenged, with no attempt on your part to go back and read my posts before responding, going round and round in a circle of ever-increasing idiocy. Add to that accusations that I support the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea (and I challenge you to actually find anything which supports these accusations) and we have one sorry-looking method of debating. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot, you are also potty-mouthed, which helps you come across as immature, and there is the juvenile use of smilies and different sized fonts making your posts even more unintelligible than they already are.

-Ad hominem attacks. You can't answer one point, you have avoided all direct questions each time based on some self-perceived intellectual superiority, so please.... I am "potty" mouthed.... oh well, fuck censorship, fuck your opinion and fuck you! :lol::thumbup1::confused: What are you? The thought police now?:lol::laugh:

On a much more serious note, I've been thinking actually, along the lines of whether there is a nonpartisan treatment of: "who were the Khmer Rouge?"; "which regimes supported them"; "what were their stated policies"; "why did they want to take Cambodia back to the past" (answer: they didn't).

- Maybe they didn't want to... but they did? Do you understand the difference between hypothetical desires and real actions? You obviously don't.


It should also be noted (I doubt you have) that there is and continues to be a fundamental issue of whether the regime was genocidal in intent, in terms of saying that there are two academic views: one (represented by anti-communists, and leftist academics like Kiernan) that it was, and a second (e.g. Vickery) that it wasn't, and 'excess deaths' occurred due to incompetence and structural breakdown, along with some as a result of internal political divides.

I tend to go for the last one.

- More sophistry- whether the fucking regime was genocidal in "intent" doesn't change the fact that it was genocidal in practice does it? Moron!

It's all very interesting on paper doing the academic analysis, but as Dimentio pointed out too... what about the real people who died in real terms?

"excess deaths"- one death is too many isn't it?

You know, what's frightening about this is you could start changing the names and places but follow the same logic and rationale as you are doing and end up justifying the Nazis as misunderstood, well-meaning commies----

:thumbup1::thumbup1::thumbup1:

[danyboy27]

Who the hell thinks that that was just a 'regretable incident'? O___O

i dunno, teacher in general, my grand father, old people in general, middle aged peoples, some young folks.


hoo i met some people who where scandalized by those thngs, but they where in minority in comparaison of those who seen those things has something that was a minor event of history.

dont get me wrong, i think the whole colonization thing was just an horrible thing, but has i said, i am not mankind, and have verry little power over it.

[milk]

@milk

I'm sorry, but your posts are incoherent and incomprehensible.

I am not playing this idiotic game any longer, and getting dragged down to your level in the process. In fact, you couldn't get any more lower if you were walking under a rattlesnake while wearing a top hat.

Make your own posts clearer, to the point, and in less of the splatter gun manner to which you've become accustomed. Then I'll respond to you better.

Out of interest, have you actually been reading my posts, on previous pages at this thread?

[RGacky3]

If your going to come up with a bunch of excuses and justifications for Pol Pot, then you might as well do the same for major corporations.

[milk]

If your going to come up with a bunch of excuses and justifications for Pol Pot, then you might as well do the same for major corporations.

And where have I done that? I have merely demonstrated a better understanding of it than, say, you for example.

[RGacky3]

what you did was the same thing stalinists do, take a situation and talk about all reasons the might have happened, here I"m gonna do it with corporations.

Ehem, Every corporation is forced to exploit based on material conditions, if a CEO does not maximise profits he'll loose the market share, then his buisiness will shut down, so he is forced to cut costs, the matrial conditions FORCE exploitation, so you see, CEO's arnt bad guys.

There we go, I did it. Does it change anything? Does it change the fact that the system that CEOs rule over causes exploittaion oppression and suffering? No, all I did was try to explain it away.

Its the same with Pol Pot, he ruled over a system that murdered millions of people, he set one up, you can explain it away all you want, trying to say that he did'nt have DIRECT control over the regional areas ist juts rediculous, CEOs don't run hte factories that lay off people, but they make the quotas and they make the standards, so did Pol Pot.

[milk]

what you did was the same thing stalinists do, take a situation and talk about all reasons the might have happened, here I"m gonna do it with corporations.

Ehem, Every corporation is forced to exploit based on material conditions, if a CEO does not maximise profits he'll loose the market share, then his buisiness will shut down, so he is forced to cut costs, the matrial conditions FORCE exploitation, so you see, CEO's arnt bad guys.

There we go, I did it. Does it change anything? Does it change the fact that the system that CEOs rule over causes exploittaion oppression and suffering? No, all I did was try to explain it away.

Its the same with Pol Pot, he ruled over a system that murdered millions of people, he set one up, you can explain it away all you want, trying to say that he did'nt have DIRECT control over the regional areas ist juts rediculous, CEOs don't run hte factories that lay off people, but they make the quotas and they make the standards, so did Pol Pot.

Your analogy is quite bonkers.

Anyway, moving on, how was Pol Pot in any way in direct control of the revolution at regional level unless he built those zonal alliances? The terror was the method by which he attempted to have that direct control. This theme of the Cambodian revolution has been recognised and explained from several viewpoints. You seem to be going against the grain of generally-held opinions on the DK regime by those who have specialised in it, academically, and researched the bloody thing.

Anyway, I want you to actually prove that I have made 'excuses' for and 'justified' Pol Pot and Democratic Kampuchea. Where in my posts have I done this?

[Palingenisis]

http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1999-25/PolPot_eng25.htm

Milk have you read this essay and if so how accurate did you find it?

[danyboy27]

Your analogy is quite bonkers.

Anyway, moving on, how was Pol Pot in any way in direct control of the revolution at regional level unless he built those zonal alliances? The terror was the method by which he attempted to have that direct control. This theme of the Cambodian revolution has been recognised and explained from several viewpoints. You seem to be going against the grain of generally-held opinions on the DK regime by those who have specialised in it, academically, and researched the bloody thing.

Anyway, I want you to actually prove that I have made 'excuses' for and 'justified' Pol Pot and Democratic Kampuchea. Where in my posts have I done this?
Well, those in control of the gun control the country right?

i am not accusing you of supporting the DK regime, just pointing out that if Pol pot was in control of the gun, he was virtually in control of the situation.

[Bright Banana Beard]

So you approve of the killing of segments of the population only because a group of philosophy students have deemed those segments "counter-revolutionary".

But can you really point me out where Pol Pot ordered this and his evil intention proclamation? I am talking order executive and his writing style rather the fucking western pseudo-communist claiming able to read his evil mind based on the event.

[milk]

Well, those in control of the gun control the country right?

i am not accusing you of supporting the DK regime, just pointing out that if Pol pot was in control of the gun, he was virtually in control of the situation.

He wasn't. That's the point. The war saw Khmer Rouge organisation divided by geographical location, with local leaders following a general line from the central committee of the CPK, but enjoying relatively autonomous conditions in which to operate, holding the reins of quite considerable power and influence, particularly militarily. This would cause a problem for the central authorities when winning power. It's a lot more complicated than can be communicated in a single post here, but Pol Pot and his allies had leadership positions in the Party, i.e. the central government, but regional power wielded by secretaries in the zones (regional administrations) wasn't completely under their control. They had little in the way of armed forced backing at the beginning, and so had to forge an alliance with Ta Mok of the Southwest Zone and Ke Pauk of the Central Zone (both allies of Pol Pot during the civil war), who provided the muscle in spreading the central government's power, which took on the shape of bloody purges, replacing regional cadre in suspect zones with their own. There weren't deep ideological divisions as such, but issues of warlordism, nepotism in local government structures, rivalries both political and military etc, and patronage links cultivated along these lines. The rural peasant-based aspect of the revolution was always generally agreed upon, and in carrying out DK policy there wasn't opposition as such, just differences on the method and degree to which the same policies were to be applied in the various zones of the country. But it is not true that Pol Pot had monolithic control of the country. He could only ever aspire to that, and indeed he attempted to centralise control, through the bloody purge waves. This process was never completed, however, as this terror was also fed with paranoia of Vietnamese infiltration of the revolution, causing a deterioration in relations with their neighbor.

[ComradeMan]

But can you really point me out where Pol Pot ordered this and his evil intention proclamation? I am talking order executive and his writing style rather the fucking western pseudo-communist claiming able to read his evil mind based on the event.

Oh shut up with that already too. You don't need to be Sigmund Freud, we aren't trying to do a postmorterm psycho-therapy on him. His actions speak for themselves.

[milk]

http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1999-25/PolPot_eng25.htm

Milk have you read this essay and if so how accurate did you find it?

I'll read it later. From a quick glance, though, I'll probably disagree with the political conclusions, seen as I am not a Maoist, although I do see that there is detail of their ambition to industrialise.

[milk]

Oh shut up with that already too. You don't need to be Sigmund Freud, we aren't trying to do a postmorterm psycho-therapy on him. His actions speak for themselves.

There was never a directive from the Party Centre to 'exterminate' all townspeople, including intellectuals. It's a vulgar interpretation of what actually happened. His actions, or those who implemented government policy, do speak for themselves only in that the scale may be unprecedented in the country's history, but the cruelty isn't that remarkable at all.

[ComradeMan]

I'm sorry, but your posts are incoherent and incomprehensible.

I am not playing this idiotic game any longer, and getting dragged down to your level in the process. In fact, you couldn't get any more lower if you were walking under a rattlesnake while wearing a top hat.

Make your own posts clearer, to the point, and in less of the splatter gun manner to which you've become accustomed. Then I'll respond to you better.

Out of interest, have you actually been reading my posts, on previous pages at this thread?


LOLLL! You are like an ideological drone, an automaton. You don't seem to be able to think for yourself and the best you can do is to start poisoning the well and coming up with ad hominem attacks.

You have been asked repeatedly, quite clear and direct questions which you have rather disingenuously sought to avoid with blocks of dry historical analysis of what may or may not have been "intentions". It's interesting you don't actually want to talk about what really happened, nor do you want to answer the direct questions! It's interesting too that your "usergroup" images are a couple of flags- no photographic stuff either- I wonder why?

Now, answer the questions raised in the post- for yourself too.

Perhaps you can't? Because you would end up contradicting your seemingly ever more apologetic stance on this issue.

Now, I'll sit back and wait for the strawmen.....

:thumbup1:

[#FF0000]

I love how any attempt to understand figures from history as anything other than comic book heroes and villains gets people so worked up around here.

[#FF0000]

LOLLL! You are like an ideological drone, an automaton.

what is milk's ideology?

[Palingenisis]

There was never a directive from the Party Centre to 'exterminate' all townspeople, including intellectuals. It's a vulgar interpretation of what actually happened. His actions, or those who implemented government policy, do speak for themselves only in that the scale may be unprecedented in the country's history, but the cruelty isn't that remarkable at all.

Okay fair enough, thats something that I can accept....However from my (limited) understanding the state was very diffuse with each commune having a lot of independence and resentment of poor peasant and tribal fighters towards intellectuals, etc from the city who its reported they saw as being soft and corrupt in many instances probably did manifest itself (the interview with Pol Pot that OP posted seems to suggest so).

[milk]

I love how any attempt to understand figures from history as anything other than comic book heroes and villains gets people so worked up around here.

I find it quite bemusing that people who describe themselves as communists have no intention of looking at, or can't look, at things from a materialist point of view, but instead merely repeat the more vulgar sensationalist garbage that's been repeated as memes for years, without any thought to thinking about the possibility that the revolution can be seen in a different way. Take ComradeMan's response to my pointing out that forced migration by the Khmer Rouge is not a unique event in the country's recent history, and the only difference was, that it involved the country's comfortable classes.

Stating this fact saw just a barrage of inaccurate insults, and lame accusations. There was nothing from him about the hundreds of thousands of peasants, perhaps up to a million, who were forcibly moved during the First Indochina War; nothing about the plans to forcibly move peasants from rural areas in the 1960s, to make way for never-built project dams; nothing about the migration of peasants to urban areas, by way of B-52 bombing raids in the 1970s; nothing which indicates to me that he is able to place DK in the context of a country well-acquainted with severe disruption, violence and death before the Khmer Rouge came to power. Instead, he decided to load my words as being somehow supportive of Khmer Rouge actions. Which they certainly weren't. The man is a fool. He knows nothing, and he accuses me of sophistry!

[Lt. Ferret]

yeah right he knew nothing about it that makes way more sense.

[milk]

LOLLL! You are like an ideological drone, an automaton. You don't seem to be able to think for yourself and the best you can do is to start poisoning the well and coming up with ad hominem attacks.

You have been asked repeatedly, quite clear and direct questions which you have rather disingenuously sought to avoid with blocks of dry historical analysis of what may or may not have been "intentions". It's interesting you don't actually want to talk about what really happened, nor do you want to answer the direct questions! It's interesting too that your "usergroup" images are a couple of flags- no photographic stuff either- I wonder why?

Now, answer the questions raised in the post- for yourself too.

Perhaps you can't? Because you would end up contradicting your seemingly ever more apologetic stance on this issue.

Now, I'll sit back and wait for the strawmen.....

:thumbup1:

Again, I will refer to the first post I made on this thread, and which got your back up so much.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40

There hasn't been much of an indication that you're wanting to debate what you find disagreeable in the position that the revolution can be viewed by way of a historical materialist method of analysis. Seen as you quoted the Marxist scholar of Cambodian history from his book which does use such an analysis, and I either corrected you or embellished your post, I thought you might have been conversant with Vickery's analysis of DK and what, as you like to say, actually happened there. It appears not, it was just a quick, shot-in-the-dark google to prove some ill-thought out point, a mere peg on which to hang your preconceptions. And from then on, it's just been post after post from you, accusing me of being a Khmer Rouge apologist, supporter, whatever you fancy.

In less polite terms, I consider you to be a bit of an idiot. You certainly aint a communist.

[milk]

yeah right he knew nothing about it that makes way more sense.

And neither did you, until I posted it.

[Dimentio]

No he isn't, that wasn't what was said.

Do you agree that using historical materialism to explain how DK came about is fruitful, or not?

All I'm seeing is talk of a few individuals, when it was heck of a lot more than that. It's another variation of the Great Man theory, nothing about the peasant social forces which drove the revolution and which also ended up rejecting it. Are you a communist or not?

I think the failure of Democratic Kampuchea could be explained a lot simpler than by dialectal materialism (while dialectal materialism could still be used to explain it's failures, but then dialectal materialism should also be used to "explain" Hitler, Franco and Pinochet without judging them).

The basic attack against Democratic Kampuchea is that it was based on a small group organised in a political party wanting to forcefully transform the lives of an entire population without knowing what the effects would be, and when confronted with failure resorted to violence and increased what they had already been doing a hundred-fold.

You don't need to be an Einstein to realise that it is completely crazy.

I would prefer Syngman Rhee, Chiang Kai-Shek, Lon Nol and almost any fucking right-wing despot before Pol Pot. At least, most right-wing autocrats are leaving you alone in the ditch as long as you aren't protesting against them or their wealthy backers.

Pol Pot would not leave you alone, and for whatever you are doing or whatever you are, you could suddenly be attacked as a counterrevolutionary, without even owning any property or having a privileged background.

Consequently, that is not only a criticism of Pol Pot, but of most states ruled by socialist dictatorships. Julius Caesar, the archetype of a smart dictator, said "if you are not against me, you are with me". Pol Pot was the total opposite to that in his conduct of power, and of the ruling clique around him.

Pol Pot represents the total perversion of socialism, but a perversion which was there since it's inception when people started to interpret Marx. There's always been this tendency, not amongst the workers but amongst intellectuals who ascribe themselves to marxist values, of wanting a total transformation of the human being and cleanse the human being from the original sin.

[Dimentio]

But can you really point me out where Pol Pot ordered this and his evil intention proclamation? I am talking order executive and his writing style rather the fucking western pseudo-communist claiming able to read his evil mind based on the event.

I cannot understand why you people seem to think what a leader has written or said is more important than what a leader does, at least if it is a socialist leader.

You don't judge governments on the basis of what they actually have done for or against their peoples, but on the basis of the ideological purity of their leaders, ignoring the fact that theories only are written on paper whereas reality always is more complex and at the same time more simple - 90% of what a government is doing is to preserve itself.

[Lt. Ferret]

And neither did you, until I posted it.


Pol Pot "why, egads, there are mountains of skulls! where on earth did these come from? "

[milk]

Pol Pot "why, egads, there are mountains of skulls! where on earth did these come from? "

My, aren't you perceptive.

[Lt. Ferret]

haha okay keep being snarky and actually believing dictators dont know about the atrocities being committed by their political organizations. maybe hitler didnt know about the holocaust either.:thumbup1:

[Bright Banana Beard]

I cannot understand why you people seem to think what a leader has written or said is more important than what a leader does, at least if it is a socialist leader.

You don't judge governments on the basis of what they actually have done for or against their peoples, but on the basis of the ideological purity of their leaders, ignoring the fact that theories only are written on paper whereas reality always is more complex and at the same time more simple - 90% of what a government is doing is to preserve itself.


But DID he DO it? Did he ENCOURAGES IT?

So Marx is a mass murderous rapist because his actions speak louder, right?

[milk]

haha okay keep being snarky and actually believing dictators dont know about the atrocities being committed by their political organizations. maybe hitler didnt know about the holocaust either.:thumbup1:

I was referring to ComradeMan, not Pol Pot.

[Bright Banana Beard]

haha okay keep being snarky and actually believing dictators dont know about the atrocities being committed by their political organizations. maybe hitler didnt know about the holocaust either.:thumbup1:

The different is that Hitler actually supports and encourages it.

[Dimentio]

But DID he DO it? Did he ENCOURAGES IT?

So Marx is a mass murderous rapist because his actions speak louder, right?

Not he, but the Khmer Rogue are responsible for the crimes against the Cambodian people perpetuated in the period of 1975-1979. The point is not that Pol Pot is personally responsible, but that the fucking Khmer Rogue - of which Pol Pot was a member and the chairman - committed many actions which...

Well, let's say that if Pol Pot had been a USA-backed fascist leader (d'Aubuisson would be the closest equivalent in terms of cruelty), you wouldn't have tried to "explain" his actions, but instead condemn them.

That is why I cannot take you guys seriously. You condemn or exalt people not because of what they have done, but because of their ideological correctness.

[milk]

Okay fair enough, thats something that I can accept....However from my (limited) understanding the state was very diffuse with each commune having a lot of independence and resentment of poor peasant and tribal fighters towards intellectuals, etc from the city who its reported they saw as being soft and corrupt in many instances probably did manifest itself (the interview with Pol Pot that OP posted seems to suggest so).

Something to reiterate is that the violent potential of such as what has been talked about was existing in Cambodia prior to Khmer Rouge influence, indeed independent of it. Michael Vickery pointed to this, with him skillfully interweaving the writings of Bun Chan Mol (Khmer Mores, or Mentality) during his days as an Issarak into the introduction of his book Cambodia 1975-1982. The same book that ComradeMan quoted from. There are several aspects of what could be termed Pol Potism, which were already present there in Cambodian society in embryo, long before DK. All that stuff wasn’t a Khmer Rouge innovation.

Here's (http://www.pacificdiscovery.org/credit/SEAreadings/Vickery.%20The%20Gentle%20Land.pdf) the opening chapter to Vickery's book.

The below quote contains an interesting anecdote of his:


Some degree of resentment, even hatred, of the towns should have been expected. In his most recent, anti-DK, avatar Wilfred Burchett has alluded to this. Under Pol Pot, he wrote, "it sufficed to turn up the palm of the hand - roughened it saved - if not it was death."

I would not argue about that measure having occasionally been used in 1975 to distinguish urban evacuees, even though in most cases they were easy to recognize without looking at their hands and, as the following chapters will show, there was never a campaign to identify and dispose of urban folk in general. What I found interesting about Burchett's remark was that I had heard the same story in 1962 from a friend, an urban school teacher, who ten years earlier had been on a bus stopped by Issaraks ostensibly fighting for Cambodian independence from France. They entered the bus by the front and passed down the aisle turning up hands. If they were soft the passengers were led away. My friend, fortunately, was sitting toward the rear and government security forces arrived on the scene before his turn came.

[Dimentio]

Something to reiterate is that the violent potential of such as what has been talked about was existing in Cambodia prior to Khmer Rouge influence, indeed independent of it. Michael Vickery pointed to this, with him skillfully interweaving the writings of Bun Chan Mol (Khmer Mores, or Mentality) during his days as an Issarak into the introduction of his book Cambodia 1975-1982. The same book that ComradeMan quoted from. There are several aspects of what could be termed Pol Potism, which were already present there in Cambodian society in embryo, long before DK. All that stuff wasn’t a Khmer Rouge innovation.

Here's (http://www.pacificdiscovery.org/credit/SEAreadings/Vickery.%20The%20Gentle%20Land.pdf) the opening chapter to Vickery's book.

The below quote contains an interesting anecdote of his:

By the same logic, a Nazi would be able to excuse the genocide of the Jews with the Germans largely seeing them as parasites, and the Interhamwe foot soldiers would be able to re-call ancient Tutsi exploitation of the Hutu majority in Rwanda.

But it's typical for maoists and pseudo-maoists to see whatever a mob is doing as legitimate. During the original communalisation of the estates in China, as well as during the GPCR, mobs in some districts were encouraged to attack people who simply were "unpopular" in areas where there were no wealthy land-owners to take out the frustrations on.

[milk]

By the same logic, a Nazi would be able to excuse the genocide of the Jews with the Germans largely seeing them as parasites, and the Interhamwe foot soldiers would be able to re-call ancient Tutsi exploitation of the Hutu majority in Rwanda.

But it's typical for maoists and pseudo-maoists to see whatever a mob is doing as legitimate. During the original communalisation of the estates in China, as well as during the GPCR, mobs in some districts were encouraged to attack people who simply were "unpopular" in areas where there were no wealthy land-owners to take out the frustrations on.

I'm not talking about Germany, or Rwanda, but Cambodia. Others may want to, I'm seeking to place the tendencies and violence into context, and pointing others to something perhaps different than what they may see as being only Khmer Rouge behavior, that DK violence was an aberration. And it also wasn't the 'result' of Maoism. The post seems to have gone over your head.

[Dimentio]

I'm not talking about Germany, or Rwanda, but Cambodia. Others may want to, I'm seeking to place the tendencies and violence into context, and pointing others to something perhaps different than what they may see as being only Khmer Rouge behavior, that DK violence was an aberration. And it also wasn't the 'result' of Maoism. The post seems to have gone over your head.

The same kind of excesses - though proportionally less extreme - happened in Mao's China on large-scale during at least two periods, the establishment of the people's communes and the culrural revolution.

I would like to see anyone here survive a "contextualisation" of Hitler's Germany unbanned.

[milk]

The same kind of excesses - though proportionally less extreme - happened in Mao's China on large-scale during at least two periods, the establishment of the people's communes and the culrural revolution.

I would like to see anyone here survive a "contextualisation" of Hitler's Germany unbanned.

Who has excused anything?

I certainly haven't.

[Dimentio]

Who has excused anything?

I certainly haven't.

Palingenesis has something invested in saving Mao's quite tarnished legacy.

The same for Gran Rojo who wins a price for the most silly avatar.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Well, let's say that if Pol Pot had been a USA-backed fascist leader (d'Aubuisson would be the closest equivalent in terms of cruelty), you wouldn't have tried to "explain" his actions, but instead condemn them. The reason we condemn them is because they not going to assist proletrian revolution or not being against capitalism.


That is why I cannot take you guys seriously. You condemn or exalt people not because of what they have done, but because of their ideological correctness. It is because what they have done, which can be connected to their ideology, but the materialism present itself as evidence while the ideology is just the ideas.

[milk]

So the context is wrong then, Dimentio? There are no historical precursors to such violence in Cambodia, it was all a Khmer Rouge innovation? Take the torture methods used by the Khmer Rouge security service, the Santebal, at the Tuol Sleng prison of Office S-21. These were largely the same methods as those used by Sihanouk's police and army against its political prisoners during the Sangkum era and then Lon Nol's Republic. They in turn had learned them from the French. It isn't about excusing it, but understanding where all of that stuff came form. I simply don't believe the Khmer Rouge invented it all.

[Dimentio]

The reason we condemn them is because they not going to assist proletrian revolution or not being against capitalism.

It is because what they have done, which can be connected to their ideology, but the materialism present itself as evidence while the ideology is just the ideas.

What is a proletarian revolution worth if it's only tangible result is the elevation a clique of people who are taking the food from people, forcing people to dig ditches and then tell people that they must be shot if they fail to recite some philosopher correctly?

In short: You replace one ruling class with another, which apart from doing the same as the old one is telling the people what to believe and are killing those who do not believe hard enough.

Sounds like an impressive proletarian revolution to me...

[Dimentio]

So the context is wrong then, Dimentio? There are no historical precursors to such violence in Cambodia, it was all a Khmer Rouge innovation? Take the torture methods used by the Khmer Rouge security service, the Santebal, at the Tuol Sleng prison of Office S-21. These were largely the same methods as those used by Sihanouk's police and army against its political prisoners during the Sangkum era and then Lon Nol's Republic. They in turn had learned them from the French. It isn't about excusing it, but understanding where all of that stuff came form. I simply don't believe the Khmer Rouge invented it all.

Most dictatorships in the world have had historical precedents for their crimes.

In Europe, antisemitism has had a long and vibrant tradition. In Rwanda, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict has a long history. The only cases were you cannot find any local historical precedents are when one people are invading another region and enslaves/replaces the people already living there, like the Norman invasion of England or the English colonisation of North America.

That is not the point!

The point is that the Khmer Rogue created a state where most of the population consisted of undernourished and overexploited paddy field slaves which received just enough from the state to barely survive, while they conducted massive purges both against the lower ranks of their own party, the civilian population and ethnic minorities. No matter if it had anything to do with historical precedents for violence in Cambodia or not (which by the way is a post-colonialist racist explanation), it is still fucking strong to call it "ideological errors".

If I went into your house, shot your dog, raped and killed your girlfriend and then put your house on fire with you in it, and claimed I did it for the oppressed workers of the world, would it then be mitigated to "an unfortunate tragedy caused by ideological errors"?

[Bright Banana Beard]

Sounds like an impressive proletarian revolution to me...Yes, we believe that the proletarians must becoming the ruling class and oppress the ideas that goes against them such as private property, capitalism, fascism, nationalism, etc. Communist have no problem admitting this. Revolution will not be all fine and dandy as mistakes are bound to happen unlike your idealism saying this won't happen because IT SAID SO and because THEY THINK MISTAKES IS NOT PART OF THEM AT ALL.

[Dimentio]

Yes, we believe that the proletarians must becoming the ruling class and oppress the ideas that goes against them such as private property, capitalism, fascism, nationalism, etc. Communist have no problem admitting this. Revolution will not be all fine and dandy as mistakes are bound to happen unlike your idealism saying this won't happen because IT SAID SO and because THEY THINK MISTAKES IS NOT PART OF THEM AT ALL.



So if a surname-ist party comes to power in the name of the proletarian class, and then proceeds by 1) confiscating all the food of the proletarian class, 2) forcing the proletarian class to dig canals and build pillboxes, 3) eliminating or at least punishing those proletarians that oppose this policy, then it objectively is in the interests of the proletarians?

So, shortly speaking...

It is in the objective interests of the proletarians to have their rice confiscated, being enrolled as forced labour and then being shot when protesting, all because the party in power claims it is doing it in their objective interest?

:confused::confused::confused:

What kind of mushrooms have you been smoking? I want some of those!

[Bright Banana Beard]

That party doesn't exist because it pops up on your mind just to find a way to not to make them communist, right?

DK actually increase the food production, FYI. I have only smoke weed that orgins from Mexico.

[Rêve Rouge]

Pol Pot's visions for a magnificent industrialized society were fine and dandy (although flawed), but the KR policies and actions blinded the Cambodian people's views on communism in general. That's why the majority of the Cambodian people point to the atrocities of the KR and use that as a justification of the "evils" of communism. They are right on about the atrocities, but it should not be used to show that communism is bad. I believe that's what milk is trying to do. We all can agree that the KR's actions are unacceptable, but we can't let that block us from trying to figure out what Pol Pot's socialist visions were. That way we might have a chance to extract those ideas and learn from them. And then possibly the Cambodian people will have a better understanding of what Pol Pot's true goal was, and accept communism (or least not be ignorant of communism). Of course that doesn't mean they have to accept Pol Pot or the KR, but the root of their idea; communism. Nowadays like I said earlier, Cambodians just don't like to hear that word. The words Pol Pot, KR, and communism still sends shivers down my family's spines.

Now I am in no way a supporter of the KR or Pol Pot. I just want to figure out what Pol Pot's ideas were. The KR's policies on how to carry out those ideas are a different story, which everyone knows were just terrible mistakes.

[Dimentio]

That party doesn't exist because it pops up on your mind just to find a way to not to make them communist, right?

DK actually increase the food production, FYI. I have only smoke weed that orgins from Mexico.

Oh yes, it has existed. The Khmer Rogue was a wonderful example of just exactly that. All food that was produced was put in government-operated granaries and then distributed to the population according to government plans. If Democratic Kampuchea actually increased food production, it would make history's judgement on the Khmer Rogue the more aggravating, due to the undernourishment of the people.

There has been other examples, like the fact that China was a food-exporting country during the famine of 1958-1960 and that Mao routinely gave away more than a tenth of China's gross domestic product in foreign aid during his government.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Oh yes, it has existed. The Khmer Rogue was a wonderful example of just exactly that. All food that was produced was put in government-operated granaries and then distributed to the population according to government plans. If Democratic Kampuchea actually increased food production, it would make history's judgement on the Khmer Rogue the more aggravating, due to the undernourishment of the people.

There has been other examples, like the fact that China was a food-exporting country during the famine of 1958-1960 and that Mao routinely gave away more than a tenth of China's gross domestic product in foreign aid during his government.

The reason there was famine is because there was no strong central government as Cambodia was in terror. DK didn't make this happen, they took on power after the famine. It just DK government was actually weak and are forced to depend on local to take care of themselves. They just have it coming.

[Palingenisis]

Palingenesis has something invested in saving Mao's quite tarnished legacy.


What has Mao got to do with all this?

For the record I dont uphold Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge but I do think its important to see what lessons can be learned from the tragedy.

[Dimentio]

The reason there was famine is because there was no strong central government as Cambodia was in terror. DK didn't make this happen, they took on power after the famine. It just DK government was actually weak and are forced to depend on local to take care of themselves. They just have it coming.

The Khmer Rogue were still in control of the local governments.

It's like claiming that NSDAP weren't responsible for the murders committed in the Generalguvernment and the occupied parts of the USSR due to them not being de-jure parts of Germany.

This is increasingly feeble, man. Just quit it and forget this exchange ever happened.

[Dimentio]

What has Mao got to do with all this?

For the record I dont uphold Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge but I do think its important to see what lessons can be learned from the tragedy.

The Khmer Rogue were mainly inspired from maoism.

[ComradeMan]

The reason there was famine is because there was no strong central government as Cambodia was in terror. DK didn't make this happen, they took on power after the famine. It just DK government was actually weak and are forced to depend on local to take care of themselves. They just have it coming.

US AID reports observed that the country faced famine in 1975, with 75% of its draft animals destroyed, and that rice planting for the next harvest would have to be done "by the hard labour of seriously malnourished people". The report predicted:

"Without large-scale external food and equipment assistance there will be widespread starvation between now and next February ... Slave labour and starvation rations for half the nation's people (probably heaviest among those who supported the republic) will be a cruel necessity for this year, and general deprivation and suffering will stretch over the next two or three years before Cambodia can get back to rice self-sufficiency". Shawcross, Sideshow pp. 374–375.

The fact ot the matter is thought that with an forewaring of the oncoming famine Pol Pot destroyed infrastructure, and pursued insane agricultural policies.

because there was no strong central government as Cambodia was in terror

There was no central government because fucking Pol Pot and his henchmen were the government and thanks to the policies of "closing" the cities there could be no strong central government anyway. If Cambodia was in terror in 1975 it was because of the Khmer Rouge.

Regardless of the "blame" for the famine- whilst people were starving to death and being shot for trying to eat cockroaches to save their lives Pol Pot deliberately turned down foreign food aid and watched his own people starve as they were worked to death like slaves.

The famine is only one aspect of all of this.

[Dimentio]

Not entirely correct. Cambodia was a pretty fucked up country already in 1974 due to American bombings, but the Khmer Rogue only worsened the crisis significantly.

[Red Future]

Im sorry but those pictures are sickening

[ComradeMan]

Not entirely correct. Cambodia was a pretty fucked up country already in 1974 due to American bombings, but the Khmer Rogue only worsened the crisis significantly.

Re the central government- I see what you are getting at, but my point was rather that instead of attempting to do anything remotely sane in the knowledge that a famine was on its way- what did they do? They exacerbated the whole situation, which was untenable, in the worst and most brutal fashion.

One thing our apologists seem to be avoiding too is the fact that a lot of this was CIA, i.e. US capitalist backed. :thumbup1:

[#FF0000]

to be honest i don't think i've seen a single "apologist" in this thread.

I've seen people describing what happened in Cambodia, and I've seen people get so mad when that explanation doesn't include "pol pot was a super villain and a sociopath hurf durf"

[Dimentio]

It's the typical result when Ivory Tower people get into power. The US equivalent to the Khmer Rogue were the experts surrounding Johnson who claimed that the US should focus on "killing enemies" in Vietnam instead of actually doing strategy, and that by killing more enemies than they lost soldiers, they would win (which meant that American soldiers were rewarded for killing enemies, which meant that officers and soldiers exaggerated the result of operations and also killed civilians in order to correct rewards).

When you try to apply simplified ideas on reality, reality will hit back.

[Dimentio]

to be honest i don't think i've seen a single "apologist" in this thread.

I've seen people describing what happened in Cambodia, and I've seen people get so mad when that explanation doesn't include "pol pot was a super villain and a sociopath hurf durf"

Not really. There are no super villains, but what Pol Pot did was just the logical conclusion of the things which Mao originally initiated, namely "politics by the mob" and a kind of permanent revolution which meant a state of lawlessness.

[ComradeMan]

to be honest i don't think i've seen a single "apologist" in this thread.

I've seen people describing what happened in Cambodia, and I've seen people get so mad when that explanation doesn't include "pol pot was a super villain and a sociopath hurf durf"


There are. Apologetics is not just about what you say but about what you conveniently "neglect" to say.

I have noted a considerable avoidance of issues around the subject- very keen to talk about intentions and "bureaucratic" theory in a disingenous attempt to somehow present a palatable version of this regime.

This was the man whose motto and group's motto became "No advantage if they live, no loss if they die". People are expendable and that's it-

Sociopath- found this basic definition of a sociopath, let's see how many might fit with Brother 0 based on his actions and those whom he commanded (and before people start, I know others would fit with this, but we are talking about Pol Pot).

Profile of the Sociopath
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html

[Palingenisis]

The Khmer Rogue were mainly inspired from maoism.

Sources?

There are superficial things in common such as stressing the subjective factor but from a Maoist perspective the Khmer Rogue were clearly ultra-left (New Democracy versus the immediate abolition of money for example).

[#FF0000]

Not really. There are no super villains, but what Pol Pot did was just the logical conclusion of the things which Mao originally initiated, namely "politics by the mob" and a kind of permanent revolution which meant a state of lawlessness.

I can sort of see this and sort of agree.

The permanent revolution via lawlessness thing is something I sort of notice elsewhere, too. It seems that most of the "socialist regimes" of the past ended up as huge disasters, not because of some crazy person with unchecked power, but because of that sort of lawlessness.

Except in the USSR it was institutions, like the NKVD, and not "mobs".

I have a feeling I'm not expressing myself very well here.

[Dimentio]

Sources?

There are superficial things in common such as stressing the subjective factor but from a Maoist perspective the Khmer Rogue were clearly ultra-left (New Democracy versus the immediate abolition of money for example).

Both were countryside-based military factions originally who won power through warfare for a start.

Both relied heavily on staged voluntaryism, like organising people's trials where people voted on who was going to be beaten or executed.

As for New Democracy, Mao waited 'till 1953 before moving on, but that is a difference of prioritation rather than an ideological difference, since Mao 1953-1960 and 1966-1976 moved in the same path which the Khmer Rogue later on led to it's logical conclusion.

[Dimentio]

I can sort of see this and sort of agree.

The permanent revolution via lawlessness thing is something I sort of notice elsewhere, too. It seems that most of the "socialist regimes" of the past ended up as huge disasters, not because of some crazy person with unchecked power, but because of that sort of lawlessness.

Except in the USSR it was institutions, like the NKVD, and not "mobs".

I have a feeling I'm not expressing myself very well here.

I am actually agreeing with you. In none of the "socialist" states, you could be certain you would survive tomorrow unless you always cheered for the ruling clique, no matter the idiocy of it's actions. A socialist republic need to have an independent judiciary, a leadership accountable to the population and a rule through institutions rather than fear to at least be somewhat socialist.

[ComradeMan]

UKVx2exYazQ

C9Lo1uZ5EZg

[danyboy27]

Sources?

There are superficial things in common such as stressing the subjective factor but from a Maoist perspective the Khmer Rogue were clearly ultra-left (New Democracy versus the immediate abolition of money for example).

well wasnt maoism also based on failed agrairian reforms?

also, i like the way you use the word ''ultra left'' has an insult toward non-maoist peoples, sound just like when Glenn beck attack leftist by calling them ''progressives'' and think its an insult.

[ComradeMan]

I see the Khmer apologists have gone quiet...

Not surprising seeing as they have an indefensible position on this issue.


The bright red blood
Was spilled over the towns and over the plain of Kampuchea, our motherland,
The blood of our good workers and farmers and of
Our revolutionary combatants, of both men and women.
Their blood produced a great anger and the courage
To contend with heroism.
On the 17th of April, under the revolutionary banner,
Their blood freed us from the state of slavery.
Hurrah for the glorious 17th of April!
That wonderful victory had greater significance
Than the Angkor period!
We are uniting
To construct a Kampuchea with a new and better society,
Democratic, egalitarian and just.
We follow the road to a firmly-based Independence.
We absolutely guarantee to defend our motherland,
Our fine territory, our Magnificent revolution!
Hurrah for the new Kampuchea,
A splendid, democratic land of plenty!
We guarantee to raise aloft and wave the red banner of the revolution.
We shall make our motherland prosperous beyond all others,
Magnificent, wonderful!

[Bud Struggle]

Sooooo. It seems that ComradeMan is the only REAL Pol Pot fighter in the bunch of you. (Not that I care but) I got more snippy remarks yesterday than Pol Pot.

This is not how you enlist the Proletariat and build a Revolution.

(Gack gets credit, too.)

[#FF0000]

Sooooo. It seems that ComradeMan is the only REAL Pol Pot fighter in the bunch of you. (Not that I care but) I got more snippy remarks yesterday than Pol Pot.

This is not how you enlist the Proletariat and build a Revolution.

(Gack gets credit, too.)

Bud, that's completely unfair. Nobody in this thread is saying "pol pot, what a guy" or even saying that there was anything remotely positive about what came of the Khmer rule.

Everyone in here agrees except for one thing. Gack and CM want to look at history through the lens of heroes and villains, and the rest want to look at it historically and see what actually went wrong and why things happened the way they did.

This isn't being an apologist. It's being a sensible person and taking an even approach to history.

Some people here say "Pol Pot was pure evil" and the others are saying "He had bad ideas made worse by bad conditions". There is nothing wrong with saying the latter, while saying the former is hard-headed, almost willful ignorance and irresponsibility.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Consider this is ironic that CM are being praised by a capitalist, so much for his credibly.

[#FF0000]

Consider this is ironic that CM are being praised by a capitalist, so much for his credibly.

well i mean he is hella wrong but I don't think this is fair either.

it doesn't matter what people think about what you say. all that matters is that it's true.

[Bud Struggle]

Some people here say "Pol Pot was pure evil" and the others are saying "He had bad ideas made worse by bad conditions". There is nothing wrong with saying the latter, while saying the former is hard-headed, almost willful ignorance and irresponsibility.

The second is bad politics. Really if you really want to build a Revolution FUCK Pol Pot.

Lots of innocent people died for the cause--why not him? You just aren't going to get anywhere making the slightest excuse for him. In fact the EVIL plays better to the masses.

Analyize him in scholarly journals, here on Revleft--play to the masses. Supporting Pol Pot, Stalin, fighting police in the street--it in the end is meaningless child's play.

As long as you people are running the Revolution--Capitalism will live forever. I'm no Commie--but ComradeMan presents a RATIONAL alternative.

[ComradeMan]

Everyone in here agrees except for one thing. Gack and CM want to look at history through the lens of heroes and villains, and the rest want to look at it historically and see what actually went wrong and why things happened the way they did.
This isn't being an apologist. It's being a sensible person and taking an even approach to history. Some people here say "Pol Pot was pure evil" and the others are saying "He had bad ideas made worse by bad conditions". There is nothing wrong with saying the latter, while saying the former is hard-headed, almost willful ignorance and irresponsibility.

I did not say Pol Pot was pure evil, I said he was a pychopath and a sociopath and deplored the abhorrence of his regime- an evil he and his henchmen brought on the long suffering people of Cambodia. If you look at the original message of the OP by Victory and then subsequent messages it also reveals a lot. We are supposed to believe he was a nice guy because he said some nice things when he was about to die--- yeah, well... so what? Then there is a covertly "racist" attack on Western Middle Class armchair proletariat thrown in too. As I pointed out and Dimentio, on that basis just about any brutal dictator could be excused.

Apologetics is giving a defense in the face of an argument- it was originally a legal term, it does not mean saying "sorry"- it's seeking mitigation in a sense, which is already a tacit admittal of guilt. The former is what some have been trying to do here when they willfully refused to answer any of the direct questions posited.

There is no willful ignorance and irresponsibility on my part. I have presented facts and sources and do not claim to be the world-leading authority on Pol Pot like some do here with their blatant confirmational and structural biases too.

Imagine if someone had come on here preaching the praises of Haile Selassie? Making subtle excuses for him? Or arguing that Hitler and Mussolini were misunderstood but basically nice guys and victims of circumstance? Please- for fucks sakes.

Although Bud is being his usual Buddish self, he makes a very good point. Until the left, communists, or whatever can grow up enough to look at what went wrong with people like Pol Pot and condemn them for their results and their actions without this pitiful attempt at apologetics nothing will ever be gained. As for setting up strawmen trying to paint others as typical neo-cons with their anti-communist propagande, pitiful- just revealing evermore how indefensible Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were.

I repeat- why does no one want to answer why the Khmer Rouge were happy to collaborate with the CIA and the US reactionary forces?

Does anyone believe they could be so stupid as to mismanage agricultural policy the way they did when they knew a famine was on its way?

The most condemning fact of all- is when it was quite clear that their policies were failing disastrously they seemed to suffer from some group psychosis and refused to accept it was down to their policies and actions but rather turned on their own people.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs

or

To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss

Think about the difference. ;)

[Dimentio]

ComradeMan is actually destroying his own cause by calling Pot a sociopath.

[Bud Struggle]

Consider this is ironic that CM are being praised by a capitalist, so much for his credibly.


I'm not a Capitalist, I'm not a Communist, but I can be either! I'm a Rationalist. I intended to get the dacha and lemousine no matter what political structure is in charge. ;) :)

[ComradeMan]

ComradeMan is actually destroying his own cause by calling Pot a sociopath.

You see that's the difference. I don't have a "cause" to win here on an Internet forum.

Look at the definitions of sociopath and think about Pol Pot- see what corresponds, just applying a scientific approach.

The truth of this is that it kills people on the left, or they are to blinded by ideology to recognise a piece of shit for a piece of shit because they just happened to think they were communists.

To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.

Why won't anyone answer the direct questions? Why? Strange?

Gran Rojo- well done for the genetic fallacy too. :lol:

[Bud Struggle]

ComradeMan is actually destroying his own cause by calling Pot a sociopath.

No, he's making an agreeable excuse for the behavior of a Revolutionary Communist. Do you want the world to think that Pol Potistic behavior is what is going to happen when the Revolution takes over?

Best to throw Pol Pot in the dustbin. Let historians in 100 years discuss him.

He is too close to us nor for any of that.

[ComradeMan]

Ah the silence... the straw must have run out.

I work on the principle, "salus populi suprema lex est".

So I say "To Hell with Pol Pot and to Hell with the Khmer Rouge!"- it was never a benefit having then and when they were destroyed it was certainly no loss.

[Dimentio]

No, he's making an agreeable excuse for the behavior of a Revolutionary Communist. Do you want the world to think that Pol Potistic behavior is what is going to happen when the Revolution takes over?

Best to throw Pol Pot in the dustbin. Let historians in 100 years discuss him.

He is too close to us nor for any of that.

Maoism is a distortion of a distortion.

People like Pol Pot will always exist, but systems need to have checks and balances to be able to control and prevent such individuals from gaining influence. Maoism is built upon ideas running contrary to such institutions, and therefore needs to be seriously overlooked and examined.

[Dimentio]

The second is bad politics. Really if you really want to build a Revolution FUCK Pol Pot.

Lots of innocent people died for the cause--why not him? You just aren't going to get anywhere making the slightest excuse for him. In fact the EVIL plays better to the masses.

Analyize him in scholarly journals, here on Revleft--play to the masses. Supporting Pol Pot, Stalin, fighting police in the street--it in the end is meaningless child's play.

As long as you people are running the Revolution--Capitalism will live forever. I'm no Commie--but ComradeMan presents a RATIONAL alternative.

Yes, I am in agreement with that. At the same time, simplifications of history to "good individuals against bad individuals" is really quite bad. The maoists here are on the right track. The sad thing is that they are enstrengthening Maoism instead of ditching it all together.

Marxism-leninism's only good contribution to political understanding is how a party could gain power by force. But it has proven to be more or less worthless in how you create a socialist society (unless you by a socialist society means a society where the state has all the power).

[Dimentio]

You see that's the difference. I don't have a "cause" to win here on an Internet forum.

Look at the definitions of sociopath and think about Pol Pot- see what corresponds, just applying a scientific approach.

The truth of this is that it kills people on the left, or they are to blinded by ideology to recognise a piece of shit for a piece of shit because they just happened to think they were communists.

To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.

Why won't anyone answer the direct questions? Why? Strange?

Gran Rojo- well done for the genetic fallacy too. :lol:

You don't understand the Khmer Rogue by understanding Pol Pot. You are actually just parroting the line of the Cambodian ruling class, of which many are former Khmer Rogue members (amongst them the Prime Minister Hun Sen). The sacrifice of Pol Pot and Khieu Sampan was a way of swearing themselves free of responsibility.

It would have been like if Joakim von Ribbentrop had arrested Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels and then declared an end to Nazi tyranny and becoming the chancellor of a new Germany.

[danyboy27]

You see that's the difference. I don't have a "cause" to win here on an Internet forum.

Look at the definitions of sociopath and think about Pol Pot- see what corresponds, just applying a scientific approach.

The truth of this is that it kills people on the left, or they are to blinded by ideology to recognise a piece of shit for a piece of shit because they just happened to think they were communists.

To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.

Why won't anyone answer the direct questions? Why? Strange?

Gran Rojo- well done for the genetic fallacy too. :lol:
well you do, you are preaching your own brand of morality rather than just analysing the issue in depth, you leave your emotion blind you and it make you miss the whole point about what happened back then.

i have emotion and feeling, and i am personally horified by what happened in cambodia, but unlike you, i dont lets my emotion stop me into making an analysis of what i know about it without calling pol pot a psychoppat beccause i seen some horrible photo over the internet.

Controling your emotion dosnt make you less human, so please, chill, take a deep breath and try to see the things from another angle, try to see beyond good and evil, only then you will be able to make an important critique about something like that.

[ComradeMan]

The apologia for a racist, nationalist-primitivist movement led by a not-too-intelligent sociopath that resulted in up to 2 million deaths and a huge negative blow to genuine communism or socialism is quite astounding. Pol Pot did more for anti-communism than many neo-cons or capitalists could imagine, of wait- they were actually funding the reactionary little prick though weren't they?

To say that the dictatorial leaders of a regime that follows sheer madness or insane policies in real terms must have psychological issues is hardly unreasonable. Look at the classic definitions of sociopaths and think about Pol Pot.....

No one is parrotting anything- the fact is with this issue, it doesn't take much reading and looking around, films and so on to form an opinion- it wasn't that deep.

Dannyboy? Preaching morality? Would I be preaching morality if I said the Holocaust was wrong? Seriously- you need to wake up and smell the coffee. You can also stick your condescending mentality too- "because I saw a photo on internet"-- seriously, fuck you for that comment. I suppose those Cambodians I knew who were refugees were just lying and making it up. I suppose the "killing fields" are a figment of my imagination, just like Chomsky's comments and sources, CIA files, confessions, trials, books, novels and millions of pages of literature, the people of Cambodia itself, the Vietnamese and so on... seriously.


Let's dump Pol Pot on the tyre bonfire of history that, in my opinion and probably the families of 2 million Cambodians, is where he belongs.

To have him was fucking terrible to lose him was pretty damn good.

[Dimentio]

The apologia for a racist, nationalist-primitivist movement led by a not-too-intelligent sociopath that resulted in up to 2 million deaths and a huge negative blow to genuine communism or socialism is quite astounding. Pol Pot did more for anti-communism than many neo-cons or capitalists could imagine, of wait- they were actually funding the reactionary little prick though weren't they?

To say that the dictatorial leaders of a regime that follows sheer madness or insane policies in real terms must have psychological issues is hardly unreasonable. Look at the classic definitions of sociopaths and think about Pol Pot.....

Let's dump Pol Pot on the tyre bonfire of history that, in my opinion and probably the families of 2 million Cambodians, is where he belongs.

To have him was fucking terrible to lose him was pretty damn good.

Lets dump Khmer Rogue.

So. Corrected.

[ComradeMan]

Lets dump Khmer Rogue.

So. Corrected.

Let's dump both of them. When you cut off the head the body dies.

Hitler-Nazism
Mussolini- Fascism
Pol Pot- Pol Potism

Of course none of these leaders did it all themselves, but they were the driving forces, they gave the orders and the chain of command stopped with them.

[∞]

I'm so sick of people trying to justify this wanker because hes a "OMG COMMIE"!

[ComradeMan]

I'm so sick of people trying to justify this wanker because hes a "OMG COMMIE"!

Amen comrade... and futhermore- RevLeft restricts nationalists, primitivists and racists- who usually get banned. I wonder how long the Brother would have lasted....

[Dimentio]

Let's dump both of them. When you cut off the head the body dies.

Hitler-Nazism
Mussolini- Fascism
Pol Pot- Pol Potism

Of course none of these leaders did it all themselves, but they were the driving forces, they gave the orders and the chain of command stopped with them.

Duhh...

Pol Pot did not magically make 2 million people die in Cambodia. It was a regime that was responsible, which espoused a distorted version of Maoism.

[ComradeMan]

Duhh...

Pol Pot did not magically make 2 million people die in Cambodia. It was a regime that was responsible, which espoused a distorted version of Maoism.

Duhh...

Hitler did not personally throw the Jews into the gaschambers.... It was a regime that was responsible, which espoused a distorted version of Social Darwinism....

[Dimentio]

Duhh...

Hitler did not personally throw the Jews into the gaschambers.... It was a regime that was responsible, which espoused a distorted version of Social Darwinism....

Yes, exactly.

[danyboy27]

The apologia for a racist, nationalist-primitivist movement led by a not-too-intelligent sociopath that resulted in up to 2 million deaths and a huge negative blow to genuine communism or socialism is quite astounding. Pol Pot did more for anti-communism than many neo-cons or capitalists could imagine, of wait- they were actually funding the reactionary little prick though weren't they?

To say that the dictatorial leaders of a regime that follows sheer madness or insane policies in real terms must have psychological issues is hardly unreasonable. Look at the classic definitions of sociopaths and think about Pol Pot.....

Let's dump Pol Pot on the tyre bonfire of history that, in my opinion and probably the families of 2 million Cambodians, is where he belongs.

To have him was fucking terrible to lose him was pretty damn good.
well, its obvious that its a good thing that pol pot is gone, its also pretty clear that he didnt helped at all to build cambodia or help its people.

Yes, he had some pretty insane policies, but just like any other governement policy, if you would read them in a quiet place and think about the goal of the whole thing, you would say something like:'' well it seem harsh, but wow, the result will be fantastic''

putting everything on the shoulder of 1 man and accusing him of being insane is more easier than trying to understand exactly how and why those horribles things happened.

[ComradeMan]

Okay

Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan etc etc etc

the Khmer Rouge,

the CIA and others who backed them...

and their associated lackeys...

But, when you are in command the buck stops with you.

If anyone had come here posting about the "other" and nice side of Hitler- which he may well have had... would anyone have taken this line of argument? Hmmm.... I don't think so.

If anyone had started talking about Bush being quite a nice guy really.... or Saddam.... or Pinochet.... etc....

Look at the OP and look at some of the OP's subsequent comments along with the apologia for the Khmer Rouge.

[Dimentio]

Yes, I am in agreement that people here are hypocrites.

History needs to be studied without the moralising liberal overtones.

Personally, I think the left could learn more from Hitler than Pol Pot. Especially since Hitler knew how to win elections.

[danyboy27]

Okay

Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan etc etc etc

the Khmer Rouge,

the CIA and others who backed them...

and their associated lackeys...

But, when you are in command the buck stops with you.

If anyone had come here posting about the "other" and nice side of Hitler- which he may well have had... would anyone have taken this line of argument? Hmmm.... I don't think so.

If anyone had started talking about Bush being quite a nice guy really.... or Saddam.... or Pinochet.... etc....

Look at the OP and look at some of the OP's subsequent comments along with the apologia for the Khmer Rouge.

the OP have already your stance on the subject, you hate pol pot beccause he killed so many people. Why for a second dont you stop talking about that, and instead look at the big picture, try to analyse the whole thing.

For exemple, how come the kmer rouges failed and China sortof didnt?
is it linked to the brutality of the regimes, was the kmer rouge more brtutal than mao, or is there something else that can be taken into account?

Why the russian industrualisation was bloody and succesfull while the industrialisation of the kmer rouge was a total failure?

Look at the big picture, stop moralizing and you might convince the OP that the Kmer rouge where a total failure.

[#FF0000]

I'm so sick of people trying to justify this wanker because hes a "OMG COMMIE"!

Oh jesus read the thread at least you stupid fuck.

[#FF0000]

I mean holy shit are you all that fucking dumb that trying to explain something beyond "omg he was evul" is something horrifying to you? do you honestly think that taking a more in-depth look at what happened in Cambodia means absolving Pol Pot?

Real talk, ya'll are fucking stupid.

[Lt. Ferret]

haha youre an apologist for pol pot and other people are stupid?

[danyboy27]

haha youre an apologist for pol pot and other people are stupid?

he is not an apologist for pol pot, he just simply refuse to see things in a simplistic machiean way to go more in depth about that particular issue, and so am i.

do we deny that the pol pot regime killed a lot of people? no.
do we say those killing where justified? no

how dare you call us pol pot apologists.

[#FF0000]

haha youre an apologist for pol pot and other people are stupid?

but i'm not.

[Lt. Ferret]

yeah go find the good in mass murder maybe he increased the funeral industry.

[Ele'ill]

yeah go find the good in mass murder maybe he increased the funeral industry.


This coming from someone who works for the United States Army :rolleyes:

[milk]

US AID reports observed that the country faced famine in 1975, with 75% of its draft animals destroyed, and that rice planting for the next harvest would have to be done "by the hard labour of seriously malnourished people". The report predicted:

"Without large-scale external food and equipment assistance there will be widespread starvation between now and next February ... Slave labour and starvation rations for half the nation's people (probably heaviest among those who supported the republic) will be a cruel necessity for this year, and general deprivation and suffering will stretch over the next two or three years before Cambodia can get back to rice self-sufficiency". Shawcross, Sideshow pp. 374–375.

The fact ot the matter is thought that with an forewaring of the oncoming famine Pol Pot destroyed infrastructure, and pursued insane agricultural policies.

because there was no strong central government as Cambodia was in terror

There was no central government because fucking Pol Pot and his henchmen were the government and thanks to the policies of "closing" the cities there could be no strong central government anyway. If Cambodia was in terror in 1975 it was because of the Khmer Rouge.

The country faced famine in 1975 because of the devastation wrought by the war. We could include in this the severe disruption to farming and a further refugee crisis by the round-the-clock saturation bombing campaign in 1973, which over an eight-month period (from January till August) saw USAF bombers drop over a quarter of a million tons of bombs on Cambodia's central agricultural region. That's more than dropped on Japan by the Allies in WWII. One of the most brutal onslaughts in modern warfare.

Any kind of government would have face such a dire situation.

In 1975, after victory, Pol Pot’s (at that time) limited power seemed to be going into something of an eclipse, but by 1976, the terror affecting (at first) regional government structures would begin, as well as the centralisation drive and the attempt to implement more Pol Potist policy decisions as the central authorities sought to spread their influence and control.

During the war, in areas where the Khmer Rouge had collectivised land, property, and the work done upon it during the war years, it did actually see improvements in food production, but this was by no means even across the country. The pre-war infrastructure was damaged or destroyed by the conflict. Their rural focus was to increase food production, and build new infrastructure to expand it further. It's how they went about this, and their choices regarding loans and aid that brought disaster.

[#FF0000]

yeah go find the good in mass murder maybe he increased the funeral industry.

but there is literally nothing good about pol pot or the khmer rouge.

[milk]

On significant regional differences (that fragmented state power during the DK years) and the government structures that would be purged by Pol Pot and his allies in the central authorities and the military, as I said eariler, the rural peasant-based aspect of the revolution was always generally agreed upon, and in carrying out DK policies there wasn’t opposition as such among many cadre, just differences on the method and degree to which the policies were to be applied in the various zones of the country.

Zonal differences are undeniable, and the Eastern Zone is the most obvious area for talking about regional variation, and also due it its location, a place that would at times represent some of the best conditions in DK and also some of the worst; one of, if not the biggest single atrocity committed by the Pol Potists happened from May 1978, with the dispersal and murder over a six month period of a hundred thousand people, as part of the massive purge of the regional administration. Indeed the Eastern Zone was different in character, yes, and in matters of regional variaton were less extreme in implementing the same polices and had at one time a less antagonistic attitude towards the Vietnamese than the Khmer Rouge in other parts of the country.

To illustrate this, here are a few excerpts from Ben Kiernan’s paper Wild Chickens, Farm Chickens, and Cormorants: Kampuchea’s Eastern Zone under Pol Pot, from the very good 1983 Yale monograph Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays. On the ideologically-driven changes undertaken and the worsening food situation as the Pol Potists aimed to spread their influence throughout the country. He gives some background on the formation of the Eastern Zone cadres as a political grouping different in character to the Khmer Rouge in other parts of the country, and also presented interviews of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ people, who had lived and laboured in the Eastern Zone.


One theme which emerges from the interviews is that very few people approved of communal eating, introduced with high-level cooperativization in the latter half of 1976 in some areas, and in early 1977 elsewhere. The generalized resentment stemmed not just from the concomitant reduction in food rations. It was, certainly, a method of population control and of state economizing; but it was also an ideological attack on what was called “privateness” (kar aekachun), and as such it was repugnant to many peasants, especially when combined with prohibitions on family (or personal) gardening and foraging. As we shall see later, this was a crucial issue for Eastern cadre such as Chhouk, chief of Region 24, who seems to have been committed more to a “peasant revolution,” and upheaval that would raise the material and social conditions of the rural mass, rather than to an ideological “revolution from above.


Even if Eastern Communists attempted “re-education” in most cases, and released thousands of new people after short periods in prison, they were not averse to executing elite new people, (including some religious leaders) on the basis of their class origins, or others whom they considered “enemies.” They were also prepared to implement directives from above urging them to prohibit religious practices, abolish conventional education, and limit freedom of movement. In no way can these actions be described as enlightened or benign. But cadre like Chhouk and, if to a lesser extent, the Zone chief So Phim, seem to have sensed that to lower the living standards or threaten the basic lifestyle of their peasant constituents would deprive the revolution of the moral force they believed it could command. Ruthless, with as much blood on their hands as all pre-1975 Kampuchean political groupings, they nevertheless saw themselves as acting primarily in the interests of the mass of the peasantry, and not of a Colossus state or a demanding ideology. They were much closer to the village people than the remote Pol Pot group (the Party Center) or the far more militaristic Zone leaders, Mok and Pauk, of the Southwest and North.


On May 10, 1978, two weeks before the Center-sponsored suppression of the East with the aid of Pauk and Mok, Phnom Penh Radio warned of the need to “purify … the masses of the people.” Such a process, now to take the form of a vast massacre, had in fact begun at the end of 1976 with the nation-wide attempt to remold peoples’ way of thinking and acting, mainly through “tempering” them (lot dam) and abolishing “privateness.” Reduction of rations two years after victory, the enforcement of communal eating, the prohibition on foraging – were not what So Phim, Chhouk and their comrades fought, killed and died for. As Phim is reported by a member of the Center armed forces to have remarked in this period – the aim of the revolution was improvement in the standard of living, not the enforcement of poverty or misery in order to teach people what it was like to be poor. It was Phim’s failure to appreciate until too late that the Center and its “blackshirt” cadres seriously if silently disagreed with him, which was to prove fatal for the Easterners.

An interview he carried out with a base peasant:


1. Ek, 58, a base peasant whom I selected at random for an interview, said that in his village there was no starvation, and no “killings from 1975 to 1977.” On further questioning, he said that at some stage before 1978 three people, including two former teachers, had been taken away by security forces and had not returned.

"I saw them taken away but we were not very interested because the Khmer Rouge were only looking for their enemies [and] did not kill ordinary people in those years …

In the period when So Phim was still alive, from 1975 right up to 25 May 1978, there were no problems. The cadres and people were on good terms, and would invite each other to meals in their homes. Conditions in the village were good, and the leadership was good, close to the people.

The people had no say in what work they did, and so production was relatively low, and they feared the cadres to a small extent, [but] they believed them. From 1974 to 1977 there were meetings in which they explained politics to us, educated us, led us. They told us to love one another, not to quarrel, and to work together to increase production. We worked enthusiastically, people were happy and chatted casually, visiting one another from house to house in the evenings. We could travel to nearby villages or go fishing; so long as we just asked permission first, they would let us go.

But then in 1978, in the Pol Pot period [sic] we were too afraid to move around like that; it was prohibited. You needed a letter from the district office. The deep fear began in 1978 when the killings started. From May 1978 when the Southwest Zone forces arrived, there were no more political meetings and we had less food to eat than before. Then in November the evacuations started. They took over forty people from my village, people they were not happy with. I just kept quiet and never said anything, so they did not evacuate me.”

And then, a ‘new’ person evacuee:


5. Nhek Davi, 32, and her husband, a former senior Foreign Ministry official, reached Lovea Em district from Phnom Penh in May 1975 and lived there for six months. Rations were low “because of flooding,” but the new people exchanged goods for food with peasants who had “plenty of rice.” No one starved at first, and there were no killings or disappearances. “They were just educating us, calling us to meetings, and so on. They did not force us to work very hard.” She approved of the subdistrict chief because he was “educated.”


However, in late October 1975, Davi and her husband were taken off to a prison in Srey Santhor district. She was released after “the women who questioned me agreed that I had done nothing wrong,” but in January 1976 her husband and fifty of the 1,000 prisoners were taken to Phnom Penh, where he was executed in Tuol Sleng five months later. Davi spent the next two years in three separate locations in Srey Santhor and Peareang districts without knowing her husband’s fate. She reported hard work, fairly low rations, but no starvation or executions, although six or seven people, mostly former soldiers and police, were arrested in the first two villages. In the third, she noted that:

“The base people really liked the revolutionaries who trusted them, although the people had not dared to protest when communal eating, which they did not like much, was introduced. The serious killings began in 1978. In mid-year, cadre executed two families of people from our village considered to be part-Vietnamese, then three or four families of new people were taken away, followed by three families of the Cham minority. They said the Cham nationality was “rebellious” and had to be ‘abolished.’ There was also killing in nearby villages.

The Center and Southwest forces arrived at this point and said the Eastern Zone was traitorous, and killed the local cadre and their families. At first ordinary base people were not touched, but they were certainly frightened by the change of cadre.

In November-December 1978, the entire subdistricts of Kanchum and Prey Sralet were evacuated to the north. We were saved because the Vietnamese attacked in time. On the way, a village cadre had told me we would all be killed on arrival in Tonle Bet.”

Another base peasant:


6. Sang, 43, a base peasant from O Reang Au district, said that he approved of the revolution until 1975 and that the mutual aid teams it sponsored brought “real prosperity.” The establishment of cooperatives after victory was unpopular however, and brought shortages but no starvation. Methods of punishment included hard labour and low rations but not execution or imprisonment. Although rations were divided equally among the population, there were a number of deaths from “disease caused by malnutrition.” The first arrests he knew of took place in 1977, and some people died in prison; but he claims that in the second half of 1978, the newly arrived Southwestern cadre “killed five people from my village and 700 from the rest of the subdistrict.” Sang said that about one-third of the village population “continued to believe in the system until May 1978, when some of them were massacred along with the rest.”

Also, here's a very good article at my site on the fate of the Eastern Zone:

http://padevat.info/2010/11/06/the-monk-the-cadre-and-the-coup-april-8-1976/

[Lt. Ferret]

there is literally nothing good about the pol pot regime that any other regime in almost all existent history could not have done better. in any conceivable field, big or small.

[danyboy27]

sorry to burst your bubble milk, but anecdotes are not evidences.

i am sure if i dig a bit i could find the same number of positive quote about Nazi germany from former german citizen of that era.

the evidences are, well, pol pot failed, ton of people died for nothing and no infrastructure where built.

[#FF0000]

So milk you're saying that there weren't so many killings in the Eastern region until 78, then?

[milk]

sorry to burst your bubble milk, but anecdotes are not evidences.

i am sure if i dig a bit i could find the same number of positive quote about Nazi germany from former german citizen of that era.

the evidences are, well, pol pot failed, ton of people died for nothing and no infrastructure where built.

You obviously haven't read the post, have you? It includes an anecdote from a 'new' person, an urban evacuee, a dangerous category for those placed into it.

And the above is from Ben Kiernan, who has spent his whole career researching the Khmer Rouge regime and it horrors, in order to help others understand it, and also to provide evidence that can be used to bring those responsible to justice.

Of course infrastructure was built, their whole program after the war was to build new infrastructure. Country-wide. A whole irrigation network or dams, dykes, canals and the clearing of land for rice cultivation, built with brutal inefficiency. The evidence is clear to see, if you want to look.

[milk]

So milk you're saying that there weren't so many killings in the Eastern region until 78, then?

That is the whole point of me posting that? No, it isn't. It's about illustrating regional variation. As I've posted elsewhere before, a general picture of DK can be seen, but we have two themes at play which complicate matters: regional variation and level of central government control of the implementation of policy locally. There were significant regional variations, some of them objective and temporal (bad weather conditions, lack of prior development) or subjective (cadre interpretation of policy and its implementation, their quality, education-level and experience in positions of authority, the CPK purge waves, massacres etc) which affected the populations of certain areas whether cadre, soldier or labourer. Most deaths were caused through the want of a better word enslavement and the overwork or neglect, lack of medical treatment etc of the labouring population, and who were to build this new infrastructure required for the mass production of rice. Then there is the centralisation drive, never completed, of which the regional administrations were subject, and the terror (killings) used as the principal method for subordinating them to the central government.

There weren't as many killings in the Eastern Zone as in other parts of the country. Compared to the Pol Pot power base it was relatively benign, until 1978, when it became among the worst places to be in DK. But then, the above doesn't deny that killings did not take place before the 1978 purge by Pol Potist forces.

It was never the same thing, in all places, all the time in DK. And it doesn't make someone supportive of the Khmer Rouge by recognising that, which is what you're trying to imply. Regional variation is very important for an understanding of the terror.

[milk]

Anyway, would it be fair to say that, roughly speaking, ComradeMan's posts are 99% and 1% intellect, or is that being too generous?

[#FF0000]

It was never the same thing, in all places, all the time in DK. And it doesn't make someone supportive of the Khmer Rouge by recognising that, which is what you're trying to imply. Regional variation is very important for an understanding of the terror.

Nah I wasn't implying that at all.

[milk]

Nah I wasn't implying that at all.

Yeah, I realised that after posting in haste, so I offer an apology.

[#FF0000]

It's cool.

Cambodia's just such a complicated place. Do you have any books that go into the entire revolution and all that? I never really read up on it.

[milk]

Sources?

There are superficial things in common such as stressing the subjective factor but from a Maoist perspective the Khmer Rogue were clearly ultra-left (New Democracy versus the immediate abolition of money for example).

I'll paste up something I posted elsewhere, instead of typing it up again, on one of the Maoist influences:


Although it would be foolish to overgeneralise, there are nevertheless similarities with Khmer Communist aims, and practice in the early stages of their never-finished development, and the Great Leap Forward in China. There have been comparisons made between the experience in Cambodia and China on this specific Communist campaign. The main use of campaigns in China, military in origin, were to mobilise large numbers of people to achieve labour-intensive goals in a ‘backward’ country. Even military-style language was used, as in Cambodia to describe this collected subjective will (or in official Chinese writing, scientific struggle) against adversarial nature. In Cambodia, the labouring population had won great victories in the rice production plan, battled against the elements, had broken through and opened up new fronts in the struggle to raise living standards. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the worker-farmer people were launching major offensives in agriculture, marching onwards to the final victory of socialism. And similarities in organisation: a mobilisation of the rural population for the purpose of among other things draft irrigation; the creation of a uniform and regimented work regime; the introduction of communal eating and sleeping, and the formation of mobile work brigades to be rationally deployed wherever they were needed. The Chinese had confidence in this idea of subjective will, but they didn’t have such a strong, overriding tendency like that of the Khmer Commuists when it came to the position that ideology was superior to technology or technical knowledge.

Stealing the words of the poster Kleber now, from a very good post on an unrelated thread, it could be said 1952-1976 is virtually the entire Maoist period in China, whereas the GLF was only from 1958-1961. The industrial development that occurred over that quarter of a century was mostly done along orthodox Soviet lines; or urban-led, top-down, managerial Stalinist change. As Kleber noted, the radical, experimental methods of the GLF were only used for a short period and mostly in certain areas. Some hardline Maoists would maybe consider 1952-58 and 1961-66 to have been deviations from the correct path to Socialism, with ‘Rightist,’ ‘Dengist’ or even ‘Liuist’ periods where the right-wing of the Chinese Communist Party was dominant and operated according to the theory of the productive forces. It should be noted that the Ten Golden Years of the People’s Republic of China, did see steadily increasing standards of living and an end to hunger and famine, however you view the politics involved. Once the growing Chinese Party bureaucracy used the Soviet model to industrialise the country, they did not hand power over industry to the workers; instead they oversaw an eventual privatisation of the economy and now we see the same Party bureaucrats and their children incarnated as private capitalists. What we have today is an authoritarian capitalism, using an old and established command and control apparatus, itself an approximation of the Stalinist political system. But that is not something relevant here. What is relevant here, is how the Khmer Communists interpreted this small period of Chinese Communist history, and its disastrous outcome, and what they hoped to achieve by trying to emulate it.

There are other Maoist influences, but they can be for another post. I need a coffee.

[milk]

It's cool.

Cambodia's just such a complicated place. Do you have any books that go into the entire revolution and all that? I never really read up on it.

I can. Give me time. A hot drink beckons.

[milk]

As I said before, it will be difficult at times to find a nonpartisan treatment of such things as:

Who were the Khmer Rouge?

Which regimes supported them?

What were their stated policies?

Why did they want to take Cambodia back to the past? (answer: they didn't).

It should also be noted when reading about Cambodian Communism, is that there was and continues to be a fundamental issue of whether the regime was genocidal in intent, in terms of saying that there are two academic views:

1. The view presented by anti-communists, and leftist academics like Ben Kiernan that it was.

And,

2. The view presented by others (e.g. Michael Vickery) that it wasn't, and that the 'excess deaths' occurred due to incompetence and structural breakdown, along with some as a result of internal political divides.

This, mostly academic, debate still carries on today.

I guess it is important to be aware of all the argumernts about the Khmer Rouge and DK, recognising them, getting to know about the sources and methodologies used etc and then making your own judgements and forming your own positions on the matter.

So, on Communism in the region and DK then I could recommend:

Two Yale University volumes called,

Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays

Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976-1977, which can be found here (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9NR59EL6), for free.

Also,

How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975 by Ben Kiernan.

On Khmer-Vietnamese Communist relations while both were contesting for power, there is Falling Out of Touch: A study on Vietnamese Communist Policy Towards an Emerging Cambodian Communist Movement, 1930-1975, by Thomas Engelbert and Christopher E. Goscha.

On the Samlaut Rebellion in northwestern Cambodia in 1967, an important event for the burgeoning Khmer Rouge insurgent movement, and still the only detailed study on the rebellion so far, is Ben Kiernan's Monash University working paper The Samlaut Rebellion and its Aftermath, 1967-70: The Origins of Cambodia's Liberation Movement, which prefers to see the rebellion as having significant Khmer Rouge involvement and direction. It is hard to find, but I think you can visit the Monash website and order copies of old working papers.

There is Kiernan's 1994 book The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79. There have been compelling arguments made (from Ben Kiernan in particular) that the Cambodian Revolution was genocidal in intent (as mentioned above), and for a general reader, The Pol Pot Regime is the book to point to.

Again, for the general reader, then journalist Philip Short's biography of Pol Pot, Anatomy of a Nightmare is pretty good, although it focusses on information from Khmer Rouge leaders themselves. Unlike Kiernan, he does not believe genocide occurred in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

For a Marxist analysis of the DK regime, then Kiernan's adversary Michael Vickery's Cambodia, 1975-1982 is worth getting hold of, even though it is a little dated, with regard to evidence over recent years unearthed about the death toll. When I say analysis, his work does have a strong polemical current running through it. The opening chapter can be found here (http://www.pacificdiscovery.org/credit/SEAreadings/Vickery.%20The%20Gentle%20Land.pdf), which is interesting, in that it gives a brief Marxist analysis of how urban Cambodia operated pre-war.

There is also The Eyes of the Pineapple: Revolutionary Intellectuals and Terror in Democratic Kampuchea, by R. A. Burgler, which was kind of a response to Vickery, but which came to similar, and now dated conclusions about the death toll.

On the DK Black Paper (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=4205), there is a 1980 article by Serge Thion, found in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (Issue 4 in the 12th volume), which is an informative piece on the interpretation of Indochinese history presented by the Khmer Rouge in the Black Paper. It's called The Ingratitude of the Crocodiles.

On the republican side of things, then there is Khmers Stand Up! A History of the Cambodian Government, 1970-1975 by Justin Corfield, which is a study of the Khmer Republic. This was his doctoral work.

As a sideline, he also did a short study on the republican army remnants who did not surrender to the Khmer Rouge from 1975, and continued the fight against them from the borderlands, and it is called A History of the Cambodian Non-Communist Resistance 1975-1983. Like Kiernan's paper on the Samlaut Rebellion, it is a Monash working paper. I have a copy in PDF format, which can be found here (http://padevat.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/NCR.pdf).

A study on the only serious but limited capitalist development of Cambodia by the French is to be found in Margaret Slocomb's Colons & Coolies: The Development Of Cambodia's Rubber Plantations.

Slocomb also did a study on the successor to the Pol Pot regime, the PRK, called The People's Republic Of Kampuchea, 1979-1989: The Revolution After Pol Pot.

The problem with some of these books is that they're out of print, so it may be difficult to get hold of them.

That is all, for now. There are a couple more things which may be of interest, but I'll post them up later.

You can always look at some of the material posted at the history group, found here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=595).

[Hiero]

The topic of Pol Pot constantly arises on this forum and the same old ignorance remains. The role of massive structures, institutions, bureaucracies, millions of people and natural environment become reduced to the imagined intentions of a select few individuals.

The claim that 2 million people died because of Pol Pot should be considered an insult.

[milk]

There's something else to read if interested, but first a little background is needed.

There was an unclassified airgram sent by Kenneth M. Quinn to the Department of State from the US Consulate, city of Can Tho, Republic of Vietnam on 20 February 1974. Entitled The Khmer Krahom Programme to Create a Communist Society in Southern Cambodia, it contained research Quinn had done on the Khmer Rouge by conducting interviews with refugees who had entered southern Vietnam during the war.

A shorter and tidied-up version of this appeared in the American forces journal Naval War College Review, in the spring of 1976, called Political Change in Wartime: The Khmer Krahom Revolution in Southern Cambodia (1970-1974).

A copy can be found here (http://padevat.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Khmer-Krahom-Revolution.pdf) in PDF format.

It was derived primarily from these refugee reports which could be said to colour the evidence found of significant social change enacted by the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries during the war years. Furthermore, part of the evidence could be easily interpreted in favour of the Khmer Rouge instead of against them, as Quinn actually does. But, given what is now known about the Khmer Rouge, and Democratic Kampuchea, in more detail, it remains after its first publication quite an informative study despite it being outdated and with flaws. And there is something that should be said about his research.

I will briefly mention that he used a model of analysis in order to describe Khmer Communist attempts to alter traditional society, that is to create an embryonic alternative that could then contest and replace the traditional political system, found in Samuel P. Huntington’s 1968 book, Political Order in Changing Societies (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Political-Changing-Societies-lectures-University/dp/0300116209/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282265297&sr=1-1).

Mentioning Michael Vickery again, who has done extensive research of the administrative divisions of Khmer Rouge-held areas during the civil war, and the government administrations they became during the DK years, and explored in his book Cambodia, 1975-1982, didn’t offer a critique of Quinn's use of Huntington’s model of an Eastern Revolution. Vickery offered factual corrections for the area that Quinn studied, and although he did not realise it at the time, Quinn had gathered information from refugees fleeing from the Southwest Zone, an area of the country that would be known for its “Pol-Potism par excellence,” according to Vickery, and was under the command of Pol Pot ally Ta Mok, became the power base of the DK central government and from where, after 1976, its influence would spread to encompass the other zones of the country (the purge waves already discussed). Taking into account a general theme of Quinn’s study, that being the brutal imposition of the Communists’ political programs, his study also reveals incongruency in Khmer Rouge implementation of policy, for the area he studied was also not just the Southwest Zone, but included Prey Veng province, which was part of the Eastern Zone, a significant place when it came to regional differences among the Khmer Rouge and how they interpreted and implemented the Communist Party’s directives. So, if we were to look at particular Khmer Rouge actions during the war, talked about by Quinn – that is the uprooting of villages and relocating them forcibly to other secure areas – it is worth quoting Vickery on this point:


The exception in Quinn’s description which does not find confirmation in other reports is his insistence on the widespread relocation of vilages with complete uprooting of the population, which he sees as prefiguring the deportation of urban populations in 1975. Such must have happened on occasion, but it cannot have been very widespread, since urban deportees to the Southwest, including Damban 25, all speak of seeing, or residing in, villages of “base” people in old locations. In this question of evacuation we must distinguish, moreover, between peasant villages and market towns, which, like Ang Tassom, were sometimes evacuated before 1975, perhaps misleading Quinn in his analysis.

For each case of an uprooted, relocated village one would wish to know more of the precise circumstances. A major fault of Quinn’s study is that it considers the Communist program entirely in abstraction from what was happening generally in Cambodia in those years. We would never know that some villages were being uprooted and relocated by B-52s or because the front line between two opposing armies passed through or near them; and we would never imagine that the austerity measures detailed by Quinn might have been an absolutely necessary minimum in such wartime conditions. As for a resistant peasantry which had to be kept in line by brute force, how do we explain the tens of thousands of peasant youth who volunteered to fight in spite of 50 percent casualties?

It might be of use, but unfortunately, I had to make a few omissions from the study. There was a map displaying regional administrative divisions in the area under study, and is absent, as is the appendix, mentioned in the text, showing a diagram that explains the Khmer Rouge system of organisation and chain of command.

[Dimentio]

haha youre an apologist for pol pot and other people are stupid?

Alright, so I am an apologist for Pol Pot by saying that the Khmer Rogue was an absolutely unacceptable regime which confiscated the food of the Cambodian people and forced the Cambodian people to work in forced labour, then shot those who disagreed?

There is only one apologist for Pol Pot around here, and that is Gran Rojo.

[Dimentio]

The topic of Pol Pot constantly arises on this forum and the same old ignorance remains. The role of massive structures, institutions, bureaucracies, millions of people and natural environment become reduced to the imagined intentions of a select few individuals.

The claim that 2 million people died because of Pol Pot should be considered an insult.

1 million or 2 million, it is still pretty awful to 1) confiscate all food, 2) put the population on forced labour, 3) shoot those who are disagreeing with that policy.

If I had written anything such like that about Nazi Germany, you would have called for my ban.

[Dimentio]

To Milk:

Most governments in the Third World have been ineffectual cleptocracies. They haven't killed millions though or initiated purges. Even Somalia, a state without a government, haven't seen nearly such a bad situation. If you want to find an equivalent in Africa, you have to look at Uganda.

You don't kill people by having a structural breakdown. A lot of countries have had structural breakdowns and avoided killing as many people.

[milk]

To Milk:

Most governments in the Third World has been ineffectual cleptocracies. They haven't killed millions though or initiated purges. Even Somalia, a state without a government, haven't seen nearly such a bad situation. If you want to find an equivalent in Africa, you have to look at Uganda.

You don't kill people by having a structural breakdown. A lot of countries have had structural breakdowns and avoided killing as many people.

Then I think you misunderstand what I mean by structural breakdown. The terror was part of that, just as much as the incompetency, not to mention the objective material conditions (the very low infrastructural base from which the revolution would have to start the building of a new society). Also you can't view it all in complete abstraction from the war years either.

[milk]

Pol Pot's visions for a magnificent industrialized society were fine and dandy (although flawed), but the KR policies and actions blinded the Cambodian people's views on communism in general. That's why the majority of the Cambodian people point to the atrocities of the KR and use that as a justification of the "evils" of communism. They are right on about the atrocities, but it should not be used to show that communism is bad. I believe that's what milk is trying to do. We all can agree that the KR's actions are unacceptable, but we can't let that block us from trying to figure out what Pol Pot's socialist visions were. That way we might have a chance to extract those ideas and learn from them. And then possibly the Cambodian people will have a better understanding of what Pol Pot's true goal was, and accept communism (or least not be ignorant of communism). Of course that doesn't mean they have to accept Pol Pot or the KR, but the root of their idea; communism. Nowadays like I said earlier, Cambodians just don't like to hear that word. The words Pol Pot, KR, and communism still sends shivers down my family's spines.

Now I am in no way a supporter of the KR or Pol Pot. I just want to figure out what Pol Pot's ideas were. The KR's policies on how to carry out those ideas are a different story, which everyone knows were just terrible mistakes.

With regard to straw men, people can't have it both ways. Either I'm an apologist or pro-Khmer Rouge, in support of their attempt to build socialism in Cambodia. Or, I'm an anti-Communist who is using Democratic Kampuchea in order to discredit socialism or communism in general.

I am definitely none of the above. Although I must say, I find it incredibly strange that I have been accused of either/or simply because of the shit-storm caused by my first post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40) on this thread: in that I not only corrected ComradeMan's ignorance with regard to the source he used (Michael Vickery), but that I am also in favour of this scholar of Cambodian history's fruitful Marxist analysis of Democratic Kampuchea, by using historical materialism as his methodology. I mean, for crying out loud, is it so wrong to apply Marxism to Cambodian history as way of explaining the Khmer Rouge and placing it into an appropriate historical context?

And this, on a site that supposedly has communists posting here. It has been rather bizarre, as well as funny, to witness this. My posts on this thread, even when they have been lengthy, have been written clearly, and with consistency. ComradeMan's attempts to smear me with his desperate scattergun posting style and its ignorant and contradictory content are less to do with disagreements on applying Marxism to pre-war Cambodia and the DK regime, but more, I suspect, due to the fact he was pwned by me in that first post of mine.

[Dimentio]

Then I think you misunderstand what I mean by structural breakdown. The terror was part of that, just as much as the incompetency, not to mention the objective material conditions (the very low infrastructural base from which the revolution would have to start the building of a new society). Also you can't view it all in complete abstraction from the war years either.

Of course not. But why has no other government which has emerged from similar conditions managed to fail so completely?

Maybe because they didn't empty the towns, confiscate the crops and enslave the population?

[milk]

Of course not. But why has no other government which has emerged from similar conditions managed to fail so completely?

Maybe because they didn't empty the towns, confiscate the crops and enslave the population?

What similar, or comparable, conditions are you talking about here? I fear you've been painting with a big broad brush.

[Dimentio]

What similar, or comparable, conditions are you talking about here? I fear you've been painting with a big broad brush.

Vietnam and Laos emerged under identical conditions. While having brutal one-party regimes, neither of them engaged in genocide like the Angkar regime. Laos was probably even worse off than Cambodia.

Many African states have endured appalling conditions, and yet not experienced the same gravity of the collapse as Cambodia. The Khmer Rogue did not confiscate the food and enslave the people because of the fact that the Americans had bombed Cambodia, but because it was a part of their programme to start a Worker's Paradise (of some sorts). Instead of blaming one individual, or the conditions, maybe it's time to blame the agrarian programme and the view of the human being espoused by the Khmer Rogue.

The reason why Democratic Kampuchea collapsed was not because of it's relatively fucked up state when it was conceived (though that could have shortened the life-span of the regime).

Any country in the world would collapse if you empty the towns and force the population out on the fields, then confiscate their food and kill those who are opposing, their relatives, the friends of their relatives, their neighbours and all that.

And all that was done in the name of the people!

All this is emanating from the idea that when the working classes are not doing or reacting as the Party wants them to react, it is because of "false consciousness", which is probably the greatest reason why marxist-leninist parties have failed to understand their constituencies, by simply neglecting the concerns of the people in one way or another and then imposing their own worldview on right and wrong.

[milk]

Vietnam and Laos emerged under identical conditions.

They didn't. Heavy bombing is not the only factor.

But it's changed from similar to identical. Make your mind up.

[Dimentio]

Gah, grammar-fascist...

Vietnam was somewhat better off, while Laos was the most bombed-out country in the entire world.

[ComradeMan]

delete post- double posted

[milk]

Seeing as some people are so blindly seeking an apologia with these vague notions of "intent"- let's have a look at some documented "intent.

You're still to point out where these apologetics have occurred. Indeed, pinheads do have points, and you've yet to make yours.

Let's be honest here, you're still feeling sore about this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40) aren't you? This is where it all kicked off. Your feelings were hurt, your pride attacked, your ignorance exposed. It's the locus classicus of your enmity towards me.

So, going back to that post, do you, or do you not agree that historical materialism is worthwhile for understanding the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea?

[ComradeMan]

You're still to point out where these apologetics have occurred. Indeed, pinheads do have points, and you've yet to make yours.

Let's be honest here, you're still feeling sore about this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40) aren't you? This is where it all kicked off. Your feelings were hurt, your pride attacked, your ignorance exposed. It's the locus classicus of your enmity towards me.

So, going back to that post, do you, or do you not agree that historical materialism is worthwhile for understanding the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea?

You're still to point out where these apologetics have occurred.

Well basically your whole line of argument and historical "coverage" blandly ignores the human impact of the whole event and you seek to take a line that abnegates responsibility for the human disaster taken from the Khmer Rouge point of view. You seem to think somehow that Pol Pot is not to blame for this- despite being the head of command of the regime. You refuse to answer any of the direct questions posited in this thread- for which it is tacitly obvious that you do not wish to answer because you know the answers to those questions would undermine your position.

As for that pathetic circumstancial ad hominem- I would say that you are rather projecting your own reality here because you can't stand the fact that people don't agree with your line on the subject.

Have you ever been to Cambodia BTW?
Have you ever known any Cambodians who lived through these events?

Just curious....

Seeing as some people are so blindly seeking an apologia with these vague notions of "intent"- let's have a look at some documented "intent.

Why not read this and consider the subsequent actions of the Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot.
http://www.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/DK_Policy/DK_Policy_DK_Constitution.htm


As for the genocide issue, well there's a lot of legal quibbling about that.

So if we are going to do some "plea bargaining" there isn't much to bargain with is there?

The other thing that people are completely avoiding is that the US was complicit in this proxy war too.

So whereas Pol Pot and his regime were "pure" communists etc according to their rhetoric, depsite also being racists, primitivists and nationalists and reactionary in the sense they were anti-progressive, despite the fact they refused food aid when they could not manage the famine and their insane policies had exacerbated the situation to breaking point- they did have no qualms whatsoever of accepting help from the US covert forces, money, food, training and equipment.


As for this shifting the blame etc.

It is true the famine in itself was not the fault of the Khmer Rouge- I never said that- but here's an analogy- if you see a house going on fire, what do you do? Throw petrol on it? Either the Khmer Rouge were either so ideologically callous they did not care or they took stupidity too new levels of tragic ineptness.

Either way to try and paint a picture that the deaths of up to 2 million people were "unfortunate, accidental, or not-intended" is a rather weak argument and still implies "criminal negligence" on a grand-scale.

It's not that I hate Pol Pot because of some knee-jerk reaction based on photos of horrible things in Cambodia- although that does not exactly make me like him and his organisation- it's for all the reasons given taken from not only a personal political point of view but also a basic human point of view.

Getting back to one of the more serious points...

The DK was in some senses a nightmare "puppet state" of the US in its anti-Vietnam "crusade" and the Khmer Rouge must take responsibility for this. Chomsky also implies this in his writing on SE Asia. Yet another reason I dislike this man and his organisation- their hypocrisy and their hypocritical collaboration with reactionary elements.

[milk]

Where have I absolved Pol Pot of blame, where have I ignored the human impact? Which posts, which words?

Stop slathering. Do you, or do you not view historical materialism as being worthwhile, or methodologically valid, for understanding the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea, and its place in Cambodian history?

Knock yourself out Big Shot.

[Sasha]

http://youchewpoop.com/wiki/images/1/17/Thumb_MichealJacksonPopcorn.gif

[Hiero]

1 million or 2 million, it is still pretty awful to 1) confiscate all food, 2) put the population on forced labour, 3) shoot those who are disagreeing with that policy.

If I had written anything such like that about Nazi Germany, you would have called for my ban.

Well that depends, if I suspect that you were a stormfront troll who was going to slowly slip into trying to absolve Nazi Germany of it's crimes then I would call you up on it early. However there is nothing wrong with such a statement. I will explain below.

I can not place your statement against mine, the major point of my statement was:



The role of massive structures, institutions, bureaucracies, millions of people and natural environment become reduced to the imagined intentions of a select few individuals.


Now if I say "Stalin won the second world war" people will immediatly say hang on, Stalin did not single handedly win the second world war it was, the winter, millions of Soviets, the army, the citizens, the bureaucracy etc.

So in that instance I am not allowed to reduce a large list of factors to one individual. When I point this out about Pol Pot, you state :



million or 2 million, it is still pretty awful to 1) confiscate all food, 2) put the population on forced labour, 3) shoot those who are disagreeing with that policy.


We were not talking about policy or what is awful or not, rather I was talking about a in depth sociological analysis of Khmer Rouge regime. All of a sudden Pol Pot can be imagined as doing all these things.

In regards to Nazi Germany, the whole Nazi regime can not be reduced to just to Hitler. That was Eichmanns defence. Regimes set forward in motion structures, blind spots, symobolic violence, grey zones and other conscious and unconcious forms of officialdom that allow people to be blind to any atrocities. These are the ways secrets become public secrets, people know but continue to aviod the issue through subtles forms of excusing responsibilities. So the train drivers, the people who just do menial task, the offical paperwork that creates routines of oppression. So for instance in regards to removing indigenous children in Australia soley because they were 'half caste' the state had varioues forms, authorities, laws etc which hide the ethnic genocide of a people and their culture. This excuses the responsibility in the mind of the social workers, nuns, police etc who can refer to a mantra of offical documents or phrases which hide the real experience. Even the term 'half caste' attempts to caterogories people. When underneath all the forms of symbolic violence the experience is of one human forceble removing another human against their will. The point is regimes and especiallty regimes of terror utilises any institutions that continue and maintain function.

Khmer society was definetly one of class terror. It emerged in historical context of national liberation of Kapmuchea under a Communst Party, the cold war, the Sino-Soviet split and the Vietnam war which. Its productive forces were vastily smashed and production disrupted. The regime for one did not take all the food, as shown by Milk there were collectives and food was rationed.

Secondly the regime and civil society was blured. My knowledge comes from an anthropology article I read a few years ago title A Head for an Eye. Democratic Kampuchea survived on distributing power to thoose in selected communities who had once been and felt disempowered. The cadre and army explioted local hostilities and the concept of 'kum', which is a khmer term meaning something along the lines of revenge at a disproportionate scale. So you take out my eye, I take out your head. Along the lines of class hatred and the exploitation of local customs, the Khmer Rouge did not require always require surveillance and could places locals in authority. Many people abused this power and beat, starved and killed past enemies for past wrongs.

That is just one example of looking at particular villages in Cambodia and how violence has it's own momentum. On the contray people on this forum like ComradeMan conjur up a Wild West image that the Khmer Rouge were a bunch of cut throat gangsters who terrorised a local victimised populace. The history is alot more blurred. Large sections of the population were alot more complacement then some are willing to admit. A regime like that in Cambodia requires large structures that dig deep into the populace so the regime can be maintained. Violence becomes systematic and runs along local and past antagonisms and cultural models. I am not saying that Khmer society and culture is essentionally violent, rather that the Khmer Rouge explioted local antagonisms and called on cultural idioms to justify and recruit people to maintain their power and achieve a revolutionary transformation of society. Which unfortanulty did not occur or follow a desired strategy.



So whereas Pol Pot and his regime were "pure" communists etc according to their rhetoric, depsite also being racists, primitivists and nationalists and reactionary in the sense they were anti-progressive, despite the fact they refused food aid when they could not manage the famine and their insane policies had exacerbated the situation to breaking point- they did have no qualms whatsoever of accepting help from the US covert forces, money, food, training and equipment.


Do you have any proof that Democractic Kampuchea recieved any funds from the USA? I can easily believe that the Khmer Rouge after the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea received money from the USA and support from China. I believe the USA and China did not recognise the Vietnamese puppert state and recgonised the Khmer Rouge. However this is not what you are saying, you are infering that the Khmer Rouge while it was soveign power in the Democractive Kampuchea regime received funds from the US. I think that is historicall inaccurate.

[ComradeMan]

Where have I absolved Pol Pot of blame, where have I ignored the human impact? Which posts, which words?

Stop slathering. Do you, or do you not view historical materialism as being worthwhile, or methodologically valid, for understanding the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea, and its place in Cambodian history?

Knock yourself out Big Shot.

It's not what you say it's what you don't say. Look up the word "tacit". :lol:

it's also telling that on your user group for the DK- which quite frankly I find ironic on a RevLeft site, I suppose it's just historical analysis, has some rather bland photos of flags and that's about it.

You also keep begging the questions I ask you? Why do you do that?

Do you deny that the Khmer Rouge and their subsequent regime were acting in the greater interests of US anti-communism in the 1970's and *[thereafter] collaborated and/or were covertly supported by the CIA?

Historical materialism is a valid approach to the understanding of history, but the understanding of history, empirically also requires you to take into account all the facts and details extent and not just cherrypick the ones that suit you.

You insist that the Khmer Rouge were in fact communists despite overwhelming evidence based on historical fact, i.e. their actions, that they went against basic principles of communism at many levels. There is also this kind of implicit tone that because people are attacking Pol Pot and his murderous regime they are de facto rightwingers. The fact that rightwingers also attack Pol Pot's regime- understandably and use it for anti-communist propaganda does not mean that the left can't attack it either, or is your vision so binary that you can't grasp that, along with Victory and Gran Rojo. The continual use of ad hominem and circumstancial ad hominem attacks contributes to nothing more than a logically fallacious argument.

An historical materialist analysis of the Khmer Rouge is curious too, seeing as Pol Pot did not actually understand Marx much it seems and instead of moving towards industrialisation moved backwards to a kind of mass "peasantification"- however using your historical materialism you insist they were. Marxist principles would have been to work towards to turing peasants into proletarians, not vice-versa- not destroying infrastructure, factories and an industrial "base"- in order "supposedly" to rebuild it again within 20 years. :thumbup1: - in the full knowledge of course of a forthcoming natural disaster, i.e. the famine.

"One has to "leave philosophy aside" (Wigand, p. 187, cf. Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p. 8), one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers... Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love." (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, International Publishers, ed. Chris Arthur, p. 103)

Your principles are also "dangerous" to the extent in which we could potentially exonerate practically any regime, including capitalism/capitalists against which the left are supposed to be against. I am not denying that the historical tragedy of Cambodia was all part of the tragedy of "Democratic" Kampuchea, but that is no exoneration of Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge either. I have heard the same kinds of arguments being used to justify Hitler- it was all the fault of the French and the reparation of the Treaty of Versailles and the fact the Bolsheviks were so beastly in the East and so and so on... it still does not exonerate Hitler and the Nazis, does it?

Leaving the academic arguments to the side....

"the true revolutionary is guided by great sentiments of love"

i.e. love of the people, love of justice and building a better world.

Not...

"To have you is no advantage. To lose you is no loss."


EDIT Hiero
Do you have any proof that Democractic Kampuchea recieved any funds from the USA? I can easily believe that the Khmer Rouge after the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea received money from the USA and support from China. I believe the USA and China did not recognise the Vietnamese puppert state and recgonised the Khmer Rouge. However this is not what you are saying, you are infering that the Khmer Rouge while it was soveign power in the Democractive Kampuchea regime received funds from the US. I think that is historicall inaccurate.

I wasn't just referring to the 1975-1979 period BTW as the OP was about Pol Pot, not the DK 1975-1979.


See Chomsky.
See John Pilger.
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgerpolpotnus.pdf
Vickery, Michael. "Democratic Kampuchea—CIA to the Rescue," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. 14.4: 1842. Print, p. 9.

Washington's support for the Khmer Rouge was more egregious, given that its beneficiary was consistently charged with committing genocide. Moreover, the support came even from the Carter regime despite the fact that President Carter ran on a platform that featured the promotion of human rights. The Carter administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid to the Khmer Rouge when it was fighting the government installed by the invading forces from Vietnam. Kiernan referred to Washington's support in this way:

Along with China, which supplied arms, and Thailand, which supplied sanctuary, the United States was instrumental in rescuing the Khmer Rouge army from its 1979 defeat by Hanoi. From 1979 to 1981, the United States led Western nations in voting for the Khmer Rouge to represent their Cambodian victims in the United Nations.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/RootDoctrine_STATUS.html

Edit- * for clarification re Hiero's point.

[#FF0000]

"To have you is no advantage. To lose you is no loss."

holy shit guy nobody is saying that this is a good thing or that the khmer rouge was a good thing

EDIT: when I google this phrase the first result is a penis enlargement scam site. do you have something to tell us, CM?

[ComradeMan]

holy shit guy nobody is saying that this is a good thing or that the khmer rouge was a good thing

EDIT: when I google this phrase the first result is a penis enlargement scam site. do you have something to tell us, CM?

Read the OP.

BTW- the Khmer Rouge did not just "go away"- that is the other problem.

Western propaganda prior to the UN "peace process" in Cambodia concentrated on the strength of the Khmer Rouge, so as to justify their inclusion. UN officials and American and Australian diplomats talked about 35-40,000 Khmer Rouge. "You will understand," they would say, "we can't leave a force as powerful as that outside the tent." As soon as the Khmer Rouge had been welcomed back to Phnom Penh and, in effect, given a quarter to a third of the countryside, they refused to take part in the elections. The tune then changed. They were now "finished," chorused Western diplomats. They were "weakened beyond hope."

In the meantime, the Khmer Rouge was establishing itself as the richest terrorist group in history by selling off tracts of Cambodia's forests, as well as its precious stones, to the Thai, whose government was a signatory to the "peace accords." No one stopped them. They established four large new bases inside Thailand, complete with a field hospital. Thai soldiers guarded the road that led to them. The "they are finished" line remains in vogue to this day Undoubtedly, they have been numerically diminished by defections and attrition, but their number was always a false measure of their true strength. It seems the State Department believes they are far from finished.

On July 10 this year, the spokesperson Nicholas Burns let slip that Khmer Rouge strength ran into "thousands. "

The real threat from the Khmer Rouge comes from their enduring skill at deception and infiltration. Before they seized power in 1975, they had honeycombed Phnom Penh. This process is almost certainly under way again. As one resident of Phnom Penh said recently, "They're everywhere." The "trial" of Pol Pot this year was a wonderful piece of Khmer Rouge theater cum-media-event, but was otherwise worthless as an indication of the organizations strength and immediate aims. The truth is that no one on the outside can really say what these are, and that alone is a measure of the organization's strength and resilience. The Cambodian leader Hun Sen, for one, clearly retains a respect for the veracity and menace of their ambitions.

The media relish Pol Pot as a unique monster. That is too easy and too dangerous. It is his Faustian partners in Washington, Beijing, London, Bangkok, Singapore, and elsewhere who deserve proper recognition. The Khmer Rouge have been useful to all their converging aims in the region. Eric Falt, the UN's senior spokesperson in Phnom Penh at the time of that manipulated organization's "triumph" in Cambodia, told me with a fixed smile, "The peace process was aimed at allowing [the Khmer Rouge to gain respectability." Unfortunately, many ordinary Cambodian people share his cynicism. They deserve better.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/UncleSam_PolPot.html

[milk]

It's not what you say it's what you don't say. Look up the word "tacit". :lol: Plus loads of other garbled nonsensical bullshit

Look, let's go back to where this started (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40). When you spat your dummy out.

I haven't budged one inch. All you can do is froth about what you think I have chosen not to say, instead of actually engaging with that I actually have said. For all the confused and confusing rubbish that are your posts, I have managed to grasp a single thread running through them: you've done nothing but attribute to me (and others) positions that I myself do not hold, and then demand that I defend them. Talk about being a dishonest pussy. Just admit that you got pwned by me ComradeMan. Find some courage in that heart of yours. Admit that you were wrong. Or flounce or something.

It's a pity this thread has been littered with ComradeMan's disruptive nonsense. It could have been better.

Anyway ...

[milk]

He's never actually read much of anything about the Khmer Rouge, or at least critically. It's obvious his attempts to be knowledgeable are pathetic and embarrassing; the best 'looking' results thrown up by ferverish Google searches, that he can then drape over his ignorance, in the hope that no-one will notice. Actually, I'm embarrassed for you ComradeMan.

[danyboy27]

okay milk, i have to admit i dont know much about the kmer beside that they failed and a shitload of people died, i have to admit i am pretty much ignorant on what happened in cambodia.

Stuying those issues are somehow complicated beccause of the verry fews evndences that exist about what happened.

Its easier to learn about the holocaust beccause of the sheer number of data gathered by the nazi about it, and also beccause many many many experts studied the phenomenon, its easier to try to understand those thing and to make up an opinion about all this.

[mosfeld]

The Khmer Rogue were mainly inspired from maoism.

Taking into consideration the following points:

1) Pol Pot never never supported the Gang of Four, and called them counter-revolutionary,
2) After the Vietnamese invasion, Pol Pot called himself a Maoist before Hua Guofeng, who claimed to be Mao's successor, as an opportunist plea for support against the invasion.

To sum it up, he and the Khmer Rouge were Maoist in words, opportunist in deeds. By accepting the arrest of Mao's real successors, the Gang of Four, Pol Pot proved himself to be no Maoist at all.

Here are two points for ComradeMan to think about, concerning the myth that Pol Pot was, to use your words, a genocidal psychopath who murdered 2-3 million people.

1) During the Vietnam War, the U.S used two times the firepower used during the entire WW2 against the tiny nation of Cambodia. These bombings were concentrated in rural areas, where both Vietnamese and Cambodian guerrillas were operating and where most of the Cambodian population lived.
2) This concentrated bombing campaign destroyed most of Cambodia's industry, flooded Phnom Penh with 2 million (1/3rd of Cambodia) refugees from rural areas, made Cambodia the poorest country in the world, killed 600,000 people (1/10th of the Cambodia), resulted in mass starvation and made Cambodia dependent on U.S food aid.

And then the Khmer Rouge overthrew the Lol Nol regime.. What would you have done, assuming you were Pol Pot or a high-ranking member of the Khmer Rouge, with mass starvations, the cities flooded with refugees and basically no income of food coming from the rural areas, as it always had?

[Hiero]

I wasn't just referring to the 1975-1979 period BTW as the OP was about Pol Pot, not the DK 1975-1979.



Well date is an important point, it provides context. Also you have been talking about the Khmer Rouge during their rule when Cambodia was called Democratic Kampuchea. Why do you get to pick and choose?

Anyway the years are important. The Communist Party of Kampuchea leads a revolutionary war against the Lol Nol government which was a US backed government. The Communist Party of Kampuchea can be seen at this time as being on the side of "good guys" against imperialism. 1975-1979 Democratic Kampuchea is consistently anti-USA and anti-imperialist.

The invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam is supported by the USSR. Both China and USA view the USSR as their biggest enemy. The USA secretly funds the Khmer Rouge as a an anti-USSR force. In one of your sources it mearly states that the CIA provided assitance in getting Chinese aid to the Khmer Rouge. The USA would have cared less if the Khmer Rouge was communist or ideologically capitalist. The USA as did China due to Mao's errors viewed USSR collapse as succesfull to each other's causes, world peace and proleteriat revolution. Basically foreign politics was fucked during the cold war. Dont' doubt that around the world the CIA during this time would have funded rival Commmunist, Trotskyist, Anarchist, left wing groups to distrupt prominent left-wing movements and draw them into unneccassary conflicts. The main goal of the CIA was to stop the spread of the influence of USSR and bring it to collapse. The CIA wouldn't have cared less if the Khmer Rouge post 1979 turned anarchist, they would have supported them if they thought that it would have stalled the USSR and the US army would have mopped them up afterwards.

[milk]

Taking into consideration the following points:

1) Pol Pot never never supported the Gang of Four, and called them counter-revolutionary,
2) After the Vietnamese invasion, Pol Pot called himself a Maoist before Hua Guofeng, who claimed to be Mao's successor, as an opportunist plea for support against the invasion.

To sum it up, he and the Khmer Rouge were Maoist in words, opportunist in deeds. By accepting the arrest of Mao's real successors, the Gang of Four, Pol Pot proved himself to be no Maoist at all.

Their Maoism, or Maoist influences are a lot more complicated than that and have roots going back quite far.

For example, there has been debate on how Maoist currents or tendencies fed into the ideological outlook of the Khmer Rouge, came together and coalesced during the 1960s.

It is complicated, too much for a single post, and so will briefly go into this.

During the 1960s in Phnom Penh and other Cambodian towns and cities, educationalists and those intellectuals outside the mainstream politics of the National Assembly, particularly those possessing a French or Soviet education, would include those who not only supported Sihanouk’s ‘neutral’ foreign policy, the NLF struggle in South Vietnam, but also the Cultural Revolution in China. For example, there were the Rectors of the country's two main universities (Keat Chhorn, from Kompong Cham, and Phuong Ton, from Phnom Penh’s Royal University) who were examples of influential intellectuals on the side of the radical left.

As Red Guard radicalism reached its peak in China, unrest was also evident in Cambodia, particularly at Phnom Penh's private schools, two-thirds of which were Chinese. The Chinese Embassy on Mao Zedong Boulevard would be a source of controversial pronouncements and leaflets. An interesting historical footnote from this period concerns a 1967 telegram sent by the Peking branch of the Cambodian-Chinese Friendship Association to its counterpart in Phnom Penh, which cast aspersions about Prince Norodom Sihanouk's rule and his conservative coterie. The outbreak of rural violence seen in the large-scale Samlaut Rebellion in southern Battambang in April 1967 (which helped a burgeoning Khmer Rouge insurgency) would be officially declared over in June, but the Sangkum’s increased hostility towards Cambodia’s leftists would ensure a flow of urban radicals from the towns and into the rural areas. There they would come into contact with that burgeoning and ragtag insurgency, loosely coordinated by the enfeebled shell of a clandestine political organisation familiar to many of them, but now renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea, and which Saloth Sar (Pol Pot from 1969) was now leader.

My other thoughts are that there were three National Assembly deputies who became Khmer Rouge leaders and DK ministers, named the Three Ghosts, after they fled the capital in 1967, and were widely believed to have been assassinated by Sihanouk's police. Their names were Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn and Hu Nim. Two of them were involved in the largely rhetorical ultra-Maoist radical milieu in Phnom Penh, which, as I said, was most active and vocal during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution in China, with some of it being transmitted to them by way of official channels. One of the Ghosts, Hu Nim, for example, was deputy president of the Cambodian-Chinese Friendship Association, which received those telegrams from Peking mentioned above. His associate in government, a leftist minister named So Nem, was also president of the Association, and both were heavily involved in radical student politics in the capital. It has been suggested that with the Three Ghosts and their associates fleeing Phnom Penh in 1967, this ultra-Maoist tendency coalesced with the relatively moderate and more practical Maoist line of Pol Pot (armed struggle with the peasantry) and others who had fled to the countryside in 1963, and although it by no means explains everything, this possibly helped to form the extreme Maoist 'subjective' positions later on.

It would be wise, however, to be cautious and not see the Cultural Revolution as the main, indeed, only source of Khmer Rouge extremism though. This would be an oversimplification, with not taking into account not only the specifics of Khmer society and politics at the time of the Cultural Revolution, but actually assessing what happened during the Pol Pot regime, when Maoism, or a vulgarised version of it, was supposed to have been writ large. It would be worthwhile for those that don't, to know what actually happened in China during that turbulent period, and judge between the two for congruency. Indeed, during the DK years, even though there was strong, overridding, what some would term ultra-left extemism, the experience of the Cultural Revolution as a comparison with DK is pretty much irrelevant to be honest. The only fruitful comparison to be made with regard to China, would be the Great Leap Forward. After all, the Khmer Rouge experience during the DK years was always related to their disastrous rural-based infrastructural program.

A poor quality clip of a Chinese government film from the early 1960s – To the Rural Areas.

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Official DK government film, showing the construction of irrigation works.

sXrYEzwBH3E

[empiredestoryer]

thats what happens when idiots like pol pot,hitler,stalin,bush get into positions of power and i have have a feeling there will be MANY,MANY MORE IDIOTS GETTING INTO POSITIONS OF POWER IN THE NEAR FUTURE

[Palingenisis]

Milk where did the idea of immediately abolishing money come from?

[milk]

Milk where did the idea of immediately abolishing money come from?

It wasn't an immediate idea.

Sorry, but again, I'll do a bit of pasting and repost what I've said elsewhere on this subject.

After the Khmer Rouge won their pyrrhic victory, early on, after winning state power, the more radical policies of the Pol Pot line and the setting of their pace were yet to kick in: full-steam ahead with primitive accumulation even at the expense of their support base (the poor peasantry) for an investment surplus; abolishment of all religious institutions and the defrocking of the monks for the purpose of agricultural labour; getting rid of markets and related to that the abandonment rather than abolishment of the money system, seen as unnecessary in the early and never-completed stage at least, of their planned economy; special attention given to national defence, with a strengthening of the borders and preparations made for potential conflict with a reunified Vietnam, which would cause future complications with the Eastern Zone; and given the confidence of Pol Pot and rather than ease or gradually place them into the new work regime, the cooperatives the urban evacuees were driven to were to be immediately transformed into ‘high-level’ ones – that is, like those (in matters of organisation and experience) which had been set up since the war.

The 'abolishment' of money, while being a Khmer Rouge cliche, was an expression of their earlier wartime practices and the barter-based economy of the rural areas under their control, following along the lines of a type of war communism, for those that understand the term but not following a blueprint from the Russian civil war.

Danton of the Cambodian revolution, Hou Yuon, had warned of the potential for disaster from the decision to abruptly empty urban areas and given its uneven success, send their populations to the Khmer Communists’ inadequate and involuntary ‘cooperative’ system. As well as arguing against abolishing money, the tendency towards this originating in its discarding as part of wartime organisation which saw the withdrawal of the Khmer Republic currency wherever that government lost effective administrative control during the 1970-1975 conflict.

This abolishment of money perhaps would have been rolled back, for after all it wasn’t until 1976 that the decision was made to do without it, perhaps for the time being. In earlier years, as mentioned above, the Lon Nol money had been removed from the liberated areas during wartime, with its alternative GRUNK government, and the rural cooperatives, or rather those villages and peasant smallholdings having a strict form of collectivisation imposed upon them by the Communists, saw little need for money, apart from its retention for outside trade, for things the cooperatives couldn’t produce. A barter system had been devised for exchange between cooperatives and other structures of their burgeoning state.

There had been plans to introduce a revolutionary currency, discussed by the CPK from as early as, I think, 1972. New sample notes were printed in China, inspected by the CPK leadership in 1973 and it was agreed that they would be introduced with a reorganising of the National Bank after they won control of the entire country. CPK debate after April 1975 changed this decision, however, and it was formally abolished, the new money withdrawn from one trial area. It seems their own version of war communism, and all they had ever known in implementing radical change, was viewed as the best model for rapidly realising their rice production plan.

Here is one of the sample notes:

http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/8663/note1024x442.jpg

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/640/note21024x455.jpg

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/3240/women1024x592.jpg

The photo of an all-female Khmer Rouge battalion during the civil war, with the women immortalised in the note above.

[∞]

The Khmer Rouge had went out, ordered, and killed many people. Living in Fresno, I've met countless people who's family has been killed by the Khmer Rouge. A person I know, Tony Pham tells me in gruesome detail about what they did to his uncle. Supposedly they thought he was some sort of spy, I don't think he was.

[Dimentio]

So so, calm down...

Maoists (judging from what I've seen here) think that an "ideological error" or a slip of the tongue is more of a problem than if people are rounded up, enslaved or beaten to death with clubs. As long as you have "flawless Maoist credentials", you could have a carte blanche to do whatever actions you want to do, as long as you could find an excuse in your ideology.

[ComradeMan]

Look, let's go back to where this started (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1927962&postcount=40). When you spat your dummy out.

I haven't budged one inch. All you can do is froth about what you think I have chosen not to say, instead of actually engaging with that I actually have said. For all the confused and confusing rubbish that are your posts, I have managed to grasp a single thread running through them: you've done nothing but attribute to me (and others) positions that I myself do not hold, and then demand that I defend them. Talk about being a dishonest pussy. Just admit that you got pwned by me ComradeMan. Find some courage in that heart of yours. Admit that you were wrong. Or flounce or something.

It's a pity this thread has been littered with ComradeMan's disruptive nonsense. It could have been better.

Anyway ...

Shut up with your arrogant pontificating you sound worse than a Medieval Pope.

You dismiss facts and figures as "confusing" rubbish- but don't say why, because you haven't perhaps got the courage to face up to the unpalatable truths of this regime.

You seem to be trying to prove how clever you are or something because you can regurgitate dry facts available to all and sundry about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

The OP- you may recall was nothing more than a pitiful Maoist attempt to somehow redeem Pol Pot with the "confessions" of a dying man that somehow mitigate his position and what he and those under him did.

Why do you refuse outright to answer any of the direct questions that have been raised? Over and over and over again? This is why I think you are being a disingenous apologist- "conveniently" leaving out the nasty bits.

Why do you refuse to discuss the human impact of this regime, or who supported them and why?

Why do you insist in this bizarre notion that Pol Pot was a communist and the Khmer Rouge actually represented communism when it's quite obvious through their actions and deeds that this was no more than the bizarre and oppurtunistic rambling of a rather unbalanced and not very intelligent tyrant?

Your arrogance seems to know no ends. You did not even create this thread and you are not the only person whose views are being discussed but perhaps you are so consumed in your little ego trip on this that you forgot that?

Admit that I was wrong? On what? Show me where I was wrong? Show me where the facts and statistics are erroneous? Show me evidence to the contrary of Pol Pot being a sociopath along with those under his regime? Show me how it is wrong not to think..."err, the Khmer Rouge murdered people who were starving to death, so perhaps it's not such a good regime to follow". If you refuse to answer such questions then views will be attributed to you. Just like someone who refuses to answer questions about their position on the Holocaust would easily be accused of being a Holocaust denier- if that is not the case then answer other people's questions instead of being an arrogant person why don't you?

If this were a court of law your case would have been dismissed- if not laughed out of court.

[Dimentio]

The party, despite everything, called itself "The Communist Party". And yes, Pol Pot was inspired by Mao and chose to take Mao's Great Leap forward a few leaps further forward straight into the abyss.

So in reality, what we should discuss is how much Maoism could be said to represent a genuinly communist ideology.

Tragically enough, sociopaths tend to amass where there is political power concentrated. The worst ills of the Khmer Rogue regime was not created by corruption and nepotism though, but by some sort of attempt to destroy both the culture of the Cambodian people and the individuality of individual Cambodian persons to create the "New Ideal Man".

[milk]

ComradeMan, being the potty mouth again.

I will not answer anything by you on that score, until you actually point out where I have been supportive, justified, apologetic about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in my posts. Show me specifically where you think I have done this.

Do it. And then I will trounce you. Again.

You're an idiot. It's clear to anyone.


You seem to be trying to prove how clever you are or something because you can regurgitate dry facts available to all and sundry about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Well, I'm not going to apologise for Pol Pot, and I certainly am not going to apologise for being far more Knowledge than you are. You don't know half the stuff that's been posted here. In fact, you didn't know about it until I posted it.

[Dimentio]

The problem with your criticism of Pol Pot is that it seems to be directed more against his "ideological flaws" and the way in which some of the reforms were conducted during the Khmer Rogue time (added with an attempt to explain it with "structural reasons").

In every country in the world, emptying the towns, destroying the trading system and putting the population on forced labour in the countryside is going to be bloody. That was especially the case in Cambodia, which already was extremely vulnerable after a bloody civil war and a indiscriminate bombing campaign.

The Khmer Rogue must have known that their policy was going to create famine and diseases, and they utilised these scourges to affect the former urban population more than the rural population.

You have also not mentioned the attacks against "intellectuals", nor the purges which weren't directed against the Eastern Zone party leadership, but against the ordinary people, for trivial reasons like being of a muslim or christian minority, being of Vietnamese descent, having glasses or having stumbled when moving dirt.

You are so very much 1970's, seeing nothing but the proud Kampuchean people stalwartly struggling together against evil American, Russian and Vietnamese imperialists. Isn't your avatar another Khmer Rogue soldier too? That depiction of the "brave bare-footed Asians struggling together to create a socialist utopia" is as orientalist as the sinophilia of the 18th century.

Your version of history, while probably factually correct, is painting the Khmer Rogue as the victims of a situation which they weren't responsible for.

As for dictatorships, how come that Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, two dictators who have inherited extremely devastated countries, have succeeded in strengthening the role of both their countries and the standard of life for most people inside them?

Yes, both of them are reactionaries and corrupt nepots. Museveni's regime is probably one of the most homophobic in the world. But despite all their all-too obvious flaws, they have succeeded in creating stability and something reminiscent of progress, whereas Pol Pot's regime was like a steamroller having levelled Cambodia with the ground.

Heck! Even the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, which ruled for about the same stretch of time as the Khmer Rogue, created less devastation in Afghanistan and were pretty much pacifists in comparison with the Khmer Rogue. The Taleban at most probably killed about 150 000 people in Afghanistan (probably quite much less). And think that Afghanistan in 1996 had about the same conditions as Cambodia in 1975, and probably worse in some aspects (ethnic fragmentation and warlordism).

It wasn't a necessity to empty the cities. It was a decision fuelled by an ideology which saw liberation as the ultimate conforming of the population into a kind of hive, a notion which has as much to do with real socialism as drinking diesel has to do with drinking fresh water. For the Khmer Rogue, worker's and peasant's liberation was only important to the degree that it would allow them to establish ultimate control and change their population to conform to an ideal.

The Khmer Rogue should be analysed, yes. But what should be condemned should not be "ultra-left deviationism" or "revisionism", but the underlying foundations of their very ideology.

Ultimately, what is socialism about?

Is it about worker's control, or about trying to transform the people?

[ComradeMan]

ComradeMan, being the potty mouth again.

I will not answer anything by you on that score, until you actually point out where I have been supportive, justified, apologetic about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in my posts. Show me specifically where you think I have done this.

Do it. And then I will trounce you. Again.

You're an idiot. It's clear to anyone.

Well, I'm not going to apologise for Pol Pot, and I certainly am not going to apologise for being far more Knowledge than you are. You don't know half the stuff that's been posted here. In fact, you didn't know about it until I posted it.

So I used the word prick- one word in probably 500 so you refuse to answer my points? :lol: Do I have a potty mouth or a Pol Potty mouth? :lol:

Just thought I'd include this message you left for me too:

Milk: I already mentioned that in more detail than you. But there is no evidence to suggest that Pol Pot was influenced to a large degree by "avant-garde" thinkers in France. That is such a nebulous term anyway. Who were these people? Pol Pot left Paris in the early 50s, and was never there in the 1960s. You really are as thick as pig shit.

:scared:Who's got a pol-potty mouth now? LOL!! It was me first!!! It was me first!!! How old are you?

Sartre had been an influence since the 1940's you ignoramus. Although Sartre was never a member of the Communist party he tried to reconcile existentialism and Marxism and collaborated with the French Communist Party of course Pol Pot had joined the Cercle Marxiste in France in 1951 so it is not improbable that he would have been influenced by Sartre. Given the existentialist nature of Khmer Rouge "philosophy" morality/ethics it is a conclusion that many have come too.

I will not answer anything by you on that score, until you actually point out where I have been supportive, justified, apologetic about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in my posts. Show me specifically where you think I have done this.

A clever piece of subterfuge here- the same thing I have to deal with Italian fascists all the time. Like I said, in politics it's not always what you say it's what you don't say.

I love the way you "award yourself" with the credit for "trouncing" people-- on an.... internet forum.... hello? :lol: You must have really low self-esteem, but I'm glad that in your existential reality I am helping you boost your ego in such manner.

If you can't reply to people without arrogantly denouncing them as "idiots" and "stupid" and a whole load of other insults, whilst at the same time begging the questions every single time, it says little for your debating skills. You know refuse to answer valid questions unless someone proves you wrong on your rather dry ideological history of the DK and the Khmer Rouge? Hmmmmm.....:lol: I think you can't answer those questions for should you answer them truly it might call into question why you have a Khmer Rouge avatar.... :confused:

It's clear to everyone- to whom? The half-a-dozen people out of a world population of 6 billion who are discussing here on this thread? I hate appeals to consensus, but I think the weight of opinion is rather tilted against your line and the OP.

Well, I'm not going to apologise for Pol Pot, and I certainly am not going to apologise for being far more Knowledge[sic] than you are. You don't know half the stuff that's been posted here. In fact, you didn't know about it until I posted it.

You have already been tacitly apologising for Pol Pot with your words and actions. Nevertheless, the fact that you say it now directly is even more enlightening and seems to confirm my original opinion of you. Along with your nice Khmer Rouge avatar too.... :thumbup:

BTW the word is "knowledg(e)able"- again, I hate picking at words but if you are going to claim a superior knowledge then make sure you spell the word correctly otherwise you risk being "trounced". :lol:

Can you read minds now? LOL!!!!!! I concede that I didn't know many of the facts- but you see it's not knowing facts alone that counts, it's the ability to apply reason with those facts.... think about the difference;). You seem to take offence that I have used internet to find sources? What's wrong with that? Most of the sources are from published works- some of which you cite yourself. I apologise if I don't possess and entire library of the history of Kampuchea/Cambodia at my disposal. I'll have to put that on my Christmas list. But many of the facts I know for myself I learned from Cambodian people and my cousin who actually went to Cambodia. So, I'm sorry if listening to the people who have first hand evidence is considered to be historically fallacious or somehow invalid. Ooops.

For the rest- Dimentio has basically said it too. I agree with him.

I'd still like it if you actually answered the questions I posed oh knowledgeable one, I, a mere ignoramus and mortal, could not possibly know the answers to these questions so I implore you to enlighten me with your superior knowledge and intellect...:lol:
I'm even going to go back to the previous post and change the word "prick" so you can then answer my un-potty mouthed questions.

EDIT- Hiero

I see your point about the timescale and should have been clearer- I was focusing on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, not just the 1975-1979 period and see how things could get mixed up. ;) I hope you appreciate my point that the Khmer Rouge did not "disappear" with the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 though too.... another reason I find apologetics for this group distasteful from a leftist point of view!

[Hiero]

As for dictatorships, how come that Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, two dictators who have inherited extremely devastated countries, have succeeded in strengthening the role of both their countries and the standard of life for most people inside them?



Because Rwanda and Uganda are two different countries in Africa and Cambodia is in Asia and Democratic Kampuchea existed fort yearsyears ago. It seems any sort of context is immediatly dismissed as apologising for Pol Pot. Thoose countries you mentioned would be receiving aid and IMF loans and support from the super powers. I don't why you think context is irrelevant.


In every country in the world, emptying the towns, destroying the trading system and putting the population on forced labour in the countryside is going to be bloody. That was especially the case in Cambodia, which already was extremely vulnerable after a bloody civil war and a indiscriminate bombing campaign.

The Khmer Rogue must have known that their policy was going to create famine and diseases, and they utilised these scourges to affect the former urban population more than the rural population.


It has been constantly mentioned that the 'indiscriminate bombing' forced 2 million refugees from the countryside into the cities. There was going to be famine and disease anyway.


That depiction of the "brave bare-footed Asians struggling together to create a socialist utopia" is as orientalist as the sinophilia of the 18th century.


And your depiction of Pol Pot as a sociopath isn't?

And thoose images came from Asia, not the other way around. In Said's Orientalism it was the depiction of the 'Orient' by the 'Occident' that created a field of orientalism.


Your version of history, while probably factually correct, is painting the Khmer Rogue as the victims of a situation which they weren't responsible for.


That does not make sense. Your willing to admit that Milk's history is "probably factually correct" but then feel uneasy as you think it absolves the Khmer Rouge. For one that is a connection that you make, the facts do not make that connection. It is your sense of accountability that has a problemw the history, for you there has to be an individual at the end of a series of events with a psychological problem. I have no problem with what Milk has said and I can still Pol Pot culpable for some of the miss mangements that did not resolve famine, disease and violence that occured in Cambodia during 1975-1979. However I do not believe in the cult of the individual, I don't need to know Pol Pot's personal psychology to point blame. But I also see the various scenerios that are local, national and international that spread culpablity not just to Pol Pot, but a whole range of factors and people found at the local and national levels of Cambodia and the international players, the USSR and USA. Because culpablity does not just end with one person.

Then what is your solution? Since you don't follow any rational for assigning culpability and even though Milk's history is "probally factually correct" do you dismiss the factual correct to adhere to your individual accountability?

There is nothing wrong with Milk's history, nor is there anything wrong with deep structural analysis of violence. You have the problem where you can't make connection between Pol Pot's role and structural and material realities.

I am not going to reply to the rest of your comments, they are just filled with half truths and assumptions.

[milk]

The problem with your criticism of Pol Pot is that it seems to be directed more against his "ideological flaws" and the way in which some of the reforms were conducted during the Khmer Rogue time (added with an attempt to explain it with "structural reasons").

Nope. My whole posting here has been based on and in agreement with Vickery's Marxist (historical materialist) analysis of Cambodia. You're talking about worker's control. Working class? The Cambodian revolution wasn't a working class revolution, but a peasant one, and it occurred in a non-feudal, pre-capitalist society, whose infrastructural base was ruined by a devastating war. I have been one of the few on here who has actually looked from the bottom-up, looked at why the peasants drove the revolution, and why they ended up rejecting it. It is others, here, who have focussed on a small group of people (the petty-bourgeois in a Cambodian context), or rather just one man, Pol Pot. This is unsatisfactory and un-Marxist Great Man rubbish. And on a site where people claim to be communists, and then post this crap.

[milk]

You have also not mentioned the attacks against "intellectuals", nor the purges which weren't directed against the Eastern Zone party leadership, but against the ordinary people, for trivial reasons like being of a muslim or christian minority, being of Vietnamese descent, having glasses or having stumbled when moving dirt.

Yes, I have.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1929288&postcount=195

Actually read my posts, and then try engaging your brain before putting fingers to keyboard, eh?

[milk]

Thanks, Hiero, for actually 'getting' me.

[ComradeMan]

Nope. My whole posting here has been based on and in agreement with Vickery's Marxist (historical materialist) analysis of Cambodia. You're talking about worker's control. Working class? The Cambodian revolution wasn't a working class revolution, but a peasant one, and it occurred in a non-feudal, pre-capitalist society, whose infrastructural base was ruined by a devastating war. I have been one of the few on here who has actually looked from the bottom-up, looked at why the peasants drove the revolution, and why they ended up rejecting it. It is others, here, who have focussed on a small group of people (the petty-bourgeois in a Cambodian context), or rather just one man, Pol Pot. This is unsatisfactory and un-Marxist Great Man rubbish. And on a site where people claim to be communists, and then post this crap.

Quote: My whole posting here has been based on and in agreement with Vickery's Marxist (historical materialist) analysis of Cambodia.

So whereas other people actually open their minds, look at a variety of sources and used their own minds to make assessments, you have used .... one book which you parrot and then you have the audacity to claim that you "know" everything yourself and imply that we should all bow to your superior intellect and dare not challenge your views? I think perhaps you've been reading too much about the Khmer Rouge, because ideologically speaking you behave like them too.

I notice you have cherrypicked it somewhat as well, for example I believe Vickery does come to more or less a conclusion that Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge were not communists in any more than a veneer, rhetoric and so on. The declaration of the existence of a communist "party" within the Khmer Rouge was 1977- perhaps in order to seek assistance from China? The first declaration of Marxist-Lennisism came in a public speech on the death of Mao (Chandler, pg.55, note 28) on which they actually explained nothing and said nothing further (Chandler, pg.45) or was it all enthymemic? However in 1977 there is the declaration by Ieng Sary that "we are not communists" (Chandler, pg.288). Rather ambiguous weren't they? Of course you should also question your sources seeing as I have seen that Vickery, Thion and Chandler are also revisionist historians and pro-Vietnam whereas Shawcross could be considered liberal and pro-Western. Are these your only sources? Let's not forget that revisionist historians also have a confirmation bias in that their whole raison d'etre is to "revise" i.e. debunk and present new opinions. This does not invalidate their views so to speak but it is a bias all the same of which we should be aware.

In your extreme arrogance and self-belief in some superior intellect you presume you are talking to rightwingers here or people who don't actually realise that the US bombing, the dreadful situation of Cambodia previously, the cultural background and so on were all contributing factors. No one here is trying to absolve anyone of the blame. Perhaps you should bear that in mind. You presume that everyone else is stupid and you know more than them, yet in your superior knowledge you refuse outright to answer their questions and conveniently avoid the more uncomfortable facts related to this issue.

This is an internet forum, and people post threads. The OP was trying to present the "nice" side of Pol Pot. That was why there were these responses and that is why the discussion has developed in the direction of focusing on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Having said all of this, having noted the extraneous circumstances and the possible tragic coincidences of history- it still does not change the fact that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot's command were a brutal and repressive regime with at best highly dubious marxist credentials who engaged in mass slaughter. Like I said before, the house was on fire, but the Khmer Rouge poured petrol on it. It's also curious that you seemed to have failed to mention the fact that an apologist view might look at the fact that as a result of US bombing the city population had swollen by around 600,000 at least and had been fed by US food handouts via the US puppet government. With the Khmer Rouge seizure of power and the onset of famine the evacuation of the cities may be seen to be necessary from one point of view in that starvation would have occurred either way. Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that within hours of the seizure of Phnom Penh the population were marched out at gunpoint with pitiful rations to be taken to the countryside to be worked and starved to death or have their heads beaten in with rifle butts to save on bullets.

The infrastructural base was badly damaged pre-Khmer Rouge, but what did the Khmer Rouge do? Seek to repair it? Or deliver the final blow... that is why they are considered insane. They went against all known marxist principles and tried to turn the clock back to some bizarre Khmer nationalist peasant utopia that existed in the mindset of Pol Pot and his organisation. They did not seek to create a proletariate they actively smashed the proletariate that was left.

You also seem to insist that the DK was the result of a "bottom-up" peasants revolution.

....For Cambodia's nightmare did not begin with Year Zero but on the eve of the U.S. land invasion of neutral Cambodia in 1970. The invasion provided a small group of extreme ethnic nationalists with Maoist pretensions, the Khmer Rouge, with a catalyst for a revolution that had no popular base among the Cambodian people. Between 1969 and 1973, U.S. bombers killed perhaps three-quarters of a million Cambodian peasants in an attempt to destroy North Vietnamese supply bases, many of which did not exist. During one six-month period in 1973, B-52s dropped more bombs on Cambodians, living mostly in straw huts, than were dropped on Japan during all of World War II, the equivalent of five Hiroshimas. Evidence from U.S. official documents, declassified in 1987, leaves no doubt that this U.S. terror was critical in Pol Pot's drive for power. "They are using [the bombing] as the main theme of the propaganda," reported the C.I.A. Director of Operations on May 2, 1973. "This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of a number of young men [and] the propaganda has been most effective among refugees subjected to B-52 strikes."

What Kissinger and Nixon began, Pol Pot completed. Had the United States and China allowed it, Cambodia's suffering could have stopped when the Vietnamese finally responded to years of Khmer Rouge attacks across their border and liberated the country in January 1979.
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgernationpolpot.html

If the U.S. bombing was the first phase of Cambodia's holocaust and Pol Pot's Year Zero the second, the third phase was the use of the United Nations by Washington, its allies and China as the instrument of Cambodia's, and Vietnam's, punishment. With Vietnamese troops preventing the return of the Khmer Rouge and a Hanoi-installed regime in Phnom Penh, a U.N. embargo barred Cambodia from all international agreements on trade and communications, even from the World Health Organization. The U.N. withheld development aid from only one Third World country: Cambodia, which lay unreconstituted from the years of bombing and neglect. For the United States the blockade was total. Not even Cuba and the Soviet Union were treated this way.
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgernationpolpot.html

My conclusion from this--- Pol Pot = US lackey, perhaps he was too stupid to realise this himself.


Quote: And on a site where people claim to be communists, and then post this crap.

Firstly, not everyone here does actually claim to be a communist- and it seems you have a strange idea of what communism is and isn't too. Secondly, accepting your premise- on a site where people claim to be communists you might also understand why there is a dislike of people coming here with Khmer Rouge avatars and trying to push the line that a bunch of incompetent and inept revolutionary wannabees who pushed racist, nationalist and anti-progressive policies were in actual fact... communists - leaving aside the crimes against humanity that is.

Have you not thought to yourself that people who are genuine "leftists" might be fed up of having Pol Pot pushed in their face by anti-communists all the time and your claiming they were communists is actually playing into the hands of the right?

See:
David P. Chandler e Ben Kiernan, Revolution and its aftermath in Kampuchea:Eight essays, New Haven, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies monograph N°25, 1983
Michael Vickery, Cambodia:1975-1982, Boston, South End Press, 1984
Pubblicato su Challenger-Desafio, Supplemento della Rivista del Partito Laburista Progressista , 19 Febbraio 1986

[Dimentio]

Alright, shouldn't a "peasant revolution" then put the power into the hands of the peasants? Or are peasant revolutions meant to put power into the hands of a small clirque who are treating their country like some kind of turd.

I don't know whether or not Pol Pot was a sociopath and that is not important. What is important is that the regime worsened a humanitarian crisis significantly, and instead of trying to alleviate it actively used it to purge elements which they saw as inherently reactionary just because their ideology said that they should be reactionary.

What Cambodia in 1975 had in common with a lot of third world nations was that it had just emerged out of a civil war/foreign war which had left massive destruction around. What any dictator with a sort of a grip on reality and empathy for the people would have done would be to install some kind of order before carrying out any reforms.

The only specific context I could see which separates Cambodia from the other examples is the fact that the other examples did not have any Khmer Rogue party. As for Hiero, he deems the Khmer Rogue as heroes just because they were anti-imperialist (while one of their goals was to take the Mekong Delta from Vietnam - so much for anti-imperialist solidarity). Even if that wasn't the case, to accept a government which takes the food from it's people and then rations it out so that some people would die and some survive so they could work a little bit longer, is a mark of complete ideological hypocrisy and indifference to the suffering of the working people.

Socialism, which is about the liberation of the working people, cannot be it's opposite.

To nationalise all the resources, placing the control under a military-political elite and the send out people on forced labour is the total opposite of any kind of socialism.

As for Milk's factually correct analysis. You could pick the cherries out of the cake while ignoring the larger image. You could choose to point out details rather than seeing the entire image. You could blame the Americans, de-centralisation or the former government, but you cannot escape the fact that Democratic Kampuchea was actively turned into a slave labour camp by the ruling party.

It is very classical of you guys to cringe and wringle and refuse to answer the main point, instead focusing on details.