Debating a religionist

[Gemscopiscan]

I know I haven't been here in quite some time but I have a question regarding some characters in history and thought this place, where there are so many who are much more knowledgeable than I, would have an answer for me. In response to a comment on another board, a religious person, as they tend to do, threw out Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot, as examples of atheist atrocities. I think it is well known that Hitler used his religious teaching to target the Jewish. And as far as I am aware, Mao's errors were largely in his inability, to run his country, and not specifically due to outright murder, in terms of numbers. Many of his people died from starvation because of mismanagement, not atheism. But, I have not been able to find any objective, reasoning behind Pol Pot's atrocities. Is there any? I have some theories myself, namely being a position of defense (not excusing it) against the juggernaut of destabilization of communist countries, like much of what we are finding happened in South America, but I could be wrong. So what actually was his stance? What brand of communism government was he practicing? And why all the death at his hands?

[Bala Perdida]

If this is about Pol Pot, then he was just full out crazy. You could have been anything from a college professor to a guy with glasses to be considered an intellectual, and killed by him. Basically he over did, to a disgusting extreme, his "purging of bourgeois elements ". As far as I know he was already conducting genocide before he even declared his state ideology as "communist". After that not even the Soviet Union recognized it as a legitimate government due to it's atrocities. His Khamer Rough regime was ultimately driven out by the "godless Vietnamese communists", and the "God fearing US" was actually one of the few countries to recognize it's regime a "legitimate". I've even heard about the US aiding the regime against Vietnam.
So religious people may have been part of the genocide, but I'm guessing atheists too for having such a "questioning mentality", for lack of a better term.

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

Whether Hitler was a Christian, atheist or even an occultist is discutable. He pretty much wanted to see Jesus' place in the liturgy replaced with himself. He also wanted to found some sort of common German Church seperate from any denomination. This is evidenced by the fact that he had plans to abduct and kill the pope, thus removing him as a threat to his power. In his public discourse there were marked Christian elements (to appeal to the predominantly Christian populace of Germany) but in private he denounced Christianity.

As for the crimes against humanity comitted by so called 'communists' (actually stalinists), I see no reason to deny these. We don't support these crimes and we should make that clear by distancing ourselves from these historical figures.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Whether Hitler was a Christian, atheist or even an occultist is discutable. He pretty much wanted to see Jesus' place in the liturgy replaced with himself. He also wanted to found some sort of common German Church seperate from any denomination. This is evidenced by the fact that he had plans to abduct and kill the pope, thus removing him as a threat to his power. In his public discourse there were marked Christian elements (to appeal to the predominantly Christian populace of Germany) but in private he denounced Christianity.

As for the crimes against humanity comitted by so called 'communists' (actually stalinists), I see no reason to deny these. We don't support these crimes and we should make that clear by distancing ourselves from these historical figures.

Stalinist groups undoubtedly committed atrocities but Pol Pot is not a Stalinist.

[Gemscopiscan]

Thank you, Cooperationiskey. I wasn't sure what to make of Pol Pot. It's not surprising that he was just nuts beforehand. Not as if that can't happen

[Gemscopiscan]

TSM, I'm under no illusion that Hitler wasn't batshyte and that church or religion itself may have been a tool for him. But, that's just the point, isn't it? He was able to use his religious education to model something for himself and came pretty close to succeeding, regardless of how he felt privately. And I don't seek to defend any of what they have done. I simply dislike the misconception that is applied to all atheists, and these examples they throw about, they do so in an effort to obliterate any distance we may put between the title and the actions. So I'd rather have something to say about the matter, rather than letting it hang around in the air unchallenged.

[Revenant]

http://www.marxmail.org/archives/July99/propaganda_about_pol_pot.htm

Is quite interesting :)

You can't really ignore the Anglo US influence there prior to Pol Pot, John Pilger also wrote Pot was covertly supported by the Thatcher Reagan Special partnership citing reports of SAS training camps for anti-communist members of Pot's government in Thailand throughout the 80's.

I agree with you about Hitler, he wasn't a one man band, Himmler and Geobbals had religion all over them, Hesse and Rosenberg were Occultists as was Adolf, they were probably all quite strongly influenced by the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Dietrich Eckart.

Mao had the Korean war and tension with the Jesuits and Vatican church throughout the fifties, in my view there are many things caused by the West that the west likes to use as an example of what will happen if we attempt to realize communism ourselves.

[Gemscopiscan]

Revenant, thanks for this. :grin:

[Red Economist]

But, I have not been able to find any objective, reasoning behind Pol Pot's atrocities. Is there any? I have some theories myself, namely being a position of defense (not excusing it) against the juggernaut of destabilization of communist countries, like much of what we are finding happened in South America, but I could be wrong. So what actually was his stance? What brand of communism government was he practicing? And why all the death at his hands?

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge didn't write their ideas down so historians have struggled to pin down the original motivations for what they did because of this. This is a particular problem for Biographers as they haven't been able to understand his thinking (have a look at few reviews on Amazon).

I haven't read up on Pol Pot in any great detail but at an educated guess, I think Pol Pot went in for the idea of an 'over-night' transformation of Cambodian society, (described as "year zero"). This suggests that they held a deeply subjectivist view of society/history in which the will power of a leader, party or class could revolutionize society without recognizing economic constraints on the ability of society to be transformed. This might have been down to the influence of existentialism/nihilist philosophical trends on Pol Pot when he was in Paris as a student and ended up him trying to be a Nietzchean 'super-man'. The result was that people starved on a massive scale.

Cambodian Communism was- to some extent- a derivative of Maoism, emphasizing the revolutionary role of the peasantry- except going further and arguing for a rural pre-industrial or agricultural socialism. Hence the Khmer Rogue simply 'emptied' the cities based on the old communist idea of "abolishing the distinction of town and country". This idea has been applied on a small scale before (The Soviet Union had 'agrotowns' which were experimental) but never so systematically or literally. The people from the cities became 'New people' who were forcibly 'reformed' by hard labor (in the same way the Gulag was supposed to 'reform' dissidents).
They used purges and revolutionary terror on a massive scale. There was some extreme nationalist stuff as well which had racist and xenophobic overtones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_%28political_notion%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_People

But on a human level, the Khmer Rogue is Marxism's Lunatic Asylum. It's the kind of stuff that gives sincere Stalin and Mao Apologists nightmares and even committed communists run away from.
Anti-Communists who say Pol Pot is purely "our" problem (and belongs only to communists) haven't understood that the problem isn't simply with a single social system, but with man's capacity for evil and what happens to a society when people lose touch with reality and their humanity on a large-scale. This is a problem with the irrational part of the human psyche taking over.
What is regrettable is that Communism- as an attempt to plan society- gave people the tools to do what had been done in Mass hysteria's such as the Salem Witch Trails, The Holocaust and (probably) the Cultural Revolution at a societal level and in this- the anti-communists have a point.

Bluntly, the Khmer Rouge is the difference between trying to take control of a situation whilst having self-control and taking control when you've lost all self-control.

[Gemscopiscan]

RedEconomist, thank you. This clarifies it a bit more for me.

[MattDoe]

Man, I get tired of explaining this to religious folk. You should point out that atrocities carried out by atheists like Stalin or Mao were not in the name of atheism. There are, however, far too many massacres that have been carried out in the name of Jesus or Allah that continue to this day.

[Tim Cornelis]

Man, I get tired of explaining this to religious folk. You should point out that atrocities carried out by atheists like Stalin or Mao were not in the name of atheism. There are, however, far too many massacres that have been carried out in the name of Jesus or Allah that continue to this day.

Or you could point out that Allah or Yahweh had the power to stop the massacred by Stalin or Mao but permitted it nonetheless, "so if you think Mao is a dick, then Yahweh/Allah/God is a much larger dick".

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

Sure, he wasn't a Stalinist in a pure ideological sense. When I say 'Stalinist', I'm referring to any self-proclaimed communist state ruled by a brutal bureaucratic machine like that in the time of Stalin. We (people in my party), refer to these regimes as such to make it easier for people to distinguish between socialists/communists who strive for a democratic society and the authoritarian, bureaucratic type.

[Sea]

Ask them how there could possibly be enough logs to keep the hellfires burning for eternity.