Pol Pot

[gewehr_3]

I am doing a research paper on pol pot and how dangerous totalitarianism is. i would like other peoples opinions on him. personally i think he had good ideas at the beginning but you cant make everyone work on farms, kill intellectuals, and abolish money right away.

[Janus]

Well, there is no doubt that Pol Pot had good intentions but so did Hitler. History isn't measured by one's intentions but by their actions. However, you must also keep in mind that much of the deaths that occured in the Killing Fields were caused by famine and disease and not all of them were the result of Saloth Sar's purges (around 50,000 to 100,000). The killing got to the point where leaders restricted the use of bullets. All in all, estimates place the numbers of dead at almost 2 million, about 1/8 of the Cambodian population.

What Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge leaders wanted to do was to establish a farming utopia that would be so pure that people would tour the place. Angka believed in a total egalitarian agrian society in which industry would be shunned. As you can see, it was impossible given Cambodia's technological development and the damage suffered to the war. I think that Pol Pot is just one of those leaders that have helped create all the negative connotations associated with communism.

I have heard that Philip Shot's biography of Pol Pot is very informative.

If you're just looking for a discussion about Pol Pot and not any information on him, then you should ask a mod to move this to the History forum.

[anomaly]

Pol Pot was a dictator who killed millions of people. His regime was one of the deadliest of the 20th century, if not the most deadly.

I really cannot think of a positive thing to say about him.

[gewehr_3]

Can a mod please move this to history?
thanks