Khmer Rouge

[Robespierres Neck]

Just curious to see what people's thoughts on Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and Pot Pol's years of power in the early 70s. People who know a bit about their policies, even many Communists, can agree that they had some extremely radical and unintelligent ideas that left Cambodia fucked for a long time.

[Vendetta]

I see them as pretty much Nazis.

[Hiero]

I see them as pretty much Nazis.
Because you don't know shit? Or you just lazy?

[Vendetta]

Have you seen some of the reasons they killed people?

[Hiero]

Have you seen some of the reasons they killed people?
Regardless you can't compare the Nazi regime to the Khmer Rouge regime. This promotes intellectual laziness. There are many cases of people and groups killing people for horrible reasons, that doesn't mean this people are like Nazis.

What you are doing is trading a scientific socialist view of history for a dramatic effect. This works quite well in the politicaly apathetic world, they can go on in their day to day life with such a simplistic view. It actually works quite well when they want to sell pop-history books. However thoose who claim to uphold a class political view have to put in the extra work.

What happen under the Khmer Rouge and in Nazi Germany are miles apart. Nazi Germany was Fascism, imperialist capitalism at it's most violent, racist and expansionist. It was a result of rapid development of capitalism after world war 1.

The Khmer Rouge were the leaders in a national liberation movement. After defeating the puppert government of Lon Nol they attempted to build socialism in a backward nation. They faced many problems, including US imperialism, the US imperialists caused many of the deaths as they were bombing the capital city. Their war in the region created overcrowding in the cities which resulting in starvation.

The Cambodian communists were also heavily burdened by the Sino-Soviet split. The USSR during the war supported a social democratic party under their position of peaceful coexistence. The Khmer Rouge however proved to the USSR revisionist that Cambodia was ripe for revolution. After national-liberation the Communists had to build socialism in a hostile environment. The only ally they had was China. At this time China was in no position to lead. This is clear because socialist China was about to fall to the revionists, something Pol Pot never criticised.

The Cambodian revolution came into emergence at a bad time. So naturally bad politics and bad theory followed. They also had a complex peasant society, they simply couldn't copy the Chinese, Vietnamese or Russian model. Which some countries attempted to do, and now have all face counter revolution after the final victory of revisionism.

The Cambodian Communist faced many challenges, these all took toll. They were unable to develop correct theory and lead class war of the progressive classes of Cambodian society against the reactionary classes. They allowed paranoia and class revenge as a method for building socialism. There was also internal strife as the US imperialist and Vietnamese revionists meddle in Cambodian affairs.

There can be no clear cut answer about the Khmer Rouge era. There should be productive study. This era should be viewed critically as a Communist error, it was a time for revolution that failed and turned quite nasty. What is unproductive is to be sloppy and adobt bourgeioise methods of history and simply try to label this or that era as ever bad/evil or good/righteous.

[Random Precision]

Hiero is correct that the Khmer Rouge could not be considered as similar to the Nazis in any way. I also agree with him that many of the errors (quite grievous errors indeed) could be laid at others' feet. For example, much of their ideological confusion came from the fact that their leaders were trained by the CPF during its most heavily Stalinist period.

I think it's key to start with their ideology. Here are some quotes from Pol Pot on the subject:


After 1963, when I withdrew into the countryside, my opinions and my thinking and views changed a lot, because I was in a very isolated, remote, rural area, far from the city... I lived among the masses and realized I could trust them.


We [the Khmer Rouge] applied ourselves to define a direction, and then to put it into practice without knowing whether it was right or wrong. [There were] a mixture of influences, a little of this, a little of that... I copied no one. It was what I saw in the country that made an impression on me...


Marxism-Leninism resides within the movements forged by the people, and the people's movement in each country puts together its own Marxism-Leninism. Cambodia is also able to contribute to the building of Marxism-Leninism.

If you read that last one, you see the greatest ideological flaw: their revolution was not in any sense based on Marxism, the only tried and true revolutionary approach. Most of the KR's leaders had never read Marx, one of them saying that "he was too deep for us". Instead, the communism of the Khmer Rouge was based on an intuitive, illogical approach founded on peasant traditions, a dash of Theravada mysticism, and Cambodian nationalism.

But the greatest reason why the revolution in Cambodia failed was that their revolution was not based on the workers- similar to the revolutions in China and elsewhere. Of all the Khmer Rouge leaders, none were of a proletarian background, nor did any have experience in organizing the workers. In fact, in 1965, the KR Central Committee decided that industrial workers were all saboteurs, and refused to allow them into the party. This was explained away (but not very well) with some Maoist claptrap by Khieu Samphan:


It is true that the Cambodian communist party was based on the poor peasantry rather than the working class... But you can't use that as an argument for saying it wasn't a Marxist party, or that there was no economic basis for a communist party in Cambodia. In fact, we applied the criterion of 'material conditions' quite correctly, because the poor peasants were the most impoverished, the most oppressed class in Cambodian society, and it was this class that was the foundation of the Cambodian party.

Yeah, about that...

As for the actual rule of the Khmer Rouge, that has been quite well documented- the deportation of everyone from the cities, the "New Man" campaign to force everyone to become an idealized Khmer peasant, the starvation rations, the executions, the provocations against Vietnam that led to their collapse. Can we say the Khmer Rouge was just crazy, and write all the suffering they caused off on insanity? No, that would be idealist to the extreme. There were material conditions- like the US bombing of Cambodia, and the subsequent use the KR served to China and the United States against Vietnam/the USSR, that were not their responsibility. Nevertheless, we must recognize the atrocities as their responsibility, and never slip into naiveté where they are concerned.

[turquino]

The Khmer Rouge were fascists!:scared: Left fascists, but fascists nonetheless. Their ideology was based on Cambodian mythology (fascists are notorious myth makers, see the nazi's aryans or Mussolini's new rome), and they idealized the primitive peasant life.

They may have been anti-big bourgeois and anti-imperialist, but they wouldn't be the first reactionary movement to cloak themselves in progressive-sounding things. I think the lesson we should learn from the Khmer Rouge is that authoritarian politics leads to extreme barbarism.

-turquino

[Hiero]

The Khmer Rouge were fascists! Left fascists, but fascists nonetheless.

They may have been anti-big bourgeois and anti-imperialist,

You can't be fascist and at the same time "anti-big bourgeoise" and "anti-imperialist".

Fascism is the organisation of the bourgeoisie into a coalition with the state as a figure head. Fascism is also imperialist.

So you post makes no sense.

[Dros]

The Khmer Rouge were fascists!

You're an idiot.


Left fascists, but fascists nonetheless.

There is no such thing as a "left fascist". You clearly have no idea what fascism actually is. Perhaps someone should break this to you: fascism is a word with a very specific and historically defined meaning. It does NOT simply refer to people we don't like!


Their ideology was based on Cambodian mythology (fascists are notorious myth makers, see the nazi's aryans or Mussolini's new rome), and they idealized the primitive peasant life.

This is true. Both the Khmer Rouge and the Fascist movement took a sentimentalist and idealistic view of reality and created nationalistic legends to guide their vision of society. This does not make them fascists.

=====

In answer to the OP, Khmer Rouge was NOT a Communist organization, and while a lot of the history about that period is corrupt, it is sadly pretty accurate. There were indeed genocidal efforts against certain nations and strata of Cambodian society that did in fact harm Cambodia for years to come.

[Red October]

I agree with drosera99 on this one. It's messed up that 'fascist' has become a term for any asshole on a power trip. The Khmer Rouge were awful, but certainly not fascists. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone in the modern left who seriously supports the Khmer Rouge's ideology, apart from maybe the Rural People's Party (http://ruralpeople.atspace.org/), who are a bunch of psychopaths.

[redSHARP]

khmer rouge? mistakes happened, we just need to make sure what went wrong and not make them twice.

[Kami]

Back when I was a Christian, during my bout as a baptist, I met a fellow who had grown up under the khmer rouge. He had grown up alone, seperated from his family; his parents had been killed, his sister he didn't know what had happened to. Having heard from him first-hand acounts of such things, as well as many more, forced labour to name but one, I feel it hard to view them on a political level; I hate the ****s, as much now as I did then.

[Sam_b]

khmer rouge? mistakes happened, we just need to make sure what went wrong and not make them twice.

Indeed, but this is more than a mistake. A 'mistake' is like the ISO in America wrongly thinking that the anti-globalization protests were irrelevant. In this case, many many thousands were brutally killed and tortured.

The entire ideology of the organization was fucked from the start, taking an exceptionally extremist view about the peasantry being the most revolutionary class. Such parties heavily rely on such terms as 'Marxism-Leninism' which in itself is a completely (in my view, and i'm ready to be proven wrong) false concept, used by Stalin, the Communist Party of China etc as a way of justifying their governance without a solid Marxist base, and ignoring some fundamental points from both the ideas of Marx and Lenin.

Edit - I should also mention this idea of 'fascism' and echo the posts made by the comrades above. I agree, fascism is used all to much to describe autocracy or governance that we disagree with. This is totally wrong: fascism is a completely separate political ideology, much as socialism is different from capitalism. By banding the word about we severely dilute its real meaning, and that is dangerous on so many levels.

[Marc Gossett]

The subject of the Khymer Rouge should be treated seriously. Making judgements on how "fucked up" a historical tendency is offers no insight into why it exerted the influence it did and how. In a September 2001 article the World Socialist Web Site takes up these questions, and writes:

"The Khmer Rouge is often falsely referred to as “communist”. In reality, it was a grotesque variant of Stalinism, based on opposition to modern industry and culture, a glorification of peasant-based society and a xenophobic Khmer (the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia) nationalism. The practical consequences of its reactionary outlook were disastrous. Upon taking power, the Khmer Rouge’s peasant army forced the population of the cities and towns into the countryside, with the aim of transforming Cambodia into a network of self-sufficient rural communes. Thousands starved. Members of ethnic minorities, particularly Vietnamese, were butchered, as were teachers, intellectuals, artists and other layers declared to be the source of “foreign” ideas. Money, culture and education were prohibited.

...While the UN has declared its involvement is necessary to guarantee “accountability,” its real concern is to prevent the proceedings from probing what happened in the years before and after the Khmer Rouge held power.

Any genuine investigation would be obliged to begin in 1969, when the US, as part of its murderous war against Vietnam, began indiscriminately and illegally bombing Cambodia to prevent it being used as a supply line and safe-haven by Vietnamese liberation fighters.

From 1969 to 1973, without even notifying the US Congress, the Nixon administration dropped over 500,000 bombs and landmines on the country and deployed troops over its border. Over 700,000 Cambodians were killed, economic life devastated and a third of the population rendered homeless. By 1974, production of rice, the staple diet, had fallen to less than 20 percent of the quantity required to feed the country. The urban population—burgeoned by thousands of refugees—relied almost totally on US food aid.

These conditions enabled the Khmer Rouge, a relatively small movement before the US intervention, to win broader support by espousing guerilla war against both the Americans and the CIA-installed Lon Nol government in Phnom Penh. The withdrawal of US forces in 1975 led to the collapse of its puppet regime and opened the way for Pol Pot to come to power. The abrupt ending of US aid was as much a factor in the ensuing starvation across Cambodia as the policies of the Khmer Rouge..."

History is linked on all sides, the development of the Khymer Rouge is inseparable from the evolution of Stalinism and the tensions in Southeast Asia. The form these tensions and particularly the social antagonisms inside Cambodia itself (between city and village) took, reactionary genocide, is only a particular manifestation of broad underlying processes which deserve the attention of serious students of history.

The 2001 Article on the Subject can be found here: wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/camb-s11.shtml

[turquino]

You can't be fascist and at the same time "anti-big bourgeoise" and "anti-imperialist".

Fascism is the organisation of the bourgeoisie into a coalition with the state as a figure head. Fascism is also imperialist.

So you post makes no sense.
Of course it can. Fascism is not simply a tool of the bourgeoisie. For example, the american anti-globalization movement is hijacked by fascists who espouse economic nationalist and anti-zionist things. The big bourgeoisie are annoyed by these types, and would much rather keep state power themselves.



And modern fascism isn’t confined to the imperialist countries either. India probably has the world’s largest fascist movement, and islamic fascism has replaced the left as the opposition to western capitalism and imperialism in some near eastern countries.

When i say the khmer rouge were left fascists, i mean they espoused a socialist sounding programme while trying to construct their mythical khmer supremacist nation. Some nazis were also in favour of a socialistic utopia for their mythical aryan nation, and one built on the barbaric plunder and enslavement of arbitrary categories of people deemed to be inferior. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

-turquino

[Hiero]

Of course it can. Fascism is not simply a tool of the bourgeoisie. For example, the american anti-globalization movement is hijacked by fascists who espouse economic nationalist and anti-zionist things. The big bourgeoisie are annoyed by these types, and would much rather keep state power themselves.



And modern fascism isn’t confined to the imperialist countries either. India probably has the world’s largest fascist movement, and islamic fascism has replaced the left as the opposition to western capitalism and imperialism in some near eastern countries.

When i say the khmer rouge were left fascists, i mean they espoused a socialist sounding programme while trying to construct their mythical khmer supremacist nation. Some nazis were also in favour of a socialistic utopia for their mythical aryan nation, and one built on the barbaric plunder and enslavement of arbitrary categories of people deemed to be inferior. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

-turquino

You have ignored everything that everyone has said about Fascism in this thread.




"The Khmer Rouge is often falsely referred to as “communist”. In reality, it was a grotesque variant of Stalinism, based on opposition to modern industry and culture, a glorification of peasant-based society and a xenophobic Khmer (the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia) nationalism. The practical consequences of its reactionary outlook were disastrous. Upon taking power, the Khmer Rouge’s peasant army forced the population of the cities and towns into the countryside, with the aim of transforming Cambodia into a network of self-sufficient rural communes. Thousands starved. Members of ethnic minorities, particularly Vietnamese, were butchered, as were teachers, intellectuals, artists and other layers declared to be the source of “foreign” ideas. Money, culture and education were prohibite


I often have heard the claim that the Khmer Rouger were primitivist, opposed to modern technology and wanted to create and sustain peasant society. Everytime I hear or read this there is not one shred of evidence comming from any Communist Party of Kampuchea publication to prove this.

[BobKKKindle$]

Left fascists, but fascists nonetheless.

"Fascism" is not a term that can be used to describe any political movement you dislike. The historical conditions which support the emergence of fascism did not exist in Cambodia, and so even though the Khmer Rouge may have had certain features which were similar to those displayed by fascists (for example, targeting and executing a section of the population exhibiting a certain feature) the term "fascist" is not appropriate as a description, and using this term as a political insult shows a failure to understand what fascism actually is.

Trotsky recognized that fascism is based on the class interests of the petty-bourgeoisie but can sometimes gain the support (especially in the form of political funding) of the bourgeoisie, when the ruling class is faced with the danger of a growing radical movement and requires a weapon by which they can disable the radical potential of workers.

[Hiero]

III. THE TASK OF BUILDING THE COUNTRY

Since the war ended, our nation must develop our country rapidly. Angkar has raised this [goal] and has furiously attacked it for one year already. As a result, now we are successful without dependence on foreigners. Of course, our country remains in a difficult situation, but we observe that the difficult factors are not basic at all, such as lack of food, cattle and buffalo, and the people have many illnesses. But as for food, if we recall the [situation] last year, we see that we are progressing a lot.

Emerging from the war, we focus on agricultural tools. This year, we have made these agricultural necessities available to a great extent both in the rural and urban areas, but we have never met with starvation. This year alone, we have rice, cassava and corn. Since 17 April 1975, we have opened a new historical page in which we have brought back the entire production mechanism.

If we are compared to Vietnam and Laos, we see that Vietnam still remains a mixture of classes like Cambodia in 1965, whereas we have a complete class purification. In terms of rice production, Vietnam lacked 1,200,000 tons and Laos invited French companies to help, but we met basic needs which is unique in our history. In China, it is not good and in Russia, pretty good. Our strength is the entire labor force used for agricultural work; no one remains unoccupied. In terms of agriculture, just for one year, we achieved a great deal of production. Functioning of industries has gone smoothly and small factories have been put back into function. Another factor making it easy is the movement of task alteration, experiment, and the availability of agricultural tools.

- Modern agriculture within a 10- to 15-year period.

- Modern industry within a 15- to 20-year period.


All the factories are functioning, but there is still a lack of cotton. The cement, iron-smelting and electricity works in Kirirom are not yet back in operation. Our factories have produced tens of tons of soft-drink, beer, wine, and rubber, per day. Therefore, our workers are now emerging from long-festering poverty.


TRANSPORTATION: Roads, navigation and railways are comfortable. We have taken out all mines planted in the Mekong River, but have not yet pulled ashore all the sunken ships. Our harbors have been constructed. Many foreign ships have now asked permission to use our harbors. Our oil-refinery is functioning. We have discovered almost 100 tons of coal.

AUTHORITY: In early 1976, the administrative system was not clear, but with the resignation of Sihanouk, we have now installed a really clean [administrative structure].

We have organized the People's Representative Assembly, the State Presidium and the Council of Ministers. We have cleared away the feudalist regime. Our current authority is stable and firm. Angkar rules directly and absolutely monopolizes authority.

SOCIAL AFFAIRS AND MEDICAL CARE

- We have built up medical specialists. We are able to produce medicine. We master this field 100% at the moment.

- With respect to culture, we have published booklets for learning. We both work and learn at the same time. We don' t follow the educational system of the old regime.


Thoose quotes come from Ieng Sary A Diary of the Khmer Rouge Foreign Ministry, 1976-79 (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/iengsary.htm#p). With this evidence I don't believe that the Khmer Rouge planed to maintain a peasant based society. The forced exile from the cities was tactical in face of American bombing and lack of production in the argiculture. Also the attack on "intellectuals" was not an anti-intellectual movement. It was part of decolonisation. Bourgeoisie acadamics can't tell the difference between acts of national-liberation and the process of nation building, and neither can some people on the left.

My take on the Communist Party of Kampuchea, is they were a Communist Party that lead a national liberation movement and attempted to build socialism. However facing a aggressive world with betreyal of the revisionist this lead to bad internal problems. Take for instance the quote below.



2. The pests buried within. In our country, 1% to 5% are traitors, [who are] boring in. So we must investigate their personal biographies clearly and carry out self-criticism, especially in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All the embassies want to know about [our] leaders for two reasons, first to report to their countries and second, to fulfil their various goals.

It is not made clear who these traitors are, this lacks Marxist-Leninist thinking. The enemies of the revolution have a class base and class intentions and Communist should make clear who these enemies are. If they are revisionist, reactionary petty bourgeoise, bourgeoise, imperialist, imperialist lackeys or agents this should be stated. This clouded thinking leads to something akin to paranoia, this is one of the problems of Khmer Rouge.

Also look at the bolded statement in the first quote. Completly ridiculous and ignorant of revisionism of the USSR and what was going in China. Also as Marxist we know that class purification (taken that Iegn Sary means classess society) only occurs after socialism, when world communism is achieved.

People should hacve a look over the diary of Ieng Sary and see what they find.

[Marc Gossett]

Citing the Khymer Rouge's own propaganda... In any case, The American bombing was over by the time of the Khymer Rouge which took power in 1975, the year the Americans withdrew from Vietnam, as is stated in the WSWS article. The evacuation of the cities and creation of collectivized labor camps from urban refugees is a historical fact that is to be found in every academic work on the Khymer Rouge. No where is the word "Primitivist" written in my prior post either, the WSWS says that the Khymer Rouge "was a grotesque variant of Stalinism, based on opposition to modern industry and culture, a glorification of peasant-based society and a xenophobic Khmer (the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia) nationalism." Primitivism suggests they sought to rid themselves of all technology and industry, this is incorrect. They evacuated the cities because they could not feed the Urban population, which as a peasant based movement they feared, and their solution was forced agricultural camps. They killed intellectuals and foreigners because of xenophobia and fear of intellectual influence over the population. "Decolonialization" makes no sense, as those that they killed were South East Asians, especially neighboring Vietnamese. Suggesting that it was a national liberation movement is incorrect, they were merely a result of the backwardness and crisis of Cambodia. They were not progressive in any way and merely served as a cap on Cambodian class consciousness that could never have been matched by the bourgeois regime they replaced. Attributing any sort of organizational, planning or educational role to the Khymer Rouge is a direct violation of the reactionary character of the tendency as it actually was. It was a bald, nihilistic and impotent distillation of Stalinism's counter-revolutionary core. It entirely lacked even the progressive veneer of many of the well-known Stalinist regimes, even that of China whose history it sought to emulate on many points. Calling it a standard "Communist Party" and especially a National Liberation movement is a very grave error. The Cambodian people were not liberated by the Khymer Rouge, but kept from any remote possibility of achieving it by them. Interview any Cambodian lucky enough to survive the Khymer Rouge, and he or she will tell you that the national bourgeois government which preceded the Khymer Rouge presided over a golden era.

[Andres Marcos]

the Khmer Rouge's ideology, apart from maybe the Rural People's Party (http://ruralpeople.atspace.org/), who are a bunch of psychopaths.

Jeez im glad you mentioned this. The RPP is ridiculous and absurd, they are also MIMites. There support for psuedo-maoist evangelical Jim Jones is just crazy.(and Raven I still did not forget that prank you pulled about inviting the RPP in the HU!!!)

Relating to the topic, the Khmer Rouge were non-communists(some Maoists actually think they are but they are third worldist MIMites) yes they were anti-imperialists but their program of placing the peasant in a glorious light is not at all progressive and they sought to halt economic progress by focusing on agriculture rather than the industrial proletariat(which could have been helped to create with some help from Maoist China). I feel the same as most everyone though that to call the KR ''left-fascists'' is another typical lazy liberal play to fall back on and really just makes you look like you are labelling anything and anyone a fascist and thus the word has no meaning anymore.



Edit: no damn clue why there is a smily there.:laugh:

[Andy Bowden]

I often have heard the claim that the Khmer Rouger were primitivist, opposed to modern technology and wanted to create and sustain peasant society. Everytime I hear or read this there is not one shred of evidence comming from any Communist Party of Kampuchea publication to prove this.

Why do you need to base your viewpoint of an organisation or party on what they say?

The evidence for the Khmer Rouge being primitivist is inherent and obvious in their strategy - emptying the cities and trying to build "socialism" on peasant labour.

If they were Stalinists they'd at least have industrialised the country.

[PRC-UTE]

If they were Stalinists they'd at least have industrialised the country.

I think that's the main point.

I agree with most of what Marc said previously, except labelling the KR in any way 'Stalinist'. The KR were completely reactionary, attempting to turn back development to primitive communes.

[Hiero]

Why do you need to base your viewpoint of an organisation or party on what they say?

The evidence for the Khmer Rouge being primitivist is inherent and obvious in their strategy - emptying the cities and trying to build "socialism" on peasant labour.

If they were Stalinists they'd at least have industrialised the country.

Primivist implies ideology.

I don't know what to think of emptying the cities. Though I don't view it is trying to maintain the peasant society. Even the peasant organisations, they were created to increase production and address the food problem.

What is the alternative, force all the peasants into the cities? Leave things as they are and risk famine? Force the peasants to create iron in their peasant communes like Mao did?

These problems are the reason I don't like labeling Democratic Kampuchea as primitivist. It implies that we have a complete analysis, when there are many question that have not been answered.

As you said, if they were Stalinist they would have industrialised the nation. This shows two problems.1) How do you do that? 2) That countries in revolution can just copy a base model, Stalin's USSR was in a different era and had different problems, different peasant organisation.

[erupt]

I've read somewhere that Pol Pot and other high ranking members of the Khmer Rouge remarked about Marx's teaching being too hard to understand or something. Also, wasn't anyone who had eye glasses ordered to be killed?

Plain and simple, Pot and his ideal society was idiotic. Regardless if it was a western news channel I saw this on or not, this alone makes me cringe....A peasant was put into a forced labor camp and right before he went a Rouge member killed his wife and son right in front of him. Now this guy was a peasant...someone who should have benefitted from a Communist revolution in a country with many peasants.

To me, the Khmer Rouge were nothing but a couple of people who wanted power. Their existence and the atrocities committed by them is nothing but more bad stigma attached to the word "communism."

[jossfritz]

I am not well-versed Cambodian history, but I did work with Cambodian refugees for a number of years. While all had some serious horror stories to tell about the killing fields, many also told me that they thought the Khmer Rouge had started out positively: they would tour the country offering to help with crops etc. According to the oral histories I was privy to, and this may simply be a case of nationalism on the speakers' parts, the Khmer Rouge was corrupted by Vietnamese communists who trained Pol Pot and others. For my friends from Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge was a grassroots socialism that was co-opted by outsiders.

How it comes about that anyone but a stone cold sadist could carry out Pol Pot's orders is another story.

[chegitz guevara]

Read Michael Vickery's book, Cambodia, 1975-82. He had extensive experience in Cambodia before the revolution and seems to be very friendly towards communism. He places the Cambodian Communist Party's ascent to power in an historical context, discusses the nature of the Cambodia peasantry and examines other peasant based revolutions. He also interviewed a lot of the refugees personally, and you really get a very interesting divergence from the official story.

Interestingly, Khmer Rouge was the government's name for the CPC. Also, after the Khmer Rouge were driven out, they were replaced by the more "mainstream" communist Khmer Rouge.

A lot of what is claimed about the Pol Pot regime isn't true, such as deliberately targeting anyone they thought was an intellectual. In fact, the most dangerous category of person to be was cadre CPC. The number one crime for which people were executed was extra marital sex. But most people starved, because the CPC began hording rice for a planned invasion of Vietnam at the same time as a massive drought.