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Posted on 03/06/2021 5:46:19 AM PST by MtnClimber
About two years ago I visited Cambodia. While there I wrote this January 2019 post, which focused on the “killing fields” genocide that swept Cambodia in 1975-79, during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot. In connection with my trip, I bought the Ben Kiernan history titled “The Pol Pot Regime,” which I have just now gotten around to reading.
Why my fascination with Cambodia in the day of the Khmer Rouge? It is one of the clearest modern instances of leftist/socialist ideology put into practice and then pushed to its logical conclusion. Highly educated elitists got taught a utopian vision of a transformed society with perfect fairness and justice, and they determined to impose that vision upon the backward and unlearned masses in their country. Then they came to power, and got the opportunity to carry out their plans. The circumstances in Cambodia were such that they could implement their plans with few to no constraints. We get to study the results. Any relevance to our current situation is for the reader to draw.
Kiernan’s basic approach is that he sought out and interviewed several hundred Cambodians who lived through the events and survived the genocide. The interviews took place starting after the fall of the regime (1979), through the 1980s and into the early 90s (the first edition of the book came out in 1996). This approach has obvious pluses and minuses. On the plus side, this is primary source, first hand information. On the minus side, the people available for interview were not randomly selected and have major gaps in their collective knowledge. Obviously, none of them were killed. If any of them were involved in the killings, they certainly don’t admit to it. Nor did any of the leaders of the regime submit to interviews, so there is nobody to offer testimony as to “here’s why we did it,” or “here’s what we were trying to accomplish.” Nevertheless, there is much to learn.
Here are the things that I find most interesting:
The “peasant revolution.” Naturally the mythology of the Khmer Rouge movement was that it was a “peasant revolution.” It was the opposite — a movement of pointy-headed elitist utopianists. Pol Pot (birth name: Saloth Sar) was born in 1925 to a relatively wealthy farming family (Kiernan: “In later years the family would have been ‘class enemies.’”) with some 30 acres of land and six buffalo. One of Sar’s cousins was a dancer in the royal palace, and became one of the King’s principal wives; then one of his sisters moved into the palace and also became a royal consort. By the age of six, Sar too had moved into the royal palace, and after that was sent to top French colonial schools of the time. In his early twenties, they sent him off for further education in Paris. Big mistake. That’s where he took up the trendy Communism of the day. What later became the Khmer Rouge inner circle — in addition to Pol Pot, it was the Thiounn brothers, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Son Sen — were all his pals from his days as a student in Paris. Needless to say, poor Cambodian peasants did not get sent off to school in Paris.
Military victory. Cambodia in the early 1970s had a U.S.-backed government headed by a military strongman named Lon Nol. Pol Pot had a guerrilla army called the Khmer Rouge that obtained substantial backing from the Soviet Union and China (Kiernan provides no information on the magnitude of the aid). In 1975 the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, and in connection with that withdrew its support for Lon Nol. The Lon Nol regime quickly fell to the Khmer Rouge.
The vision of the anointed. Pol Pot and his pals took their Communist training with utmost seriousness. During their years fighting in the jungle, they put together a full utopian vision to be implemented when they would have power. They were not going to make the mistakes of prior failed attempts at socialism. Instead, this was going to be a far more pure and vigorous variety of the ideology. The vision — much of which seems ridiculous today — included that the cities would be evacuated and everyone sent to the country to work the fields; private property would be entirely abolished, with personal property mostly confiscated and land held collectively; money would be abolished; markets would be abolished; and the nuclear family would be replaced with communal eating and communal care for children.
The early days. In the telling of Kiernan’s witnesses, there was widespread support for the new regime at the outset in 1975. The cities were quickly emptied without substantial resistance, with most people going to some region or village where they had some relatives or other connections. Most of the “new” people were welcomed in the villages and quickly put to work. The work was heavy and manual — tending rice fields or building irrigation works including dams. In the early days, most of the witnesses report that there was sufficient food to eat.
The “indentured agrarian state.” This is Kiernan’s term for the organization of society imposed by the Khmer Rouge. Essentially all work was in agriculture, and everyone took orders from the central state. Private initiative was not welcome.
The killings begin. In my January 2019 post I reported (based on information received while in Cambodia) that the Cambodian genocide was internal to the Khmer ethnic group, rather than involving the extinction of ethnic minorities. Not quite. Beginning in the early days of the Pol Pot regime (1975), essentially all ethnic minorities in Cambodia were wiped out. From Kiernan, page 251: “Chams, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thais, Lao and twenty other groups, who comprised close to 20 percent of the population, were virtually erased from history by the CPK [Communist Party of Kampuchea].”
The killings continue. Aside from the ethnic minorities, the implication from Kiernan’s interviews is that the killings started slowly, but accelerated as 1975 moved to 1976, 1977 and 1978. As noted, Kiernan’s methodology does not give a good basis for understanding if there was an overall plan behind the killings, and if so, what the plan might have been. From this perspective, the whole thing appears largely random, although it may not have been. Rather than mass deportations, this genocide proceeded more like tens or twenties at a time. Time and again, a witness reports something like “Twenty people were taken away from the village ‘for study.’ We never saw them again.” Some of the disappeared had had disagreements, however minor, with Khmer Rouge authorities, or had resisted ongoing disruptions (like having their children taken away). In the less random category, essentially everyone who had held a position of any significance in the Lon Nol regime disappeared. So did nearly everyone who had substantial education or held a professional job prior to 1975.
The economy deteriorates. Kiernan’s methodology does not provide for any kind of coherent overall view of the economy, and in any event it is likely that no honest aggregate economic statistics exist from this period. However, with witness after witness, the story is the same. In 1975 the food rations were generally adequate, and then they went downhill from there. By 1977 many were starving, and by 1978, almost everybody was hungry and there were large numbers of deaths from starvation.
The denouement. By 1979 the situation had become so unstable that Vietnam, then under the control of the Communist successors to Ho Chi Minh, stepped in and removed Pol Pot. Of an initial population of under 8 million in 1975, about 3 million had died. However, the breakdown of those deaths between murder and starvation is less clear.
So do our pointy-headed elites today have anything comparable to the Khmer Rouge vision to impose upon the common people in order to achieve a version of utopia? You might check out the latest brief video from the World Economic Forum with the title “Lockdowns are quietly improving cities around the world.”
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A really interesting site posted by a conservative NYC attorney.
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Yipe, so closer to 40% of the population was killed, rather than the 20 to 25% bandied around by revisionists. I was young, but I do remember reading the very short articles in the paper about what was happening in that country (particularly the cities being emptied) and how little concern there was for it. The Left in this country, who indirectly orchestrated this genocide by leaving that part of the world to the knives of the Communists, I guess, didn’t have the time to look back and ask whether they did anything wrong by allowing Pol Pot to take over. More pressing matters ahead...
That’s why ANYONE who thinks that they’ll stop if we just give them what they demand, today, is NUTS.
They NEVER stop.
Think about it - 50 years ago, they only wanted to not be arrested for what they did in the bedroom. We gave them it. Now we have Drag Queens in libraries reading to little kids and a Drag Queen testifying to Congress last week. Get it, yet?
By the time the Carter years were through and Reagan was taking on the Sovie Union, I guess this fell through the cracks. I remember only vaguely becoming aware because my college roommate did an Economics paper about Kampuchea. I had never heard of it.
“By the time the Carter years were through and Reagan was taking on the Sovie Union, I guess this fell through the cracks.”
At the time it was Ford, then Carter, and no, no one was talking about it in the US, that I can remember. It was reported real-time, as I noted, but most with people wondering what was going on. But you are probably right in that the genocide wasn’t known until Vietnam invaded, which was just as Iran was being ‘liberated’ from the Shah.
As it is, it still has NEVER been talked about as a failure of Socialism...rather just some insane government. But never forget, it was committed by Cambodians against other Cambodians...something to keep in mind here.
Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the 1960-70s Weather Underground’s post-revolution governing plans for the United States...
Larry Grathwohl:
“I asked, ‘well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?’ and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.
And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say ‘eliminate,’ I mean ‘kill.’ Twenty-five million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people. And they were dead serious.”
_________________________________________
“Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments.
Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at”
—Bill Ayers, co-founder of the communist-revolutionary Weather Underground, 1970 — quoted in The New York Times, September 11, 2001
_______________________
“Dig It. First they killed those pigs [ie, rich people/capitalists], then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!”
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, referring to the Manson murders
_______________________
“It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming ‘community organizer,’ had his political coming out party in 1995.
Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World - where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working ‘only to educate’ - both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers.”
Article: The Company He Keeps: Meet Obama’s circle:
The same old America-hating Left
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Online, April 11, 2008
________________________
“As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who [Bernardine] Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam.
Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with Vietnamese communists in Toronto. He later recalled being so moved by the gesture that he ‘left the room to cry.’
—American Thinker, September 16, 2008
________________________
“They’re certainly friendly” -quote from ‘Obama’s chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago’s political tribes), David Axelrod,’ on the Bill Ayers, Obama relationship.
—Politico
The left, through history, has not changed much at all.
As a matter of fact, in percentage killed, it was the largest regime killing of its own people in human history.
And really quite recent. I remember it very well.
It was the Vietnamese invasion, which finally stopped it.
Somehow, after all the killing, Pol Pot got still enough followers to wage guerrilla war for a long while.
The more moderate communists are in charge there even today. And the country is still in trouble.
I have been warning about these various communist organizations and the movement in general on here and elsewhere for nearly 25 years. Most go directly back to the 60s and 70s. When I began doing it here years ago, there were actually people who accused me of exaggerating or even being “paranoid”. They were upset at me for using the then-dreaded “C-word” to describe what these groups and the movement were really about.
s/
I know the feeling about people laughing off the threat and saying it could never happen here. I think much of it is normalcy bias. They will be in denial as they are being led to the railroad car.
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In 1985, Rosenberg was convicted for possessing hundreds of pounds of explosives. She and her organizations involved in multiple robberies, police officer assassinations, and bombings.
Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in prison. She spent 16-years in federal prison before being pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day in office.
Now, Rosenberg is leading the fundraising efforts for Black Lives Matter. ...”
Posted: July 9, 2020, KUSI Newsroom
(KUSI-TV is an independent television station licensed to San Diego, California)
_____________________________________________
“Released in 2001 when then-President Bill Clinton [on his last day in office, Jan 20, 2001] commuted her sentence.”
_____________________________________________
Susan Rosenberg is a convicted domestic terrorist and radical left activist ...”
A member of the [communist-revolutionary] Weather Underground and other radical organizations which used violence as a tool for political change, Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in federal prison after being arrested for possession of explosives and weapons during the planning of a number of bombing operations. [1]
She was also a suspect in a 1981 armored car robbery which left one guard and two officers dead.
She was released in 2001 when then-President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. [2] ...”
“After Rosenberg’s parole request was denied, President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence on his last day in office. ...”
Clinton also commuted the 40-year sentence of Rosenberg co-conspirator Linda Sue Evans. [35]
Evans was imprisoned for 11 counts of false identification used to purchase firearms and for harboring a fugitive related to the armored car murders. [36]
She was also convicted in 1990 for participating in a number of terrorist bombings, including at the U.S. Capitol Building. [37]”
influencewatch org / person/ susan rosenberg
And I could be speaking ... figuratively. I could be speaking literally.
It’s a matter of interpretation. ...”
—Victor Garcia | Fox News | June 24, 2020
ERIC MANN, Part 1 of 2
“[Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse] Cullors, 36, was the protégé of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization”
________________________________________
Black Lives Matter co-founder describes herself as ‘trained Marxist’
by Yaron Steinbuch, New York Post, June 25, 2020
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a newly surfaced video from 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists” – making clear their movement’s ideological foundation, according to a report.
Cullors, 36, was the protégé of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization, and spent years absorbing the Marxist-Leninist ideology that shaped her worldview, Breitbart News reported.
“The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers,” she said, referring to BLM co-founder Alicia Garza.
“We are trained Marxists. ...”
___________________________________
Part 2 of 2, ERIC MANN
“Mann was elected to SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] national committee in 1968.[18] He told the Associated Press that he believed in “continuous resistance” against “institutions and policies of corporate capitalism” and that SDS chapters transition from campus protests groups to community groups that would guide students as a “de facto government.”[19]
When SDS splintered into three groups in 1969, Mann, then a leader in the SDS faction, the Weathermen (Weather Underground), adopted the Revolutionary Youth Movement’s belief that violent “direct action,” a euphemism for terrorism, should be used as a tactic to dismantle the group’s perceived power centers of “US imperialism”.[20]
Mann and 20 others were arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs, which the Revolutionary Youth Movement saw as a university-sponsored institution for counter-insurgency.[14] [21]
Mann and 24 other Weathermen were charged with conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the police headquarters on November 8, 1969.
Mann surrendered to the police on four counts stemming from the November 8 incident: conspiracy to commit murder, assault with intent to commit murder, promotion of anarchy, and threatening.[22]
Mann was sentenced to two years in prison of which he spent 18 months in Billerica, Deer Island, and Concord State Prison ...”
_____________________________________________________
They are in the same camp with the radical left groups here in the US.
[excerpt]
"...while Black Lives Matter claim to oppose police abuse and racism around the world, the organization is simultaneously a great supporter of some of the world’s most brutal and repressive dictators. In particular, the founders of BLM have been staunch supporters and allies of the sanguinary Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro and of the Castro regime in Cuba.
In December 2015 Black Lives Matter sent a delegation, headed by the organization’s co-founder, Opal Tometi, to act as observers during the Venezuelan Parliamentary elections of that year. The Maduro regime did not allow accreditation for observers from the Organization of American States, the UN, or the EU. The only accredited observers where from regimes and organizations friendly to the “revolutionary cause.”
Later that same month Tometi penned an article where she espouses, word for word, the regime’s standard text for international propaganda.
“In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world ,” wrote Tometi about one of the world’s most corrupt voting systems in history.
Earlier in 2015 Maduro was given an award at the Afro-descenndants Summit” held in Harlem. Maduro was invited at the behest of the Black Lives Matter leadership. ..."
[Venezuelan President] Nicolas Maduro with Opal Tometi (right), co-founder
of Black Lives Matter, in Harlem, Manhattan, December 2015.
______________________________________________________________________
Also in 2015...
Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow's Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said.
Shoygu met with defense and military leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and signed several agreements on warship visits and military training during the visit, which ran from Feb 11 to 14.
It is not clear whether any new arms deals were completed during the visit.
Defense officials said the Russian leader is seeking bases in the region for strategic bomber flights that Shoygu recently promised would include flights over the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. ..."
____________________________________
2020...
Russia has pledged to boost military and economic co-operation with Venezuela to help the South American nation deal with growing US pressure.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s comments came after his meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas.
Mr Lavrov said any attempts to remove Mr Maduro’s government by force were unacceptable.
The US accuses Mr Maduro of leading a corrupt and brutal regime. ...”
“Russia is a key ally of Venezuela, lending it billions of dollars and backing its oil industry and military.”
______________________________________________________________________
By Lara Seligman | April 8, 2019
As U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security team mulls a military intervention to oust Venezuela’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, the Pentagon is watching China’s commercial and financial creep in the crisis-gripped nation with growing alarm.
In an interview with Foreign Policy, Adm. Craig Faller, the four-star military officer who heads U.S. Southern Command, pointed to a Chinese disinformation campaign designed to blame the United States for the blackouts that devastated Venezuela in recent weeks. ..."
Maduro, whose government is backed by China, Russia, and Cuba, has himself publicly accused the U.S. Defense Department of causing the blackouts. Following the power failures, Beijing offered to help the Venezuelan government restore its grid. ...”
Yeah, that’s what I don’t get I.e., different this time. Has he ever been asked how it will be different and in what context? Would be of interest to pin 📌 that down.
They have no other objective. That part of leftism is continuous and consistent.
Our own commie Democrats are currently, quite publicly, advocating genocide of anyone who doesn't agree with them. And that on the heels of half a million dying from our Democrat-facilitated bio-warfare from the CCP.
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