[HN Gopher] The Khmer Rouge: Genocide in the Name of Utopia
___________________________________________________________________
The Khmer Rouge: Genocide in the Name of Utopia
Author : exolymph
Score : 119 points
Date : 2020-07-14 19:57 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openendedsocialstudies.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (openendedsocialstudies.org)
| ralfd wrote:
| Funny, did you find that from the ,,notice the skulls" reference
| in a certain subreddit?
| Jenz wrote:
| > The Khmer Rouge believed that parents were tainted with
| capitalism, so they separated children from their parents,
| indoctrinated them in communism, and taught them torture methods
| with animals. Children were a "dictatorial instrument of the
| party" and were given leadership in torture and executions.
|
| This sounds like it's taken straight out of Orwells 1984.
| notahacker wrote:
| Wait until you read about the forced confession extraction in
| S-21 / Tuol Sleng...
| Jenz wrote:
| I came back here in a hurry, having just read that part...
| where did they get this from? Why on earth would they be
| interested in forcing 'confessions' out of people, just to
| execute them later?
|
| Maybe my initial comment should be that this _is_ taken out
| from [a book] that both Orwell, and the Khmer Rouge has read;
| which book would this be?
| botwriter wrote:
| If you're ever in Cambodia you should go it will change you.
| sfpoet wrote:
| I still get chills hearing about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
| This article struck me in a different way: the farmers vs
| urbanites. I never saw it this way before.
| mc32 wrote:
| It doesn't matter who. The mechanism is always divide and
| conquer with the help of "useful idiots" in their parlance who
| are usually very enthusiastic members who believe the dogma a
| little too much and thus get in the way of "progress" and get
| "ditched" so to speak.
| refurb wrote:
| The Khmer Rouge weren't dumb. Pol Pot came from a wealthy
| family and was educated at the top French-Cambodian schools.
|
| Similar to the North Vietnamese massacre of 3,000 civilians
| during the Battle of Hue, it's the doctors, teachers,
| professors and other elite who have the power to oppose you.
| The rural folks have little power or money to resist.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Pol Pot came from a wealthy family and was educated at the
| top French-Cambodian schools._
|
| And actually went to Paris for schooling.
| topspin wrote:
| Russia exhibited the opposite phenomena. In part it was
| urbanites vs farmers. The "kulak" was the source of all evil
| and had to be brought to heel through collectivization.
|
| The most effective technique the Soviets found to accomplish
| this was mass starvation.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I mostly agree - though the role of complete incompetence and
| mismanagement shouldn't be overlooked.
| grandridge wrote:
| The modern left, antifa and blm are no different
| walrus01 wrote:
| For anyone who hasn't seen it, I recommend watching The Killing
| Fields. Obviously it's from a very British/American perspective.
| Since I doubt that the film production companies that made it are
| earning much, if any revenue from it these days, I don't feel bad
| about linking to a torrent of it:
|
| https://rarbg.to/torrent/cbm3x4z
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields_(film)
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Highly recommended. Haing Ngor won the Best Supporting Academy
| Award for his portrayal which also may have offended Pol
| Pot/the Khmer rouge enough to get him killed. [0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haing_S._Ngor
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Defense attorneys suggested the murder was a politically
| motivated killing carried out by sympathizers of the Khmer
| Rouge, but offered no evidence to support this theory.[13]
| Kang Kek Iew, a former Khmer Rouge official on trial in
| Cambodia, claimed in November 2009 that Ngor was murdered on
| Pol Pot's orders, but U.S. investigators did not find him
| credible."
|
| More likely just murder and theft, it seems.
| [deleted]
| chinhodado wrote:
| As a Vietnamese, one of the sad thing about this whole ordeal was
| how Vietnam's involvement in this was viewed under a very
| negative light by the world.
|
| The year was 1978. Vietnam had just came out of the country's
| great war 3 years earlier, and was extremely exhausted to put it
| lightly. The last thing it wanted was getting in another war. But
| it had no choice. The Khmer Rouge crossed the Cambodian -
| Vietnamese border, looted nearby villages and massacred the
| people. You can read up on the details, but be warned the
| atrocities will ruin your day.
|
| Under the circumstances which can be argued as an existential
| threat, Vietnam had no choice but to launch attack on the Khmer
| Rouge and swiftly got rid of them and liberated the Cambodian
| people, ending the genocide.
|
| Yet the world's view on this has been incredibly negative. Even
| now, Vietnam is often seen as the invader, the aggressor in the
| conflict instead of the Cambodian people's liberator.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I can tell you that from at least this Canadian's perspective,
| using military force to eliminate the Khmer Rouge was no less
| necessary than using military force to eliminate the Nazi
| control of Germany. I think you'll find that among people who
| have extensively studied asian and southeast asian history and
| military topics, it's almost universally agreed upon how evil
| their regime was.
|
| The full weight of the evidence for how many people they
| killed, which only surfaced by the mid to late 1980s, only
| further reinforces this.
| notahacker wrote:
| Vietnam's removal of the Khmer Rouge was certainly necessary
| and ultimately spared a lot of people further suffering, but
| Vietnam's 'good guy' status in the conflict is somewhat dented
| by the fact that they'd provided the military support to help
| install the Khmer Rouge in the first place [see also a lot of
| other 'world policing' actions...] before the Khmer Rouge
| decided that Vietnam was an enemy due to a mix of ethnic and
| ideological hatred and being on different sides of the Sino
| Soviet split.
|
| The Sino Soviet split was also a big deal for international and
| especially Western perceptions of Vietnamese involvement at the
| time: China at the time not only viewed Vietnam as an enemy but
| also the Khmer Rouge as an ally, and even pressured other anti-
| Vietnamese Cambodian exile factions to involve the defeated
| Khmer Rouge in their government in exile.
|
| The regime the Vietnamese installed was less spectacularly
| genocidal but certainly very dubious, although it says a lot
| about the weirdness of Cambodian realpolitik that Hun Sen, the
| former Khmer Rouge cadre the Vietnamese installed as deputy PM,
| has held continuous office since then through years of
| decreasing Vietnamese influence and then a transition to
| notional multiparty democracy and capitalist oligarchy
| including coalitions with his former enemies. And that's even
| before we get into how many times the Cambodian king switched
| sides...
| peisistratos wrote:
| The US tends to play word games to where they never armed the
| Taliban, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the 1970s and 1980s.
|
| In the same manner its easy to play word games to where after
| years of screaming headlines about genocide (which I guess does
| not include the US carpet bombing of Cambodia), as soon as the
| Khmer Rouge, whatever that is supposed to be, gets pushed out of
| power in 1979, the US begins aiding the KR in a myriad of ways,
| including in 1985 when it began somewhat openly, somewhat
| clandestinely, arming the Khmer Rouge. ( This marks the start of
| the heavy armament https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/10/world/u-s-
| may-help-2-rebe... - note all the denials that any of the arms
| are going to the KR - later reports showed they indeed were).
|
| It's kind of amusing to watch Americans in hysterics claiming a
| group is committing genocide, then arming that group for victory
| in their civil war, then going back to tearing their shirts about
| this genocide they claim happened. If it happened, then the good
| old USA armed the KR after all the period it supposedly happened.
| drocer88 wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that the U.S. directly supported the
| Taliban or al-Qaeda?
| walrus01 wrote:
| They didn't, he's oversimplifying it greatly. The US armed
| the Mujahadeen throughout the 1980s (through the Pakistani
| ISI and Pakistani state), leaving behind a vast amount of
| unused weaponry in Afghanistan. This was during the period
| prior to the soviet ground forces' withdrawal from
| Afghanistan and prior to the ending of the Najibullah
| government, and the killing of Najibullah.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Najibullah
|
| It definitely is a fact that during the 1980s the US pursued
| a policy of "the enemy of my enemy...", in which the hardcore
| fundamentalist/sharia law politics and religious ideology of
| some of the mujahadeen they supported (Bin Laden included),
| were seen as secondary or tertiary to the primary mission of
| killing soviet soldiers, and bringing about the end of the
| soviet-backed government.
|
| _Some_ of the former Muj, predominantly the very
| fundamentalist Pashtun factions, later became the Taliban
| which seized Kandahar in 1994, and then Kabul in 1996. At
| that point the US had not been supporting them for at least 4
| years. After the Taliban became an actual "thing" the US
| shifted its support to the northern alliance/northern
| warlords such as Dostum and Massoud.
| banads wrote:
| There is lots of evidence of the US supporting gangsters
| throughout the middle east and then later going to war
| against them. So much so, that the intelligence agencies
| responsible invented a word for it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_(intelligence)
| refurb wrote:
| You're playing word games too. The US never armed the Taliban.
| Yes, the US armed anti-Soviet fighters in the 80's and many of
| those fighter ended up joining the Taliban years later, but to
| say "the US armed the Taliban" is being dishonest.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| It's enlightening to contemplate the impact of such a thing, all
| the way out to the song "Holiday in Cambodia." Imagine seeing a
| tree with a plaque on it stating that this was the place where
| they used to smash infants' heads against the trunk. They were
| always just one murder away from achieving perfection, and in
| light of such a goal, what is a single life?
|
| I was recently remarking to someone on their Year Zero, their
| willful destruction of all that had gone before. Certainly we
| have seen it with ISIS and Mao encouraged it for that revolution,
| but this was much more thorough. Pagodas were turned into
| warehouses and statues were of course destroyed. It certainly
| seem to be a common thread in communist revolutions: all that has
| gone before must be destroyed.
|
| Now I am going to see if I cannot find Spalding Gray's _Swimming
| to Cambodia_.
| mc32 wrote:
| I hope this gets thoughtful discussion.
|
| The events are very tragic. I know people whose families were in
| danger of being sent to the camps --they escaped though laborious
| trudging through jungle at night, escape to Vietnam and then HK
| as boat people before moving on to better places.
|
| How does idealism end up in such a dark ditch like this where
| your own neighbor thinks the horror is so bad they have to go in
| a clean things up, despite nominally being "on the same side"
| phenkdo wrote:
| Because at some point they run out of people to blame, and turn
| on each other.
| enitihas wrote:
| Almost any country which tries full on communism sadly ends up
| in a similar scenario. See USSR, Mao's China. In Mao's China,
| it was well apparent that the communal farms weren't working
| and even the people's daily wrote a story on it. The then high
| ranking party officials also opposed them. But Mao still got
| rid of them all and continued, causing several famines.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The USSR at least pushed _hard_ for science, engineering and
| technology education. Political party type and organization
| aside, the rapid growth of their electrical grid and large-
| scale engineering projects (hydroelectric dams, airports,
| nuclear power, hospitals etc) in the post-1945 era was quite
| rapid.
|
| The Khmer Rouge and its strongly anti-intellectual stance was
| quite the opposite. You can't return an entire country to an
| agrarian subsistence agriculture system and literally kill
| off every educated person that can be found, and expect good
| results...
| clon wrote:
| Much of the "progress" in the USSR was based on slave
| labour [1]. And it was not limited to just physical labour.
| Many intellectual feats were also the product of people
| working in, what essentially amounts to, a prison [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
| mc32 wrote:
| As far as I understand it they also in many cases
| virtually held scientists or their families hostage to
| the outcome. Fail and you or your family gets sent to the
| gulags. One example is Yuri Gagarin's cosmonaut partner
| and his getting burned on re-entry due to rushing things
| to get under a deadline to avoid "consequences".
| walrus01 wrote:
| Or if not sent to the gulags, sent back to a much lower
| standard of living. People with the equivalent of masters
| degrees in electrical engineering, aerospace, structural
| engineering etc could expect to have a fairly decent
| apartment, chance to get in the waiting list to acquire a
| family car, and other "high standard of living" compared
| to persons working in a manual labor job. Fail at
| whatever scientific or engineering endeavor your project
| was working on, and expect to lose your nice apartment
| and benefits...
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| The slave labor that the USSR used was abhorrent.
|
| According to this study [0] the gulag deaths were
| approximately 830,000 from 1934 to 1953. It is important
| to know however that 70% of the deaths occurred between
| 1941 and 1944 (included) so they can kinda be attributed
| to difficulties from War Period. Also, it's important to
| note that antibiotics didn't become available until after
| WW2.
|
| To put things into perspective, I have an interesting
| comparison for you. Using the same source as above for
| the USSR, and this report [1] from the Bureau of Justice
| Statistics we can say that Mortality in the gulag in 1953
| (236 deaths per 100,000 prisoners) was lower than
| mortality in US prisons today, both in state prisons (303
| deaths per 100,000 prisoners) and federal prisons (252
| deaths per 100,000 prisoners).
|
| Hope it's useful.
|
| [0]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597?read-
| now=1&refreqid=exc...
|
| [1]: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6766
| haberman wrote:
| What is that comparison meant to show?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| that atrocities are not the domain of any particular
| political or economic ideology or system, but rather a
| danger that we need to fight against actively everywhere,
| and now.
| clon wrote:
| A close friend's father was one of the persons to return
| from Gulag. He was one of the few people that buried the
| rest of the camp, due to him being immune to whatever
| disease that killed everyone else. Survived, came back
| and conceived my friend, all thanks to a lucky mutation
| somewhere.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > the rapid growth of their electrical grid and large-scale
| engineering projects (hydroelectric dams, airports, nuclear
| power, etc) in the post-1945 era was quite rapid.
|
| Some of the large construction projects, were built with
| slave labor. Not all of course, but many where.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gulag_camps. "The
| Road of Bones" is famous as well
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway
|
| And while science and engineering was promoted later,
| during Stalin's time, a lot of intellectuals were purged
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
|
| ---
|
| In the 1920s and 1930s, 2,000 writers, intellectuals, and
| artists were imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and
| concentration camps. After sunspot development research was
| judged un-Marxist, twenty-seven astronomers disappeared
| between 1936 and 1938.
|
| [...]
|
| Official figures put the total number of documentable
| executions during the years 1937 and 1938 at
| 681,692,[1][92] in addition to 136,520 deaths in the
| Gulag;[3] whereas the total estimate of deaths brought
| about by Soviet repression during the Great Purge ranges
| from 950,000 to 1.2 million
|
| ---
| kennxfl wrote:
| They were particularly encouraging of scientific endeavors
| that contributed to national posterity over other nations
| and disregarded the rest. Intellectual pursuits in politics
| and really any criticism of government or social norms
| could get one easily disappeared.
| SiVal wrote:
| The Soviet universities also had Marxist agriculture
| departments that guaranteed year after year of food
| shortages due to "bad weather". Anyone who disagreed was
| purged until only Marxists, whom they defined as the only
| true "intellectuals", remained.
|
| True anti-intellectualism is when you don't allow
| intellectual debate. It doesn't require emptying the
| universities entirely. It is sufficient to empty them of
| anyone who doesn't sufficiently support the mandated
| opinions. You can then define those politically pure
| supporters as the "intellectuals" and anyone who doesn't go
| along with them as, by definition, "anti-intellectual". You
| then have an anti-intellectual system where intellectual
| debate has been silenced, but the universities remain open
| and anyone who disputes their pronouncements is on the
| outside and is called "anti-intellectual".
| enitihas wrote:
| The USSR pushed hard for science which could improve the
| nation's global standing, like space missions.
|
| The USSR was no less anti intellectual in other fields like
| biology:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
| cousin_it wrote:
| The story of Vavilov's arrest, torture and death simply
| for being right about genetics is one of the clearest
| arguments against Soviet communism. Another one is the
| story of Schastny, who saved the Baltic fleet for the
| Bolsheviks and was promptly killed because it made him
| look too good.
| [deleted]
| 1123581321 wrote:
| That is why critiquing and opposing bad ideas is important.
| Idealism and altruism do not inherently improve or redeem goals
| or philosophies.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| agreed, authoritarianism is something we should leave in the
| 20th century.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'd hesitate to say there was anything idealistic about the
| Khmer Rouge: you'll find more idealism in the actions of
| Stalin or Hitler. It wasn't even a sincere outbreak of angry
| hatred: the leadership were all members of the educated
| classes they condemned to hard labour and pogroms.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| "In Washington, then-Representative Christopher Dodd of
| Connecticut averred: ``The greatest gift our country can give to
| the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to
| accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now.''"
|
| "In the news columns of The New York Times, the celebrated Sydney
| Schanberg wrote of Cambodians that ``it is difficult to imagine
| how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans
| gone.'' He dismissed predictions of mass executions in the wake
| of a Khmer Rouge victory: ``It would be tendentious to forecast
| such abnormal behavior as national policy under a Communist
| government once the war is over.'' On April 13, 1975, Schanberg's
| dispatch from Phnom Penh was headlined, ``Indochina without
| Americans: for most, a better life.''"
|
| http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/...
| aaron695 wrote:
| I think by far the best documentary on Cambodia is -
|
| The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock'n'Roll (2015)
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4678238/
|
| It ties the past to the present and it doesn't bring the whole
| country to that one incident but also acknowledges it has
| affected so much.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| Oh didn't know there was a documentary, will check it out. I
| saw them do a musical in Kampot which was very interesting. RIP
| Srey Thy, too early.
| Freeboots wrote:
| In a similar vein, Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost
| Rock and Roll
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| So much of the tragedy of our times has been along those lines.
| Reading this book (amongst others) about the atrocities committed
| in service of the British idea of utopia in India evoked similar
| feelings: https://www.amazon.com/Inglorious-Empire-What-British-
| India/....
|
| In comparison, the turn towards soft power in the 21st century on
| the macro (political) and micro (personal) levels is much
| appreciated, despite all of its ills.
| wow_no wrote:
| This time, I'll make Utopia work, because I'm a better person
| than those who tried before. I believe all the right things,
| after all.
| rado wrote:
| Didn't Kissinger's atrocious bombing of Cambodia help pave way
| for the Khmer Rouge?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Yes, and if you want an example of American political hypocrisy
| in things like international war crimes courts, I'm honestly
| astonished that people like Slobodan Milosevic were prosecuted,
| but Kissinger hasn't spent the past 30 years in a prison cell.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm sure there is some hyperbole in your comment - no part of
| it is even faintly surprising I don't think. The idea of an
| American soldier being prosecuted by that court just seems so
| far fetched. The wiki is worth a read, and some of the US
| concerns certainly make you think, however the opposition
| overall is rather lame. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite
| d_States_and_the_Intern...
| rumanator wrote:
| > I'm honestly astonished that people like Slobodan Milosevic
| were prosecuted, but Kissinger hasn't spent the past 30 years
| in a prison cell.
|
| In your opinion what did Kissinger do that amounts to
| genocide of his own people, not to mention the string of
| assassinations of his domestic opponents?
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| I don't know enough about Kissinger to have a strong
| opinion about him, but I think the idea is that Kissinger
| got away with a lot of awful stuff because he was
| responsible for a lot of horrendous things done to other
| peoples. If Hitler had left the Jews in Germany and Austria
| alone and just killed the Jews in Poland would that have
| made things any better?
|
| Again, I am not taking a stance since I haven't done enough
| research, just explaining why theoretically someone could
| think that Kissinger committed crimes against humanity
| without killing any Americans or even violating American
| laws.
| andrepd wrote:
| Genocide of other people.
| rumanator wrote:
| Could you please point out which genocide are you talking
| about?
| andrepd wrote:
| I will talk about one in particular which hits close to
| home, since I have people in my extended family which
| were killed there. The genocide in Timor-Leste, which
| killed 150,000 to 200,000 people. If that doesn't seem
| that much at first glance, the population of Timor in
| 1975 was _688,000_. That invasion was: _approved_ or even
| _suggested by the US (Kissinger and Ford met with Suharto
| on the eve of the invasion to give the OK),_ financed* by
| the US, with troops _trained_ by the US and _armed_ by
| the US.
|
| The reason? The people of that small, freshly liberated
| country were on the verge of holding their first
| democratic elections, and dangerously close to choosing a
| left-wing party to govern them, of their own free will.
|
| That being said perusing his wikipedia page should give
| you many things to read about.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I am not sure how many Americans are even aware of how
| extensively the USA supported Suharto militarily, no
| matter what he did, because he was supposedly anti
| communist.
| rumanator wrote:
| So your biggest complain about Kissinger is that he
| didn't opposed the initiative of a foreign country to
| invade and assassinate civilians of a smaller neighboring
| country?
| walrus01 wrote:
| The international war crimes court is not limited to only
| persons who have committed genocide against their own
| people.
| rumanator wrote:
| You're the one who decided to explicitly compare
| Kissinger with Milosevic. Milosevic was trialed for his
| role in he Bosnian genocide, among other war crimes. If
| you cannot understand why Milosevic was on trial but
| Kissinger wasn't then please explain, in your own word,
| what did Kissinger do that was worse than genocide of his
| own people.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Milosevic was tried not for genocide against his own
| group of people, but an opposing ethnic/religious group
| in a civil war. Are you trying to say that because the
| area where the conflict took place was within the
| boundaries of the former state of Yugoslavia, the people
| his forces killed were "his own people"?
|
| Perhaps you may wish to familiarize yourself with the
| ethnic and religious differences between the Serbian
| forces commanded by Milosevic and the persons they
| killed.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I'm curious as well, what did Kissinger do that puts in
| the same category as Milosevic?
| walrus01 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu
|
| "In his diary in March 1969, Nixon's chief of staff, H.
| R. Haldeman, noted that the final decision to carpet bomb
| Cambodia 'was made at a meeting in the Oval Office Sunday
| afternoon, after the church service'.
|
| In his diary on 17 March 1969, Haldeman wrote:
|
| Historic day. K[issinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" finally
| came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is
| P[resident].
|
| And the next day:
|
| K's "Operation Breakfast" a great success. He came
| beaming in with the report, very productive. A lot more
| secondaries than had been expected. Confirmed early
| intelligence. Probably no reaction for a few days, if
| ever. "
| rumanator wrote:
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu
|
| Did you missed the part of your own source where it says
| that the operation targetted North Vietnamese Army bases
| within Cambodja?
|
| Does that count like a genocide at all, let alone a worse
| genocide than Milosevic's Bosnian genocide?
| rumanator wrote:
| > Milosevic was tried not for genocide against his own
| group of people, but an opposing ethnic/religious group
| in a civil war.
|
| Wrong. Milosevic was trialed for his role on the Bosnian
| genocide, which included the assassinations of Bosnian
| serbs.
|
| Even if you believe that although Milosevic was president
| of Yugoslavia then no breakaway Yugoslav republic can be
| counted as his people, you can't turn a blind eye to
| Bosnian serbs.
| ngold wrote:
| Apparently his only punishment was investing in theranos.
| tlear wrote:
| Communist ideology payed way for Khmer Rouge.
| peisistratos wrote:
| Kissinger's documented order was "anything that flies on
| anything that moves".
|
| While the Nuremberg trials had a lot of evidence, they never
| had such direct documentary evidence of a call for genocide
| like that.
|
| (or is that overblown? Perhaps only for the Cambodians fighting
| against the CIA backed coup of Lon Nol should shirts be torn in
| accusations of genocide).
| rumanator wrote:
| > Kissinger's documented order was "anything that flies on
| anything that moves".
|
| Wrong. That quote is a report from a direct order from Nixon.
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/.
| ..
| peisistratos wrote:
| So your counterpoint is that the call to genocide was one
| he relayed directly from the president of the USA?
|
| The "I was only following orders" defense did not fly at
| the Nuremberg trials.
| rumanator wrote:
| > So your counterpoint is that the call to genocide was
| one he relayed directly from the president of the USA?
|
| I presented no counterpoint, I've pointed out the fact
| that you're basing your accusations on claims that are
| patently wrong, if not intentionally false and
| disingenuous.
|
| And while on the topic of disingenuous statements, please
| revise your sources because the Cambodja bombing campaign
| does not come close to fit the definition of genocide.
| bezmenov wrote:
| > People usually refer to the bombing of Cambodia as if it had
| been unprovoked, secretive U.S. action. The fact is that we
| were bombing North Vietnamese troops that had invaded Cambodia,
| that were killing many Americans from these sanctuaries, and we
| were doing it with the acquiescence of the Cambodian
| government, which never once protested against it, and which,
| indeed, encouraged us to do it... Why is it moral for the North
| Vietnamese to have 50,000 to 100,000 troops in Cambodia, why
| should we let them kill Americans from that territory... and
| why in all these conditions is there a moral issue?
|
| Henry Kissinger on the bombing of Cambodia in 1969
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| American/Western leftists supported and celebrated the Khmer
| Rouge revolution. In 1975, President Ford tried to resist the
| de-funding of anti-Khmer Rouge pro-American regime but the
| Democratic controlled congress stripped every nickel of US
| support. Chris Dodd and many other prominent leftists
| celebrated the move and welcomed the new future for Cambodia.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| More than that, the Khmer Rouge were actively supported by the
| US.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States...
| drocer88 wrote:
| Your link says "Allegations". What is proven? Not much. The
| article suggests the U.S. was not too keen on Vietnamese
| occupation of Cambodia and when they did actively support a
| group it was the non communist groups. China and Thailand
| actively supported the Khmer Rouge.
| refurb wrote:
| Your article says "allegations", but you're stating it as
| fact.
| truculent wrote:
| It also has a section "Undisputed US support"
| refurb wrote:
| Which makes up about 5% of the claims and when you read
| it you're like "ok, they wanted the KR to keep their UN
| seat".
| cousin_it wrote:
| And when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and stopped the genocide in
| two weeks, this happened:
|
| > _Although Sihanouk distanced himself from the human rights
| abuses of the Khmer Rouge, he accused Vietnam of using
| aggression to violate Kampuchea 's sovereignty. As such, he
| demanded all UN countries suspend aid to Vietnam and not
| recognize the Vietnamese-installed regime. Subsequently,
| seven non-aligned members of the UN Security Council
| submitted a draft resolution calling for a ceasefire and the
| withdrawal of all foreign forces from Kampuchea, which was
| endorsed by China, France, Norway, Portugal, the United
| States and the United Kingdom. However, the resolution was
| not approved due to opposition from the Soviet Union and
| Czechoslovakia._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese.
| ..
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| >As described in PBS's Frontline documentary series, "Instead of
| becoming pariahs, the Khmer Rouge continued to play a significant
| role in Cambodian politics for the next two decades.The Khmer
| Rouge would likely not have survived without the support of its
| old patron China and a surprising new ally: the United States.
| Norodom Sihanouk, now in exile after briefly serving as head of
| state under the Khmer Rouge, formed a loose coalition with the
| guerillas to expel the Vietnamese from Cambodia. The United
| States gave the Sihanouk-Khmer Rouge coalition millions of
| dollars in aid while enforcing an economic embargo against the
| Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government. The Carter administration
| helped the Khmer Rouge keep its seat at the United Nations,
| tacitly implying that they were still the country's legitimate
| rulers."
| leephillips wrote:
| This was aided by Noam Chomsky, who used his considerable
| influence to cast doubt on the idea that the genocide had
| happened at all.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Ignoring how you are misconstruing his views on the genocide,
| when has Chomsky had considerable influence on US foreign
| policy?
| Cyph0n wrote:
| We're going to need a reference for this one.
| notahacker wrote:
| https://chomsky.info/19770625/
|
| Perhaps the worst bit is where he dismisses the testimony
| of thousands of Cambodian refugees as 'refugees questioned
| by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting
| atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries',
| arguing one should put more weight to the testimony of an
| anonymous European in Phnom Penh who apparently did enough
| cycling around to know that the only people being executed
| were 'prominent politicans' and 'hated bomber pilots'.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| References and nuance here:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial
| airstrike wrote:
| _> "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst
| these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again
| want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through
| to the American public is a seriously distorted version of
| the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge
| atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S.
| role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has
| suffered."_
|
| That's a far cry from what the parent stated.
| leephillips wrote:
| Not really. He made these comments when the genocide had
| become common knowledge, and the facts had been accepted
| by anyone conversant with the situation in the region.
| His continuing denial was based on the flimsiest scraps
| of evidence, and people were generally dumbfounded by his
| obtuseness in this matter. When you deny a genocide, it's
| not merely a difference of opinion, it has a moral
| dimension, as when people deny the holocaust.
| easyat wrote:
| More discussion on the Chomsky section:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cambodian_genocide_denia
| l...
| phenkdo wrote:
| This is a great "follow-up" documentary about the reporter
| investigating his family's deaths and talking to Pol Pot's deputy
| "brother number 2" icymi
|
| https://enemiesofthepeoplemovie.com/
| snicker7 wrote:
| My grandfather was a victim (he was educated and a well-to-do
| farmer). They beheaded him in front of the village. My mother and
| her family were forced to watch and clap.
| gus_massa wrote:
| There is an interesting video about this in the "Rare Earth"
| channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUCiADFjQG0 (He has a
| more videos about Cambodia.)
| botwriter wrote:
| Before Covid I was living out in Phnom Penh. I adore Cambodia and
| its people who are some of the friendliest people I've ever met
| in the world!
|
| The Khmer Rouge were a mixture of Marxism and Khmer nationalism.
| Black lives matter is a mixture of Marxism and Black
| nationalism...
|
| It's very apt to have this article here. I'll always challenge
| Marxism because I've seem the results and what it does to people.
| My landlord was a child solider his mother a lovely elderly women
| who's only English was "hello" with a very toothless grin. But if
| children walked past she would go silent because when the Khmer
| rouge were in power if children heard you say anything which
| could be construed as wrong you'd be murdered.
|
| The Khmer don't talk of post traumatic stress they call it
| 'broken courage'.
|
| I've met so many people who's parents did amazing things. My ex
| girlfriends grandfather fled to Thailand as he was a teacher and
| considered educated. Her father worked the field during the Khmer
| rouge period afterwards who got an education where he could and
| put himself through medical school and became a doctor. He's one
| of the most incredible people I've ever met. My ex keeps a
| picture of him in her purse on the back in written my hero my
| father.
|
| You do walk around and see old people and the thought does wonder
| in your mind are you a victim of genocide or a war criminal. The
| Khmer have forgiven though and should be an inspiration to us
| all.
|
| Black lives matter terrifies me because I look back in history
| and I've seen what racial Marxism does!
| enitihas wrote:
| > The Khmer Rouge was formed in 1968 as a revolutionary Communist
| party in Cambodia.
|
| Ok another communist utopia gone horribly wrong.
|
| I think China had one of the greatest leaders in Deng Xiaoping as
| he was able to steer a country which has deep ties to communism
| away from communism and make it the State Capitalist power it is
| today.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yes China is definitely an example of a great place to live
| now...
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| The Khmer Rouge was communist in the much the same way as the
| Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei was socialist.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Marx on the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat, 1850:
|
| "When the Democrats propose measures which are not revolutionary,
| but merely reformist, the workers must press them to the point of
| turning such measures into direct attacks on private property;
| thus, for example, if the small middle class propose to purchase
| the railways and factories the workers must demand that such
| railways and factories, being the property of the reactionaries,
| shall be simply confiscated by the State, without compensation.
| If the Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must
| demand a progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for
| a moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so
| steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if
| the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the
| workers must demand State bankruptcy.
|
| Thus the demands of the workers must everywhere be directed
| against the concessions and measures of the Democrats.... to
| concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the State.
| They need not be misled by democratic platitudes about the
| freedom of the Communes, self-determination, etc. Their battle-
| cry must be 'the revolution in permanence.'"
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| The phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" used to trip me
| up. It is the will of the people: a true democracy.
|
| As much as we call what we have a "democracy", we don't live in
| one; it's an illusion. What we have is a Dictatorship of the
| Bourgeoisie that ignores the masses.
| mhh__ wrote:
| "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all
| those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| While Marx surely thought his program was in the best
| interests of the proletariat, the dictatorship was a
| dictatorship not a democracy:
|
| "The most effective lever for the achievement of this object
| is the conquest of political power. With its aid the
| proletariat can consciously carry out the transformation of a
| Capitalist into a Communist society. To this transformation,
| there also corresponds a political transition period, the
| state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary
| Dictatorship of the Proletariat." -- Marx, Letter to the
| German Social Democracy, 1875
|
| The Khmer Rouge was that "political transition period" Marx
| spoke of.
| refurb wrote:
| The will of some people. Of course the people that oppose you
| are against "the will of the people" and over the course of
| the "revolutionary struggle" it would be a shame if those
| people dissappeared.
| zigzagzog wrote:
| Wait till you see what BLM have in store.
| geodel wrote:
| Well that was then. This time we got it right.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Does this skip over any bits or did it really go from "royal
| hanger on learns colonialism is bad in Paris" to "let's teach the
| kids how to torture people" really quickly in reality?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| A family member who was there provided me these points:
|
| As the civil war ended, the armed population was told by the
| king to give their weapons back to the government. The Khmer
| Rouge kept their arms and 1) easily overtook disarmed areas,
| and 2) intercepted the shipments of arms which were collected.
| cryptonector wrote:
| There is a straight line from Robespierre and La Terreur to Pol
| Pot and his genocide. It passes through Marx, Engels, Lenin,
| and so on, and the respective Terrors that Lenin and his
| descendants inflicted on their peoples.
|
| It is not overstating things to say that none of the things
| that Orwell saw in Republican Spain in the Spanish Civil War
| -the things that inspired his Animal Farm and 1984 books- were
| particularly original! That the torture of language, history,
| and culture, were all invented in revolutionary France by the
| Jacobins and Robespierre and his friends. That the only thing
| particularly new since then is the purging of the people that
| might turn on a Robespierre and guillotine him when they
| realize that the Terror _will come for them too_. Not that
| Robespierre wouldn 't have figured that out himself in time,
| but that he couldn't figure out all the details of Terror in
| time to save his own neck. Lenin and Stalin perfected
| Robespierre's Terreur, and every successive would-be Lenin has
| copied them, and by extension, Robespierre.
|
| It's like there's an Olympic Games of Dystopia where each
| successive gold medalist has surpassed their predecessor's mass
| murder records. But I'm not sure which was truly the "best"
| (worst). Molotov -the only senior official to serve Lenin and
| Stalin- said that Lenin was the more severe of the two -- to
| think of what might have happened if Lenin had lived longer...
| _shudder_. Mao killed more than Stalin, and Pol Pot killed a
| greater proportion than of his country 's population than any
| other communist dictator ever. But for having invented the
| modern communist Terror State, Robespierre wins the ultimately
| prize of being the intellectual father to all the others.
|
| We should all judge them as harshly as I do. Sadly, however, we
| don't all, and we will see this history repeat itself with some
| minor variation.
|
| I strongly recommend Leninthink, by Gary Saul Morson:
| https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink
| walrus01 wrote:
| It significant skips over pretty much the entire biography of
| Pol Pot and his early life, which can be found on the wikipedia
| page and linked citations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
| grawprog wrote:
| My last boss is probably one of the few people I know I would
| consider an actual genuine hero. He singlehandedly rescued his
| family from the Khmer Rouge and smuggled them out of the country
| through China, then to Britain and finally Canada. He started a
| business from nothing here and is probably the best employer i've
| ever had. His nephew was the manager while I worked there and is
| one of the greatest people i've met and became a good friend. Him
| and the rest of my boss' family wouldn't be alive today if it
| weren't for him. He lost a lot of friends and family because of
| the genocides.
| Natsu wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't appreciate this until I read about the
| survivors, but it's freaky to imagine that one day you go from
| living relatively normally, to being marched out of Phenom Penh
| at gunpoint by teenagers, separated from your family, and
| forced to become rice farming slaves.
|
| And they were slaves, one story is about a person who was
| starving, just like everyone else, who dared to catch a fish
| that swam between their legs to eat. They were shot for that.
|
| They also practiced eating the rich in the literal sense. For
| whatever odd cultural reason, they enjoyed eating human livers
| from people who were executed.
|
| When the civil war ended, the king asked the people to return
| their guns. The Khmer Rouge kept theirs and intercepted
| shipments thereof, easily taking over the disarmed areas.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Article is from (2016)
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| My fiancee's mother was one of those children who was seperated
| from her parents in Cambodia during this time. What became of
| them is unknown, but it could have been any of the gruesome fates
| covered by this expose. I learned a portion of the story from
| what she could share through tears, and thanks to this article I
| now understand more.
|
| Thanks for sharing. One day I will need to go there and see some
| of these sites for myself.
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