Pol Pot: Difference between revisions

In 1962, he became the leader of the first real communist party in Cambodia (the French had departed several years ago). To escape the wrath of the new Cambodian government, he fled into the jungle and founded the Khmer Rouge, a rebel Maoist peasant army. Like most communist guerrillas, the Khmer Rouge [[Irony|had middle-class boys and girls at the top]], commanding troops of illiterate peasants.

His rise to power began when the [[Vietnam War]] spilled over into the neighboring Cambodia. After the US invaded Vietnam, the sympathies of Cambodian people naturally lay with the North Vietnamese. Then, the Cambodian government was attacked and overthrown--not by any rebels, but by the US-supported military, who were trying to prevent a communist takeover of the country. Pol Pot launched guerrilla war; in only a few months, his troops controlled the entire Cambodian countryside. The US answered by bombing them with napalm. Of course, this had the opposite effect and only gave the Khmer Rouge a massive surge in popularity.

Pol Pot seized power after the US withdrew from Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975. Tens of thousands in Phnom Penh were celebrating in the streets when the Khmer Rouge began entering the capital as victors. The five-year war had come to an end, and [[It Has Only Just Begun|Cambodia was finally at peace]]...

Then, the people of the cities were evacuated to the countryside--General Secretary Pol Pot declared this to be "Year Zero" and society was about to be purified. An agrarian utopia for peasants would be created in the deep countryside, without any "social ills" such as industry, foreign influences and urban environments. All city residents, young and old, had to move out as quick as possible. No exceptions were made. Those who refused to leave, or were unable to go, were killed. Ethnic minorities were the first to be massacred, along with anyone having any ties to the old regime. Intellectuals, teachers, and religious minorities were also hunted down and killed by Khmer Rouge death squads. Not even the average person was left undisturbed--the entire urban population had been moved to farming communes and had no idea how to farm rice, which resulted in devastating famines.

Once the Cambodian Genocide began rolling in earnest, Pol Pot's insanity claimed more and more victims--anyone wearing glasses was killed, since [[Smart People Wear Glasses|glasses were a sign of literacy]], and literacy was a sign that one was an intellectual. Babies had their brains smashed out. Cham Muslims were forced at gunpoint to rape female pigs. Acts like [[Insane Troll Logic|picking berries or fruit by yourself were deemed "private enterprise"]] and punished with instant death. Around two million people died in the "Killing Fields" (out of a population of 8 million), as they came to be called.

Across the border in the jungles of Thailand, Khmer Rouge forces attempted to reclaim power, but without any success. They had an unexpected ally with the United States, who backed them to spite their common enemy Vietnam, since [[The Vietnam War]] had instilled lingering bad feelings and desire for revenge. US support mainly extended to food supplies-they contrived to have international aid agencies feed the Khmer Rouge along with genuine refugees. President Clinton wisely put a stop to this upon taking office in 1993. After internal power struggles through [[The Nineties]], other Khmer Rouge leaders turned on Pol Pot, handing him over to the UN. Before they could put him on trial, he died of a heart attack in 1998. Shortly before his death, he was asked by a foreign journalist if there were any actions Pol Pot now regretted. Seeming genuinely confused, he said "No. I want you to know, everything I did, I did for my country."

* [[Culture Police]]: Western culture, urban life, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished. The Khmer Rouge destroyed old Cambodian art forms in their insane quest to cleanse their homeland of all "rotten influences". After their reign was over, only ''three people'' left in the country knew how to dance.

* [[Full-Circle Revolution]]: In theory, this was what the Khmer Rouge's policies were designed to prevent. The thinking at the time among some prominent Marxists in France was that the reason why socialist societies stalled in their progress towards communism and eventually evolved into state capitalism was due to remnants of the old order being allowed to survive the revolution. Once the revolutionary leaders consolidated their power and got into the tedium of running things, these elements reasserted themselves and corrupted the revolution from within. The only solution, they reasoned, was to completely scrap the idea of gradual transition, go straight to communism, destroy all trace of the old order and rebuild society from scratch.

* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]: This guy has the dubious distinction of being the leader of an auto-genocidal regime that killed a greater percentage of its own population than any other country on earth.