You Say You Want a Revolution
November 19, 2023 Leave a comment
Not your usual Thanksgiving fare . . . If you live in Disneyworld, then don’t bother reading further.
May 19, 1925. Saloth Sar, as the eighth of nine children, is born into a well-off and well-connected farming family, landowners in Kompong Thong province in central Cambodia. He arrives in a time when the kingdom of Cambodia is a French protectorate within French Indochina.
Sar’s childhood is strict and sheltered in the capital city of Phnom Penh. He spends a year at a Buddhist monastery prep-school before attending a French Catholic primary school. He involves himself with the violin, drama, soccer and carpentry. His Cambodian education continues until 1949.
Having won a scholarship to study abroad with a group of some 200 students, Sar journeys to Paris to study radio technology. During the one-month boat trip in 1949, Sar meets Mey Mann. Mann would later describe Sar at that time as being a pleasant man who showed little interest in politics. But in Paris during the early 1950s, Sar becomes a different man. He turns his conscious into consciousness.
What Happened? Marx and Mao happened.
“Though a Roman Catholic and a devout Jeffersonian [preferring agrarian life over city life] coming out of high school, Sar attended university in Paris, 1949-1953, where he came under the influence of several Marxists, especially the radical former nazi-collaborator Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).”
Bradely J. Birzer in The Horrors of Communism: Roland Joffe’s “The Killing Fields” ~ The Imaginative Conservative
In Paris, Sar is in the company of fellow travelers – radicalized Cambodians. He joins their reading group and immerses himself in the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Sar connects with the ruthless ways of Lenin and Mao. He joins France’s Stalinist Communist Party.
As a result of neglecting his studies, Sar loses his scholarship. He then returns to Cambodia in 1953 to bring revolution to Cambodia. Mey Mann, who also went off to Paris as a young college student, also came back a leftist revolutionary.
Back in Cambodia, Saloth Sar joins Vietnamese communists who were intent on ridding South East Asia of western influence. When he becomes the leader of the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) he takes on the nom de guerre Pol Pot, which means “the original Cambodian.” His family’s ancestry traced back to Cambodian royalty.
William Branigin, who spent 19 years overseas, reporting in Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East and Europe, provides background to Pol Pot’s growing revolutionary activism and his Maoist leanings in his article ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE WAS UNREPENTANT TO THE END – The Washington Post:
After years of secret communist activity in Phnom Penh, Pol Pot rose to the leadership of the underground movement in 1962. The following year he fled to the countryside to escape a crackdown by the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who dubbed the revolutionaries “Khmers Rouges,” or Red Khmers. . ..
Ensconced in the Cambodian northeast in an isolated jungle base protected by Vietnamese communist guerrillas who were then his allies, Pol Pot and his followers concocted a strange ideological brew of Marxism and what one scholar described as “badly digested Maoism.” During this period Pol Pot was apparently influenced by a five-month trip he made to China at the beginning of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and his economic “Great Leap Forward.” It was marked by the partial evacuation of Chinese cities and purges of “class enemies.”
. . .
Pol Pot then launched his own version of the “Great Leap Forward,” but with an apparent determination to jump even farther. The Khmer Rouge promptly emptied the cities, viewed as breeding grounds of capitalism, and began slaughtering old-regime soldiers and officials. The aim was to establish an agrarian Utopia in a single giant bound over the various stages of Marxist development. It was “Year Zero,” and people were entirely expendable. . ..
Pol Pot combined Stalinist and Maoist models with a focus on an agrarian society. With support from rural Cambodians, North Vietnamese, and the Chinese, Pol Pot was able to take control of the country in 1975. The Khmer Rouge began inverting the entire structure of Cambodian society.
Children, indoctrinated into the new ideology, were given power. Taught to “harden their hearts” toward their countrymen and their own families, they decided who was ideologically pure and who must be purged. But that was not enough for Pol Pot. He remained obsessively paranoid, as Branigin writes:
But soon the revolution began devouring its own children, as Pol Pot launched repeated purges of those he believed were plotting against him or working for his Vietnamese or American enemies. Thousands were tortured into making “confessions” at Tuol Sleng, a Phnom Penh school-turned-jail whose director reported to Pol Pot.
In another article, POL POT: LOVER OF LIFE BECAME INSTRUMENT OF DEATH – The Washington Post William Branigin writes
In pursuit of their dreams of a communist Utopia, the Khmer Rouge abolished money, commerce, religion and traditional education. They suppressed family relationships, individualism, intellectuals and ethnic groups, slaughtered anyone who showed recalcitrance and enforced unquestioning obedience to “Angka,” the organization.
Thousands were beaten to death, then dumped in mass graves in the regime’s “killing fields.” Many more succumbed to starvation, disease and overwork. Out of a population of about 8 million, demographers and researchers estimate, at least 1 million, and possibly as many as 1.7 million, died.
But as the killing intensified, the revolution increasingly turned on itself, targeting “enemies” whom Pol Pot perceived to be multiplying like germs, creating what he called a “sickness in the party.”
There is much to the Pol Pot murderous legacy that is not written here. This brief intro describing Saloth Sar’s fundamental transformation into genocidal dictator Pol Pot is meant to open eyes to the fundamental transformation -subtle and not so subtle – that is taking place in our country right now.
I want my readers to recognize the signs of the coming onslaught on humanity. The Biden regime, the Merrick Garland DOJ, Leftist judges and the media, are showing signs of demanding ideological conformity to their form of totalitarian “Democracy!” The Left’s constant lawfare against Trump is just one indicator of this.
And though implemented in more efficient ways today, e.g., digital technology, the same Lennin Think and Maoism is being used by the intelligentsia to control every aspect of our lives – from thought to word to deed, from sunup to sundown and throughout the night.
To understand Pol Pot’s way of thinking and that of today’s intelligentsia, listen to the podcast below – Thinking Like Lenin with Gary Saul Morson.
The three videos below reveal the man Pol Pot and the political horrors of his regime. Learn about the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and the genocide, one of the worst in recorded history, of about half the Cambodian nation. Learn from the firsthand accounts of Dith Pran and Haing S. Ngor.
Dith Pran, a Cambodia-born journalist, helped bring to light the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. His three brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Haing S. Ngor, Cambodian physician and actor, is best known for his Dith Pran role in the movie The Killing Fields (1984), which depicted the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that Ngor himself had also lived through.
Watch Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields to see what is coming our way under the growing despotism.
The Killing Fields – Trailer #1 – YouTube
Also, you may want to watch the third in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Tribology, The Dark Knight Rises, to get a sense of the anarchy and destruction just beginning to be released upon the world to bring about change. Gotham’s (Western Civilization’s) infrastructure is set apart for destruction by Bane and his “social justice” henchmen.
And learn about dehumanizing Marxism:
“Marx’s mechanical theory of society reduces real individuals, with their hopes and fears, beliefs and desires, to mere abstract “classes”. He subordinates reality—messy, limited, and all too human—to a perfect model in which utopia is the only possible outcome. As [Theodore] Dalrymple puts it: “Marx’s eschatology, lacking all common sense, all knowledge of human nature, rested on abstractions that were to him more real than the actual people around him.””
Laurie Wastell, Orwell and Dalrymple on English Class (quillette.com)
You say you want a revolution . . . so, with bloodlust, you can rid the world of monarchy and colonialism, of Christians and Jews, of the West, and of “oppressors” and replace it with an oppressive murderous regime and a descent into hell; to create a colony of insect peasants, war slaves, and execution squads, of senseless brutality, mind-numbing torture and purges; to create a society where indoctrinated children decide ideological purity among its members and where families cease to exist . . . well, you can count me out.
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The Stomach-Churning Events Of The Killing Fields Of Cambodia – YouTube
POL POT – The Killing Fields – Forgotten History – YouTube
Last Word: Dith Pran – YouTube
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Thinking Like Lenin with Gary Saul Morson
Gary Saul Morson Ph.D. — The Moral Imagination Michael Matheson Miller
Gary Saul Morson & James Panero discuss “Leninthink” | The New Criterion
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Mey Mann on the origin of Pol Pot’s murderous ways:
“On many occasions, Mey Mann said he tried to understand why the Khmer Rouge had turned to the killing fields. He asked Ieng Sary and Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea many times when Pol Pot had changed, when Saloth Sar turned into the leader of a murderous regime, but he never got a clear answer.
““Nobody knows. I don’t know why it happened like that, why they tried the extreme way,” Mey Mann said. “When we were students, we thought in a good way and did everything step by step. I don’t know which year Pol Pot changed his attitude.
““Maybe Pol Pot wanted to follow China and be strict like that. He was too biased to China and needed support from them because he hated Vietnam,” he said. “But Pol Pot forgot that Cambodia has only 10 million people. If China goes the tough way and kills 100 people, they have many more people so it doesn’t have a big effect. But here, that’s a big killing.””
Former KR Intellectual Expresses Contrition – The Cambodia Daily
Saloth Sar/Pol Pot explains his motives:
“What influenced me most was the actual situation in Cambodia,” Pol Pot told American journalist Nate Thayer. When he came home from Paris, he found that his family had fallen on hard times. A once prosperous uncle had become a rickshaw puller, and other relatives had lost their land and livestock.
”I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,” the infirm, 72-year-old Pol Pot argued to Thayer. ”Even now, and you can look at me: Am I a savage person?” he asked, adding: “My conscience is clear.”
Thayer’s Pol Pot Interview: POL POT: UNREPENTANT An Exclusive Interview By Nate Thayer – Nate Thayer (typepad.com)
Nate Thayer, journalist who interviewed Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, dies at 62 : NPR
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“Wokeism is Maoism”- Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Mao’s cultural revolution who is warning Americans about what’s to come.
Survivor of Mao’s China WARNS America is falling for the SAME tricks – YouTube
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“In order to survive you have to pretend to be stupid.” -Dith Pran, about life in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge
“I see … a pile of skulls and bones. For the first time since my arrival, what I see before me is too painful, and I break down completely. These are my relatives, friends and neighbors, I keep thinking … It is a long time before I am calm again. And then I am able, with my bare hands, to rearrange the skulls and bones so that they are not scattered about.”
— Dith Pran, writing about his return to Cambodia for The New York Times in 1989.
“This is sad for the Cambodian people because he was never held accountable for the deaths of 2 million of his fellow countryman. The Jewish people’s search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people’s search for justice doesn’t end with Pol Pot.”
— Dith Pran, upon the death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1998, quoted in The Times.
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Cambodian Genocide: 33 Haunting Photos From The Killing Fields (allthatsinteresting.com)
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ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE WAS UNREPENTANT TO THE END – The Washington Post
The Killing Fields: authentically good | Period and historical films | The Guardian
The Tragic Real-Life Story Of The Killing Fields (grunge.com)
Last Word: Dith Pran – YouTube
Pol Pot – Definition, Death & Quotes (biography.com)
Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Journalist, Dies at 65 : NPR
Pol Pot And The Cambodian Reign Of Terror Of The Killing Fields (allthatsinteresting.com)
Cambodia | Holocaust and Genocide Studies | College of Liberal Arts (umn.edu)
Part of my life is saving life. Dith Pran
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Lenin Think:
Why do revolutions “eat their own?” What is the sociological dynamic here? – History Stack Exchange
Cindy Wity 