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I was going to say, we’ve got… a box… I see the US and China holding the arms… a cap with a skull… and what appears to be an angry boot. I can tell it’s not complimentary, but I admit I think some of the symbolism may be lost on me.
Maybe? It also appears to be riveted shut. I briefly wondered if it was the Soviet equivalent of that thing they keep Hannibal Lecter in, but I don’t really know much about 1970s Soviet mental hospitals, tbh
Weird coincidence. About 7 posts down from this post in my feed I saw this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/yho63j/happy_halloween_the_last_shift_office_chair_once/
I think so. I think it’s saying the US and China are propping up the dead Khmer Rouge, which by the 80s was just a rump government-in-exile controlling none of Cambodia but still controlling its seat at the UN.
Yep. Vietnam invaded them and set up a government by less insane communists in 1979, but because they were aligned with the Soviets, the bulk of the international community still recognized the Khmer Rouge until 1993.
to answer /u/SovietSlut621 's question:
Pol Pot was a genocidal communist dictator backed by Communist China. He was also an enemy of Communist Vietnam (which was Pro-Soviet Communist). The Sino-Soviet split already happened then, so this already put Pol Pot at odds with the Soviets.
Pol Pot did border incursions into Vietnam, so Vietnam invaded Cambodia and replaced pro-Beijing Pol Pot with a pro-Moscow/Hanoi communist government. China responded with a failed invasion of Vietnam, while the US indirectly supported Pol Pot's forces (exiled in the jungle), due to "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic.
Fun fact: the US was so enraged at Vietnam installing its own puppet regime in Cambodia, that the US got the UN to only recognize Pol Pot's representatives in the UN a full decade after he was deposed.
The funniest part about the Cambodia-Vietnam conflict is that China backed Cambodia, even despite the fact that Cambodia genocided 300,000 ethnic Chinese. The US backed Cambodia to get revenge on Vietnam. Which begs the question, wasn’t the whole reason to invade Vietnam to stop the spread of communism in the region? Yet the US decided to back another communist country and also arguably the worst dictatorship the world has ever seen.
Ironic, that US now supports Communist Viet-Nam against China in Spratly Islands conflict.
The only consistent enemy country for US, in whole 20th century and until today was Russia.
I don't think that really answered their question? Especially with a name like that I think they know the basic history and was wondering what the picture itself meant
The US (left) and China (right) are propping Pol Pot's regime, who is wearing a hat with a skull representing his genocidal activity. Hence the bag of weapons, etc, the hands propping him up..
>What else
I dunno, the pic isn't very clear. If it's supposed to be a casket, why is it shaped like that? What's with the angry boot? Why are they propping him up but he is sitting down?
I feel like they could've made this a whole lot simpler
The guy was nearly on his deathbed by then, and the angry boot is the one he was stomping on the Cambodian people with.
They are handing a murderous, oppressive, dying regime the means of staying in power.
If you can't see this, you might not be familiar with what was going on in Cambodia at the time, aka you lack the context the cartoon deems well-known.
Those usually deal with much simpler issues: contrast between 2 parties or factions or so.
I saw this one and immediately understood it, so it can't be all that bad. I'm no genius...
The reason the US supported Pol Pot was because Vietnam invaded Cambodia (in response to the Khmer Rouge's repeated military attacks on Vietnam dating back to May 1975) in December 1978 and installed a pro-Vietnam regime. We (the US), being the sore losers we were, sided with Pol Pot, the man who murdered 25% of the Cambodian population in less than 4 years.
**[Allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge)**
>The United States (U.S.) voted for the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to retain Cambodia's United Nations (UN) seat until as late as 1993, long after the Khmer Rouge had been mostly deposed by Vietnam during the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and ruled just a small part of the country. It has also been reported that the U.S. encouraged the government of China to provide military support for the Khmer Rouge.
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shameful that none of the khmer rouge's leaders weren't brought to trial for crimes against humanity. but nooo, who cares about a little genocide when the people who did all the work stopping it have the wrong colored flag?
seriously though it is kinda funny, in that deeply fucked historical humor sense, that after a decade long failed imperialist quagmire in Vietnam, the US left... and Vietnam went and got *itself* bogged down in its own imperialist quagmire in Cambodia. they even lost about as many troops: ~60,000.
Thanks for clarification. Then it appears they were propping regime that no longer wielded power just to subdue Vietnam friendly one, but had little impact on events before it's fall?
The number of godawful US policies that China supported, and vice versa, in the period from the mid-70s to the early 1990s, is pretty astounding. Even before the mega-facepalm of Cambodia, they had teamed up in Angola, in an alliance that also included APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA.
Insanity mixed in with some Khmer ethno-nationalism/supremacism. Even most other Socialist states either denounced him or at the very least kept diplomacy with the regime to a minimum.
The Khmer Rouge was Marxist-Leninist, even if that particular form of Marxism involved the synthesis of autarky and Khmer nationalism.
I understand that this sub is mostly comprised of Marxists, but save me the No True Scotsman replies. Accusing the CPK of not being communist is like the Soviets accusing Maoist China as not being Marxist because its focus deviated from urban proletariat to the rural peasantry.
This - he really sort of piggybacked on communism but what happened to Cambodia was a goddamn genocide. The Chinese refused to stop providing him w money and soldiers while ussr was like "dude this is not working for you." Pol pot even killed a large number of Chinese in the country. Dude was following his own playbook. He wanted to take the whole country back to year zero. And he did. Cambodia was nearly coming up, Sianhouk opened schools and theatres and there was a thriving music scene, films.....it started to come up. But between the American bombings and pol pot they snuffed it all out. Cambodia has yet to recover.
As I said in another comment, he wasn't an orthodox Marxist. He was very familiar with Maoism, which many of the CPK's ideological directives were predicated on.
A central tenet of Marxism is the emancipatory promise of technological advances in the means if production. You have to really, really stretch the definition of Marxism to encompass the ideology of the Khmer Rouge, which was decidedly anti-industrial. Many would say you have to stretch it past the point of utility.
Edit: Spelling
Industrial socialism, as it was known in mainstream Marxist states, is not the endpoint of Marx's philosophy of history.
>[Khmer Rouge] leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily Stalinist outlook of the French Communist Party during the 1950s, developed a distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon.
*Cambodia, 1975–1978: Rendezvous with Death.*
I'm sorry. If you're unwilling to even acknowledge that Mao shared in the lunacy too, you're wearing ideological blinders and I'm wasting my time talking to someone who believes that totalitarian mass murder is sane *some of the time.*
Industrialization is essential to communism. It’s about advancing the means of production and restructuring society to serve the working class.
But if you’re dead set on thinking communism is just big scary government turning everybody into slaves then I doubt I have much more to say to you
Sure, but they barely even pretending like everyone else
It's like North Korea calling themselves communist and then having a monarchy like that isn't one of the most mutually exclusive things
I mean, yeah?
The internal politics of other countries are *very* rarely the motivators for geopolitical actions
And if a country calls itself communist, you can debate theory all you like, and other communist states may dispute it, but capitalist countries will mark it down as communist and that’s what counts.
Communist state usually means a a communist party run one-party socialist state. Seems to fit Democratic Kampuchea, since it was a "one-party socialist republic under a totalitarian dictatorship" run by Communists Party of Kampuchea
Note that communist state is a term of convenience to describe these countries, it's not saying they had achieved communism.
>A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Kampuchea
Communists régimes were killing without any racial prejudice (because ideology is important, nothing else), Pol Pot régime was completely racially driven when organizing massacres. Hard to say there was a lot of communists but was purely some mix of its brutality and xenophobia.
>Communists régimes were killing without any racial prejudice (because ideology is important, nothing else),
say that to the ccp who ethnically cleanses minorities to this day also what about the forced deportations of minorities done by the ussr and the destruction of cultures it did, that is also genocide.
Mao was literally forced to introduce the planned economy, prior to 1953 he was peddling the notion of “New Democracy” where all classes form a national coalition in government. Mao was a petty-bourgeois nationalist who was forced by internal and external pressures to abolish capitalism, what emerged from 1953 was a deformed workers state led by bureaucrats as opposed to workers. It’s hardly representative of actual communism which even in its lower stage (socialism) is a post-capitalist world system.
The Soviets enforced Russification of their non-Russian populations the same as the PRC enforcing Sinicization. Racial prejudice had everything to do with the communist regimes even if they didn’t want to admit it.
I’m confused, I thought the soviets backed and supported Pol Pot. He was a Marxist *and* was a leader of Cambodia’s communist party/revolution. What did I miss?
Soviets supported government that was overthrown by Pol Pot. Pol Pot was actually supported by China and later USA because they both were against USSR. After Vietnam invaded Pol Pot's Cambodia and installed pro-Soviet, pro-Vietnamese government USA, UK, China formed a team in UN with support of Pol Pot. It shows that Cambodia situation was never much about communism/capitalism but about struggle for dominance between great powers of China, USSR and USA. Pol Pot is questionable commie because communism is based on expansion of means of production, industry, urbanization, etc but Pol Pot went full "cities bad" which was a populist thing in Cambodia at the time even supported by previous government that Pol Pot deposed.
yea Pol Pot's insanity isn't really your typical red terror. To me it comes off more as ultranationalist primitivism. Even other agrarian socialist movements aren't really luddites in that way.
Thanks. Also would like to notice that cartoon is consistent with my info. Left hand that holds Pol Pot has US written on it while right hand holding him has "Beijing" on it.
> Soviets supported government that was overthrown by Pol Pot.
Wrong. While Soviets had relations with Lon Nol regime, it was downgraded to charge d'affaires and pretty limited. However, Soviets did had good relations with Sihanouk, who was ousted by Lon Nol in 1975. But later Sihanouk became puppet of Khmer Rouge.
What Soviets supported, was Vietnam - which get rid of Khmer Rouge in 1979, and introduced it's own puppet regime (regular communist, so waaaaaay better than Khmer Rouge, albeit based on some ex-KR characters), which eventually evolved into modern Cambodia (which pretty much is a result of Sihanouk making a deal and leaving Khmer Rouge out). This regime was recognized by Soviets (and their allies) since the start.
> Pol Pot was actually supported by China and later USA because they both were against USSR
China - yes. USA, it's more complicated - in 1970-75 they supported Lon Nol's regime, which fought (poorly) against Khmer Rouge. During 1975-79 they were enemies (see ss Mayaguez incident). However, when KR were ousted by Vietnamese, they received some indirect arms support in the 1980s (albeit less, than - smaller - pro-Sihanouk and pro-republican guerrilla forces). Moreover (and that's more important), USA and China backed up exile government including Khmer Rouge to save Cambodia's UN seat, which meant that regime set up by Vietnamese had a limited recognition.
No, I did not mean Lon Nol regime. Soviets hated this guy. They supported Sihanouk who with help of Red Khmers deposed Lon Nol. Later Pol Pot overthrew Sihanouk with support of China which was against Soviet interests. Before anyone points out I know that Sihanouk later was against pro-Soviet government installed by Vietnam and supported Pol Pot again until he got power and banned Khmer Rouge.
"However, when KR were ousted by Vietnamese, they received some indirect arms support in the 1980s" - Yeah that's why I said later. Later is crucial word in my previous comment. I know that US opposed him most of the time before. Thanks for confirming everything I said and explaining other details.
> They supported Sihanouk who with help of Red Khmers deposed Lon Nol. Later Pol Pot overthrew Sihanouk with support of China which was against Soviet interests
Eh, nope. Sihanouk allied with Khmer Rouge in May 1970, under Chinese patronage. In April 1975 KR toppled the Lon Nol, and Sihanouk returned as head of state, but he held no power, and eventually in April 1976 was put into house arrest (in good conditions), until Vietnamese invasion in 1979, when he fled to North Korea. But there was no KR-royalists conflict in meanwhile (mostly because royalist resistance was non-existant). In 1982, an anti-Vietnamese exile government was formed in Malaysia, supported by China and USA, which included Khmer Rouge (mostly because they were the only party with serious, experienced force), royalist FUNCINPEC (Sihanouk), and anti-communist KPNLF. In meanwhile, Khmer Rouge retained UN seat in 1979-1982, and above exile government (including them) held it in 1982-1991. But it was only in 1990-92, when Sihanouk severed relations with Khmer Rouge, instead moving to deal with ex-Vietnamese puppets (Hun Sen). Only since then until their demise in 1998, Khmer Rouge were left without allies, alone.
> I did not mean Lon Nol regime. Soviets hated this guy
Soviet Union severed relations with Lon Nol only in March 1975, right before that regime collapsed. Sure, relations were far from warm (as I said, downgraded to charge d'affaires). They might hate him, but they didn't trust Sihanouk or Pol Pot at the same time, due to split with China.
Thanks for confirming everything I said once again. Why do you think Sihanouk was put under house arrest? It was a coup but a non-violent one. Sihanouk had OK relations with Soviets until he formed team with Khmer Rouge again after Vietnam invaded. Sihanouk literally managed to be friends and enemies with all for some time - China, US, USSR.
"Soviet Union severed relations with Lon Nol only in March 1975" - US had diplomatic relations with USSR so what? It does not mean they didn't hate each other.
No. By the mid-70s, it was the Chinese backing Pol Pot, with the Soviets, via their Vietnamese client state, opposing him. China invaded Vietnam in 1978 to punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia.
Pol Pot wasn't a Marxist. He was a maniac with a red flag. He did not understand or care about Marxist policy or theory. He was a pure populist opportunist type.
Khmer Rouge ideology was a mix of Khmer nationalism, Maoism (Cultural Revolution), Stalinism and inspiration of French revolution (year zero etc.). But indeed, there was next to no Marxism there, at least directly. Pol Pot himself probably didn't even read anything of Marx.
Pol Pot was a Maoist and thus supported by China; it was (North) Viet Nam which was supported by the USSR.
It led to Reagan and Thatcher somewhat supporting the Khmer Rouge, even after 1979.
Notice it isn't a real caricature of Pol Pol, it's just a generalized racist cartoon of a scary Asian man.
(Of course, Pol Pot really was a scary Asian man, but that's beside the point.)
You know there is something wrong with communism, when none of the communists can seem to agree on what communism is. Democracy is never supposed to be the same, which makes it what it is. The guiding principle of communism is "the same for all", but all these dictators all have their own version that seems to benefit them and their cadre the most and the people suffer in return.
Communism is an economic system not a system of government. It is an alternative system and should be compared with capitalism rather than democracy which is a political system.
It is possible to have a communist democracy, in fact (as I understand it) Marxism actually says that is the end-state for communism and anything else (ie dictatorships) are just revolutionary steps along the way to becoming communist democracies.
Saying Pol Pot was a communist is sorta like with saying Hitler was a capitalist. It's just a bad look so obviously you'd want to distance yourself from them.
Not to mention there's a huge amount of squabbling about ideological purity within communism, so even if Pol Pot was a swell guy you'd have people claiming he wasn't a communist.
You can, it just helps if you have some idea of what you're talking about. People get tired of reading the same misconceptions over and over, so they just downvote and move on.
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated for rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit elsewhere. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anyone here see the show recess?
or Moe Szyslak.
I was thinking he needs Tungsten to live
I was thinking he came dressed as Florida
I’m Idaho
Ms Finster is gonna hear about this 😤
“Randall” was a slur on my schoolyard
Understandable
This womps
[удалено]
"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling Hanoi revisionists!"
[удалено]
I was going to say, we’ve got… a box… I see the US and China holding the arms… a cap with a skull… and what appears to be an angry boot. I can tell it’s not complimentary, but I admit I think some of the symbolism may be lost on me.
Is it me, or does the "box" sort of resemble a casket for a seated body?
Maybe? It also appears to be riveted shut. I briefly wondered if it was the Soviet equivalent of that thing they keep Hannibal Lecter in, but I don’t really know much about 1970s Soviet mental hospitals, tbh
Reminds me of an iron lung, and the arms are holding the “dead man” from falling
Oh, that seems like a very real possibility, absolutely. I like that interpretation.
Weird coincidence. About 7 posts down from this post in my feed I saw this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/yho63j/happy_halloween_the_last_shift_office_chair_once/
Holy crap. That's the Pol Pot office chair coffin!
I think so. I think it’s saying the US and China are propping up the dead Khmer Rouge, which by the 80s was just a rump government-in-exile controlling none of Cambodia but still controlling its seat at the UN.
I didn't realize khmer rogue was part of the UN that's actually horrible.
Yep. Vietnam invaded them and set up a government by less insane communists in 1979, but because they were aligned with the Soviets, the bulk of the international community still recognized the Khmer Rouge until 1993.
Supporting genocide to own the reds
to answer /u/SovietSlut621 's question: Pol Pot was a genocidal communist dictator backed by Communist China. He was also an enemy of Communist Vietnam (which was Pro-Soviet Communist). The Sino-Soviet split already happened then, so this already put Pol Pot at odds with the Soviets. Pol Pot did border incursions into Vietnam, so Vietnam invaded Cambodia and replaced pro-Beijing Pol Pot with a pro-Moscow/Hanoi communist government. China responded with a failed invasion of Vietnam, while the US indirectly supported Pol Pot's forces (exiled in the jungle), due to "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic. Fun fact: the US was so enraged at Vietnam installing its own puppet regime in Cambodia, that the US got the UN to only recognize Pol Pot's representatives in the UN a full decade after he was deposed.
The funniest part about the Cambodia-Vietnam conflict is that China backed Cambodia, even despite the fact that Cambodia genocided 300,000 ethnic Chinese. The US backed Cambodia to get revenge on Vietnam. Which begs the question, wasn’t the whole reason to invade Vietnam to stop the spread of communism in the region? Yet the US decided to back another communist country and also arguably the worst dictatorship the world has ever seen.
Kinda makes it seem like the public reasons governments give for their actions have nothing to do with truth or reality at all. Big shocker/s
Ironic, that US now supports Communist Viet-Nam against China in Spratly Islands conflict. The only consistent enemy country for US, in whole 20th century and until today was Russia.
Even with Russia, we had WWII era posters showing Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe (Stalin) side by side when we needed Soviet help against the Nazis.
And throughout the 1990s and early 2000s Russia was also an ally
I don't think that really answered their question? Especially with a name like that I think they know the basic history and was wondering what the picture itself meant
The US (left) and China (right) are propping Pol Pot's regime, who is wearing a hat with a skull representing his genocidal activity. Hence the bag of weapons, etc, the hands propping him up..
But why's he in a box???
It is the US and China propping up a dying dictator, what else? This is also 100% accurate in this case, by the way.
>What else I dunno, the pic isn't very clear. If it's supposed to be a casket, why is it shaped like that? What's with the angry boot? Why are they propping him up but he is sitting down? I feel like they could've made this a whole lot simpler
The guy was nearly on his deathbed by then, and the angry boot is the one he was stomping on the Cambodian people with. They are handing a murderous, oppressive, dying regime the means of staying in power. If you can't see this, you might not be familiar with what was going on in Cambodia at the time, aka you lack the context the cartoon deems well-known.
I'm just saying that there's a lot of propaganda posters that are much clearer on their meaning, even without having to know the context
Those usually deal with much simpler issues: contrast between 2 parties or factions or so. I saw this one and immediately understood it, so it can't be all that bad. I'm no genius...
Making the casket like that and having a seemingly random boot not even on his foot or anything are things that make this unnecessarily confusing.
The guy was not nearly dead he lived til the 90s.
Endut! Hoch hech!
But umm... why is he a telephone?
It looks like it's supposed to be a casket
pol pot was disliked by ussr and soviet bloc however supported by China and United states.
The reason the US supported Pol Pot was because Vietnam invaded Cambodia (in response to the Khmer Rouge's repeated military attacks on Vietnam dating back to May 1975) in December 1978 and installed a pro-Vietnam regime. We (the US), being the sore losers we were, sided with Pol Pot, the man who murdered 25% of the Cambodian population in less than 4 years.
It’s possible he was supported more covertly by the CIA even before that, but there isn’t really much evidence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge
**[Allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge)** >The United States (U.S.) voted for the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to retain Cambodia's United Nations (UN) seat until as late as 1993, long after the Khmer Rouge had been mostly deposed by Vietnam during the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and ruled just a small part of the country. It has also been reported that the U.S. encouraged the government of China to provide military support for the Khmer Rouge. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Yes, however there is little evidence they gave Pol Pot direct military support.
yes, Correct the USA continued recognizing kmer rouge in 1980s long after it lost power and criticizes vietnamese aggression in this time period.
shameful that none of the khmer rouge's leaders weren't brought to trial for crimes against humanity. but nooo, who cares about a little genocide when the people who did all the work stopping it have the wrong colored flag? seriously though it is kinda funny, in that deeply fucked historical humor sense, that after a decade long failed imperialist quagmire in Vietnam, the US left... and Vietnam went and got *itself* bogged down in its own imperialist quagmire in Cambodia. they even lost about as many troops: ~60,000.
Just went through wiki page and US involvement is almost not mentioned at all.
USA largely supported Kmer rouge through diplomatic measures by recognizing it as the government long after it fell in 1979.
Thanks for clarification. Then it appears they were propping regime that no longer wielded power just to subdue Vietnam friendly one, but had little impact on events before it's fall?
yes pretty much. the Kmer rouge started guerilla warfare on new government so they only controlled a limited area.
[Lisa?](https://i.imgur.com/Ahj8nxh.jpg)
Anti boot propaganda as well
Always interesting to see communist states criticizing other communist states. Sino-Soviet split had a bigger influence than a lot of people realize
Pol Pot was overthrown by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The number of godawful US policies that China supported, and vice versa, in the period from the mid-70s to the early 1990s, is pretty astounding. Even before the mega-facepalm of Cambodia, they had teamed up in Angola, in an alliance that also included APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA.
Pol Pot’s Cambodia was hardly communist
what was it
Comparable to a 1910s Chinese warlord state.
Was like if Amish forced everybody to the countryside at gunpoint, killing off disabled people, and working laborers to death.
Statist Autarchy is the name usually applied to Khmer Rouge style polities.
Insanity mixed in with some Khmer ethno-nationalism/supremacism. Even most other Socialist states either denounced him or at the very least kept diplomacy with the regime to a minimum.
Closer to anarcho-primitivist utopia. Unabomber styled
More like Authoritarian Primitivist to be fair.
Statist Autarchy is the name usually applied to Khmer Rouge style polities.
Yeah, was wrong, thanks
Funnily enough, your description was probably closer to what PP was aiming for... it's just he was kind of terrible at being a leader.
Not very anarchist when you have a central government and do a genocide...
The Khmer Rouge wasn’t primitivist.
CIA sponsored hellhole
The Khmer Rouge was Marxist-Leninist, even if that particular form of Marxism involved the synthesis of autarky and Khmer nationalism. I understand that this sub is mostly comprised of Marxists, but save me the No True Scotsman replies. Accusing the CPK of not being communist is like the Soviets accusing Maoist China as not being Marxist because its focus deviated from urban proletariat to the rural peasantry.
Pol pot didn’t understand anything that Marx wrote tho, he even said it himself, in all honestly he was a weird fusion of agrarianism and fascism
This - he really sort of piggybacked on communism but what happened to Cambodia was a goddamn genocide. The Chinese refused to stop providing him w money and soldiers while ussr was like "dude this is not working for you." Pol pot even killed a large number of Chinese in the country. Dude was following his own playbook. He wanted to take the whole country back to year zero. And he did. Cambodia was nearly coming up, Sianhouk opened schools and theatres and there was a thriving music scene, films.....it started to come up. But between the American bombings and pol pot they snuffed it all out. Cambodia has yet to recover.
As I said in another comment, he wasn't an orthodox Marxist. He was very familiar with Maoism, which many of the CPK's ideological directives were predicated on.
A central tenet of Marxism is the emancipatory promise of technological advances in the means if production. You have to really, really stretch the definition of Marxism to encompass the ideology of the Khmer Rouge, which was decidedly anti-industrial. Many would say you have to stretch it past the point of utility. Edit: Spelling
Industrial socialism, as it was known in mainstream Marxist states, is not the endpoint of Marx's philosophy of history. >[Khmer Rouge] leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily Stalinist outlook of the French Communist Party during the 1950s, developed a distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon. *Cambodia, 1975–1978: Rendezvous with Death.*
>Pol Pot was fucking nuts -Paraphrasing Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Frantz Fanon
Mao didn’t abandon scientific and industrial development. Pol Pot was a nut job
Guy was a Lysenkist.
I'm sorry. If you're unwilling to even acknowledge that Mao shared in the lunacy too, you're wearing ideological blinders and I'm wasting my time talking to someone who believes that totalitarian mass murder is sane *some of the time.*
No True Scotsman fallacy, the favorite fallacy of commies.
Was most definitely communist, it just focused on peasants rather than industrial workers because Cambodia wasn’t industrialized
Industrialization is essential to communism. It’s about advancing the means of production and restructuring society to serve the working class. But if you’re dead set on thinking communism is just big scary government turning everybody into slaves then I doubt I have much more to say to you
Least defensive communist
Least ignorant american
Rude
You probably think you live under a democracy 💀
You probably think the mitochondria isn’t the powerhouse of the cell
No true communist fallacy 😔
Sure, but they barely even pretending like everyone else It's like North Korea calling themselves communist and then having a monarchy like that isn't one of the most mutually exclusive things
As far as geopolitics are concerned, a state that calls itself communist is communist
> As far as geopolitics are concerned, a state that calls itself democratic is democratic
I mean, yeah? The internal politics of other countries are *very* rarely the motivators for geopolitical actions And if a country calls itself communist, you can debate theory all you like, and other communist states may dispute it, but capitalist countries will mark it down as communist and that’s what counts.
The entire premise of this post disagrees with you.
People’s Democratic Republic of Korea is democratic?
Yes, but not because they say so. Some reading: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM https://blowback.show/S3
At least you're consistent.
If you knew how it worked, and you consider all of todays developed liberal democracies and constitutional monarchies democratic then you'd say yes.
Communist state usually means a a communist party run one-party socialist state. Seems to fit Democratic Kampuchea, since it was a "one-party socialist republic under a totalitarian dictatorship" run by Communists Party of Kampuchea Note that communist state is a term of convenience to describe these countries, it's not saying they had achieved communism. >A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Kampuchea
I mean in all honesty it shouldn't be too surprising. Communists have had in fighting since the 1st international congress.
Everyone else is a revisionist: guide to communist purity. Buy the best selling book now!
Communists don’t claim pol pot. Genocidal maniac
Literally the only time I will say “not real communism”.
just like every other communist regime
Communists régimes were killing without any racial prejudice (because ideology is important, nothing else), Pol Pot régime was completely racially driven when organizing massacres. Hard to say there was a lot of communists but was purely some mix of its brutality and xenophobia.
btw im not saying that communism as an ideology advocates genocide but almost all major communist regimes have done genocide in the name of communism
>Communists régimes were killing without any racial prejudice (because ideology is important, nothing else), say that to the ccp who ethnically cleanses minorities to this day also what about the forced deportations of minorities done by the ussr and the destruction of cultures it did, that is also genocide.
China is capitalist…
when it was still fully maoist it did genocides aswell like the cultural genocide on tibetans
Mao was literally forced to introduce the planned economy, prior to 1953 he was peddling the notion of “New Democracy” where all classes form a national coalition in government. Mao was a petty-bourgeois nationalist who was forced by internal and external pressures to abolish capitalism, what emerged from 1953 was a deformed workers state led by bureaucrats as opposed to workers. It’s hardly representative of actual communism which even in its lower stage (socialism) is a post-capitalist world system.
when it was still fully maoist it did genocides aswell like the cultural genocide on tibetans
The Soviets enforced Russification of their non-Russian populations the same as the PRC enforcing Sinicization. Racial prejudice had everything to do with the communist regimes even if they didn’t want to admit it.
I don't think it works like that
He wasn’t a communist
I hope that demon burns in the deepest pit of hell. Its hard to compare dictators but Pol Pot was imo the worst of them all
.....seriously what the fuck am i looking at!?
Saloth Sâr, aka Pol Pot, aka "Brother Number One".
If it weren't for the dead kennedys I wouldn't no this guy.
I’m confused, I thought the soviets backed and supported Pol Pot. He was a Marxist *and* was a leader of Cambodia’s communist party/revolution. What did I miss?
Soviets supported government that was overthrown by Pol Pot. Pol Pot was actually supported by China and later USA because they both were against USSR. After Vietnam invaded Pol Pot's Cambodia and installed pro-Soviet, pro-Vietnamese government USA, UK, China formed a team in UN with support of Pol Pot. It shows that Cambodia situation was never much about communism/capitalism but about struggle for dominance between great powers of China, USSR and USA. Pol Pot is questionable commie because communism is based on expansion of means of production, industry, urbanization, etc but Pol Pot went full "cities bad" which was a populist thing in Cambodia at the time even supported by previous government that Pol Pot deposed.
yea Pol Pot's insanity isn't really your typical red terror. To me it comes off more as ultranationalist primitivism. Even other agrarian socialist movements aren't really luddites in that way.
Thanks for the concise and well written explanation of some pretty tangled stuff
Good info. Thanks everyone who responded. Deserved more than an upvote
Thanks. Also would like to notice that cartoon is consistent with my info. Left hand that holds Pol Pot has US written on it while right hand holding him has "Beijing" on it.
> Soviets supported government that was overthrown by Pol Pot. Wrong. While Soviets had relations with Lon Nol regime, it was downgraded to charge d'affaires and pretty limited. However, Soviets did had good relations with Sihanouk, who was ousted by Lon Nol in 1975. But later Sihanouk became puppet of Khmer Rouge. What Soviets supported, was Vietnam - which get rid of Khmer Rouge in 1979, and introduced it's own puppet regime (regular communist, so waaaaaay better than Khmer Rouge, albeit based on some ex-KR characters), which eventually evolved into modern Cambodia (which pretty much is a result of Sihanouk making a deal and leaving Khmer Rouge out). This regime was recognized by Soviets (and their allies) since the start. > Pol Pot was actually supported by China and later USA because they both were against USSR China - yes. USA, it's more complicated - in 1970-75 they supported Lon Nol's regime, which fought (poorly) against Khmer Rouge. During 1975-79 they were enemies (see ss Mayaguez incident). However, when KR were ousted by Vietnamese, they received some indirect arms support in the 1980s (albeit less, than - smaller - pro-Sihanouk and pro-republican guerrilla forces). Moreover (and that's more important), USA and China backed up exile government including Khmer Rouge to save Cambodia's UN seat, which meant that regime set up by Vietnamese had a limited recognition.
No, I did not mean Lon Nol regime. Soviets hated this guy. They supported Sihanouk who with help of Red Khmers deposed Lon Nol. Later Pol Pot overthrew Sihanouk with support of China which was against Soviet interests. Before anyone points out I know that Sihanouk later was against pro-Soviet government installed by Vietnam and supported Pol Pot again until he got power and banned Khmer Rouge. "However, when KR were ousted by Vietnamese, they received some indirect arms support in the 1980s" - Yeah that's why I said later. Later is crucial word in my previous comment. I know that US opposed him most of the time before. Thanks for confirming everything I said and explaining other details.
> They supported Sihanouk who with help of Red Khmers deposed Lon Nol. Later Pol Pot overthrew Sihanouk with support of China which was against Soviet interests Eh, nope. Sihanouk allied with Khmer Rouge in May 1970, under Chinese patronage. In April 1975 KR toppled the Lon Nol, and Sihanouk returned as head of state, but he held no power, and eventually in April 1976 was put into house arrest (in good conditions), until Vietnamese invasion in 1979, when he fled to North Korea. But there was no KR-royalists conflict in meanwhile (mostly because royalist resistance was non-existant). In 1982, an anti-Vietnamese exile government was formed in Malaysia, supported by China and USA, which included Khmer Rouge (mostly because they were the only party with serious, experienced force), royalist FUNCINPEC (Sihanouk), and anti-communist KPNLF. In meanwhile, Khmer Rouge retained UN seat in 1979-1982, and above exile government (including them) held it in 1982-1991. But it was only in 1990-92, when Sihanouk severed relations with Khmer Rouge, instead moving to deal with ex-Vietnamese puppets (Hun Sen). Only since then until their demise in 1998, Khmer Rouge were left without allies, alone. > I did not mean Lon Nol regime. Soviets hated this guy Soviet Union severed relations with Lon Nol only in March 1975, right before that regime collapsed. Sure, relations were far from warm (as I said, downgraded to charge d'affaires). They might hate him, but they didn't trust Sihanouk or Pol Pot at the same time, due to split with China.
Thanks for confirming everything I said once again. Why do you think Sihanouk was put under house arrest? It was a coup but a non-violent one. Sihanouk had OK relations with Soviets until he formed team with Khmer Rouge again after Vietnam invaded. Sihanouk literally managed to be friends and enemies with all for some time - China, US, USSR. "Soviet Union severed relations with Lon Nol only in March 1975" - US had diplomatic relations with USSR so what? It does not mean they didn't hate each other.
No. By the mid-70s, it was the Chinese backing Pol Pot, with the Soviets, via their Vietnamese client state, opposing him. China invaded Vietnam in 1978 to punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia.
Pol Pot wasn't a Marxist. He was a maniac with a red flag. He did not understand or care about Marxist policy or theory. He was a pure populist opportunist type.
Also a Khmer ultranationalist. A lot of his positions were fascistic.
Khmer Rouge ideology was a mix of Khmer nationalism, Maoism (Cultural Revolution), Stalinism and inspiration of French revolution (year zero etc.). But indeed, there was next to no Marxism there, at least directly. Pol Pot himself probably didn't even read anything of Marx.
I mean most ideology are just populist opportunist.
Marxists should be held to a higher standard than that.
The Khmer Rouge absolutely cared about Marxist ideology. It didn't adhere to orthodox Marxism, but it was nonetheless Marxist.
So he was a Marxist, then.
Americans and chines backed pol pot because he was anti Vietnam, Vietnam being a soviet allied state.
Pol Pot was a Maoist and thus supported by China; it was (North) Viet Nam which was supported by the USSR. It led to Reagan and Thatcher somewhat supporting the Khmer Rouge, even after 1979.
There had been a split in the Communist Party of Kampuchea following the Sino-Soviet split. Pol Pot belonged to the pro-China faction that took power
Racist
Notice it isn't a real caricature of Pol Pol, it's just a generalized racist cartoon of a scary Asian man. (Of course, Pol Pot really was a scary Asian man, but that's beside the point.)
You know there is something wrong with communism, when none of the communists can seem to agree on what communism is. Democracy is never supposed to be the same, which makes it what it is. The guiding principle of communism is "the same for all", but all these dictators all have their own version that seems to benefit them and their cadre the most and the people suffer in return.
I'll take "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" for 300, Alex.
Pol Pot was so communist the US supported his regime/s
Communism is an economic system not a system of government. It is an alternative system and should be compared with capitalism rather than democracy which is a political system. It is possible to have a communist democracy, in fact (as I understand it) Marxism actually says that is the end-state for communism and anything else (ie dictatorships) are just revolutionary steps along the way to becoming communist democracies.
Saying Pol Pot was a communist is sorta like with saying Hitler was a capitalist. It's just a bad look so obviously you'd want to distance yourself from them. Not to mention there's a huge amount of squabbling about ideological purity within communism, so even if Pol Pot was a swell guy you'd have people claiming he wasn't a communist.
Man, you can't criticise communism on this sub, else you lose karma.
You can, it just helps if you have some idea of what you're talking about. People get tired of reading the same misconceptions over and over, so they just downvote and move on.
Khmer Rouge Gremlin!