How come is Pol Pot communist ?

As all you know, Pol Pot was hated throughout Cambodia, Vietnam, USSR and the rest of the world. His government and army inhumanly caused the death of 26% Cambodian. As far as I know, Pol Pot is anti Soviet, and so was supported by China as well as some Westerner then to fight agains the USSR and Vietnam. He can be considered Communist that he studied and developed his ideology from Mao Zedong (according to what I studied) but building a 2-million barehand-working argriculture social, massly killing intellectual, monks and "unnecessary" people ? How can such a thing ruin communism's image ? Some of the brain-washed capitalist could think "Communism is like that, cruel and heartless, cause mass murder just to build their empires". Please explain to me at which point is Pol Pot's ideology similar to our communism.

Well... he took a feudalist country and tried to push it into communism, thereby skipping capitalism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and socialism. Of course, that led to huge contradictions and difficulties, and therefore everything collapsed.

Quote:

He can be considered Communist that he studied and developed his ideology from Mao Zedong (according to what I studied) but building a 2-million barehand-working argriculture social, massly killing intellectual, monks and "unnecessary" people ?

No, he can't. Communism is at its core humanist. When you start completely disregarding human lives, you're not a communist anymore, no matter how many Mao Zedong quotations you can recite.

Quote:

How can such a thing ruin communism's image ?

Because the Western propaganda took it as an example for communism? They don't really care if the man was actually communist or not, you know.

Pol Pot was not a communist, he was an anti-industrialist and anti-intellectual that wanted to establish a utopian agrarian commune

Wasn't he supported by the US?

after being evicted by the vietnamese yes, apparently he was the 'legitimate' government.

Mabool wrote:

Well... he took a feudalist country and tried to push it into communism, thereby skipping capitalism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and socialism. Of course, that led to huge contradictions and difficulties, and therefore everything collapsed.

Yup, he could somehow skip capitalism with a little hardship (North Vietnam did, and we suffered some famine as well as protest) but skipping socialism is impossible. And his "communsim" model isn't a good one either.

Mabool wrote:

Because the Western propaganda took it as an example for communism? They don't really care if the man was actually communist or not, you know.

Ironically enough, yes. Some stupid Westerner considered Vietnam's counterattack in Cambodia to be an invasion.

Conscript wrote:

Pol Pot was not a communist, he was an anti-industrialist and anti-intellectual that wanted to establish a utopian agrarian commune

Well, look at this :




So cruel for us commies.

Tyler wrote:

Wasn't he supported by the US?

According to some documentaries available in my country, yes. And how I couldn't sleep after watching those.

Come on, that's not an argument. Just because Wikipedia says he was a communist doesn't mean it's true. Think for yourself. How could he be a communist? Nobody who disregards human life is a communist.

Quote:

Ironically enough, yes. Some stupid Westerner considered Vietnam's counterattack in Cambodia to be an invasion.

It wasn't 'stupidity' which prompted the US to regard Vietnam's defence of its border as an 'invasion'. It was actually convenient for the US to regard it as an 'unprovoked' attack on Cambodia (or 'Kampuchea', as the US and UK insisted on calling it). Never underestimate the Machiavellian cleverness of the US and its allies. Even when they seem to be stupid, they're actually being clever.

Quote:

According to some documentaries available in my country, yes. And how I couldn't sleep after watching those.

The US definitely supported the Khmer Rouge, even before they were expelled from Cambodia. I was a child in the UK when Pol Pot came to power in Cambodia and renamed the country 'Kampuchea', and I can remember watching the BBC news as the presenter 'explained' to the audience that from henceforth Cambodia was now named 'Kampuchea'. They even showed a map of Cambodia with the name 'Kampuchea' written on it so we would remember. In all subsequent news about the country while the Khmer Rouge were in power, it was always referred to as 'Kampuchea'. The Khmer Rouge were seen as enemies of Vietnam, and were therefore 'on our side', regardless of their internal policies in Cambodia itself. The US and its Western allies regarded the fall of Pol Pot from power as a strategic defeat for themselves.

At least I can be proud for being a Vietnamese then, because my country fought against a holocaustic Khmer Rouge inhumanly "supported" by the US and the UK.

Actually nationalism is pretty stupid.

You're telling a south-east Asian not to be nationalistic? Are you serious?

Yes.

Mabool wrote:

Come on, that's not an argument. Just because Wikipedia says he was a communist doesn't mean it's true. Think for yourself. How could he be a communist? Nobody who disregards human life is a communist.

I agree with you, but isn't this a bit of a squiffy line of argument? Communism doesn't exactly have the best track record for human rights...

Nor has capitalism. People die. That's a fact of life. I think it's pretty useless to accuse any ideology of killing people. Ideologies don't kill people. People kill people.

Ya rly? I wouldn't be a commie if I didn't believe that. But what I meant was that by your earlier logic, we could very well accuse Stalin of not being a Communist. Which would be daft.

And, lol @ Pol Pot. I think I dislike him a little bit more than Mao.

Bullshit. Stalin never showed disregard to human life on a scale that might be even remotely comparable to Pol Pot. In fact, Stalin's policies brought huge improvements for the life of people. Pol Pot's didn't.

Quote:

And, lol @ Pol Pot. I think I dislike him a little bit more than Mao.

Let me guess, you believe that Mao killed 60 million?

No, of course not. I just think he was an idiot.

Yeah, that's right. But there have been worse idiots. Kim Jong Il. Ceausescu. Hoxha.

Ah, I forgot Kimmy. I've never heard of the other two, where were they from? Laos?

Nicolae Ceausescu was the ruler of socialist Romania. He had a huge cult of personality - there were whole books filled with poetry about how awesome he was - and he put handicapped children into huge gulag-like orphanages where they were kept in cages and starved. Also he tried to make his country self-sufficient and flat out refused to take any foreign loans. It was probably the only socialist country that was brought down by its own people because he was such a moron. He was executed by his military.

Enver Hoxha was the leader of socialist Albania. During de-Stalinization, he cut all ties of Albania to the Warsaw Pact and aligned himself with China because, all of a sudden, the USSR had supposedly become "social imperialist". Then, as Mao started to produce more and more bullshit (Three Worlds Theory etc.), he noticed that Maoism was pretty revisionist as well, and cut his ties to China too. So, Albania ended up alone, although it was surrounded by socialist countries, and because he had that same stupid self-sufficiency fetish, everybody ended up being pretty poor. Oh, and he completely banned all religion.