Speaker 1: Also media, Oh my goodness, gracious, jimminy Christmas. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert Evans is
Speaker 1: using the phrase jimminy Christmas. For some goddamn reason, we're
Speaker 1: allowed to curse on this. I don't get it your
Speaker 1: Boston accent to you that. I don't know you're gonna do?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What? What does the Sophie roberts, it's terrible. No, you
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 2: That's you.
Speaker 1: Gotta put more Boston, rob.
Speaker 2: For wash.
Speaker 1: You gotta put like you gotta put more of like
Speaker 1: a like a spit, like like rhyme on it, Sophie.
Speaker 1: It's got to sound like it's got to sound like
Speaker 1: you're you're screeching it over a bunch of wet rocks,
Speaker 1: just like the Pilgrims did yes when they landed in Boston.
Speaker 1: I just think that's something that only you can do.
Speaker 3: I don't know what about Jimmy Cricket was like, I
Speaker 3: want to do Robert's Boston.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were there. Neither do I? Neither do I?
Speaker 1: Andrew t what do you think of Ben Affleck's back tattoo?
Speaker 2: Oh, Ben Affleck's back tattoo.
Speaker 4: I think it's actually pretty pleasant commitment to It's like
Speaker 4: the most authentic thing he has going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Like he he is just a Boston guy.
Speaker 1: See I think he is. I think he's he's our
Speaker 1: most one of our most authentic male celebrities that we've
Speaker 1: ever had. That doesn't mean, like I'm not saying he's
Speaker 1: a good person. He's obviously not. But you can tell
Speaker 1: in his face that he knows that and hates himself,
Speaker 1: which is what I love about Ben Affleck.
Speaker 2: He is keeping it real. He's keeping it indisputably real.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, when that that picture of him like looking
Speaker 1: at j Lo's butt and just being having the look
Speaker 1: on his face like he's just watched fucking Dresiden go
Speaker 1: up in flames, is like it's because he's thinking, like,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm going to cheat on her. Like I'm Ben Affleck,
Speaker 1: I have no choice in them. I simply can't be
Speaker 1: a scumbat and not be a scumbat the beloved tattoo.
Speaker 3: I personally enjoy the video of Ben Affleck putting Jennifer
Speaker 3: Lopez in the car and then slamming the door and
Speaker 3: then realizing the paparazzi caught him.
Speaker 2: Being like Christmas.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what's what mood I'm in, but
Speaker 3: this is how we're starting the.
Speaker 1: Fun I had a friend of mine made me rewatch
Speaker 1: Gone Girl recently. He's likening himself. I'm just like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck didn't even know they were filming, Like he
Speaker 1: was pleasantly surprised to realize he wasn't in trouble for
Speaker 1: murder at the end of this movie.
Speaker 3: Fun fact about Gone Girl is he had to stop
Speaker 3: production for multiple days because he was refusing to wear
Speaker 3: I think it was like a Yankees hat that they
Speaker 3: wanted him to wear, but he's like, I'm from Boston,
Speaker 3: I can't wear perfect perfect He ended up that they
Speaker 3: ended up like settling on him wearing.
Speaker 1: A Mets hat, and it's like it's like, come the
Speaker 1: fuck on, Come the fuck on. Incredible stuff. Clearly was
Speaker 1: a Yankee fan, like literally here.
Speaker 4: I think that also means he possibly didn't really he
Speaker 4: didn't read that movie the same way the rest of
Speaker 4: us read that movie.
Speaker 3: No, No, Yeah podcast has literally nothing to do with Boston,
Speaker 3: the Yankees, Ben Affleck back tattoos.
Speaker 1: Well, you know this hit. We're talking about a guy
Speaker 1: who you could call the Ben affleck of Cambodian revolutionaries
Speaker 1: because this week we're finally doing pole Pot. That's right, everybody.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we're brought you up getting a pole
Speaker 1: position here, baby, yeah, thank you. Well, when we're going
Speaker 1: for the big guns andrew t, you can't do better.
Speaker 1: And this is this is also unfortunately, like we did.
Speaker 1: King Nordom Sahannak, who was the King of Cambodia and
Speaker 1: also a massive piece of shit, had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with how the Khmer Rouge got in power and
Speaker 1: why they killed so many fucking people. And he's also
Speaker 1: a lot less known. Like I think generally people who
Speaker 1: have any kind of reasonable education are aware of Paul Pot,
Speaker 1: whereas like King sah not nearly as well known. So
Speaker 1: I thought it was important to start with him years ago.
Speaker 1: I think Polepot is really relevant now. I think, actually
Speaker 1: right now might be the most relevant he has been
Speaker 1: since the horrible crimes against humanity he was committing because,
Speaker 1: at least from a perspective of a podcast that is
Speaker 1: primarily speaking to listeners in the United States, and it
Speaker 1: is because the way in which he and his comrades
Speaker 1: orchestrated the deaths of roughly between a quarter and a
Speaker 1: third of their country something like that. We're talking a
Speaker 1: death toll of about somewhere in between like one and
Speaker 1: a half to three million. I think probably two million
Speaker 1: is probably is generally kind of like the hedging your
Speaker 1: guess estimate out of a pre war population of maybe
Speaker 1: six million Cambodians.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm saying that this is extra relevant
Speaker 1: right now is that what essentially happened is in Cambodia
Speaker 1: is you had this cadra of guys who started as
Speaker 1: young men hanging out in reading groups, talking about politics
Speaker 1: and making plans for how they would like to rebuild
Speaker 1: their country and reorganize their country starting from this position
Speaker 1: they called year zero, right like, We're going to totally
Speaker 1: totally strip down everything that had existed before and start
Speaker 1: new based on these ideas we had in our weird
Speaker 1: little friend groups. Right. Well, that's essentially what's happening with
Speaker 1: guys like Elon Musk and Peter Teel and the cadra
Speaker 1: of fanatic young doge kids, right yeah, who are disassembling
Speaker 1: the administrative state for fun and trying to rebuild it
Speaker 1: based on a bunch of shit that they discussed on
Speaker 1: four chan and eight chan over the years.
Speaker 4: Right, there's the difference is the these motherfuckers have.
Speaker 2: Never read a book. But otherwise yeah, pretty yes.
Speaker 1: And the command and the Khmer Rouge guys both read books.
Speaker 1: And also, one thing you can't take away from Polepot
Speaker 1: and the other Khmer Rouge guys, they were hard as
Speaker 1: fuck by the time they got in charge. They spent
Speaker 1: twenty years fighting in the jungle. So right, we have
Speaker 1: that going for us. But I do think there's a
Speaker 1: lot relevant here in the story of how how a
Speaker 1: group of people, and particularly the dude at the head,
Speaker 1: come to believe a set of things about how the
Speaker 1: world should be remade and then pursue those goals no
Speaker 1: matter the cost. And that's kind of the story we're
Speaker 1: going to be telling this week. So I hope you're excited.
Speaker 2: I hope you.
Speaker 1: Jesus, Chris, So let's fucking go and talk about the
Speaker 1: man who, well, one of the men who really fucked
Speaker 1: up Cambodia. It's it's yeah, I gotta say, their strong
Speaker 1: competition for being the dude who was worse to Cambodia
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century. You got Kissinger, you got Nixon,
Speaker 1: you got King Sahannock, you got lawn Noll, who will
Speaker 1: talk about later. But Polepot probably still does win the crown,
Speaker 1: which which is hard being the worst guy for Cambodia
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, crowded ass field.
Speaker 4: He's I mean, he's also just like he's got the
Speaker 4: name recognition, and he didn't have a massive whitewashing campaign
Speaker 4: waged on his behalf.
Speaker 1: So no, no, he didn't have that. So the first
Speaker 1: thing you need to know about Polepot is that Polepot's
Speaker 1: not his name, right, Like this is a nom de revolution.
Speaker 1: You know, you get this with all of these guys.
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin wasn't born Joseph Stalin. That he literally just
Speaker 1: picked the name Joe Steele because it sounded cool, right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of these guys do that because, for
Speaker 1: one thing, it's just smart if you're planning to overthrow
Speaker 1: your government to work under a fake name. And for
Speaker 1: another thing, usually your fake name sounds cooler than your
Speaker 1: real name. And one of the first thing that makes
Speaker 1: Polepot unique is that Polepot is not a cool name
Speaker 1: and it was never meant to be. It doesn't sound
Speaker 1: it's not cooler. In Cambodian, it basically means like Joe Khmer,
Speaker 1: like the Khmara or the ethnic people that are the
Speaker 1: majority of Cambodia. Like he's basically Polepot is the Khmer
Speaker 1: equivalent of calling yourself like Joe America almost right, Like
Speaker 1: I'm the average man, right right, That's basically what he
Speaker 1: was saying. Or like John Doe, sort of yeah, like
Speaker 1: John Doe. His real name sounds like a fucking like
Speaker 1: Marvel villain. He was born Saloth Sar, which is like
Speaker 1: such a cool name like that. That is the name
Speaker 1: of a guy who fist fights Batman like I'm sorry
Speaker 1: and has done well. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. He
Speaker 1: breaks Batman Batman's spine at one point, right, Saloth Sar,
Speaker 1: it goes by Polpot. Now this name goes too hard.
Speaker 1: Nobody will believe that Salad Sar was born in a
Speaker 1: village called Prekshaw, a couple of miles west of the
Speaker 1: capital of his province and about ninety miles north of Nompen,
Speaker 1: which is the capital of Cambodia. For decades, there was
Speaker 1: consider debate as to the precise year of his birth,
Speaker 1: and we don't have perfect knowledge of when he was born.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of reasons for this. Just beyond
Speaker 1: the general fact that record keeping and impoverished rural Cambodia
Speaker 1: wasn't great in the twenties. People were not like keep
Speaker 1: it did. No one was digitizing anything right, and Cambodia's
Speaker 1: educational system hinged a lot on your birth date because
Speaker 1: the central administration was lacking a culture that sorry this
Speaker 1: the central administration. Basically, if you had if you wanted
Speaker 1: your kid to kind of get into the best kind
Speaker 1: of school that they could get into, if you came
Speaker 1: from a prosperous family, and Saloth does, it was common
Speaker 1: to alter your kid's birthday to maximize which school they
Speaker 1: would get into. And that was as easy as literally
Speaker 1: just changing markings on a piece of paper, because there
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like centrally kept right. So there was a
Speaker 1: strong culture of changing your kid's birthday at least by
Speaker 1: a but sometimes by a couple of years, in order
Speaker 1: to get them where you wanted them to go. Bigrapher
Speaker 1: Philip Short says that salath Czar's real birthday was probably
Speaker 1: March of nineteen twenty five. Others will say May of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven. Polpot himself told journalist Nate Thair that
Speaker 1: he'd been born in January of nineteen twenty five. But
Speaker 1: he just recalled that because he saw like basically a
Speaker 1: post it note, not it was a literal posted, but
Speaker 1: like a note that was like posted on top of
Speaker 1: like a cabinet in their kitchen. And this would be
Speaker 1: him memory remembering it as like a five year old.
Speaker 1: So we don't know when he was born, but somewhere
Speaker 1: in that period.
Speaker 4: My grandparents literally also had this. I wonder if now
Speaker 4: I'm realizing they did this for the same reason. But
Speaker 4: they were very, very squarely about what their actual birthdays were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I knew someone had interviewed someone once who had
Speaker 1: grown up as a like hunter gatherer in the highlands
Speaker 1: of Vietnam. They were a Montagnard and like, didn't they
Speaker 1: were like sixteen or seventeen the first time they heard
Speaker 1: music that wasn't being played in front of them. They
Speaker 1: didn't know what electric lights were for a while and yeah,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, we're like, yeah, I have no idea
Speaker 1: what it was born. I'm probably twenty six. I think
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 4: It's like if I really sat down, I could maybe
Speaker 4: make an educated guest. Yeah. Yeah, my grandparents were like
Speaker 4: it was a it was a war records got lost.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, we had a lot of other priorities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, birthday, Yeah, birthdays were at high even for.
Speaker 1: Yeah Salas Star's family was upper middle class, right. He
Speaker 1: came from about as much privilege as a non noble
Speaker 1: member of camp of Cambodia of Khmer society could in
Speaker 1: this period of time. His father, Pin Salaf owned a
Speaker 1: lot of land. Now how much a lot, Like, I
Speaker 1: think something like two to three hectares would be like
Speaker 1: a normal amount for a peasant farmer to own. Biographer
Speaker 1: David Chandler says that Penn owned about nine hectares, but
Speaker 1: Philip Short, whose book is more recent and I think
Speaker 1: works off of better information, says that it was more
Speaker 1: like fifty hectares, so about ten times the average. And
Speaker 1: their house was probably the largest of the twenty or
Speaker 1: so houses in the village. So they're not rich as like,
Speaker 1: they're not one of the people who run the country,
Speaker 1: but they're they're they're the wealthiest guy in town. Rights,
Speaker 1: that's his dad, you know, Pennsaloth was prosperous enough to
Speaker 1: hire his neighbors to help out during harvest time, So
Speaker 1: like that's the kind of money he had where like
Speaker 1: I am paying my neighbors to do my harvest for me, right,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like.
Speaker 2: They just can't do that. Right.
Speaker 1: He also owned multiple oxen, which was like that's like
Speaker 1: having like a sports car or something in other day. Right,
Speaker 1: if you've got your own oxen and more than one,
Speaker 1: you're like, that's a sign of wealth. His wife, Salathsar's mother,
Speaker 1: came from a prominent family and was well known as
Speaker 1: a humanitarian and a pious Buddhist. The two had nine children.
Speaker 1: I think five of them survived into like the nineties,
Speaker 1: so like pretty good record for you know, as a
Speaker 1: mom and dad. Saloth was number eight, so he comes
Speaker 1: near the end. And he and his two siblings, like
Speaker 1: around his age, were very close short rights, they played
Speaker 1: and swam in the river to other and in the evenings,
Speaker 1: by the light of a rush lamp, listened to the
Speaker 1: old people of the village recounting stories and legends from
Speaker 1: the days before the French established the protectorate in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties. And if you'll remember back to our Napoleon
Speaker 1: the third episodes, like right while France was getting ready
Speaker 1: to lose a bunch of territory in a major war
Speaker 1: to what became Germany. The Navy was largely kind of
Speaker 1: put carrying out, to some extent on its own recognizance,
Speaker 1: the conquest of a sizable chunk of Indo China, right
Speaker 1: of what came to be known as French Indo China.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And this is why France is running Vietnam, and it's
Speaker 1: also why France is running Cambodia. Right. So they have
Speaker 1: this dominion in Cambodia, and that for about a century
Speaker 1: Cambodia is governed by the French. In the capital, which
Speaker 1: is the primary place you would see the white French colonizers.
Speaker 1: They were a tiny minority whose control was so great
Speaker 1: that they were people who were young Cambodians in this period,
Speaker 1: like Gung Khmer described French like white French residents of
Speaker 1: the cap is almost deities, right, because they were untouchable.
Speaker 1: You did not have social contact with them, and they
Speaker 1: had access to like resources that were almost unimaginable to
Speaker 1: regular people.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And again, despite this being the capital of Cambodia, it
Speaker 1: has the lowest Khmer population of any part of the country.
Speaker 1: The entire like business class, the people who are handled
Speaker 1: running companies and who are doing trading and thus have
Speaker 1: the most money outside of the white French class are
Speaker 1: primarily Vietnamese and Chinese khmre right. And these are in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases still people who were born in Cambodia,
Speaker 1: but they are ethnically Chinese and ethnically Vitmes. And this
Speaker 1: is this is because Cambodia for most of its history
Speaker 1: has been for large chunks of its history has been
Speaker 1: the property of either like China or Vietnam or Thailand,
Speaker 1: like bits and pieces of it. Right, there's been constant
Speaker 1: it's in the middle of everything, right, It's like Poland,
Speaker 1: It's like the Southeast Asian Poland and that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys are usually like under but he's thumb right.
Speaker 4: Well, and yeah, that's also just like like as much
Speaker 4: as like the French colonialism, you know bad obviously, it's
Speaker 4: like a should just be doing that.
Speaker 2: And China's probably the biggest culprit.
Speaker 1: Well. And that's the one of the initial surprises that
Speaker 1: the Communists have that kind of slows down them getting
Speaker 1: off the board, is they initially expect, well, everyone must
Speaker 1: hate the French, and the regular Khmer people don't hate
Speaker 1: the French as much as they hate the Vietnamese, and
Speaker 1: in fact, it's going to be true even with the
Speaker 1: Khmer Rouge gets in power, Like, even with all the
Speaker 1: horrible shit the US does, for the Khmer Rouge and Polepot,
Speaker 1: Vietnam is always the enemy, right, and it's because they've
Speaker 1: got a thousand years of shit, but it's always the
Speaker 1: last war. Yeah, it's just like that's the one that sticks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like, no matter how racist Americans get about a
Speaker 1: foreign country, Texans will always hate Oklahomans more, right, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. So the fact that the people with money
Speaker 1: in the capitol and running these businesses, the kind of
Speaker 1: saying capitalist class isn't super useful in this sense, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of our closest thing. The fact that their
Speaker 1: Vietnamese and Chinese contributes to a long standing cultural grievance
Speaker 1: among the majority Khmer population who see themselves they have
Speaker 1: an inferiority complex. And this is something that is written
Speaker 1: about extensively by Khmer people, right that there is within
Speaker 1: the culture and within like even a lot of like
Speaker 1: the Buddhist kind of writings at the time, there's this
Speaker 1: discussion of like the Khmer we're fundamentally good people, were
Speaker 1: humble but we're also kind of like naive and easy
Speaker 1: to be taken advantage of by these kind of savvier
Speaker 1: foreign peoples around us. Right, This is the way they
Speaker 1: talk about themselves to a sizeable extent, right.
Speaker 4: Sure, although how much there's a question, I guess I'm
Speaker 4: asking more than like poking at this, but it's like
Speaker 4: that is also exactly the type of thing that like
Speaker 4: a broad multinational religion could start to spread well, right,
Speaker 4: Right in terms of supporting imperialism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And there's there's some I mean that this
Speaker 1: is I'm not I'm certainly not qualified to give you detail,
Speaker 1: but I think it's there's there's plenty of evidence that
Speaker 1: a lot of the way they discuss themselves is in
Speaker 1: sort of this context of we are we really need
Speaker 1: to get our shit together and stop being ruled by
Speaker 1: these people, right, Like that's kind of the attitude, And
Speaker 1: it depends with the Chinese Khmer. There's this mix of
Speaker 1: like respect with kind of some jealousy and some anger.
Speaker 1: Vietnam is seen almost into Vietnamese people are seen almost
Speaker 1: entirely as imperialists, right, as like this arrogant force that
Speaker 1: has continually dominated us over our history. And again Khmer
Speaker 1: people often have friends who are Vietnamese Cambodians and Chinese Cambodians.
Speaker 1: But this is this idea of like this is what
Speaker 1: this race is done to our race, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: really common. A very like popular story that would be
Speaker 1: told to children at the time when Salasar was a kid,
Speaker 1: described three Cambodian prisoners being buried up to their necks
Speaker 1: around a fire so their heads could be used as
Speaker 1: a tripod to hold their Vietnamese master's teapot. And it's
Speaker 1: like a joke that like this is what they think
Speaker 1: we're good for, is like you know, like that that's
Speaker 1: the bit. Now, when it came to like the looking
Speaker 1: back at periods of time in which things were different,
Speaker 1: the real one period of like glory that educated Cambodians
Speaker 1: in particular would think back to was the time of
Speaker 1: the An Korean Empire, which had ruled northwest Cambodia from
Speaker 1: the nine hundreds eighty to about fourteen hundred eighty and
Speaker 1: included parts of modern day Lao, Thailand and Vietnam as well. Right,
Speaker 1: this is the Ang Korean Empire, and Sala Tsar and
Speaker 1: his peers would have seen themselves as being raised in
Speaker 1: the ruins of a once great culture. The attitude these
Speaker 1: people have is almost we're growing up in a post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic empire, right, And this was not far from the truth.
Speaker 1: By the twelve hundreds, which is right around if you've
Speaker 1: heard of angkor Watt, it's still to this day the
Speaker 1: largest surviving religious complex on the world. And it's this massive,
Speaker 1: incredibly complex, beautiful like temple complex that was part of
Speaker 1: the heartland of this empire. And while it was at
Speaker 1: its height around the twelve hundreds, the in Korean Empire
Speaker 1: contained a higher population than lived in all of Cambodia
Speaker 1: in the thirties. So if you're looking at like the
Speaker 1: degree to which things got worse, there are in the thirties,
Speaker 1: this area is capable of supporting fewer people than it's
Speaker 1: supported in the twelve hundreds, right, right, right, So they
Speaker 1: are really living in a post apocalypse in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Now, some of the first stories Sar would
Speaker 1: have heard would have been tales of his grandfather Fem,
Speaker 1: who came up during one of the many periods of
Speaker 1: domination by Vietnamese and Thai invaders. Cambodia came close to
Speaker 1: being destroyed as an independent culture and Sar would have
Speaker 1: been raised on tales of Vietnamese soldiers gouging the eyes
Speaker 1: out of captives and salting their wounds before burying them alive.
Speaker 1: And this is a thing that happened. We are talking
Speaker 1: about really hideous wars that happened between these people in
Speaker 1: these periods, and I mean in every period of time.
Speaker 2: Right, these are.
Speaker 1: Ugly conflicts, and he grows up with stories about like
Speaker 1: this is what war is like. It's not just fighting
Speaker 1: and killing do gain territory. It is like torturing and
Speaker 1: destroying your enemy, and like that is the norm. Right.
Speaker 1: The French, by comparison, would have seemed benign to him
Speaker 1: as a child, in large part because the French were
Speaker 1: the backers of the royal family. That was like, because
Speaker 1: there's still a king in Cambodia and he's a useful
Speaker 1: figurehead for the French. And Salatsar's family is really close
Speaker 1: to the royal family, and so they kind of owe
Speaker 1: their privileges and their good position two in part to
Speaker 1: the French occupiers, right, just like the king does. Salot's
Speaker 1: early childhood then was mild. His father was noted for
Speaker 1: being less strict and for beating out leading, he didn't
Speaker 1: beat his kids as much as most fathers did. Right.
Speaker 1: This is a culture where strict parenting is the norm,
Speaker 1: and where children it's believed that you need to be
Speaker 1: you need to use violence very strictly to maintain the
Speaker 1: behavior of your children. Right. And this was not just
Speaker 1: common with parents, it was extremely common with teachers.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: These are like the like the strain of Buddhism that
Speaker 1: is dominant in Cambodia is called Theravada Buddhism, and this
Speaker 1: is a faith that has an incredibly sharp delineation between
Speaker 1: good and evil. There's not really shades of gray, right,
Speaker 1: and so if you're doing the wrong thing, you need
Speaker 1: to be punished very severely. Right. This is like a
Speaker 1: very black and white faith in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: At least that's the way it's interpreted at this period
Speaker 1: of time. One common punishment from school masters was to
Speaker 1: make a disobedient child lie down on an ant's nest.
Speaker 1: That's like if you fuck up in school, they make
Speaker 1: you light out on.
Speaker 2: Our red ant torture.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just want to point out Robert, of course,
Speaker 4: is not saying that if you don't beat your kids enough,
Speaker 4: they will become polepot but it is not.
Speaker 2: Saying that.
Speaker 1: Look, there's obviously an amount of beating your kids that
Speaker 1: will turn them into polepot, right, But there's an amount
Speaker 1: of beating your kids will turn them into polepot, not
Speaker 1: polepot too, So you.
Speaker 2: Know it's a five line.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe don't punish your kids with ants?
Speaker 1: Can we see? Can we agree on that? Quotes one
Speaker 1: of Polpot's peers, King von Sack as saying this about
Speaker 1: discipline in schools. At the time, I didn't like arithmetic
Speaker 1: and I hadn't learned my multiplication table. So every time
Speaker 1: we were going to have a lesson, I said that
Speaker 1: I had a stomach ache and wanted to go home.
Speaker 1: The third time I did that, the teacher said, all right,
Speaker 1: you may go, but first recite the seven times table.
Speaker 1: Of course I didn't know it. How he beat me
Speaker 1: kicks and punches. He was brutal. Then he took me
Speaker 1: outside and put me under a grapefruit tree full of
Speaker 1: red ants. After that I knew my times tables. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Well, I guess if it works. No, I
Speaker 1: don't guess that at all.
Speaker 4: You know, in general philosophy, I think held on for
Speaker 4: quite some time.
Speaker 2: If my parents are any education.
Speaker 1: And like, yeah, there's unique Cambodian. The whole ant thing
Speaker 1: pretty unique to Cambodia. But the whole you beat the
Speaker 1: shit out of a kid if they're not learning, right,
Speaker 1: that's more normal than not. In the twenties, you gotta oaklow.
Speaker 1: I got beat as a kid in Oklahoma by my principle,
Speaker 1: So like not trying to like but yeah, what's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me though, is that Vansak recalls this teacher
Speaker 1: who like beat him and then tied him to an
Speaker 1: auntrey as a saintly man who was adorable, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was my nicest teacher.
Speaker 2: Oh, kicking a kid is really nuts.
Speaker 1: That's nuts. That's wild.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like truly, Yeah, it just requires so much
Speaker 4: intention and preparation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It says a lot that like and
Speaker 1: that's your good teacher, Like, that's the guy that you're like,
Speaker 1: can you know what? You really really straightened me out?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They say you never forget your teachers or how many
Speaker 4: aunts they tort you you with, And it's true.
Speaker 1: See why you wouldn't forget that teacher. If anybody kicked
Speaker 1: the shit out of me and tied me to an antry,
Speaker 1: I would remember that motherfucker. Uh speaking of beating Nope,
Speaker 1: speaking of not amusing children. Jesus products. And we're back. So,
Speaker 1: as I've established, we're not talking about a society. This
Speaker 1: is a Khmer society is in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and I don't there's other aspects of it, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of brutality here, right, and this is not
Speaker 1: unique among the Khmer. But this is a black and
Speaker 1: white society, and it's going to be meaningful in terms
Speaker 1: of how the Khmer rouge act in power that punishments
Speaker 1: like this are very normal when they're kids, right, There
Speaker 1: is already a high level. It's just like you, the
Speaker 1: ultra violence of the Nazis is not detached from the
Speaker 1: fact that the initial group of the Nazis all spent
Speaker 1: four years in the trenches, you know, Like you can't
Speaker 1: separate those things, and you can't separate what the Khmer
Speaker 1: rouge does from the fact that this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: is normal when they're kids, right, And the legends that
Speaker 1: we're told often in Khmer society, because this is a
Speaker 1: group of people who have been constantly conquered and beaten
Speaker 1: and massacred by their neighbors, and of course done a
Speaker 1: little bit done some of that themselves. To be fair,
Speaker 1: it does not be the stories. The fairy tales one
Speaker 1: that they grow up on don't depict a just world,
Speaker 1: right they are. Instead of like you know, happy endings
Speaker 1: in the Good Guy Winning, there's a lot more stories
Speaker 1: of murderers going free and honorable men being hideously executed
Speaker 1: by the king. Right, that's a lot a very common
Speaker 1: kind of thing. This is the lore of a culture
Speaker 1: formed through centuries of domination, defeat and murder. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the result. Right, There's a lot of trauma in the
Speaker 1: collective history of the Khmer, and it comes through in
Speaker 1: their legends. Salat Sar's cousin Meek joined the Royal Ballet
Speaker 1: Corps in the nineteen twenties. Now that sounds nice, right, Ah,
Speaker 1: ballet good way to express yourself. Great, we love the arts.
Speaker 1: This is not that kind of ballet troop. The ballet
Speaker 1: troop is primarily a feeder organization for the king's harem. Right.
Speaker 1: That is the reason why you collect all these ballet artists, right.
Speaker 1: This makes it easier for the king to pick out
Speaker 1: who he wants to make a cortissan. Right. David Chandler
Speaker 1: in the book brother number one, which is a biography
Speaker 1: of Polepot writes quote. Each dance involved thousands of movements,
Speaker 1: each keyed to moments in a particular story and in
Speaker 1: the mythological character being portrayed. None of the gestures was improvised.
Speaker 1: Although some dancers might be more beautiful or more graceful
Speaker 1: than others, their movements depended on memory, tradition, and practice,
Speaker 1: in other words, on what they had been taught, rather
Speaker 1: than on what the individual wanted to express. The dancers
Speaker 1: were vehicles for tradition rather than its interpreters. So while
Speaker 1: this is an art form, it is not one in
Speaker 1: which self expression is prized. It is how can you
Speaker 1: ab exactly recreate this right.
Speaker 2: Do the thing that as I was done before and again?
Speaker 1: This whole Ballet Corps, its primary audience is the royal family,
Speaker 1: and the royal family within Khmer society is it's so
Speaker 1: high above everything else, right. The Khmer word that like
Speaker 1: people who are high level advisors and counselors for the
Speaker 1: king would use for themselves literally translated to something like
Speaker 1: we who keep the king shit in our heads, like
Speaker 1: our brains are his shit.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And as I said, the Ballet Corps existed in
Speaker 1: large part to provide raw material for the royal harem,
Speaker 1: but it was traditional for kings and princes to have
Speaker 1: eyes bigger than their heads in this regard, and especially
Speaker 1: once kings got old, they would pick a lot of
Speaker 1: concubines that they wouldn't really get around to having sex
Speaker 1: with because they're like old and sish, and these women
Speaker 1: are untouchable to any other men, but often also untouched themselves,
Speaker 1: and they're kept prisoner in a network of huts in
Speaker 1: the palace and are forbidden from contact with non royal
Speaker 1: bays over a certain age right, so most of their
Speaker 1: time was spent arguing and gossiping among each other. Raising
Speaker 1: the few kids that they have, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: gambling and when at the few outsiders who are allowed
Speaker 1: to visit, obviously they socialize with as much as possible
Speaker 1: because they live in such a closed little society, and
Speaker 1: soon enough Salatsar would be one of those visitors. His
Speaker 1: older brother. They was the first to be sent to
Speaker 1: the capital to attend one of the few Western style
Speaker 1: schools in the country. And these are schools the French
Speaker 1: have started, and they're often sometimes they're run by Khmer
Speaker 1: educated Khmer, but they're like patterned off of French schools. Right,
Speaker 1: and Saloth followed into the capital in nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: at age nine, and the plan was he's going to
Speaker 1: start attending one of these proper Western schools. But as
Speaker 1: is not uncommon for a lot of Khmer, his parents
Speaker 1: don't want him to go fully western, right, They still
Speaker 1: do want him to be Khmer. So he spends a
Speaker 1: year in a Buddhist monastery just south of the palace
Speaker 1: before he goes to school. Right, This is a really
Speaker 1: common experience, and in fact the princes all do this too, Right,
Speaker 1: like the guy who's going to become the king nor
Speaker 1: Dam Sahanak spends like a year or some amount of
Speaker 1: time as in this monastery, because it's a thing that
Speaker 1: you do in part to like show I'm authentically.
Speaker 2: Of this culture.
Speaker 1: And this is also going to be the only education
Speaker 1: that Polpot ever gets in his native language. This is
Speaker 1: the only the rest of his schooling he'll be taught
Speaker 1: in French. So this is the only time he's being
Speaker 1: taught like in Khmer.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Sure, now, about one hundred kids a year had this experience,
Speaker 1: and the accounts that we get make it sound pretty
Speaker 1: miserable to me, Like the worst summer camp you can imagine.
Speaker 1: There is no room in this for personal creativity or expression.
Speaker 1: Every single person has a strictly delineated role in stepping
Speaker 1: out of it was met with traditionally brutal punishments. One
Speaker 1: of Sar's contemporaries later explained, you were given a thrashing
Speaker 1: if you didn't do as they said. If you didn't
Speaker 1: walk correctly, you were beaten. You had to walk quietly
Speaker 1: and slowly, without making any sound with your feet, and
Speaker 1: you weren't allowed to swing your arms to move serenely.
Speaker 1: You had to learn by heart the rules of conduct
Speaker 1: and the Buddhist precepts so that you could recite them
Speaker 1: without hesitation. If you hesitated, you were beaten. And I
Speaker 1: think I encountered a whole lot, especially as like an
Speaker 1: angry young atheist. This idea is you here? This I
Speaker 1: think more common among liberals that like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: these Christians and Muslims, and like all the violence that
Speaker 1: comes out of these these Western like Judeo Christian religions,
Speaker 1: why can't we all be like the Buddhists. They never
Speaker 1: have Tons of Buddhist terrorist groups plenty of Buddhist genocides.
Speaker 1: Every religion has it, and also non religions have it.
Speaker 1: People love committing genociside. It's not no, no culture has
Speaker 1: a fucking lock on that.
Speaker 2: Religion is a handy tool, but it's not the only
Speaker 2: hand It's not.
Speaker 1: The only tool. Get that out of you again. If
Speaker 1: you blame genocide fundamentally and the fact that people can
Speaker 1: be pieces of shit, that's that's what's to blame.
Speaker 2: The real genocide juice is in here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in here. If you to understand how a
Speaker 1: person can be moved to genocide driving traffic for twenty
Speaker 1: two minutes, that's the most I'm ever like, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: just got to start killing people.
Speaker 2: If no one was here, I'd be home.
Speaker 1: I no, no, no, I'm three more, but still three
Speaker 1: minutes away from the fucking burger risk. God damn it.
Speaker 1: So the religious texts that they were made to memorize
Speaker 1: were rooted in a rigid respect for hierarchy and Theravauta Buddhism.
Speaker 1: Children were treated almost as robots, right, They are the
Speaker 1: product of cause and effect that accumulate rather than people
Speaker 1: in their own right. And so what matters is modifying
Speaker 1: what goes into them, right, in order to produce the
Speaker 1: desired outcome. There's almost again, this is very mechanical understanding
Speaker 1: of like, this is how you make a good person.
Speaker 1: Right now, Their holy book was the Spop's pap. It's CPAP.
Speaker 1: It's like spelled like a c pat machine. Right, And
Speaker 1: it's basically a collection of morality plays and anecdotes which
Speaker 1: reinforce the sense of Khmer inferiority next to their neighbors.
Speaker 1: One relevant portion reads, learn arithmetic with all your energy,
Speaker 1: lest the Chinese and Vietnamese cheat you. The Khmers are
Speaker 1: lacking in judgment. They eat without giving thought for what
Speaker 1: is proper and right. Each season they borrow from the Chinese,
Speaker 1: and the Chinese gained control of the inheritance their parents
Speaker 1: have bequeathed. So again, this is.
Speaker 2: The hell.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of racism in this upbringing, and it's
Speaker 1: racism against these ethnic minorities in the country who have
Speaker 1: also periodically controlled the country.
Speaker 2: Right, reasonable, yeah, of course, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be pissed. But as a spoiler in
Speaker 1: part two, this is going to lead to a bunch
Speaker 1: of genocides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how it goes. The resentment turns into the
Speaker 2: worst thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, by the time star I finished his year at
Speaker 1: the monastery, and I've heard nine months, I've heard a year.
Speaker 1: I don't know that they were keeping that good attrack.
Speaker 1: He will often lie about having spent longer time there
Speaker 1: because he's kind of proud of this period in his life.
Speaker 1: By the time Sala Czar finished his time in the monastery,
Speaker 1: his cousin had become the highest ranking woman at the palace.
Speaker 1: She was like in charge of the harem basically, and
Speaker 1: this was in part because she had borne the prince regent,
Speaker 1: and that's the prince who's going to become the king
Speaker 1: when the king dies a son right before he was
Speaker 1: made the new king, so obviously that elevates her in
Speaker 1: his eyes. His older brother, loth Swung had started working
Speaker 1: as a clerk in the palace in the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: and it was decided that he would taken his younger
Speaker 1: brother Sar and raise him with his wife, so that
Speaker 1: Salasar could live in the capitol and attend a modern
Speaker 1: French style school. David Chandler writes that lost Song considered
Speaker 1: his younger brother quote an even tempered, polite, unremarkable child
Speaker 1: as a primary student, Sammy told the Australian journalist James
Speaker 1: Jerrand Sar had no difficulties with the other students, no
Speaker 1: fights or quarrels, and examining his early years, I found
Speaker 1: no traumatic events and heard no anecdotes that foreshadow his
Speaker 1: years in power. People who met him as an adult
Speaker 1: found his self effacing personality, perhaps a carryover from the
Speaker 1: image he projected as a child and laf Swung's words,
Speaker 1: the contemptible Polepot was a lovely child. And this is
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing about him. Almost every source agrees he
Speaker 1: was an incredibly nice, like polite, pleasant guy to be around,
Speaker 1: which you don't most dictators. You really do get like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, there's hints of the megalomania. Maybe they can
Speaker 1: be nice to some people. But there's other people who
Speaker 1: are like, oh yeah, I got a sign of the
Speaker 1: crazy Polepot. Everyone's just like, yeah, he was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: He seemed nice, and this is so weird.
Speaker 2: I did not know that. That's yes, he's like so bizarre.
Speaker 1: Even after like when Nate Thayer, who's like the last
Speaker 1: journalist to talk to him when he's like in hiding
Speaker 1: eighteen or so years after leaving power is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like a really very polite man. You know,
Speaker 1: it's very odd.
Speaker 4: On that score, you know, the like the modern day
Speaker 4: version of that is prior to now most US presidents
Speaker 4: like yeah, Trump, at least you're clear like, Okay, this
Speaker 4: guy's a fucking like guy's exactly what you've seen. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but like, yeah, truly people, well, you know, there's no
Speaker 4: amount of jedicide George Bush could commit that. People would
Speaker 4: you know, be like I'd drink with him.
Speaker 1: No, And he's absolutely a monster. Absolutely should be in
Speaker 1: the Hague. I was in a room with him once
Speaker 1: and like, get I get why people were loyal to him.
Speaker 1: He's very charming in person or even if you know
Speaker 1: what he's done, it's just skills, like yeah, a fucking Obama,
Speaker 1: right exactly. People who have done a horrible things are
Speaker 1: often deeply likable, which is how they get in position
Speaker 1: to do horrible things. And Sar appears to be that
Speaker 1: kind of guy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, that said, he's also described as a pretty
Speaker 1: boring dude.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He is not political at all, and he's not political
Speaker 1: until very late in this story. His schooling at the
Speaker 1: monastery would mark the only time he was educated in
Speaker 1: his native language once he starts at the French style.
Speaker 1: At col Miche, Sar was taught in French by Catholic
Speaker 1: fathers who were either French or Vietnamese. So these are
Speaker 1: Catholic priests who are French and Vietnamese. Remains a Buddhist,
Speaker 1: but he's being taught every day in Catholicism, right, And
Speaker 1: if this produced any sense of whiplash and the young boy,
Speaker 1: we don't have any evidence of it, but it must
Speaker 1: have been weird. I have to imagine. When he wasn't
Speaker 1: in class, Sar had be rare freedom to visit his
Speaker 1: sister in the ballet harem section of the palace. And
Speaker 1: again not a lot of people are allowed here. This
Speaker 1: gave him number one. He would run into the Queen
Speaker 1: mother pretty regularly and like you have to bow when
Speaker 1: you see her and stuff. And interestingly enough, even afterwards
Speaker 1: as a hardcore communist revolutionary, he remembered her with like
Speaker 1: a sense of awe and reverence. Now this also put
Speaker 1: him in a very vulnerable position, the fact that he's
Speaker 1: one of the few young men boys allowed in this harem.
Speaker 1: As I stated earlier, this group of women who were
Speaker 1: like officially the king's consorts and potential consorts were bored
Speaker 1: all the time, and they were forbidden to be touched
Speaker 1: by anyone else right. And as a result, when a
Speaker 1: kid like Sar comes in, this is the closest they
Speaker 1: can get to going after a man right right, And
Speaker 1: this leads to some profoundly abusive experiences for young Saloth Sar.
Speaker 1: As Philip Short writes, at fifteen, Sar was still regarded
Speaker 1: as a child, young enough to be allowed into the
Speaker 1: women's quarters. Decades later, two of the palace women, living
Speaker 1: out their old age on a French government stipends in Paris,
Speaker 1: remembered little Sar, who used to come to visit them
Speaker 1: wearing his school uniform, a loose white shirt with baggy
Speaker 1: trousers and wooden shoes. The young women would gather around,
Speaker 1: teasing him, they remembered. Then they would loosen his waistband
Speaker 1: and fondle his genitals, masturbating him to a climax. He
Speaker 1: was never allowed to have intercourse with them, but in
Speaker 1: the frustrated hot house world of the Royal Pleasure House,
Speaker 1: it apparently afforded the women of a curious satisfaction. Jesus Christ, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and fuck this does not come out until fairly late,
Speaker 1: like the first the Chandler biography and the earliest biographies
Speaker 1: you're going to read about Polepot. Don't talk about this,
Speaker 1: Nate Thayer. I don't know if I think it may
Speaker 1: have been known when they are talk to him, but
Speaker 1: there is in like a khmer Roue stronghold, So maybe
Speaker 1: you're just not going to bring up like, hey, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about you getting molested, Like I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: blame Nate for that, right, he was in a very
Speaker 1: dangerous position, you know, and exercised a lot of courage
Speaker 1: within that position, But we just don't he never talked
Speaker 1: about this, so we can only kind of speculate like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, I mean this has to have had some impact,
Speaker 1: right right, right, right right, this didn't help, But you know,
Speaker 1: anything beyond that is going to be peer speculation, right
Speaker 1: because they just didn't. This is the only these are
Speaker 1: the only people who talked about it, right.
Speaker 4: Right, right, And it's not like this is coming up
Speaker 4: in you know, therapy notes that we can.
Speaker 1: Find right right, right, And while it is certainly not
Speaker 1: wrong to like be like, well this is pretty poisonous,
Speaker 1: I bet it had an impact on the kind of
Speaker 1: guy he was as an adult. I want people to
Speaker 1: also keep in mind this passage from Chandler's book quote,
Speaker 1: Cambodians attached to the Palace in the nineteen thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: like Salasar and his relations, were insulated from the Chinese
Speaker 1: and so I know Khmer commercial sector of non pen
Speaker 1: from the worldwide economic depression, and from the need to
Speaker 1: grow their own food. Salatsar inhabited this elaborate, safe, safe,
Speaker 1: entirely Cambodian world for many years. So whatever impact this has,
Speaker 1: he is also one of the only Khmer people in
Speaker 1: the society who grows up feeling safe and secure. He's
Speaker 1: never worried about food. And these are the starving times.
Speaker 1: These are and this is a horrible depression for the country.
Speaker 1: Most people are short on food. That's not a thing
Speaker 1: for him. He lives in abundance as a kid, right,
Speaker 1: yeah for her, yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, But it's also like like having that
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, fifteen is old enough to kind
Speaker 4: of realize like.
Speaker 1: This probably shouldn't be happening. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, This abundance is conditional upon some of the other
Speaker 4: maybe horrible things that are having.
Speaker 1: Maybe the fact that these old ladies keep on yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: For her part, his sister recalled his visits fondly, and
Speaker 1: she primarily remembered her brother as a funny kid.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Whenever he had something serious to say, he would make
Speaker 1: a joke of it. This was another common recollection shared
Speaker 1: by his classmates in primary school. Salot Tsar was funny,
Speaker 1: he was easy to be around, and he was most
Speaker 1: particularly gentle, a child who one friend described as not
Speaker 1: being willing to hurt a chicken, which I guess is
Speaker 1: like not, you wouldn't hurt a fly at Cambodia. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, we're coming off a time.
Speaker 4: We're just anything that's considered violence, you could societally ramp
Speaker 4: it up from what US soft Americans are used to.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, as an adult, maybe he wouldn't
Speaker 1: hurt a chicken, but he was willing to hurt a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, exactly. He was not a
Speaker 1: good student. Again, throughout his educational career, he showed a
Speaker 1: capability to learn and study, but no inclination to do it.
Speaker 1: He did not graduate primary school until age eighteen, two
Speaker 1: years after that would have been customary. Now I should
Speaker 1: note that this is the general stance taken by Chandler
Speaker 1: and other biographers, including Short, that like he's not great
Speaker 1: in school, he's kind of lazy. Polpot rebutted these claims
Speaker 1: in the last interview he ever gave, saying that Chandler
Speaker 1: was not entirely accurate.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: I was not a bad student. I was average. I
Speaker 1: studied just enough to keep my scholarship. The rest of
Speaker 1: the time, I just read books. And you know what,
Speaker 1: Sae bestie for most of I should call Polepot bestie.
Speaker 4: You're heading in that direction from most Again, it's just
Speaker 4: refreshing to hear about a murderer's dictator who reads books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ah, you would have loved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you would have loved the Hunger Games Polepot
Speaker 1: for most of the big Dub Dub dose. And again
Speaker 1: we're talking about like his education, like he's like the
Speaker 1: school years that he's going to remember the most are
Speaker 1: during World War Two, right, like he is kind of
Speaker 1: entering adolescents in like the forties, and for most of
Speaker 1: that war, life for Cambodians like Sar in the rarefied
Speaker 1: air of the Capitol went by relatively unchanged. The VC
Speaker 1: government takes over in France, right, so it for Cambodians.
Speaker 1: It's still French people running Canada, but it's a slightly
Speaker 1: different group of French people, right, who are basically fascist collaborators.
Speaker 1: But you're not going to notice much different as a Cambodian.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, the non fascist collaborators still not such great dudes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The main difference would be that Sar would start
Speaker 1: learning in school songs about the glory of Marshall Pataine
Speaker 1: and the like. But I don't know that much of
Speaker 1: this stuck. Thailand invades and conquers several border provinces during
Speaker 1: this time, which is a deep shame to the king
Speaker 1: who is dying in a deep shame to Cambodia. But
Speaker 1: Sar is not a political kid, and we have no
Speaker 1: evidence that this particularly impacted him. Short does theorize, Philip
Speaker 1: Short does theorize that some of the fascist propaganda brought
Speaker 1: into the schools during this period did impact Sar, particularly
Speaker 1: the fact that the propaganda of the vch era romanticizes
Speaker 1: peasants like poor farmers as the true embodiment of the nation.
Speaker 1: And that's really going to be a big sticking point
Speaker 1: for him as an adult. And so maybe there's a
Speaker 1: line there, right, right, The propaganda of the Potanist era
Speaker 1: also depicts the city as an inherently decadent and unnatural thing,
Speaker 1: like a break from the righteous path of subsistent assistance
Speaker 1: farming under a dictator, and that probably leaves a mark
Speaker 1: right now. In the summer of nineteen forty two, the
Speaker 1: capitol saw its first major protests against French control. A
Speaker 1: group of Cambodian monks began preaching anti French sermons. This
Speaker 1: was an escalation of what was at this point a
Speaker 1: slowly developing sense of Cambodian nationalism that had been supercharged
Speaker 1: by the fact that France had collapsed under the Nazi
Speaker 1: boot heel. Two of these monks are arrested by vishi
Speaker 1: French police, who do so in a way that defaces
Speaker 1: a religious shrine, and this sparks more extensive protests right
Speaker 1: and these protests terminate in a march on the French
Speaker 1: administrator's office. Now, the main leader of the nationalist movement
Speaker 1: in the country at this time is a guy named
Speaker 1: Sun nach Than who he had some kind of lefty inclinations.
Speaker 1: He was not anti socialist, but he's not a communist.
Speaker 1: He's not really a socialist. He is a big popular front,
Speaker 1: big tent. Let's free Cambodia and then we could figure out,
Speaker 1: like politically what we want to do. Right. That's his
Speaker 1: kind of deal, right, and so he's broadly popular with
Speaker 1: kind of everyone who wants an independent Cambodia. He's a
Speaker 1: very heroic figure during these times, this time, and he
Speaker 1: starts organizing demonstrations against the French. They do what regimes do,
Speaker 1: and they crack down. They imprison all his friends and
Speaker 1: he's forced to go on the run, where he eventually
Speaker 1: asks the Emperor of Japan for asylum and gets it. Now,
Speaker 1: Sar would have been aware of all of this. He
Speaker 1: probably would have admired than but there's not much evidence
Speaker 1: that this takes up a lot of bandwidth in his brain.
Speaker 1: Like most of his classmates who go on to become communists,
Speaker 1: he was focused at the time on his own educational career.
Speaker 1: As a student, Sar loved French poetry and sports. He
Speaker 1: loved all kinds of sports. He was an avid soccer
Speaker 1: player who was known for kicking the ball behind his
Speaker 1: head with stunning accuracy. He also played This shocked me.
Speaker 1: He's on the school basketball team, and Sophie I looked
Speaker 1: it up, and since Polepot died in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: sadly there is no way he ever saw Lebron play,
Speaker 1: which is a real tragedy because Lebron does. Lebron goes
Speaker 1: straight into the NBA two thousand and three, I think
Speaker 1: so one of the.
Speaker 2: Great hoping history.
Speaker 4: Some some stats on Poulpot's numbers, but he.
Speaker 1: Must have known about Michael Jordan's, so at least there's
Speaker 1: that composition. I don't know. I looked, Sophie, I looked.
Speaker 1: I don't know. These are the great mysteries of history.
Speaker 1: I'm only it's.
Speaker 3: Really proud that you're you take the time to look
Speaker 3: up stuff about you know, Lebron, Ramon James.
Speaker 1: I did it for you. I did it for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What if Polepot had gotten to play a pickup game
Speaker 1: with Kareem Abdul Jabbar. You know that's the I'm working
Speaker 1: on a novel right way. Not that tall. Look, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest, Khmer basketball could not have been the
Speaker 1: most Like these are not tall people's protein. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, like Lebron six nine. Yeah, no, these Lebron
Speaker 1: alone probably could have taken on the whole team. I
Speaker 1: mean on him every time. Yeah, like, oh god. So
Speaker 1: while several of his friends went off to a prestigious
Speaker 1: secondary school, salatsar barely eked by. He does horrible in
Speaker 1: his exams, and so he's not able to go to
Speaker 1: like the Humanities school, which is really progressive. So he
Speaker 1: goes to like a much worse boarding school, which is
Speaker 1: still vastly better than ninety nine percent of the population. Again,
Speaker 1: we're talking a chunk of one percent who gets any
Speaker 1: kind of education like this, right, So the fact that
Speaker 1: he's like at the bottom of the educlated class still
Speaker 1: means that he is almost unfathomably privileged by the standards
Speaker 1: of average mayor. So he starts this school in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three. In nineteen forty five, Japan seized Tarot seized
Speaker 1: Cambodia from VC France for a variety of complex reasons
Speaker 1: that all boiled down to they were losing the war
Speaker 1: and they were trying every hail Mary they could, right,
Speaker 1: They're like, look, these French guys, they don't have a
Speaker 1: good hold on things. What don't we just arrest them
Speaker 1: all and make Cambodia Japan for a little while. Will
Speaker 1: that help us beat the Americans? No, turns out, turns out,
Speaker 1: Cambodia not really that useful in fighting the United States
Speaker 1: in this period.
Speaker 2: It will be later, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The Vietnamese are going to make some real hay out
Speaker 1: of having a Cambodia in their back pocket.
Speaker 4: But right piece, wrong time, you know. Yeah, that's like
Speaker 4: it's like any risk game.
Speaker 1: It's like any risk game, right, yeah. So they arrest
Speaker 1: all of the French people basically in France, and Japan
Speaker 1: is in trouble, in touch for a while. Japan is
Speaker 1: pretty brutal in a lot of areas they govern. They
Speaker 1: really aren't in Cambodia to the Khmer because like why
Speaker 1: would they be, right like, and they don't have the time,
Speaker 1: you know, it's nineteen forty five. But the main impact
Speaker 1: this has on people like Salassar and his peers is
Speaker 1: that they see all of these French administry, all of
Speaker 1: these French teachers and priests get arrested and locked up.
Speaker 1: And these people had been untouchable previously. They were very
Speaker 1: similar to the king in that like you just can't
Speaker 1: even comprehend the idea of laying a hand on them.
Speaker 1: And they see these people forced from power and locked
Speaker 1: up by people who aren't white, and that has a
Speaker 1: huge impact, right, And the thing it teaches them is that,
Speaker 1: like the power of the French is not inevitable or immovable,
Speaker 1: it can be pushed aside. And if the Japanese could
Speaker 1: do it, maybe we could. Right. One of Sar's friends
Speaker 1: later recalled, we saw that a yellow and this is
Speaker 1: his words, we saw that a yellow race. The Japanese
Speaker 1: had gotten the better of the white colonialists the French.
Speaker 1: That awakened something in us. It made us start thinking.
Speaker 1: And as far as propaganda goes, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about all the reading that these kids do, and you know,
Speaker 1: reading Mao, reading Stalin, that all has an impact. I
Speaker 1: don't know of anything has a bigger propaganda impact than
Speaker 1: seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists.
Speaker 2: And that is the power of representation.
Speaker 1: There we go, right, Yeah, obviously the Empire of Japan
Speaker 1: is no less imperialist than the French empire, right, But
Speaker 1: that's immaterial in discussing how it influenced people like Salasar
Speaker 1: and these the future Khmer's Rouge. Now, for the immediate moment, though,
Speaker 1: the biggest change brought on by Japan's brief conquest is
Speaker 1: that everybody kind of got a case of senioritis because
Speaker 1: all their teachers get arrested, right should you hear? When
Speaker 1: you read about them talking about this period, it reminds
Speaker 1: me most of that like week after you take your
Speaker 1: AP exam while they're still school but like no one's
Speaker 1: doing anything in class. That's kind of what these kids
Speaker 1: all go through. Like their French teachers get replaced by
Speaker 1: some Vietnamese teachers, but the substitutes don't really know it
Speaker 1: a handle shit as well, so like they're kind of
Speaker 1: fucking off for a little while. Some Nochtan returns to
Speaker 1: agitate for independence and even manages to briefly run Cambodia
Speaker 1: as an independent country after Japan, you know, collapses, right,
Speaker 1: And so he's running Cambodia is independent under this broadly
Speaker 1: popular nationalist for about two months, which is just enough
Speaker 1: that everyone really likes this guy and feels really good
Speaker 1: about it, but not so long that like maybe some
Speaker 1: of the problems that he might have managed, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing not that I'm not saying. He actually seems
Speaker 1: like he was pretty competent, but like it it's going
Speaker 1: to it's going to stick in people's minds as a
Speaker 1: golden period.
Speaker 4: Because you don't you don't have to the consequences of
Speaker 4: your tough decisions. Yeah, you don't spend enough time in
Speaker 4: office for them to come back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So this this lasts about two months
Speaker 1: and then the French show back up with their tanks
Speaker 1: and are like, actually, we still feel like Cambodia is
Speaker 1: natural French territory. Yeah, they arrest Pan, they call him
Speaker 1: a trader and to what again, you guys weren't even
Speaker 1: there anymore. Like, but by this point he was universally beloved,
Speaker 1: particularly by young educated Khmer like Siloth Sar and his friends.
Speaker 1: Now Sar again has no real political beliefs at this point,
Speaker 1: beyond a growing endorsement of populis nationalism. He continues to
Speaker 1: be a mid student. He fails to get into an
Speaker 1: educational program that would have gotten him a prestigious degree
Speaker 1: and instead settles to go to a technical school. And
Speaker 1: he picks the easiest degree plan at the technical school, carpentry,
Speaker 1: because the Khmer professor was known for giving everyone good grades,
Speaker 1: no matter how well they did, so he's like a
Speaker 1: carpenter for a little while in school, and he's doing
Speaker 1: this because there's like a there's like a study abroad
Speaker 1: program that gets given to the best students, and there's
Speaker 1: a number of slots, and like he figured, basically the
Speaker 1: easiest thing for me to be the best at his
Speaker 1: carpentry because it's like the blowoff class, and that'll be
Speaker 1: my best shot at getting into this program.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, grab a wildcard slot anyway you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, what a very very that's a very modern
Speaker 1: attitude towards it. Honestly, I have a lot of friends
Speaker 1: in school who made similar calls. Nineteen forty seven is
Speaker 1: the first year we have evidence for Sar getting directly
Speaker 1: involved in politics. That year, the newly found Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: which advocated for replacing French and absolute monarchical rule with
Speaker 1: a democracy, or at least like a hybrid democracy when
Speaker 1: there's a king but he's limited constitutionally and we have
Speaker 1: like this parliament type deal. They win fifty four seats
Speaker 1: in the national elections. King Vansak, an older student who
Speaker 1: is something of a mentor to Sar and his friends,
Speaker 1: claims that Sar, along with several of his friends, including Jangsari,
Speaker 1: who's going to also help run the Khmaer rouge volunteer
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Party during the elections. Right, And when
Speaker 1: I say Democratic Party here, it's literally like the party
Speaker 1: that thinks we should have a democracy. Yeah, right, And
Speaker 1: this is and this is kind of this is a
Speaker 1: melting pot. A lot of future communists and socialists are
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party, as well as a lot of
Speaker 1: guys who are like going to wind up more and
Speaker 1: the like, well, I want to be aligned with the Americans, right,
Speaker 1: This is just kind of where a lot of them
Speaker 1: are at this stage. In nineteen forty nine, Salat Sar
Speaker 1: gets picked for that Study Abroad program and he becomes
Speaker 1: one of the first one hundred Khmer male and female
Speaker 1: students to win a scholarship to go study in Paris.
Speaker 1: They leave on a steamship that they actually go through
Speaker 1: Saigon and they arrive in Paris on the same day
Speaker 1: Mauzi Dung announces the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Speaker 1: So a lot is happening, and this is going to
Speaker 1: increasingly make discussions of like communism a lot more relevant
Speaker 1: to these kids who it really hadn't been all that
Speaker 1: much up to this point. Now, nearly all of the
Speaker 1: students that he goes to Paris with wind up being
Speaker 1: prominent political figures. A lot of them are are leaders
Speaker 1: within the Khmer Rouge. A lot of them get killed
Speaker 1: by the Khmer Rouge because they're leaders of the Khmer Rouge,
Speaker 1: and the Khmer Rouge loves murdering the Khmer Rouge. Right Like,
Speaker 1: this is primarily because almost no one else in the
Speaker 1: country had access to educational opportunities or the free time
Speaker 1: necessary to learn about radical politics. So obviously the people
Speaker 1: who are dominant in the radical political sect are the
Speaker 1: only ones with the time to read. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: that shocking. Speaking of things that aren't shocking, these products,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be surprised. We're back. And actually it
Speaker 1: turns out several of our sponsors might electrocute you. But
Speaker 1: you know, some people called getting electrocuted. I call it
Speaker 1: getting free electricity, you know, and that shit's expensive these days.
Speaker 1: If you looked at your power bill, can you afford
Speaker 1: to turn down getting electrocuted?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Maybe speaking I know, I shouldn't use electrocuted because that
Speaker 1: only means you've been killed shocked, I guess an electrician
Speaker 1: friend explained that to me once. Anyway, whatever fucking power
Speaker 1: power cops. So where are we here? Yeah, So Sar
Speaker 1: gets into this program to study abroad despite his unimpressive grade,
Speaker 1: not just because there's not a lot of kids in
Speaker 1: this program, but because even among the ones who do
Speaker 1: better than him, most of them don't want to like
Speaker 1: leave Cambodia for years, right, because they got like families
Speaker 1: and shit.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: His fellow students are guys like Jang Seri, who later
Speaker 1: becomes the co founder of the Khmayer Rouge. Chandler summarizes
Speaker 1: his early life this way. Sari was born and raised
Speaker 1: upon among the Cambodian minority of Coach in China. His father,
Speaker 1: Kim Reem, was a prosperous landowner. When Riim died, Sari,
Speaker 1: still a young boy, was sent to live with relatives
Speaker 1: in the Cambodian province of pre Vang. He was given
Speaker 1: the name Yng Seri, which sounded more Khmare than his
Speaker 1: real name Kim Trang. And that's not an uncommon story,
Speaker 1: is like, especially among these guys. Paul Pot's gonna do
Speaker 1: the same thing where it's like, Eh, my original name
Speaker 1: not quite as good as I want it to be.
Speaker 1: Let me, let me, kimare this fucker up a little bit, right.
Speaker 4: It's all very WWF. I like it, just like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's get a populous name going. Look, I think one
Speaker 4: thing we've all learned from the last decade of American
Speaker 4: politics is that the Rosetta stone for understanding all of
Speaker 4: human behavior, culture, and history is professional wrestling.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, if you get pro wrestling, you understand
Speaker 1: the whole swap of human achievement.
Speaker 4: You thought it was, you thought it was gladiatorial combat,
Speaker 4: but that wasn't nearly campinof.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, not nearly campinoff. So, as you can see,
Speaker 1: the reason I bring up Sary's background is it's not
Speaker 1: all that different from Salat Sar, right, and most of
Speaker 1: these Paris kids are going to become like the core
Speaker 1: of this like educated revolutionary class, have similar stories. Right,
Speaker 1: they are intellectuals. They're going to target and annihilate the
Speaker 1: intellectual class in Cambodi once they get in power. But
Speaker 1: they're intellectuals, right, that's the class they come from. It's
Speaker 1: not not that different from how Stephen Miller's background goes. Actually, right,
Speaker 1: So salots Star and most of Salastar starts off his
Speaker 1: time in Paris living in a dormitory complex. He would
Speaker 1: later claim that in the first year he was a
Speaker 1: fairly good student, and this is true enough, but his
Speaker 1: studies quickly slipped. Part of this is because his middling
Speaker 1: grades meant that he had to go to a technical
Speaker 1: school rather than get a degree in like the humanities,
Speaker 1: which was a lot sexier for these people who are
Speaker 1: going to wind up being future revolutionaries. And the degree
Speaker 1: plan he's working on for his years in Paris is
Speaker 1: as a radio technician. Chandler suggests that this is because
Speaker 1: he kind of befriends the King's nephew, Prince Song Pon,
Speaker 1: who lives in Paris at the time, and Prince Somong
Speaker 1: Pon is also studying to be a radio technician. We
Speaker 1: know the Prince helps him find an apartment with a
Speaker 1: couple of friends, which is, you know, the place he
Speaker 1: moves out of that dormitory to live in Polpot will
Speaker 1: deny this for the rest of his life. He denied.
Speaker 1: He would lie a lot about his connections to the
Speaker 1: royal family, which are deep. As we've established, he gets
Speaker 1: a lot out of his family's connections to the royal family,
Speaker 1: but in the future he's going to be like no
Speaker 1: when I was in Paris, I lived with a cousin.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like friends with the prince.
Speaker 4: Come on, let's not let it go, and said that
Speaker 4: he was obviously studying to be the twentieth century version
Speaker 4: of a podcast.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, that's right, Pot one coming for my job.
Speaker 1: That's right. Oh, Sophie, I gotta I gotta say. I
Speaker 1: give him a shot. Look, nothing against you. I just
Speaker 1: want to see how Polepot produces a podcast. How fucking
Speaker 1: dare you? You know what dare you don't tell me
Speaker 1: you don't want to see it.
Speaker 2: I would die for you.
Speaker 1: You're gonna give me, Sophie Pot. It gets in the operation.
Speaker 1: We're all dying.
Speaker 4: The important thing is Sophie could organize a genocide. Poulpot
Speaker 4: could never produce a podcast.
Speaker 1: That's that's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna sting for a little while.
Speaker 1: And I didn't say. I didn't say i'd like it.
Speaker 1: I said it up.
Speaker 3: With a lebron stat And then you kick me to
Speaker 3: the curve for fucking polepought.
Speaker 1: Look he could he could have been a podcaster, you know,
Speaker 1: could have been a podcaster. He was known as having
Speaker 1: a nice voice, you know, he could have had my
Speaker 1: job maybe behind.
Speaker 2: The means and guess the po podcast and my boys.
Speaker 1: I have a Pole podcast. I wouldn't choose you. I
Speaker 1: might I might prefer to listen to the Pole podcast, honestly,
Speaker 1: Like that sounds that sounds fascinating. So Sar joins the
Speaker 1: Khmer Student Union, which at that time was in the
Speaker 1: process of morphing into a semi covert communist youth league.
Speaker 1: He attended his first protest the next year for a
Speaker 1: radical member of the Democratic Party who was assassinated by
Speaker 1: right wingers using a hand grenade. Still, at this point
Speaker 1: in his political involvement, it seems to have been a
Speaker 1: byproduct of a social life. Right, He's at this protest
Speaker 1: because like his friends are doing stuff like this, and
Speaker 1: this is where you like go to hang out with people, right,
Speaker 1: and he is he is kind of a hedonist at
Speaker 1: this phase of his life. Philip Short writes, Sar's friends
Speaker 1: regarded him as a bon vivant whose purpose in life
Speaker 1: was to have a good time. So that's a I
Speaker 1: think where we're going to end for part one. We're
Speaker 1: at about an hour. Uh, We've got a lot more
Speaker 1: polepot here, so we'll see how long it takes to
Speaker 1: get through all of this. I really did try to
Speaker 1: cut this fucker down because I wanted to deliver this
Speaker 1: all in one week. But there's this guy's life. See fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there we are part one. How are you feeling
Speaker 1: about Polepot so far?
Speaker 4: Andrew t I mean so far sounds fucking dope. What
Speaker 4: could possibly go wrong? What could possibly change? What could
Speaker 4: possibly go wrong?
Speaker 1: This is like that first Star Wars prequel where it's like, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: he's kind of an annoying kid, but you know whatever,
Speaker 1: how could things go badly? Yeah?
Speaker 2: He likes the party, but he's a kid, come on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's got a weird crush on a lady
Speaker 1: who's visibly like fifteen years older than him. That's a
Speaker 1: little off, but.
Speaker 4: Whatever, Like, you know, he doesn't realize it's abuse, and
Speaker 4: that's the important thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, I mean, it is weird. They
Speaker 1: then paired Hayden Christensen with Natalie Portman. Toby, we were
Speaker 1: clearly the same age, after establishing that, like, she was
Speaker 1: a mature adult ruling a country when he was a
Speaker 1: small boy.
Speaker 2: It's just why why would you write that?
Speaker 1: In Look?
Speaker 4: You know, it's the power of shooting your shot. I
Speaker 4: guess that's what the force is, is just shooting.
Speaker 1: Your shot, shooting your shot. The Star Wars version of
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards probably does talk a lot about and
Speaker 1: then Darth Vader is this weird relationship with this woman's
Speaker 1: like twenty years older than him. So who knows how
Speaker 1: this abuse affected you know, the things that he did
Speaker 1: when he was in Bauer, right, he never wrote about this. Well,
Speaker 1: we am as this interview with Watto, and that guy's
Speaker 1: not really super reliableenda his own agenda. Now, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure he murdered Watto if I'm remembering my expanded universe sh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think primary universe.
Speaker 1: Primary universe, Yeah yeah, yeah, Sorry, where's that legends? I
Speaker 1: don't know, fucking Disney.
Speaker 2: Goddamn you know what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it anyway, everybody please join me from
Speaker 1: my Behind the Bastard's Star Wars focused podcast, which is
Speaker 1: actually entirely about Kathleen Kennedy. I don't have any issue
Speaker 1: with Kathleen kid any It's all about George Lucas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's all about a bunch of anonymous money guys.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, all right, Well, like George Lucas. I hope
Speaker 1: you all have a good day eating in a food
Speaker 1: court and being photographed like a Yetti andrew T Jetty
Speaker 1: pluggables to plug.
Speaker 4: I mean my podcast is yeoways as racist. I don't
Speaker 4: know that's keeping it real.
Speaker 1: Keep it real all right, everybody, YouTube, Keep it real
Speaker 1: until next day or whatever.
Speaker 2: Go to help.
Speaker 1: I love you.
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