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Speaker 1: Also media, Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a

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Speaker 1: podcast about really our first genocidal bastard who is legitimately

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Speaker 1: considered a nice guy, which is a nice write at

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Speaker 1: everybody that nice does not mean good. Lots of nice

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Speaker 1: people who are evil.

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Speaker 2: That is so I was going to say, Yeah, that's

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Speaker 2: also a reminder.

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Speaker 3: Of course, you know, you don't have to be an

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Speaker 3: asshole to be the top of your field.

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Speaker 1: So no, no, no, you don't have to be an

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Speaker 1: asshole to be the top of your field.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Robert, what I don't say that to me. I'm

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Speaker 4: still mad about last time.

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Speaker 1: You're still mad about the fact that I want to

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Speaker 1: see what Polepot looks like producing a podcast. But what

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Speaker 1: if we just put him on sixteenth minute for a week?

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Speaker 4: No, I would never replace Jamie Loftus.

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Speaker 1: Maybe maybe Polepot and Jamie will find out that they're

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Speaker 1: like like a Fleetwood Mac deal, like just like perfect,

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Speaker 1: perfect musical partners, you know, like just a historic talent match.

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Speaker 4: You've you've watched that Spring that that Silver Springs video

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Speaker 4: one time.

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Speaker 1: I've been I've been watching the nineteen ninety seven fans

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Speaker 1: Silver Springs million times. I know you have Honestly, what

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Speaker 1: if Polepot had been in Fleetwood Mac? You know, could

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Speaker 1: that have had Could that have been good? Almost certainly not.

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Speaker 4: Stephen X would have come out on top, just like

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Speaker 4: you didn't realize.

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Speaker 1: I'm just imagining Polepots sitting down all of Fleetwood Mac

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Speaker 1: and being like, guys, this is way too toxic. You

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Speaker 1: need you need to learn how to have healthier interpersonal boundaries.

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Speaker 2: I learned that. I learned this one at my time

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Speaker 2: at the Temple.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and let me tell you so one time we

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Speaker 1: were shooting twenty thousand people to death and I got

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Speaker 1: angry at my friend.

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Speaker 2: That's what it's about.

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Speaker 1: It's not what it's about speaking of shooting twenty thousand

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Speaker 1: people to death. Our guest Andrew T never did that.

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Speaker 2: He didn't. Yeah, probably did. I knew, No, you would know,

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Speaker 2: you would know, you would know. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: For one thing, that's twenty thousand bullets. That's not cheap

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Speaker 1: these days, right, like you're talking several months even of

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Speaker 1: la rent, you know. So yeah, with the tariffsh my god, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that cheap Turkish amo is going to be a lot

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Speaker 1: more expensive. So you're gonna have to shoot people with

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Speaker 1: the homegrown American bullets, which you know anyway, Andrew, how

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Speaker 1: are you doing today?

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Speaker 2: Okay, I'm alive. I'm alive.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you're alive. And we're talking about the doge of Indo, China,

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Speaker 1: the Khmer Rouge, which is not as far from the

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Speaker 1: truth as it would be comforting for it to be.

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Speaker 3: It's closer to the truth than we want it to be,

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Speaker 3: but yeah, by a lot.

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Speaker 1: Specifically, we're talking about Salothsar, the man who would become Polepot,

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Speaker 1: who at this point is living in Paris, and he

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Speaker 1: is a bon vivant whose purpose in life is to

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Speaker 1: have a good time. He's drinking the wine, he's reading

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Speaker 1: lots of books, and he's not doing a whole lot

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Speaker 1: of radio technician school, which is why he is ostensibly

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Speaker 1: in Paris in the first place. He would later recall

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Speaker 1: spending all of his spare money on French language books

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Speaker 1: during this period of time. He is a real hound

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Speaker 1: to the used bookstore crowd. He shows a particular interest

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Speaker 1: in the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is, among

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Speaker 1: other things, like that the big idea from Rousseau that

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Speaker 1: seems to have left the primary mark on Sar's psyche

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Speaker 1: is this concept of the noble savage, right, this almost

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Speaker 1: idealized human that lives close to nature and hasn't been

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Speaker 1: polluted by these concepts of modernity. Right. This is a

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Speaker 1: big idea for Rousseau, obviously influenced by European colonialism in

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Speaker 1: the Americas, and it's going to have a big mark

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Speaker 1: on Polepot. He's not in the least bit interested in

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Speaker 1: the Americas, but there's this idea he starts to get

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Speaker 1: in his head of idealizing the Khmer peasantry who he

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Speaker 1: was technically born into but not really like he born

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Speaker 1: just above, just above and immediately bounced to go hang

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Speaker 1: out with the royal family, right, Right, But he's really

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Speaker 1: going to like and this it's not just he's not

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Speaker 1: doing this in isolation. They're all reading guys like Rousseau.

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Speaker 1: They're all getting involved in knowledgeable of these French thinkers,

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Speaker 1: and so this would not he would have been having conversations

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Speaker 1: about these these concepts with his friends at the time.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 1: He Also, one thing I learned in the interview he

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Speaker 1: did with Nate Thayer later in life, and this is

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Speaker 1: not in his earlier biographies. They talk a lot. He

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Speaker 1: reads Mao, he reads Stalin, we'll talk about that. He's

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Speaker 1: also for a period of time really interested in Mahatma Gandhi,

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Speaker 1: Like he kind of keeps up obsessively with the story

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Speaker 1: of Gandhi and the successful fight to decolonize India. Not

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Speaker 1: a Gandhi figure, po Pot, you could say, but he

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Speaker 1: is very and it makes sense that he's interested in

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Speaker 1: it because India is a colonized country that throws off

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Speaker 1: the shackles of its colonial oppressor, and that's what he's

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Speaker 1: gonna want to do, right, he does reject the Gandhi route, Well, you.

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Speaker 3: Know it's about that that ends justifying the means, right,

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Speaker 3: this is where this goes right now.

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Speaker 1: And you know, here's the difference. Polepot. I do think

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Speaker 1: could have been a pretty good podcaster. Gandhi terrible podcast,

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Speaker 1: absolutely dog shit. Could have had a YouTube channel, could

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Speaker 1: have been pretty good on YouTube. You know, he's me

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Speaker 1: on a Twitch instead of freeing India. He would have

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Speaker 1: gotten really successful on Patriot. And then he started guy Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a Twitch streamer, Gandhi playing Gears of War but just

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Speaker 1: refusing to shoot the whole time. Yeah, doing the pacifist

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Speaker 1: doing the pacifist run of cyberpunk twenty seventy seven.

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Speaker 4: So much funnier than Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So Poulpot would later say of his time and like

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Speaker 1: the impact that all this reading had on him. I

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Speaker 1: started as a nationalist and then patriot, and then I

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Speaker 1: read progressive books. Before that time, I had never read

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Speaker 1: The Humanity the French Communist Party newspaper. It scared me,

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Speaker 1: but I got used to it because of the student movement.

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Speaker 1: So he describes kind of being initially frightened of like

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Speaker 1: communism and some of these ideas. And I wonder how

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Speaker 1: much of that has to do with the fact that

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Speaker 1: very clearly his family and background is like the enemy

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Speaker 1: as often described in like a lot of communist writing, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: people like him are not who you're messaging to primarily,

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Speaker 1: right like he is. There's not much of a bourgeoisie

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Speaker 1: in Cambodia, but he definitely is part of it, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's sort of like that, Yeah, get him and

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Speaker 3: then melting hi, Yeah, slowly out of the back of

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Speaker 3: the craft.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And he says that like basically just like the

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Speaker 1: fact that it is so not just among but by

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Speaker 1: the way, when we say the student movement, he's not

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Speaker 1: just socializing with other Khmer he socializing with a lot

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Speaker 1: of young French radicals, right, and so he just kind

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Speaker 1: of through immersion gets more comfortable with socialism and than communism.

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Speaker 1: But he was also very engaged with the non educational

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Speaker 1: opportunities afforded to him, including a free work trip to

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Speaker 1: war ravaged Yugoslavia. Now, we actually had two different options

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Speaker 1: for a vacation during this first year that he's in France.

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Speaker 1: One was a month long backpacking trip in Switzerland, which

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Speaker 1: costs seventy dollars in Boy, if I could get that

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Speaker 1: deal today, I'd be gone the fucking heartbeat. But that

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Speaker 1: is a lot of money for the time, and he

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Speaker 1: has no money, right, so he picks a labor trip

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Speaker 1: to go help rebuild Yugoslavia, which had just become a thing.

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Speaker 1: If you think about Yugoslavia is the Balkans. It's the

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Speaker 1: Balkans all being a state that's an independent state for

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Speaker 1: basically the first time, and it's like the least governable

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Speaker 1: territory on Earth is finally being governed by a guy.

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Speaker 1: But it's all been blown to fuck by World War Two.

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Speaker 1: So you can come here for free and will kind

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Speaker 1: of feed you, even though we don't have much food,

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Speaker 1: but it'll be free if you help rebuild, and so

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Speaker 1: that's what he does. Right, This was not a political thing.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't go to Yugoslavia because they're communist. He later wrote,

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Speaker 1: I didn't have money, so I couldn't do as the

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Speaker 1: others and go to Geneva or to the sea or

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Speaker 1: to the mountains and have a holiday there. A group

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Speaker 1: of a poor students went instead to Zagreb. Now this

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Speaker 1: is a seminal moment for Salathsar. Tito, who is the

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Speaker 1: dictator of Yugoslavia, was a communist who had been who

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Speaker 1: had fought as an insurgent against the Nazis. Tito, we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about him one day. He's one of these guys

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Speaker 1: where I can't say he's not a bastard because he's

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Speaker 1: a dictator. He does some bad stuff. He's also like

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Speaker 1: the best case scenario for a dictator. If you're gonna

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Speaker 1: live under a dictator in the twentieth century, you fucking

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Speaker 1: want it to be Tito. Right. He does know what

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Speaker 1: he's doing, which is extremely rare. And he's also legitimately

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Speaker 1: like the hardest son of a bitch alive in his day,

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Speaker 1: Like he fights the Nazis, and then my favorite Tito's

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Speaker 1: story because he breaks away from the USSR because Stalin

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Speaker 1: obviously wants Yugoslavia to basically be an extension of the USSR,

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Speaker 1: and Tito is like, yeah, the Balkans have had enough

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Speaker 1: being other people's property. We're gonna be the bullk you know,

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Speaker 1: We're going to be our own thing for a while.

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Speaker 1: And Stalin keeps sending guys to kill him and find

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Speaker 1: Stalin like Tina like sends back. I think it's a

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Speaker 1: piece of one of the assassins with a note that's like,

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Speaker 1: you can keep sending guys and I'll keep killing them.

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Speaker 1: But if you do, I'm gonna send one guy and

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Speaker 1: you're not gonna send him back, right, Like he's gonna

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Speaker 1: get you right right, Like Tito is legitimately one of

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Speaker 1: the scariest dudes who ever lived, and also shockingly competent

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Speaker 1: at what he does, because like, Yugoslavia collapses immediately after

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Speaker 1: his death into a heart into a hideous civil war. Right,

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Speaker 1: but it's like the only time the Balkans is a unified,

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Speaker 1: peaceful thing more or less while Tito's in charge, and

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Speaker 1: again he has he runs, he has a police state,

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Speaker 1: he's not a nice man, but you can't help but

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Speaker 1: be like, well, shit, that motherfucker knew what he was doing, right,

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Speaker 1: good at his job. At least he's like he's like

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Speaker 1: Tom Cruise. Right, I'm not gonna say Tom Cruise is

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Speaker 1: a good man, but the son of a bitch loves cinema, right.

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Speaker 4: I'm definitely not going to say Tom Cruise is a good.

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Speaker 1: Man and he cares about COVID policy. Looks, Sophie, beggars

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Speaker 1: can't be choosers anymore.

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Speaker 4: I don't like that.

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Speaker 1: Man, no, no, no, but he's the Tito of movies.

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Speaker 1: We can all agree on that. I think that's a

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Speaker 1: fair way.

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Speaker 2: To look at him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is good. This is good. Historians with me.

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Speaker 2: He's a Stanis Barathian.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Stantus, Yes, these are all Stanus except for

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Speaker 1: Stanis again loses. Tito never fucking does.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So at this point though, Tito is in charge and

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union really doesn't like that like young kind

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Speaker 1: of socialist lefty inclined kids in France, because the Communist

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Speaker 1: Party still does try to and into a degree, exercises

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Speaker 1: a lot of control over these like like national Western

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Speaker 1: communist parties and like Paris and stuff. They think that

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Speaker 1: Tito was a traitor to the cause, right, and so

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Speaker 1: there's like an effort among French socialists to discourage young

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Speaker 1: people from volunteering in Yugoslavia. But for whatever reason, Sara

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Speaker 1: does not get the memo, or he just doesn't give

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Speaker 1: a shit, So he goes Salath and a bunch of

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Speaker 1: his friends. They go in there. You know, at this point,

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Speaker 1: the whole population of Yugoslavia is basically organized into these

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Speaker 1: massive labor brigades that are rebuilding the part of the

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Speaker 1: country that had been ruined in the war, which was

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Speaker 1: all of the country. It's the least covered theater of

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Speaker 1: war in World War Two. The shit that went on

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Speaker 1: in the Balkans in World War two is it's nuts

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Speaker 1: by Eastern Front standards. Like there were like SS guys

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Speaker 1: who tried to go to the East because the Balkans

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Speaker 1: was so fucked up. Like I cannot exaggerate how bad

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Speaker 1: World War two was for the Balkans. Sar's particular crew

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Speaker 1: helped to rebuild a motorway, and the impression he took

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Speaker 1: away from the experience was stirring, this powerful sensation of

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Speaker 1: being engaged in a great, real time task of building

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Speaker 1: a modern nation from the ground up using only the

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Speaker 1: raw human material of its populace. As Polepot years later,

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Speaker 1: he was emphatic that he had no political interest in

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Speaker 1: planning the trip. It was purely for pleasure. But the

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Speaker 1: experience left an impact anyway. Short quotes from one of

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Speaker 1: his friends at the time, who wrote about the experience

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Speaker 1: highlights kind of the impact we can assume this probably

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Speaker 1: had on Polepot. Quote everywhere this guy wrote, the People's

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Speaker 1: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia resembles an enormous work site where factories, roads,

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Speaker 1: railways and hydraulic centers are being built. This effort is

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Speaker 1: also worthy of praise because strength of all the people

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Speaker 1: united around their leaders gives them the chance of gaining

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Speaker 1: successive victories, knowing that it is a question of national survival,

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Speaker 1: and the post war rebuilding of Yugoslavia has a lot

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Speaker 1: of successes, right, And obviously there's more to it than

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Speaker 1: just throwing together huge work gangs, and that's kind of

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Speaker 1: going to be lost on salath Tsar and his comrades, right,

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Speaker 1: But this idea of mobilizing a nation to remake a

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Speaker 1: country from the ground up, and that's very much what

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Speaker 1: That's not accurate to literally what was going on in Yugoslavia,

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Speaker 1: but that's accurate to what they would have been aware

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Speaker 1: of as foreigners coming in. That leaves him mark.

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Speaker 3: And they were at the that were there at the

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Speaker 3: forefront of seeing the that is action.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Salotsar and his friends, as I said, represented a

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Speaker 1: sizable chunk of the entire educated adult Khmer population at

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Speaker 1: this point in time. Right. But due to the isolation

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Speaker 1: of Cambodia and some of the cultural realities inherent to

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Speaker 1: having your education conducted entirely in a second language, most

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Speaker 1: of these guys arrive in Paris with no real understanding

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Speaker 1: of Marxism or Communism, and they never get a very

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Speaker 1: good way. These guys are not what a Marxist today

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Speaker 1: would call super educated Marxists, in that a lot of

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Speaker 1: them are kind of bored of marx and a lot

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Speaker 1: of them are like in part because like, I don't

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Speaker 1: really get this. This is not this has been translated

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Speaker 1: several times. Marx is not the communists who speaks to

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Speaker 1: them the most, right, and that's not primarily what they're

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Speaker 1: going to base. Stalin and Mao are going to be

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Speaker 1: the communist writers who have the biggest direct impact on

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Speaker 1: this crew.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So after getting back from Yugoslavia, Sar increasingly falls in

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Speaker 1: with his friend Yang Seri and Hip Sari's friends, and

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Speaker 1: these guys are better students, They're at more prestigious schools,

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Speaker 1: getting more prestigious degrees and like the humanities and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Seri introduced Sar to a guy named King Bonsak, who

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Speaker 1: was one of the most probably the most senior Khmer

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Speaker 1: student in France. He'd been there the longest at twenty five.

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Speaker 1: He is the old man of the Cambodian expat community, right,

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Speaker 1: and Van Sack was, as a result, one of the

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Speaker 1: executive committee members of the student union. So there's like

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Speaker 1: this Khmer student union that he is helping to run.

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Speaker 1: And the way the organization works is you've got this

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Speaker 1: central union and then there's a bunch of what are

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Speaker 1: called circles, and each circle is a kind of additionally,

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Speaker 1: at least, there's not really a hierarchy in each circle.

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Speaker 1: It's a student discussion group based around a specific topic.

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Speaker 1: So you might have a circle for the kids who

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Speaker 1: are doing radio stuff, or a circle for the kids

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Speaker 1: who are into French literature, a circle for the poetry students, right,

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Speaker 1: and you kind of like meet at hawk and you

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Speaker 1: do you know stuff that way. These are I think

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Speaker 1: the best. These are the analog version of how things

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Speaker 1: get done today for most young people. Right. Imagine this

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Speaker 1: is a bunch of different signal loops or discords, right, right,

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Speaker 1: that's what these are, except for you have to like

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Speaker 1: meet up in person, right, yeah, but that's basically what's

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Speaker 1: happening here. So a month or so after meeting, sar

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Speaker 1: Vansach convened a private gathering to create a new circle

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Speaker 1: dedicated to discussing Cambodia's future. By this point, the vietnam

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Speaker 1: Men were escalating their war for independence against the French,

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Speaker 1: and there was widespread and interest in what this might

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Speaker 1: mean for Cambodians. And also because the Vietmen are communist,

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Speaker 1: and because Mao has just announced the start of the

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Speaker 1: People's Republic, all these guys are being like, shit, you know,

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Speaker 1: there might be this co like global communist uprising that

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Speaker 1: we could be a part of that could like free

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Speaker 1: us from the shackles of French domination while still like

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Speaker 1: being a part of this greater international community. And that

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Speaker 1: sounds kind of dope, right, It is.

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Speaker 3: So funny to actually hear like the other side of

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Speaker 3: domino theory.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting because the correct like the thing

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Speaker 1: about Domino theory that was kind of accurate is that

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Speaker 1: other people in other countries in Asia were influenced by

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Speaker 1: communism taking off in Vietnam and China, and it made

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Speaker 1: them think about the things that were possible. I think

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Speaker 1: that we're wrong about is that all of these guys,

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Speaker 1: as soon as they're in power, wind up primarily hating

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Speaker 1: other countries near them, including communist countries. Right, it's how like,

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Speaker 1: oh god, obviously communists China and the USS are going

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Speaker 1: to form a unified block. Oh no, they nearly nuked

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Speaker 1: each other. They're literally shooting each other on the border.

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Speaker 1: China is inviting Nixon over because of how pissed they

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Speaker 1: are at the Soviet Union. Right, Like, all of this

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Speaker 1: shit is very wrong in that regard. If you knew

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Speaker 1: anything about the left, you knew that the left was

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Speaker 1: never going to get along with each other.

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Speaker 2: I mean, that's the whole problem. They know not think

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Speaker 2: about the left.

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Speaker 1: No, so Van sax starts this circle, which is initially

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Speaker 1: about like the future of Cambodia and maybe independence and

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Speaker 1: they start talking about communism a lot too. Yengsari attends,

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Speaker 1: as does a number of future influential Khmer politicians, including Salathsar.

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Speaker 1: So they're beginning to talk more about communism and again

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Speaker 1: mostly focused around Maow and Ho Chi Minh. In January

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Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty, China became the first country to recognize

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Speaker 1: North Vietnam, which was still a couple of decades away

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Speaker 1: from just being Vietnam. The USSR followed, and this prompted

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Speaker 1: an equal but opposite reaction from the US and her

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Speaker 1: capitalist allies, who then turn recognize Cambodia, Lao, and South

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Speaker 1: Vietnam as part of the so called French Union. Maybe

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Speaker 1: not the wisest move. Yeah, all these guys want to

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Speaker 1: be independent, and that seems to be a big part

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Speaker 1: of the appeal of communism is getting a pen. Let's

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Speaker 1: recognize them as part of France. That'll stop this. Nip

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Speaker 1: this in the.

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Speaker 2: Bud God classic, I guess.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So everyone in the area is increasingly prodded to

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Speaker 1: choose sides. Thailand, for example, picks the US right in

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Speaker 1: art because the US is like, we will leave you guys.

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Speaker 1: So many fucking guns, so many fucking guns. France controls

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Speaker 1: the Union for a while, and Vietnamese leaders, as a

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Speaker 1: result see a strategic benefit and starting to seed allied

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Speaker 1: communist movements in these neighboring countries. Right because these places

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Speaker 1: are part of the French Union. These Vietnam leaders are like, okay,

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Speaker 1: so we should start sending some like CADRA leaders to

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Speaker 1: Cambodia and allow maybe with some weapons, and see if

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Speaker 1: we can start making local communist movements in the imitation

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Speaker 1: of the Vietman so that they can start their own

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Speaker 1: uprisings which will overall help us in our goal and

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Speaker 1: just getting the fucking French out of this goddamn right.

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Speaker 1: So from the outset of this, you know, the Vietnamese

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Speaker 1: communists coming into Cambodia and trying to start their own

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Speaker 1: communist organizations. It was understood by the Vietnamese that Cambodians

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Speaker 1: were incapable of generating their own autonomous communist party as

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Speaker 1: Vietnam had. There was no proletariat, right, which is the idea,

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Speaker 1: the Marxist idea is that is where a communists like

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Speaker 1: movement comes from. Right, everyone is the peasantry basically within

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Speaker 1: within Cambodia, and that means there's no base of education

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Speaker 1: or convenient way to reach and organize large numbers of

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Speaker 1: Khmer in any reasonable timeframe. So a decision has made.

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Speaker 1: These are their conclusions, and by the way, they're not

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Speaker 1: going to prove broadly accurate. But this is how the

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Speaker 1: Vietnamese are thinking, and this is a very chauvinistic, paternalistic attitude,

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Speaker 1: which is exactly how everyone in Cambodia feels about the Vietnamese.

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Speaker 1: They're arrogant, they don't think we're really people, and they

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Speaker 1: don't listen to us. And the Vietnamese are like, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we can't let these people make any decisions, right, So

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Speaker 1: this is they're not wrong.

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Speaker 2: History never changes, it's the important Yeah yeah, oh god.

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Speaker 1: People are always the biggest dicks to their neighbors. So

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Speaker 1: a decision is made that these Vietnamese leaders are going

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Speaker 1: to build communism in Cambodia from the top down, which

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Speaker 1: is not how it generally works. The Khmer National United

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Speaker 1: Front is the result. This organization was patterned off of

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Speaker 1: the Vietna, but it had some local characteristics, including an

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Speaker 1: embrace of the king, who it argued must be liberated

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Speaker 1: from French territory, and that doesn't really fit with traditional

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Speaker 1: communist ideology, right, the fact that we actually love the king,

390
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Speaker 1: but the king is super fucking popular with the regular

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Speaker 1: people of Cambodia, right, And so this is one of

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Speaker 1: the wiser things. The Vietnamese are like, well, we can't

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Speaker 1: just like shit talk the king because they will immediately

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Speaker 1: stop listening to us. We have to do this thing.

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Speaker 1: And they're kind of, i think, recognizing a lot of

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Speaker 1: what people said about the Czar pre revolution and even

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Speaker 1: Hitler where it's like, well, he must not know about

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Speaker 1: all this shitty stuff. His dudes are doing, right, And

399
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Speaker 1: so I think the Vietnamese are like, let's just say

400
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Speaker 1: the king's really good and the French are the ones

401
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Speaker 1: making him make that making things suck, right, fuck it right,

402
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Speaker 1: like this doesn't hurt us. The first Khmer Vietnamese Communist

403
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Speaker 1: Party member when Than Song was put in charge of

404
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Speaker 1: this party in May, and he issues a proclamation of

405
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Speaker 1: independence that means absolutely nothing at the time because they

406
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Speaker 1: controlled no real territory. There is an actual Cambodian Communist

407
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:03,560
Speaker 1: party started a year later. This is eventually going to

408
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Speaker 1: be the Khmer Rouge, but it's not right Now, Vietnamese

409
00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:09,960
Speaker 1: fighters liberate a few small border areas, and again because

410
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of strategic benefit in them having this

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Speaker 1: area to like retreat to, right and to hold supplies

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Speaker 1: and stuff, and they set up in these areas they

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Speaker 1: quote unquote liberate a system that imitates the Vietnam People's

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Speaker 1: committees that are run by Vietnamese revolutionaries. Every decision made

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Speaker 1: by Cambodian assemblies and committees in these territories has to

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Speaker 1: be approved by the Vietnamese. You cannot join the Cambodian

417
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:38,199
Speaker 1: Communist Party without Vietnamese approval, right, So these are this

418
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:41,360
Speaker 1: is very centralized and very much not something in which

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00:21:41,359 --> 00:21:43,320
Speaker 1: the Cambodians have a lot to say, even though it's

420
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Speaker 1: their communist organize. A lot of Khmer nationalists do not

421
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Speaker 1: like this, and a lot of Khmayer who are budding

422
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Speaker 1: communists are like, all right, like I agree with the

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Speaker 1: basic idea, but like, why the fuck are we listening

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Speaker 1: to these gouy the in Vietnamese people, right, Like why

425
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Speaker 1: do they get to be in charge of our communist revolution?

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Speaker 1: We're Khmer? Right, Like Salatsar and his comrades know very

427
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Speaker 1: little about what's going on in this regard at the time.

428
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Speaker 1: According to Van sach Sar spent quote most of his

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Speaker 1: time reading or going out to the movies. Very relatable,

430
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Speaker 1: but then he falls in love with a history of

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Speaker 1: the French Revolution, which he reads cover to cover, even

432
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,200
Speaker 1: though his French isn't great, and he admits, I didn't

433
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:24,160
Speaker 1: get a lot of it, but I felt compelled to.

434
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:25,400
Speaker 2: Read through it right.

435
00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:28,080
Speaker 1: And there are a few things that really stick in

436
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:28,760
Speaker 1: his mind.

437
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:29,160
Speaker 2: Right.

438
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 1: One of them is the concept of a revolution as

439
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:37,280
Speaker 1: a historical reset, as in, once you succeeding in a

440
00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 1: revolution means you can make a you can break history.

441
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:41,240
Speaker 2: Right.

442
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:45,439
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety two, the French revolutionaries had instituted a

443
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:48,080
Speaker 1: new calendar, right, and this was them attempting to be like,

444
00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:51,040
Speaker 1: the past is done, we are never going back. This

445
00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 1: is a totally new world that we are creating, and

446
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:56,200
Speaker 1: a new kind of human being that we are creating

447
00:22:56,240 --> 00:23:00,199
Speaker 1: in this new world. And obviously Napoleon comes wrong. Not

448
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:02,920
Speaker 1: that long later. They didn't create a new world, right,

449
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 1: No one creates a new man. People will always be people.

450
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:10,200
Speaker 1: This this ideology that you can like, we're fundamentally broken

451
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:12,480
Speaker 1: with the past. Things will never go back, things will

452
00:23:12,520 --> 00:23:15,199
Speaker 1: never change. We have heralded in a new world, and

453
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:17,320
Speaker 1: it's always going to be this way. Everyone who thinks

454
00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:20,440
Speaker 1: that is always wrong. Change is the only guaranteed constant.

455
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:24,560
Speaker 1: You can't stop it. But that's the idea that some

456
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:27,360
Speaker 1: of these French revolutionaries have, and that's the idea Sar

457
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 1: comes away with, right. And one big thing he takes

458
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:32,960
Speaker 1: away from the history is that what doomed the French

459
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 1: Revolution is that it didn't go all the way. It

460
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:39,919
Speaker 1: didn't tear down every structure of the previous old world.

461
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:43,199
Speaker 1: It kept too much alive from the old days of

462
00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:46,959
Speaker 1: the king, and that's why it eventually failed. So you

463
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:49,240
Speaker 1: do want to have a total break with the past.

464
00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:52,440
Speaker 1: A revolution should be that, but you have to destroy

465
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:57,159
Speaker 1: absolutely everything that had existed previously. Right, And this is

466
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:58,840
Speaker 1: a common He's not coming up to this on his own.

467
00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 1: This is a lot of stuff that he and Circle

468
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: they're talking about. This is there. They are more influenced

469
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:06,199
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways by the French Revolution than

470
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: what's happening in Vietnam because they're in France, right, they're

471
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: studying in French schools.

472
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:10,840
Speaker 2: You know.

473
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: Now, over the course of nineteen fifty one, the Circle

474
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:19,360
Speaker 1: Vansack had started turned into a Marxist circle, which itself

475
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:21,600
Speaker 1: began to exert direct control on the rest of the

476
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:24,440
Speaker 1: student union. And they kind of turned this student union

477
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:28,679
Speaker 1: into a stealth Communist vanguard party, right, Like, that's the

478
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 1: goal and they're executing. They're kind of secretly planning it

479
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:34,920
Speaker 1: from this circle, but exerting control over the other circles

480
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:36,119
Speaker 1: in order to get them in line.

481
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 2: Right.

482
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: In his book on Polepot Brother Number One, Chandler rights

483
00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: recollections about Salat Sar's behavior at the meetings are contradictory,

484
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: and several interviews in the nineteen eighties, after Polepot had

485
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 1: been identified as Salat Sar, King Vansac recalled that Sar

486
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,880
Speaker 1: attended irregularly, kept in the background, and made little impression

487
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:55,680
Speaker 1: on his colleagues. In nineteen seventy five to seventy six,

488
00:24:55,680 --> 00:25:00,399
Speaker 1: an unnamed source spoke with journalist Francois Debra, who had

489
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: attended the discussion groups. Remember that Salasar was the most intelligent,

490
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:06,199
Speaker 1: the most convinced, the most intransigent. It was he who

491
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: animated the debates and most impressed the newcomers. Now there's

492
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 1: some evidence that this unnamed source mixed up Polepot with

493
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: a different kid and was actually talking about someone else.

494
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 1: We really don't know the guy. Deborah basically claims that

495
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 1: this dude he talked to stated that like I knew

496
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: immediately this guy was going to wind up leading the

497
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:30,199
Speaker 1: Communist Party in Cambodia, and that polepot even set at

498
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 1: the meeting. I will direct the revolutionary organization. I will

499
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: be at secretary General, I will hold the dasiers, I

500
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:37,679
Speaker 1: will control the ministers, and I will see to it

501
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 1: that they don't deviate from the line fixed in the

502
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 1: people's interests by the Central Committee. I don't think this

503
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 1: is likely. I'm bringing it up because it's one of

504
00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:47,479
Speaker 1: the reports. Most of the people who survived from these

505
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:49,679
Speaker 1: days were like, yeah, he was like a part of it.

506
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 1: He was there, he was engaged, he was pretty quiet,

507
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 1: like he was always happy to do work and like help,

508
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:58,679
Speaker 1: but he wasn't like a big That reminds me of

509
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 1: a lot of guys, right, we talk about like Chichescu,

510
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 1: who like, if there's ever a guy in your revolutionary

511
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: organization who's like really quiet, really friendly and always doing

512
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: willing to do bullshit work, you need to kill that

513
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 1: man immediately because he's going to murder all of you

514
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: and take power once the revolution's over. That's the way

515
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: these things go, right, Yeah, speaking of murder, so no, no,

516
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:30,159
Speaker 1: instead of killing anyone, no, kill your wallace with these products.

517
00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 5: Wow.

518
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:43,159
Speaker 1: Oh, and we are returned back, returned back. So yeah.

519
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: Most of the accounts of Sar during this period, again

520
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:49,119
Speaker 1: he's a quiet, friendly, easygoing dude. But as short notes

521
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: Philip short notes in his book on pol Pot, Sar

522
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: did start reading a lot of Stalin around this time,

523
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: and that's because he in a circle. There's a lot

524
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: of Stalin going around. Particularly there's a history of the

525
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: Communist Party in Russia that Stalin wrote, right, and this

526
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,719
Speaker 1: is it's a Stalin book, right, so we could assume,

527
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 1: like there's a couple of things you can just infer

528
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 1: even if you haven't read it. It's very paranoid. It

529
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: is very focused on the internal enemies, right. His history

530
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,679
Speaker 1: of the Russian is very focused on the need to

531
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:22,280
Speaker 1: like how necessary it was for him to get rid

532
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:25,719
Speaker 1: of internal enemies within the party who were counter revolutionary, right,

533
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: who were dangers to the success of the revolution, because

534
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:32,600
Speaker 1: he was Joseph Stalin, right. And this the fact that

535
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:35,880
Speaker 1: this book is seen as like very inspirational to salath

536
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 1: Tsar and a lot of his young not great, not

537
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 1: getting in well, not gonna in well now. Sar also

538
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: becomes very acquainted with Mao's writings, which are the most

539
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: directly relevant both to the kind of communism he's going

540
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,120
Speaker 1: to preach and to the kind of war he's going

541
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: to orchestrate, because Mao, unlike Stalin and unlike a lot

542
00:27:55,280 --> 00:28:00,400
Speaker 1: of other communists, Mao runs a peasant insurgency, right, because

543
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:02,320
Speaker 1: that's how things go in China, right, it is a

544
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: peasant uprising, you know, in a lot of ways. That's

545
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: a big part of what's going on. And so Mao

546
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 1: is really relevant for for what saloths Are is going

547
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: to be doing and not too long from now, right.

548
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: And there's also a lot that Mal writes about theorizing

549
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: about how to remake a society from the bottom up, and,

550
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: as we know from the Great Leap Forward, not always

551
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: a great idea. Maybe backyards shouldn't be where we make steel,

552
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: you know, maybe factories are better for that. I don't know,

553
00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:31,159
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we need sparrows. I don't know.

554
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 3: I mean, your big society remaking ideas tend not to

555
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 3: be good.

556
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: No, it's yeah, it's it's like what we're trying to

557
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 1: do now, Like, what if we get rid of everyone

558
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: who researches how to stop diseases and instead make them

559
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 1: build iPhones. I feel like we're all going to have

560
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: a lot more diseases and probably less iPhones, like which

561
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 1: might work out for us. Maybe the less iPhones will

562
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: eventually lead us back to having people who learned how

563
00:28:57,680 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 1: to cure diseases.

564
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,040
Speaker 2: I'll cast that in for a couple of decades.

565
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,520
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's going to take a little while. So

566
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 1: in late nineteen fifty one, there was a huge Marxist

567
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: gathering in East Berlin. It's like this big burning man

568
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: from Marxists in the fifties. Uh Basar does not attend,

569
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: but several of his Khmer comment comrades do. For the

570
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: very first time they meet with this Marxist group, and

571
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:26,120
Speaker 1: they are told about the establishment of the Khmer communist

572
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: resistance in Cambodia. Right, So this is the first time

573
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 1: and they bring this back to their circle. So now

574
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 1: everyone knows there is a communist movement in Cambodia that

575
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: is organizing and arming, and they've taken some territory even right,

576
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 1: So for you know, a year or so. After this point,

577
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: these kids are going to continue reading books and discussing

578
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: their ideas and making plans for how they're going to

579
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: get involved in the revolution. That becomes the focus now

580
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,959
Speaker 1: we know it started. We are the educated, you know, Kahmara,

581
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: We need to figure out how we're going to help

582
00:29:55,120 --> 00:29:58,959
Speaker 1: direct and lead this. Right now, what we've got here

583
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: is a group of people who are isolated within Paris

584
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: because their Khmer French is not their first language. They're

585
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,240
Speaker 1: even isolated from a lot of their fellow Khmer students

586
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 1: because they see themselves as in charge of radicalizing them

587
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: and directing them, and they see themselves as engaged in

588
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: a dangerous, condestined effort. Right, So they're isolated socially, and

589
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: they're all constantly talking about their beliefs and reading radical politics,

590
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 1: and the same thing happens to them that happens to

591
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 1: similar groups of people on let's say Twitter, which is

592
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: that they make each other more and more extreme and

593
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:35,160
Speaker 1: less and less rational, right right, They're only going to

594
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 1: get crazier. And one thing that a lot of them,

595
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: including Sar, become obsessed with, is this idea that will

596
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 1: eventually become known as Year zero which is the concept

597
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: that we can, with a revolution, force a clean break

598
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: with history that creates a new kind of human right.

599
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: This is not limited to Cambodian communists. This is not

600
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: limited to communists, because there's some you can find some

601
00:30:57,920 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: stuff that the note you we're talking about that's not

602
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 1: all that different. There's this concept of the new Soviet Man.

603
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:06,080
Speaker 1: It's less eugenic for the communists, but like, there's this

604
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: idea that if we if we remake society radically enough

605
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: and break what had existed radically enough, we can make

606
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: fundamentally different people that way.

607
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 3: And it really is like, do these people just simply

608
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:20,959
Speaker 3: cannot hear themselves?

609
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's Look, I think everyone believes a degree

610
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: of this, which is one of the reasons why nobody

611
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: should ever get the power to try. Right.

612
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, when I'm watching.

613
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I when I and others watch Star Trek

614
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: and are like, oh, what if we could be like that?

615
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: You're not not thinking people can be radically remade, And

616
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I don't think people can be made better,

617
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: but it doesn't happen like this. It happens very slowly

618
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: and carefully, and if you want them to add, if

619
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: you want to actually improve the quality of people, you

620
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 1: improve the quality of life, and you don't do that

621
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: by shattering everything that makes it possible for them to

622
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: survive at the jump right right, like it's people can

623
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: get better both as individuals and as societies. But the

624
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: most important thing is not to kill them all.

625
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,880
Speaker 3: While you're telling that that the means create a different

626
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:16,720
Speaker 3: end than you think.

627
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and these this is going to like the

628
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:23,720
Speaker 1: idea that's going to be like particularly prevalent is that, like,

629
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:27,959
Speaker 1: because of the danger of Vietnam, we're going to have

630
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:31,200
Speaker 1: to do this very quickly. Right, once we get independence,

631
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: we have to remake ourselves into a society that can

632
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: withstand our foreign aggressors as quickly as possible.

633
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 2: Right.

634
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: In a paper on the subject, historian Andris ERR's writes,

635
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: Maoism also provided the Khmer Rouge with an activist perspective

636
00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: on history, something that sheds considerable light upon their own

637
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: year zero. This activist perspective, as opposed to the orthodox

638
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: Marxist representation of history as a rational process of necessary advances,

639
00:32:56,160 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 1: emphasize human will and the triumph of determination over material conditions.

640
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 1: Put differently, not so much learning from history as overcoming it,

641
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: diverting history in the right direction, as it were, by

642
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: means of superior will and resolution. The French Revolution is

643
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: already noted, had met with failure by stopping halfway. Yet

644
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: even maw argued q sum Fan, the movement's chief theoretician,

645
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: had not been radical enough to overcome history by definitively

646
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 1: abolishing private property. The family received knowledge and traditional teaching.

647
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:28,320
Speaker 1: So again this is where we see, like the real

648
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: dangerous thing is there's like number one, You're never going

649
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: to learn from history. It's like, no, we're going to

650
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: transcend it. Not possible, No one ever has. And you

651
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: really should pay attention to the shit people try to

652
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 1: do in the history. Like, for example, every time in

653
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 1: the past, when someone's decided, I a guy who's never

654
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: farmed is going to remake how my entire country grows food,

655
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 1: that only ends one way, and it's with everyone starving

656
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 1: to death, right, Yeah, Like, whether it's whether it's the

657
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: fucking East India Company governing in Bengal, whether it's fucking

658
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: like the Sanchoism in the Soviet Union and China. Yeah,

659
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:03,040
Speaker 1: it always ends in mass starvation, don't do it?

660
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:06,479
Speaker 3: I mean Listen, we're on the A side of this

661
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 3: proposition with you know, guys that don't know what the

662
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 3: fuck they're talking about and deciding how social security should

663
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:13,439
Speaker 3: be distributed.

664
00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can fix all this because I'm good at

665
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: video games. Yeah, it's it's fucking every people, a lot

666
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 1: of people. This is a very attractive thing to think

667
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 1: that you can do, right.

668
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

669
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: So for sem Fan, who's again he's one of you know,

670
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 1: Polpot's peers in this period of time, and he's like

671
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:34,800
Speaker 1: kind of the chief theoretician of what becomes the Khmer Rouge,

672
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: the task of making communism reality entail an ideological zero

673
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: point zero for him and zero for you. That is

674
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: true equality, right, And this is zeroing in the sense

675
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 1: that you like zero a rifle, Right. We're zeroing right

676
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 1: right to a point where everyone is in the same place,

677
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: and then we can build up right now. To be clear,

678
00:34:56,680 --> 00:35:00,319
Speaker 1: these conclusions I just related aren't all fully sketched during

679
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: the years they're in Paris, right, But this is they

680
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: start on that road in Paris, and as these guys

681
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: filter back into Cambodia, they're going to continue working to

682
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:08,760
Speaker 1: that point.

683
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 2: Right.

684
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: Paris starts the process that ends in the ideology of

685
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 1: what we now know as the Khmer Rouge. As things

686
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 1: actually stood in nineteen fifty two. Sar and his comrades

687
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 1: were committed communists, but not particularly well read ones, and

688
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: his writings from this period don't sound like what you

689
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: would get from an avowed Marxist. In fact, one of

690
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 1: the weird things is that, like Polpot's first political obsession

691
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:33,240
Speaker 1: seems to be with democracy, which he called quote incomparable

692
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:37,319
Speaker 1: and as beautiful as a diamond. And democracy and communism,

693
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: in his eyes, are very not just compatible, they're the

694
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,279
Speaker 1: same thing, and they're the same thing in that they

695
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 1: stand in opposition to the monarchy. He published his first

696
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: political article, the first thing we know he wrote, was

697
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: called Monarchy or Democracy, and it was a strident argument

698
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: against the king in favor of a democratic system. And

699
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:59,800
Speaker 1: he gives examples of democratic systems that Cambodia should be

700
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 1: made the image of. And his examples are China, France,

701
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:07,840
Speaker 1: and the USS are all classically democracy.

702
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 6: Well, at a king, you know, everything looks like peratively right,

703
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 6: and his actual knowledge of what's going on in China

704
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:18,920
Speaker 6: and the US s are had to be honest, Like

705
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 6: France is not perfect right, But this is how he's

706
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 6: thinking at the time.

707
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: So while they're reading and talking, events back home have

708
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 1: continued to evolve. Sun Nach Than, the nationalist leader, got

709
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,760
Speaker 1: allowed back into Cambodia by the King and the hope

710
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: that he could be used as a figurehead. Right, the

711
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: King is like, I think that, you know, there's a

712
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: lot to say of this nationalist thing, because maybe that's

713
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:42,920
Speaker 1: gonna work out better for me, you know, having more

714
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: powers the king. So I'll bring this guy in who

715
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: is popular, you know, after the Japanese got kicked out.

716
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: But Than is a very smart guy who really believes

717
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: in something, and he realizes the king's just using me.

718
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:56,640
Speaker 1: So he fucks off into the jungle to fight with

719
00:36:56,680 --> 00:37:00,680
Speaker 1: the guerrillas. And again, he's not an ideolog. His goal

720
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,399
Speaker 1: was to unite the communists and the nationalists of other

721
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: stripes into a broad anti French coalition.

722
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:06,399
Speaker 2: Right.

723
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: Again, he's a let's get our independence from these fuckers,

724
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:11,760
Speaker 1: and then I don't care, we'll figure it out. Whatever works,

725
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:18,440
Speaker 1: we'll do, you know, King Sahanak respond to getting our freedom. Yeah,

726
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:21,880
Speaker 1: So Sahanak responds by carrying out a coup against the

727
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: Democratic Party when it wins the elections that year and

728
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 1: backed by the French, he sets him up as the

729
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:31,760
Speaker 1: absolute ruler. Right the French begin conducting pacification campaigns against

730
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 1: the Vietmen and Fans rebels, who had not yet managed

731
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 1: to agree on the whole coalition thing. The circle back

732
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,320
Speaker 1: in Paris only learned what was going on in snatches

733
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,879
Speaker 1: of brief, conflicted reports. It was unclear which groups were

734
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: doing what and who was who, and who this circle

735
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 1: of educated young communist radicals could support. Right, It's very

736
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 1: hard for them to tell who's actually fighting, what do

737
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: they actually hold. You know, they don't have great infants,

738
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: not like they could look at like the telegram chats

739
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: for these different groups from the jungle, right, Like they

740
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 1: have very little telegrams or even the telegram telegrams. Right,

741
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: So they're like, we need on the ground intelligence. One

742
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 1: of us needs to go there and figure out who

743
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: we should be backing. And Salothsar this is really the

744
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:20,480
Speaker 1: first time he identifies himself as special and not just

745
00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:24,959
Speaker 1: another dude sitting around bullshitting. Is like, I'll go right

746
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: and let that be a lesson to you kids. If

747
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: you want to one day kill a third of the

748
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: people in your country, you gotta start by volunteering. You know,

749
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:36,439
Speaker 1: no one ever got anywhere sitting out there, but right,

750
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:41,240
Speaker 1: get out, be active, starve your entire country to death.

751
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:44,319
Speaker 1: I probably probably bad things to encourage people to do.

752
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 2: Get out there in the community. You know, make a difference.

753
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 1: He made a difference. You can't say Polepot didn't make

754
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: a difference. He left a very different Cambodia.

755
00:38:56,360 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, to make a difference part of just get involved. Really,

756
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 3: I feel like the public messaging we should be concentrated

757
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:04,680
Speaker 3: or in the direction you make a difference.

758
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: That is one of my big issues with like a

759
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff we were raised with as kids

760
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 1: in like the nineties and early two thousands is like

761
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: anyone can make a difference. That's true. We should have

762
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 1: higher standards.

763
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 2: Than just different different.

764
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can leave ground to beef out overnight and

765
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: it's different, but that doesn't mean it's better. Speaking of

766
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:37,319
Speaker 1: rancid ground beef, here's our sponsors. Oh boy, howdy, we

767
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: are back, and we're talking about eating rancid ground beef

768
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: because look, the FDA is no longer going to be

769
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 1: you know, and I Andrew, it's actually good that you're

770
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: back because you're the person. I first told on the

771
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:52,280
Speaker 1: air my story about eating dozens and dozens of rancid

772
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: muscles at a Vegas buffet and harm with my friend

773
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: in a muscle eating competition.

774
00:39:56,600 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 2: Forgot about that?

775
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, who's the smart one now? Who's getting ready

776
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: for the RFK future? Now, maybe it's me. I got

777
00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 1: an iron stomach. I don't care how we don't uh

778
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: huh uh. I've been I was molded by this. You know,

779
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 1: I've had GRT. I don't give a fuck anymore. A

780
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: lot of kids are gonna die anyway, back to the podcast,

781
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:24,879
Speaker 1: so it's important to note that Sala Star's back. The reason,

782
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 1: part of the reason why you know he volunteers to

783
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 1: go travel back home and make contact and part of

784
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: why everyone agrees he's a good guy to do it

785
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:37,759
Speaker 1: is he's got the contacts, the whitest He's got the

786
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:41,760
Speaker 1: whitest breadth of contacts. Because his dad is a farmer,

787
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: he did grow up in a rural village. Is he

788
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: knows rural people. He's able to talk to rural Khmer people.

789
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 1: He also is able to talk to urban people. He

790
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 1: was educated in the city, but he also spent a

791
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:53,359
Speaker 1: lot of time in the palace, so he can talk

792
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 1: to that chunk of the popular. He he's really good

793
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: at talking to everybody, right Like, that's a big thing.

794
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: He's charisma, and he's charismatic in the way that matters,

795
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: which means he can, within seconds of meeting someone new,

796
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: figure out the best way to communicate with them, right Like,

797
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: that's the kind of skill that he has. And you

798
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 1: can't teach that almost you can't learn it after a

799
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: certain point in your life. It really is just a

800
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 1: product of during your formative years running into enough different

801
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: kinds of people that you can get very good at that, right,

802
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: And he salath Tsar, has that ability, and I think

803
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: that's why everything else that happens to him happens to him.

804
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:29,439
Speaker 2: Right.

805
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:33,800
Speaker 1: So, on Deptember fifteenth, nineteen fifty two, Salasar left Paris

806
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 1: just as things in Cambodia reached a boil. Several assassinations

807
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:40,319
Speaker 1: and grenade attacks and the provinces provided the pretext for

808
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:43,239
Speaker 1: King Sahannock to announce a rule by decree and the

809
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: suspension of civil liberties. His French backers express their hope

810
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: that Cambodia's pacification will make continued progress. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

811
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: I think that's going to work out great for you guys.

812
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 1: So decades later, Polpot would claim that his real political

813
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:01,359
Speaker 1: awakening came not as a result of anything that had

814
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: happened in the reading circle in Paris, but what he

815
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 1: experienced after he returned home to Cambodia during this tumultuous period.

816
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: And I want to quote from an article by journalist

817
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,800
Speaker 1: Nate Thayer here. Before I went to France, my relatives,

818
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: they lived comfortably. There were middle peasants. When I came back,

819
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: I went to my village by bus. When I got

820
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: off the bus, I met someone with a wagon. He

821
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 1: asked my name, and he said, ah, you've come back.

822
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 1: And I look at him and see he's my uncle,

823
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:26,760
Speaker 1: and he asks me, do you want to go home?

824
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:29,359
Speaker 1: I was shocked. Before he had a piece of land

825
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:31,840
Speaker 1: in a buffalo. Now he had become a rickshaw puller.

826
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:33,960
Speaker 1: I met and talked with the relatives who used to

827
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:36,840
Speaker 1: have land in buffaloes and had nothing. Now. What influenced

828
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: me most was the actual situation in Cambodia. And I

829
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,439
Speaker 1: don't think that's untrue, but it does make me think

830
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:50,320
Speaker 1: of that is not a I reckoned with the suffering

831
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: of the common man, and it allowed me to realize

832
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: that I had grown up in a privileged position, that is,

833
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 1: my family was supposed to be doing better than this

834
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: or not, which is a really familiar to like modern

835
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 1: conservative radicalism in a lot of yeah, yea, I find

836
00:43:04,719 --> 00:43:05,320
Speaker 1: that interesting.

837
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:08,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the me of it, not to like us

838
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 2: of it, right, And.

839
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:12,320
Speaker 1: It also is worth noting in terms of how accurate

840
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: is this to what really radicalized him. This is Polepot

841
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:16,920
Speaker 1: near the end of his life in the late nineties,

842
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: talking to journalist Nate Thayer, who also by the way,

843
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:21,839
Speaker 1: passed pretty recently about a year and a half ago.

844
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:25,919
Speaker 1: Interesting guy, but a really groundbreaking It was the only

845
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: guy who got in to do this right, So we'll

846
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 1: be quoting from Nate quite a bit here. Over the

847
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 1: next eight years, Sar is often in the provinces, he's

848
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: moving around, he's connecting these different groups. As the rebellion

849
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: against the king and then the Prince Sihannak goes through

850
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: several stages. The Red Khmer or Khmer Rouge proved to

851
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 1: be the most resilient of kind of the different nationalist

852
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:54,799
Speaker 1: rebel groups against the repeated pacification campaigns. Salat Sar rose

853
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 1: through the ranks for the same reason. He was hard

854
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: to fucking kill. And it was hard to kill because

855
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 1: from the beginning he's really he's the first of the

856
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: guys in his circle who's like, well, I'm not going

857
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: to ever go by my real name. I'm going to

858
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: start like from that first article he writes, he picks

859
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,919
Speaker 1: a fake name, and he picks fake names as he's

860
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:16,680
Speaker 1: doing this on the groundwork meeting these rebels. He doesn't

861
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: call himself Sala Tsar Polepot's one of the names he uses,

862
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: but like he has a couple of different nicknames, will

863
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: go over them later. And this this means he's anonymous,

864
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: and he's good at being anonymous. He's one of these

865
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,280
Speaker 1: guys who's kind of forgettable. That's what everyone in Paris

866
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:32,240
Speaker 1: talks about. Is you don't notice him in a room,

867
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: and that means he doesn't get spotted and killed by

868
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,839
Speaker 1: the security forces. Be it kind of blending in and

869
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 1: being forgettable. Great asset for a guy who's trying to

870
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: build a revolutionary movement under like constant bombardment from the French.

871
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're blended you, but I mean that's the spy thing,

872
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 3: that's the real life spy thing, I guess.

873
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 1: But yeah, and again, folks, if you're trying to overthrow

874
00:44:57,560 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 1: the government and there's a guy in your cell and

875
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: you can never remember his name, you need to murder

876
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 1: him immediately. He's going to wind up taking power, right.

877
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 3: I mean, the problem is it's it's always one of

878
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 3: those guys. But not all of those guys is going

879
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:10,920
Speaker 3: to become noble.

880
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 1: Some of those guys are just really good at like

881
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 1: keeping their mouths shut.

882
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 2: It's done. Or they just have nothing to say.

883
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: Oh they just got nothing to say. Yeah, yeah, they're

884
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: just vibeing. So Sar was amongst the first Khmer revolutionary

885
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:26,400
Speaker 1: leaders to take pains to keep himself anonymous. As a result,

886
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,560
Speaker 1: nobody realizes that he's steadily moving up the ranks of

887
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: the insurgency. In nineteen sixty, he is added to the

888
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: Communist Party's Standing Committee. Now, in the same interview I

889
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 1: just quoted from with Polepot near the end of his life,

890
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: Nate Thayer writes, and this is Nate. They are quoting Polepot.

891
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 1: The secrecy that made the Khmer rous show so effective

892
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: was Polepot, said second nature to him. Since my boyhood,

893
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: I never talked about myself. That was my nature. I

894
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 1: was taciturn. I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell

895
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:55,200
Speaker 1: people that I'm a leader. I didn't tell anybody, not

896
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:57,799
Speaker 1: my brother, not my sister, because I didn't want to

897
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:00,160
Speaker 1: worry them if anything happens to me, I didn't want

898
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:02,359
Speaker 1: them to have any connection to it. So some people

899
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,759
Speaker 1: think that I don't care about them, But on the contrary,

900
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 1: I respect, I love my relatives, but I never revealed

901
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: my political thinking to them. And I gotta say, obsec

902
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 1: king here that you can't take that away of a bullpot.

903
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: This motherfucker would have been incredible at using signal Like

904
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:21,759
Speaker 1: nobody would have known this son of a bitch's name.

905
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: He would have had burner phones for his fucking burner phones.

906
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: This guy is really good. It's staying secret.

907
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,239
Speaker 2: Oh my god, imagine having that discipline.

908
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: He's very disciplined, right like he doesn't. This isn't an

909
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:36,440
Speaker 1: accident that he winds up where he is.

910
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:37,000
Speaker 2: He's smart.

911
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:40,800
Speaker 1: He continues to live. He has in addition to this private,

912
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:44,280
Speaker 1: hidden revolutionary life, he has a very public life and career.

913
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,000
Speaker 1: He is a teacher at a private school, like he's

914
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:49,560
Speaker 1: like a high school teacher. During this period of time.

915
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: And he's a pretty good teacher. I'm going to quote

916
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:57,880
Speaker 1: from Chandler's book here. As a teacher, he was remembered

917
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:01,959
Speaker 1: as calm, self assured, smooth, feature, honest, and persuasive, even

918
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: hypnotic when speaking to small groups among his students and

919
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: his colleagues in the clandestine communist movement. He seemed in

920
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: these years to have gained some of the moral authority

921
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 1: and stature he enjoyed among his followers up to nineteen

922
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: ninety seven. A man who met him in the late fifties,

923
00:47:15,080 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 1: for example, said, I knew immediately that I could become

924
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 1: his friend for life.

925
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:20,359
Speaker 2: Yeah.

926
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:23,719
Speaker 3: By the way, yeah, that's what they say about presidents

927
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 3: and dictators alike.

928
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: And there are people he kills who like that is

929
00:47:28,239 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 1: their recollections, like I knew he was my friend, and

930
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 1: they diet being like, wait, this can't happen. No, I know,

931
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:34,400
Speaker 1: I know, Polpot, You've gotta let me, you gotta let

932
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: me talk to him.

933
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 2: And Polbot doesn't give a fuck. Now.

934
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:41,759
Speaker 1: What is interesting to me about Salatsar is that these

935
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: recollections of him as a kindly, decent, sweet man aren't

936
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 1: a product of later propaganda like most revolutions, the Khmer

937
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: Rouge heavily attacked their own people, which caused a lot

938
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 1: of Khmer Rouge to defect, and like, when these guys

939
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: were interviewed later, basically none of them said Polepot was

940
00:47:57,080 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 1: why they left, right And in fact, even after the

941
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 1: exten if his crimes were known, most of the people

942
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: who had defected from the Khmer Rouge, according to Chandler,

943
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:09,959
Speaker 1: described Polepot as quote a man they regarded almost.

944
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 2: As a saint. So they're like, oh, yeah, I mean.

945
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:13,839
Speaker 1: The regime killed all these people, and like I had

946
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:16,320
Speaker 1: to leave it was so fucked up. But that Polepot,

947
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:18,720
Speaker 1: like basically, Jesus.

948
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 2: Man, it's so good.

949
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: He's really good at this, right, Like, you can't you

950
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: can't take that away from him. The motherfucker knew his

951
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:32,880
Speaker 1: business right now. As I noted, Polepot made it to

952
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:35,759
Speaker 1: the Standing committee in nineteen sixty The party leader was

953
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,160
Speaker 1: a guy he'd known from the Paris days called Samoth,

954
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 1: who was assassinated, probably by the King's security services in

955
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, Although a lot of people theorize Polepot

956
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: did it. Because Polepot succeeds Sammoths as the leader of

957
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 1: the party in nineteen sixty three, and now he's in

958
00:48:51,719 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: charge of the Khmer Rouge. Right, this is how he

959
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: rises to run things, and he will retain that position

960
00:48:57,440 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 1: for more than thirty years. He is now in sole

961
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:03,800
Speaker 1: command of the Communist revolution. Later in life, Poulpot spoke

962
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 1: of this rise to the peak of power as a

963
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:08,839
Speaker 1: chance accident of history. There was nobody else to become

964
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 1: secretary of the party, so I had to take charge, right,

965
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:15,359
Speaker 1: Like what else was I gonna do? You know, Like

966
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:17,799
Speaker 1: I didn't have a choice. I had to be in

967
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: charge someone. And Nate Fair I really recommend we'll have

968
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 1: it in the links there because Nate post about the

969
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: article he wrote about his interview and the raw interview

970
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:29,799
Speaker 1: transcript and Poulpot's like, Samoath was my best friend. I

971
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: loved him. Why would I have had him killed? And

972
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 1: I think the broad agreement is it was probably the

973
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 1: French security services. But I can't not be suspicious because

974
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:42,359
Speaker 1: Polpot talks about a bunch of people he loves. And

975
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:44,480
Speaker 1: then Nate there will be like, but you had his

976
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 1: entire family killed, including his like infant grandchildren, and he

977
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 1: will be like well yeah, like yeah, well, yeah, that's

978
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 1: just how things go sometimes here in the Khmar Rouge, Right,

979
00:49:56,280 --> 00:49:58,359
Speaker 1: you gotta kill someone's own family. Sure, it doesn't mean

980
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:00,720
Speaker 1: I didn't love him, that's.

981
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 2: Right, that's right.

982
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 3: Imagine getting like, yeah, the genocide conducted by like not

983
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:10,440
Speaker 3: I was gonna say ned Flanders, but not even that,

984
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:12,960
Speaker 3: just like a like a mister rogers ass.

985
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He was getting up there and being like,

986
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 1: you guys are my best friends. I can't tell you

987
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:21,080
Speaker 1: enough how grateful I am. Now you're all going to

988
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 1: be a machine gunned in a second. Right, But don't

989
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: think that means I don't love you.

990
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:26,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's nothing. That would mean it has.

991
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: Nothing to do with me. This has just gotta happen

992
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 1: for reasons I can't really explain anyway. I'm gonna go bounce.

993
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:34,800
Speaker 1: I got to change the way we farm so everyone

994
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: starts to death. Oh well, I think that's a good

995
00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: place to end for part two. We're gonna just run

996
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 1: all three parts this week because it was a longer

997
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: script but not quite enough for a four part er,

998
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:49,359
Speaker 1: So you fuckers are getting a bonus. But you know,

999
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 1: as we end, Polepot his listeners, the leader of the

1000
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: Khmer Rouge, and I think it's gonna go well, you know,

1001
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: I know, I wrote another nine pages. But my guess

1002
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: right now now is everything's good. You know, it could

1003
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 1: possibly go wrong and he becomes the world's greatest industrial

1004
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 1: and agricultural power. Nobody dies. In fact, they invent the

1005
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:11,920
Speaker 1: curreity immortality. That's my assumption. We'll see how it bears out.

1006
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:16,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything could happen. That's the important thing. Find next to.

1007
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: Me called the killing Fields, and I think it's because

1008
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,799
Speaker 1: they made a killing in the biotech. Yeah, they're killing it.

1009
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 4: Show is called chext notes Behind the Best.

1010
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: Oh no, is that what we call the show?

1011
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 2: Fuck?

1012
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 1: Oh no, Andrews, how are you feeling?

1013
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:39,320
Speaker 2: Oh man, I mean you know we're still still positive?

1014
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 2: Still positive? It is the important thing.

1015
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, great guy.

1016
00:51:43,040 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 2: Yeah great, good dude.

1017
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 3: Wow, this is so bizarre, truly, I never I guess

1018
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:50,840
Speaker 3: I my knowledge of Pulpot not sufficient because this is

1019
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:51,839
Speaker 3: fucking fascinating.

1020
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he is a really interesting monster. The degree

1021
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 1: of agreement that like, yeah, he was really chill as

1022
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: far as I knew him.

1023
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:01,520
Speaker 2: It was nice.

1024
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who like when they finally

1025
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: see him on TV, are like, wait a second, that

1026
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: guy has been killing everybody like, yeah, it'd be like

1027
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: if you had like a friend that you like, smoked

1028
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 1: weed with and played Grand theft Auta when you were

1029
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: like nineteen, and then like forty years later he winds

1030
00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 1: up killing a million people like him.

1031
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,919
Speaker 3: But that is most of those guys like right, right, right, yeah,

1032
00:52:30,040 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 3: or yeah, most of that situation.

1033
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, you never know. He was always nice to me.

1034
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:36,399
Speaker 2: He was always so nice to me. He seemed chill.

1035
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, we didn't ever talk about how

1036
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: many people he wanted to kill. Yeah, how many people

1037
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 1: do you want to kill?

1038
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:47,759
Speaker 3: Andrews less than twenty k?

1039
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 2: Where we left?

1040
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:52,839
Speaker 3: Listen, that's where we left at some point. I can't

1041
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 3: remember his last episode or.

1042
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 1: Someone's in the position of I don't want anyone to

1043
00:52:57,760 --> 00:52:58,760
Speaker 1: be killed exactly.

1044
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 3: If he says, if you say zero, it's more suspicious

1045
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:02,760
Speaker 3: than if you say.

1046
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,959
Speaker 1: Ye, zero is suspicious. Yeah, less than twenty k, I'd

1047
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 1: say that's very very you know, that's not that's that's minimalist, right, Yeah, yeah,

1048
00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: that qualifies she was a good person. I bet the

1049
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:16,200
Speaker 1: Pope would want to kill less than twenty k people

1050
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:17,160
Speaker 1: if he had his choice.

1051
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Well, you know, Pope's.

1052
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: That would make it problem still on the lower end

1053
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:24,479
Speaker 1: of pope body.

1054
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:27,400
Speaker 3: The pope means pope would say I would love to

1055
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:29,440
Speaker 3: only have to kill twenty thousand people.

1056
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: But see, that's the great thing about being a pope

1057
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:34,399
Speaker 1: is you're grading on a curve where if you were

1058
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 1: to kill twenty thousand people as a pope today, you're

1059
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 1: still in like the upper twenty percent of popes in

1060
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:40,200
Speaker 1: terms of not.

1061
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 2: Killing hortile pope. That's right.

1062
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like being the leader of Germany. There's a

1063
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: lot of room where you can like, yeah, I fucked

1064
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 1: up on some things, but no one's going to remember

1065
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:51,400
Speaker 1: me as the worst.

1066
00:53:52,200 --> 00:53:57,000
Speaker 3: I mean, or owning an American auto manufacturer, right, it

1067
00:53:57,040 --> 00:54:00,200
Speaker 3: makes you like more Nazis than not in.

1068
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 1: The future if we have those Nazis being the president

1069
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: of the United States.

1070
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:08,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we'll see or whatever the position is called

1071
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 3: after this.

1072
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah whatever. Anyway, Andrew T, where could people

1073
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: find you?

1074
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:16,640
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, it is this racist Andrew T on whatever

1075
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:18,719
Speaker 3: social media? I'm not looking at it that much.

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Speaker 1: M hmm, yeah, well do that and uh let's all

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Speaker 1: go not Well, you know what if you know somebody

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Speaker 1: who's quiet and nice and.

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Speaker 4: And that's the episode.

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Speaker 5: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 5: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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Speaker 5: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:51,359
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes

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00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:58,960
Speaker 4: every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot

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Speaker 4: com slash at Behind the Bastards