Speaker 1: Also media, Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a
Speaker 1: podcast about really our first genocidal bastard who is legitimately
Speaker 1: considered a nice guy, which is a nice write at
Speaker 1: everybody that nice does not mean good. Lots of nice
Speaker 1: people who are evil.
Speaker 2: That is so I was going to say, Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: also a reminder.
Speaker 3: Of course, you know, you don't have to be an
Speaker 3: asshole to be the top of your field.
Speaker 1: So no, no, no, you don't have to be an
Speaker 1: asshole to be the top of your field.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Robert, what I don't say that to me. I'm
Speaker 4: still mad about last time.
Speaker 1: You're still mad about the fact that I want to
Speaker 1: see what Polepot looks like producing a podcast. But what
Speaker 1: if we just put him on sixteenth minute for a week?
Speaker 4: No, I would never replace Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe Polepot and Jamie will find out that they're
Speaker 1: like like a Fleetwood Mac deal, like just like perfect,
Speaker 1: perfect musical partners, you know, like just a historic talent match.
Speaker 4: You've you've watched that Spring that that Silver Springs video
Speaker 4: one time.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been watching the nineteen ninety seven fans
Speaker 1: Silver Springs million times. I know you have Honestly, what
Speaker 1: if Polepot had been in Fleetwood Mac? You know, could
Speaker 1: that have had Could that have been good? Almost certainly not.
Speaker 4: Stephen X would have come out on top, just like
Speaker 4: you didn't realize.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining Polepots sitting down all of Fleetwood Mac
Speaker 1: and being like, guys, this is way too toxic. You
Speaker 1: need you need to learn how to have healthier interpersonal boundaries.
Speaker 2: I learned that. I learned this one at my time
Speaker 2: at the Temple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let me tell you so one time we
Speaker 1: were shooting twenty thousand people to death and I got
Speaker 1: angry at my friend.
Speaker 2: That's what it's about.
Speaker 1: It's not what it's about speaking of shooting twenty thousand
Speaker 1: people to death. Our guest Andrew T never did that.
Speaker 2: He didn't. Yeah, probably did. I knew, No, you would know,
Speaker 2: you would know, you would know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For one thing, that's twenty thousand bullets. That's not cheap
Speaker 1: these days, right, like you're talking several months even of
Speaker 1: la rent, you know. So yeah, with the tariffsh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that cheap Turkish amo is going to be a lot
Speaker 1: more expensive. So you're gonna have to shoot people with
Speaker 1: the homegrown American bullets, which you know anyway, Andrew, how
Speaker 1: are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm alive. I'm alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're alive. And we're talking about the doge of Indo, China,
Speaker 1: the Khmer Rouge, which is not as far from the
Speaker 1: truth as it would be comforting for it to be.
Speaker 3: It's closer to the truth than we want it to be,
Speaker 3: but yeah, by a lot.
Speaker 1: Specifically, we're talking about Salothsar, the man who would become Polepot,
Speaker 1: who at this point is living in Paris, and he
Speaker 1: is a bon vivant whose purpose in life is to
Speaker 1: have a good time. He's drinking the wine, he's reading
Speaker 1: lots of books, and he's not doing a whole lot
Speaker 1: of radio technician school, which is why he is ostensibly
Speaker 1: in Paris in the first place. He would later recall
Speaker 1: spending all of his spare money on French language books
Speaker 1: during this period of time. He is a real hound
Speaker 1: to the used bookstore crowd. He shows a particular interest
Speaker 1: in the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is, among
Speaker 1: other things, like that the big idea from Rousseau that
Speaker 1: seems to have left the primary mark on Sar's psyche
Speaker 1: is this concept of the noble savage, right, this almost
Speaker 1: idealized human that lives close to nature and hasn't been
Speaker 1: polluted by these concepts of modernity. Right. This is a
Speaker 1: big idea for Rousseau, obviously influenced by European colonialism in
Speaker 1: the Americas, and it's going to have a big mark
Speaker 1: on Polepot. He's not in the least bit interested in
Speaker 1: the Americas, but there's this idea he starts to get
Speaker 1: in his head of idealizing the Khmer peasantry who he
Speaker 1: was technically born into but not really like he born
Speaker 1: just above, just above and immediately bounced to go hang
Speaker 1: out with the royal family, right, Right, But he's really
Speaker 1: going to like and this it's not just he's not
Speaker 1: doing this in isolation. They're all reading guys like Rousseau.
Speaker 1: They're all getting involved in knowledgeable of these French thinkers,
Speaker 1: and so this would not he would have been having conversations
Speaker 1: about these these concepts with his friends at the time.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: He Also, one thing I learned in the interview he
Speaker 1: did with Nate Thayer later in life, and this is
Speaker 1: not in his earlier biographies. They talk a lot. He
Speaker 1: reads Mao, he reads Stalin, we'll talk about that. He's
Speaker 1: also for a period of time really interested in Mahatma Gandhi,
Speaker 1: Like he kind of keeps up obsessively with the story
Speaker 1: of Gandhi and the successful fight to decolonize India. Not
Speaker 1: a Gandhi figure, po Pot, you could say, but he
Speaker 1: is very and it makes sense that he's interested in
Speaker 1: it because India is a colonized country that throws off
Speaker 1: the shackles of its colonial oppressor, and that's what he's
Speaker 1: gonna want to do, right, he does reject the Gandhi route, Well, you.
Speaker 3: Know it's about that that ends justifying the means, right,
Speaker 3: this is where this goes right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, here's the difference. Polepot. I do think
Speaker 1: could have been a pretty good podcaster. Gandhi terrible podcast,
Speaker 1: absolutely dog shit. Could have had a YouTube channel, could
Speaker 1: have been pretty good on YouTube. You know, he's me
Speaker 1: on a Twitch instead of freeing India. He would have
Speaker 1: gotten really successful on Patriot. And then he started guy Yeah,
Speaker 1: a Twitch streamer, Gandhi playing Gears of War but just
Speaker 1: refusing to shoot the whole time. Yeah, doing the pacifist
Speaker 1: doing the pacifist run of cyberpunk twenty seventy seven.
Speaker 4: So much funnier than Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Poulpot would later say of his time and like
Speaker 1: the impact that all this reading had on him. I
Speaker 1: started as a nationalist and then patriot, and then I
Speaker 1: read progressive books. Before that time, I had never read
Speaker 1: The Humanity the French Communist Party newspaper. It scared me,
Speaker 1: but I got used to it because of the student movement.
Speaker 1: So he describes kind of being initially frightened of like
Speaker 1: communism and some of these ideas. And I wonder how
Speaker 1: much of that has to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: very clearly his family and background is like the enemy
Speaker 1: as often described in like a lot of communist writing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: people like him are not who you're messaging to primarily,
Speaker 1: right like he is. There's not much of a bourgeoisie
Speaker 1: in Cambodia, but he definitely is part of it, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's sort of like that, Yeah, get him and
Speaker 3: then melting hi, Yeah, slowly out of the back of
Speaker 3: the craft.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he says that like basically just like the
Speaker 1: fact that it is so not just among but by
Speaker 1: the way, when we say the student movement, he's not
Speaker 1: just socializing with other Khmer he socializing with a lot
Speaker 1: of young French radicals, right, and so he just kind
Speaker 1: of through immersion gets more comfortable with socialism and than communism.
Speaker 1: But he was also very engaged with the non educational
Speaker 1: opportunities afforded to him, including a free work trip to
Speaker 1: war ravaged Yugoslavia. Now, we actually had two different options
Speaker 1: for a vacation during this first year that he's in France.
Speaker 1: One was a month long backpacking trip in Switzerland, which
Speaker 1: costs seventy dollars in Boy, if I could get that
Speaker 1: deal today, I'd be gone the fucking heartbeat. But that
Speaker 1: is a lot of money for the time, and he
Speaker 1: has no money, right, so he picks a labor trip
Speaker 1: to go help rebuild Yugoslavia, which had just become a thing.
Speaker 1: If you think about Yugoslavia is the Balkans. It's the
Speaker 1: Balkans all being a state that's an independent state for
Speaker 1: basically the first time, and it's like the least governable
Speaker 1: territory on Earth is finally being governed by a guy.
Speaker 1: But it's all been blown to fuck by World War Two.
Speaker 1: So you can come here for free and will kind
Speaker 1: of feed you, even though we don't have much food,
Speaker 1: but it'll be free if you help rebuild, and so
Speaker 1: that's what he does. Right, This was not a political thing.
Speaker 1: He doesn't go to Yugoslavia because they're communist. He later wrote,
Speaker 1: I didn't have money, so I couldn't do as the
Speaker 1: others and go to Geneva or to the sea or
Speaker 1: to the mountains and have a holiday there. A group
Speaker 1: of a poor students went instead to Zagreb. Now this
Speaker 1: is a seminal moment for Salathsar. Tito, who is the
Speaker 1: dictator of Yugoslavia, was a communist who had been who
Speaker 1: had fought as an insurgent against the Nazis. Tito, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about him one day. He's one of these guys
Speaker 1: where I can't say he's not a bastard because he's
Speaker 1: a dictator. He does some bad stuff. He's also like
Speaker 1: the best case scenario for a dictator. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: live under a dictator in the twentieth century, you fucking
Speaker 1: want it to be Tito. Right. He does know what
Speaker 1: he's doing, which is extremely rare. And he's also legitimately
Speaker 1: like the hardest son of a bitch alive in his day,
Speaker 1: Like he fights the Nazis, and then my favorite Tito's
Speaker 1: story because he breaks away from the USSR because Stalin
Speaker 1: obviously wants Yugoslavia to basically be an extension of the USSR,
Speaker 1: and Tito is like, yeah, the Balkans have had enough
Speaker 1: being other people's property. We're gonna be the bullk you know,
Speaker 1: We're going to be our own thing for a while.
Speaker 1: And Stalin keeps sending guys to kill him and find
Speaker 1: Stalin like Tina like sends back. I think it's a
Speaker 1: piece of one of the assassins with a note that's like,
Speaker 1: you can keep sending guys and I'll keep killing them.
Speaker 1: But if you do, I'm gonna send one guy and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna send him back, right, Like he's gonna
Speaker 1: get you right right, Like Tito is legitimately one of
Speaker 1: the scariest dudes who ever lived, and also shockingly competent
Speaker 1: at what he does, because like, Yugoslavia collapses immediately after
Speaker 1: his death into a heart into a hideous civil war. Right,
Speaker 1: but it's like the only time the Balkans is a unified,
Speaker 1: peaceful thing more or less while Tito's in charge, and
Speaker 1: again he has he runs, he has a police state,
Speaker 1: he's not a nice man, but you can't help but
Speaker 1: be like, well, shit, that motherfucker knew what he was doing, right,
Speaker 1: good at his job. At least he's like he's like
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise. Right, I'm not gonna say Tom Cruise is
Speaker 1: a good man, but the son of a bitch loves cinema, right.
Speaker 4: I'm definitely not going to say Tom Cruise is a good.
Speaker 1: Man and he cares about COVID policy. Looks, Sophie, beggars
Speaker 1: can't be choosers anymore.
Speaker 4: I don't like that.
Speaker 1: Man, no, no, no, but he's the Tito of movies.
Speaker 1: We can all agree on that. I think that's a
Speaker 1: fair way.
Speaker 2: To look at him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is good. This is good. Historians with me.
Speaker 2: He's a Stanis Barathian.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Stantus, Yes, these are all Stanus except for
Speaker 1: Stanis again loses. Tito never fucking does.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So at this point though, Tito is in charge and
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union really doesn't like that like young kind
Speaker 1: of socialist lefty inclined kids in France, because the Communist
Speaker 1: Party still does try to and into a degree, exercises
Speaker 1: a lot of control over these like like national Western
Speaker 1: communist parties and like Paris and stuff. They think that
Speaker 1: Tito was a traitor to the cause, right, and so
Speaker 1: there's like an effort among French socialists to discourage young
Speaker 1: people from volunteering in Yugoslavia. But for whatever reason, Sara
Speaker 1: does not get the memo, or he just doesn't give
Speaker 1: a shit, So he goes Salath and a bunch of
Speaker 1: his friends. They go in there. You know, at this point,
Speaker 1: the whole population of Yugoslavia is basically organized into these
Speaker 1: massive labor brigades that are rebuilding the part of the
Speaker 1: country that had been ruined in the war, which was
Speaker 1: all of the country. It's the least covered theater of
Speaker 1: war in World War Two. The shit that went on
Speaker 1: in the Balkans in World War two is it's nuts
Speaker 1: by Eastern Front standards. Like there were like SS guys
Speaker 1: who tried to go to the East because the Balkans
Speaker 1: was so fucked up. Like I cannot exaggerate how bad
Speaker 1: World War two was for the Balkans. Sar's particular crew
Speaker 1: helped to rebuild a motorway, and the impression he took
Speaker 1: away from the experience was stirring, this powerful sensation of
Speaker 1: being engaged in a great, real time task of building
Speaker 1: a modern nation from the ground up using only the
Speaker 1: raw human material of its populace. As Polepot years later,
Speaker 1: he was emphatic that he had no political interest in
Speaker 1: planning the trip. It was purely for pleasure. But the
Speaker 1: experience left an impact anyway. Short quotes from one of
Speaker 1: his friends at the time, who wrote about the experience
Speaker 1: highlights kind of the impact we can assume this probably
Speaker 1: had on Polepot. Quote everywhere this guy wrote, the People's
Speaker 1: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia resembles an enormous work site where factories, roads,
Speaker 1: railways and hydraulic centers are being built. This effort is
Speaker 1: also worthy of praise because strength of all the people
Speaker 1: united around their leaders gives them the chance of gaining
Speaker 1: successive victories, knowing that it is a question of national survival,
Speaker 1: and the post war rebuilding of Yugoslavia has a lot
Speaker 1: of successes, right, And obviously there's more to it than
Speaker 1: just throwing together huge work gangs, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: going to be lost on salath Tsar and his comrades, right,
Speaker 1: But this idea of mobilizing a nation to remake a
Speaker 1: country from the ground up, and that's very much what
Speaker 1: That's not accurate to literally what was going on in Yugoslavia,
Speaker 1: but that's accurate to what they would have been aware
Speaker 1: of as foreigners coming in. That leaves him mark.
Speaker 3: And they were at the that were there at the
Speaker 3: forefront of seeing the that is action.
Speaker 1: Yes, Salotsar and his friends, as I said, represented a
Speaker 1: sizable chunk of the entire educated adult Khmer population at
Speaker 1: this point in time. Right. But due to the isolation
Speaker 1: of Cambodia and some of the cultural realities inherent to
Speaker 1: having your education conducted entirely in a second language, most
Speaker 1: of these guys arrive in Paris with no real understanding
Speaker 1: of Marxism or Communism, and they never get a very
Speaker 1: good way. These guys are not what a Marxist today
Speaker 1: would call super educated Marxists, in that a lot of
Speaker 1: them are kind of bored of marx and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are like in part because like, I don't
Speaker 1: really get this. This is not this has been translated
Speaker 1: several times. Marx is not the communists who speaks to
Speaker 1: them the most, right, and that's not primarily what they're
Speaker 1: going to base. Stalin and Mao are going to be
Speaker 1: the communist writers who have the biggest direct impact on
Speaker 1: this crew.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So after getting back from Yugoslavia, Sar increasingly falls in
Speaker 1: with his friend Yang Seri and Hip Sari's friends, and
Speaker 1: these guys are better students, They're at more prestigious schools,
Speaker 1: getting more prestigious degrees and like the humanities and stuff.
Speaker 1: Seri introduced Sar to a guy named King Bonsak, who
Speaker 1: was one of the most probably the most senior Khmer
Speaker 1: student in France. He'd been there the longest at twenty five.
Speaker 1: He is the old man of the Cambodian expat community, right,
Speaker 1: and Van Sack was, as a result, one of the
Speaker 1: executive committee members of the student union. So there's like
Speaker 1: this Khmer student union that he is helping to run.
Speaker 1: And the way the organization works is you've got this
Speaker 1: central union and then there's a bunch of what are
Speaker 1: called circles, and each circle is a kind of additionally,
Speaker 1: at least, there's not really a hierarchy in each circle.
Speaker 1: It's a student discussion group based around a specific topic.
Speaker 1: So you might have a circle for the kids who
Speaker 1: are doing radio stuff, or a circle for the kids
Speaker 1: who are into French literature, a circle for the poetry students, right,
Speaker 1: and you kind of like meet at hawk and you
Speaker 1: do you know stuff that way. These are I think
Speaker 1: the best. These are the analog version of how things
Speaker 1: get done today for most young people. Right. Imagine this
Speaker 1: is a bunch of different signal loops or discords, right, right,
Speaker 1: that's what these are, except for you have to like
Speaker 1: meet up in person, right, yeah, but that's basically what's
Speaker 1: happening here. So a month or so after meeting, sar
Speaker 1: Vansach convened a private gathering to create a new circle
Speaker 1: dedicated to discussing Cambodia's future. By this point, the vietnam
Speaker 1: Men were escalating their war for independence against the French,
Speaker 1: and there was widespread and interest in what this might
Speaker 1: mean for Cambodians. And also because the Vietmen are communist,
Speaker 1: and because Mao has just announced the start of the
Speaker 1: People's Republic, all these guys are being like, shit, you know,
Speaker 1: there might be this co like global communist uprising that
Speaker 1: we could be a part of that could like free
Speaker 1: us from the shackles of French domination while still like
Speaker 1: being a part of this greater international community. And that
Speaker 1: sounds kind of dope, right, It is.
Speaker 3: So funny to actually hear like the other side of
Speaker 3: domino theory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting because the correct like the thing
Speaker 1: about Domino theory that was kind of accurate is that
Speaker 1: other people in other countries in Asia were influenced by
Speaker 1: communism taking off in Vietnam and China, and it made
Speaker 1: them think about the things that were possible. I think
Speaker 1: that we're wrong about is that all of these guys,
Speaker 1: as soon as they're in power, wind up primarily hating
Speaker 1: other countries near them, including communist countries. Right, it's how like,
Speaker 1: oh god, obviously communists China and the USS are going
Speaker 1: to form a unified block. Oh no, they nearly nuked
Speaker 1: each other. They're literally shooting each other on the border.
Speaker 1: China is inviting Nixon over because of how pissed they
Speaker 1: are at the Soviet Union. Right, Like, all of this
Speaker 1: shit is very wrong in that regard. If you knew
Speaker 1: anything about the left, you knew that the left was
Speaker 1: never going to get along with each other.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the whole problem. They know not think
Speaker 2: about the left.
Speaker 1: No, so Van sax starts this circle, which is initially
Speaker 1: about like the future of Cambodia and maybe independence and
Speaker 1: they start talking about communism a lot too. Yengsari attends,
Speaker 1: as does a number of future influential Khmer politicians, including Salathsar.
Speaker 1: So they're beginning to talk more about communism and again
Speaker 1: mostly focused around Maow and Ho Chi Minh. In January
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty, China became the first country to recognize
Speaker 1: North Vietnam, which was still a couple of decades away
Speaker 1: from just being Vietnam. The USSR followed, and this prompted
Speaker 1: an equal but opposite reaction from the US and her
Speaker 1: capitalist allies, who then turn recognize Cambodia, Lao, and South
Speaker 1: Vietnam as part of the so called French Union. Maybe
Speaker 1: not the wisest move. Yeah, all these guys want to
Speaker 1: be independent, and that seems to be a big part
Speaker 1: of the appeal of communism is getting a pen. Let's
Speaker 1: recognize them as part of France. That'll stop this. Nip
Speaker 1: this in the.
Speaker 2: Bud God classic, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So everyone in the area is increasingly prodded to
Speaker 1: choose sides. Thailand, for example, picks the US right in
Speaker 1: art because the US is like, we will leave you guys.
Speaker 1: So many fucking guns, so many fucking guns. France controls
Speaker 1: the Union for a while, and Vietnamese leaders, as a
Speaker 1: result see a strategic benefit and starting to seed allied
Speaker 1: communist movements in these neighboring countries. Right because these places
Speaker 1: are part of the French Union. These Vietnam leaders are like, okay,
Speaker 1: so we should start sending some like CADRA leaders to
Speaker 1: Cambodia and allow maybe with some weapons, and see if
Speaker 1: we can start making local communist movements in the imitation
Speaker 1: of the Vietman so that they can start their own
Speaker 1: uprisings which will overall help us in our goal and
Speaker 1: just getting the fucking French out of this goddamn right.
Speaker 1: So from the outset of this, you know, the Vietnamese
Speaker 1: communists coming into Cambodia and trying to start their own
Speaker 1: communist organizations. It was understood by the Vietnamese that Cambodians
Speaker 1: were incapable of generating their own autonomous communist party as
Speaker 1: Vietnam had. There was no proletariat, right, which is the idea,
Speaker 1: the Marxist idea is that is where a communists like
Speaker 1: movement comes from. Right, everyone is the peasantry basically within
Speaker 1: within Cambodia, and that means there's no base of education
Speaker 1: or convenient way to reach and organize large numbers of
Speaker 1: Khmer in any reasonable timeframe. So a decision has made.
Speaker 1: These are their conclusions, and by the way, they're not
Speaker 1: going to prove broadly accurate. But this is how the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese are thinking, and this is a very chauvinistic, paternalistic attitude,
Speaker 1: which is exactly how everyone in Cambodia feels about the Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: They're arrogant, they don't think we're really people, and they
Speaker 1: don't listen to us. And the Vietnamese are like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't let these people make any decisions, right, So
Speaker 1: this is they're not wrong.
Speaker 2: History never changes, it's the important Yeah yeah, oh god.
Speaker 1: People are always the biggest dicks to their neighbors. So
Speaker 1: a decision is made that these Vietnamese leaders are going
Speaker 1: to build communism in Cambodia from the top down, which
Speaker 1: is not how it generally works. The Khmer National United
Speaker 1: Front is the result. This organization was patterned off of
Speaker 1: the Vietna, but it had some local characteristics, including an
Speaker 1: embrace of the king, who it argued must be liberated
Speaker 1: from French territory, and that doesn't really fit with traditional
Speaker 1: communist ideology, right, the fact that we actually love the king,
Speaker 1: but the king is super fucking popular with the regular
Speaker 1: people of Cambodia, right, And so this is one of
Speaker 1: the wiser things. The Vietnamese are like, well, we can't
Speaker 1: just like shit talk the king because they will immediately
Speaker 1: stop listening to us. We have to do this thing.
Speaker 1: And they're kind of, i think, recognizing a lot of
Speaker 1: what people said about the Czar pre revolution and even
Speaker 1: Hitler where it's like, well, he must not know about
Speaker 1: all this shitty stuff. His dudes are doing, right, And
Speaker 1: so I think the Vietnamese are like, let's just say
Speaker 1: the king's really good and the French are the ones
Speaker 1: making him make that making things suck, right, fuck it right,
Speaker 1: like this doesn't hurt us. The first Khmer Vietnamese Communist
Speaker 1: Party member when Than Song was put in charge of
Speaker 1: this party in May, and he issues a proclamation of
Speaker 1: independence that means absolutely nothing at the time because they
Speaker 1: controlled no real territory. There is an actual Cambodian Communist
Speaker 1: party started a year later. This is eventually going to
Speaker 1: be the Khmer Rouge, but it's not right Now, Vietnamese
Speaker 1: fighters liberate a few small border areas, and again because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of strategic benefit in them having this
Speaker 1: area to like retreat to, right and to hold supplies
Speaker 1: and stuff, and they set up in these areas they
Speaker 1: quote unquote liberate a system that imitates the Vietnam People's
Speaker 1: committees that are run by Vietnamese revolutionaries. Every decision made
Speaker 1: by Cambodian assemblies and committees in these territories has to
Speaker 1: be approved by the Vietnamese. You cannot join the Cambodian
Speaker 1: Communist Party without Vietnamese approval, right, So these are this
Speaker 1: is very centralized and very much not something in which
Speaker 1: the Cambodians have a lot to say, even though it's
Speaker 1: their communist organize. A lot of Khmer nationalists do not
Speaker 1: like this, and a lot of Khmayer who are budding
Speaker 1: communists are like, all right, like I agree with the
Speaker 1: basic idea, but like, why the fuck are we listening
Speaker 1: to these gouy the in Vietnamese people, right, Like why
Speaker 1: do they get to be in charge of our communist revolution?
Speaker 1: We're Khmer? Right, Like Salatsar and his comrades know very
Speaker 1: little about what's going on in this regard at the time.
Speaker 1: According to Van sach Sar spent quote most of his
Speaker 1: time reading or going out to the movies. Very relatable,
Speaker 1: but then he falls in love with a history of
Speaker 1: the French Revolution, which he reads cover to cover, even
Speaker 1: though his French isn't great, and he admits, I didn't
Speaker 1: get a lot of it, but I felt compelled to.
Speaker 2: Read through it right.
Speaker 1: And there are a few things that really stick in
Speaker 1: his mind.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of them is the concept of a revolution as
Speaker 1: a historical reset, as in, once you succeeding in a
Speaker 1: revolution means you can make a you can break history.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety two, the French revolutionaries had instituted a
Speaker 1: new calendar, right, and this was them attempting to be like,
Speaker 1: the past is done, we are never going back. This
Speaker 1: is a totally new world that we are creating, and
Speaker 1: a new kind of human being that we are creating
Speaker 1: in this new world. And obviously Napoleon comes wrong. Not
Speaker 1: that long later. They didn't create a new world, right,
Speaker 1: No one creates a new man. People will always be people.
Speaker 1: This this ideology that you can like, we're fundamentally broken
Speaker 1: with the past. Things will never go back, things will
Speaker 1: never change. We have heralded in a new world, and
Speaker 1: it's always going to be this way. Everyone who thinks
Speaker 1: that is always wrong. Change is the only guaranteed constant.
Speaker 1: You can't stop it. But that's the idea that some
Speaker 1: of these French revolutionaries have, and that's the idea Sar
Speaker 1: comes away with, right. And one big thing he takes
Speaker 1: away from the history is that what doomed the French
Speaker 1: Revolution is that it didn't go all the way. It
Speaker 1: didn't tear down every structure of the previous old world.
Speaker 1: It kept too much alive from the old days of
Speaker 1: the king, and that's why it eventually failed. So you
Speaker 1: do want to have a total break with the past.
Speaker 1: A revolution should be that, but you have to destroy
Speaker 1: absolutely everything that had existed previously. Right, And this is
Speaker 1: a common He's not coming up to this on his own.
Speaker 1: This is a lot of stuff that he and Circle
Speaker 1: they're talking about. This is there. They are more influenced
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways by the French Revolution than
Speaker 1: what's happening in Vietnam because they're in France, right, they're
Speaker 1: studying in French schools.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Now, over the course of nineteen fifty one, the Circle
Speaker 1: Vansack had started turned into a Marxist circle, which itself
Speaker 1: began to exert direct control on the rest of the
Speaker 1: student union. And they kind of turned this student union
Speaker 1: into a stealth Communist vanguard party, right, Like, that's the
Speaker 1: goal and they're executing. They're kind of secretly planning it
Speaker 1: from this circle, but exerting control over the other circles
Speaker 1: in order to get them in line.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: In his book on Polepot Brother Number One, Chandler rights
Speaker 1: recollections about Salat Sar's behavior at the meetings are contradictory,
Speaker 1: and several interviews in the nineteen eighties, after Polepot had
Speaker 1: been identified as Salat Sar, King Vansac recalled that Sar
Speaker 1: attended irregularly, kept in the background, and made little impression
Speaker 1: on his colleagues. In nineteen seventy five to seventy six,
Speaker 1: an unnamed source spoke with journalist Francois Debra, who had
Speaker 1: attended the discussion groups. Remember that Salasar was the most intelligent,
Speaker 1: the most convinced, the most intransigent. It was he who
Speaker 1: animated the debates and most impressed the newcomers. Now there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that this unnamed source mixed up Polepot with
Speaker 1: a different kid and was actually talking about someone else.
Speaker 1: We really don't know the guy. Deborah basically claims that
Speaker 1: this dude he talked to stated that like I knew
Speaker 1: immediately this guy was going to wind up leading the
Speaker 1: Communist Party in Cambodia, and that polepot even set at
Speaker 1: the meeting. I will direct the revolutionary organization. I will
Speaker 1: be at secretary General, I will hold the dasiers, I
Speaker 1: will control the ministers, and I will see to it
Speaker 1: that they don't deviate from the line fixed in the
Speaker 1: people's interests by the Central Committee. I don't think this
Speaker 1: is likely. I'm bringing it up because it's one of
Speaker 1: the reports. Most of the people who survived from these
Speaker 1: days were like, yeah, he was like a part of it.
Speaker 1: He was there, he was engaged, he was pretty quiet,
Speaker 1: like he was always happy to do work and like help,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't like a big That reminds me of
Speaker 1: a lot of guys, right, we talk about like Chichescu,
Speaker 1: who like, if there's ever a guy in your revolutionary
Speaker 1: organization who's like really quiet, really friendly and always doing
Speaker 1: willing to do bullshit work, you need to kill that
Speaker 1: man immediately because he's going to murder all of you
Speaker 1: and take power once the revolution's over. That's the way
Speaker 1: these things go, right, Yeah, speaking of murder, so no, no,
Speaker 1: instead of killing anyone, no, kill your wallace with these products.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: Oh, and we are returned back, returned back. So yeah.
Speaker 1: Most of the accounts of Sar during this period, again
Speaker 1: he's a quiet, friendly, easygoing dude. But as short notes
Speaker 1: Philip short notes in his book on pol Pot, Sar
Speaker 1: did start reading a lot of Stalin around this time,
Speaker 1: and that's because he in a circle. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of Stalin going around. Particularly there's a history of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party in Russia that Stalin wrote, right, and this
Speaker 1: is it's a Stalin book, right, so we could assume,
Speaker 1: like there's a couple of things you can just infer
Speaker 1: even if you haven't read it. It's very paranoid. It
Speaker 1: is very focused on the internal enemies, right. His history
Speaker 1: of the Russian is very focused on the need to
Speaker 1: like how necessary it was for him to get rid
Speaker 1: of internal enemies within the party who were counter revolutionary, right,
Speaker 1: who were dangers to the success of the revolution, because
Speaker 1: he was Joseph Stalin, right. And this the fact that
Speaker 1: this book is seen as like very inspirational to salath
Speaker 1: Tsar and a lot of his young not great, not
Speaker 1: getting in well, not gonna in well now. Sar also
Speaker 1: becomes very acquainted with Mao's writings, which are the most
Speaker 1: directly relevant both to the kind of communism he's going
Speaker 1: to preach and to the kind of war he's going
Speaker 1: to orchestrate, because Mao, unlike Stalin and unlike a lot
Speaker 1: of other communists, Mao runs a peasant insurgency, right, because
Speaker 1: that's how things go in China, right, it is a
Speaker 1: peasant uprising, you know, in a lot of ways. That's
Speaker 1: a big part of what's going on. And so Mao
Speaker 1: is really relevant for for what saloths Are is going
Speaker 1: to be doing and not too long from now, right.
Speaker 1: And there's also a lot that Mal writes about theorizing
Speaker 1: about how to remake a society from the bottom up, and,
Speaker 1: as we know from the Great Leap Forward, not always
Speaker 1: a great idea. Maybe backyards shouldn't be where we make steel,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe factories are better for that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we need sparrows. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, your big society remaking ideas tend not to
Speaker 3: be good.
Speaker 1: No, it's yeah, it's it's like what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do now, Like, what if we get rid of everyone
Speaker 1: who researches how to stop diseases and instead make them
Speaker 1: build iPhones. I feel like we're all going to have
Speaker 1: a lot more diseases and probably less iPhones, like which
Speaker 1: might work out for us. Maybe the less iPhones will
Speaker 1: eventually lead us back to having people who learned how
Speaker 1: to cure diseases.
Speaker 2: I'll cast that in for a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's going to take a little while. So
Speaker 1: in late nineteen fifty one, there was a huge Marxist
Speaker 1: gathering in East Berlin. It's like this big burning man
Speaker 1: from Marxists in the fifties. Uh Basar does not attend,
Speaker 1: but several of his Khmer comment comrades do. For the
Speaker 1: very first time they meet with this Marxist group, and
Speaker 1: they are told about the establishment of the Khmer communist
Speaker 1: resistance in Cambodia. Right, So this is the first time
Speaker 1: and they bring this back to their circle. So now
Speaker 1: everyone knows there is a communist movement in Cambodia that
Speaker 1: is organizing and arming, and they've taken some territory even right,
Speaker 1: So for you know, a year or so. After this point,
Speaker 1: these kids are going to continue reading books and discussing
Speaker 1: their ideas and making plans for how they're going to
Speaker 1: get involved in the revolution. That becomes the focus now
Speaker 1: we know it started. We are the educated, you know, Kahmara,
Speaker 1: We need to figure out how we're going to help
Speaker 1: direct and lead this. Right now, what we've got here
Speaker 1: is a group of people who are isolated within Paris
Speaker 1: because their Khmer French is not their first language. They're
Speaker 1: even isolated from a lot of their fellow Khmer students
Speaker 1: because they see themselves as in charge of radicalizing them
Speaker 1: and directing them, and they see themselves as engaged in
Speaker 1: a dangerous, condestined effort. Right, So they're isolated socially, and
Speaker 1: they're all constantly talking about their beliefs and reading radical politics,
Speaker 1: and the same thing happens to them that happens to
Speaker 1: similar groups of people on let's say Twitter, which is
Speaker 1: that they make each other more and more extreme and
Speaker 1: less and less rational, right right, They're only going to
Speaker 1: get crazier. And one thing that a lot of them,
Speaker 1: including Sar, become obsessed with, is this idea that will
Speaker 1: eventually become known as Year zero which is the concept
Speaker 1: that we can, with a revolution, force a clean break
Speaker 1: with history that creates a new kind of human right.
Speaker 1: This is not limited to Cambodian communists. This is not
Speaker 1: limited to communists, because there's some you can find some
Speaker 1: stuff that the note you we're talking about that's not
Speaker 1: all that different. There's this concept of the new Soviet Man.
Speaker 1: It's less eugenic for the communists, but like, there's this
Speaker 1: idea that if we if we remake society radically enough
Speaker 1: and break what had existed radically enough, we can make
Speaker 1: fundamentally different people that way.
Speaker 3: And it really is like, do these people just simply
Speaker 3: cannot hear themselves?
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's Look, I think everyone believes a degree
Speaker 1: of this, which is one of the reasons why nobody
Speaker 1: should ever get the power to try. Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, when I'm watching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I when I and others watch Star Trek
Speaker 1: and are like, oh, what if we could be like that?
Speaker 1: You're not not thinking people can be radically remade, And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I don't think people can be made better,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't happen like this. It happens very slowly
Speaker 1: and carefully, and if you want them to add, if
Speaker 1: you want to actually improve the quality of people, you
Speaker 1: improve the quality of life, and you don't do that
Speaker 1: by shattering everything that makes it possible for them to
Speaker 1: survive at the jump right right, like it's people can
Speaker 1: get better both as individuals and as societies. But the
Speaker 1: most important thing is not to kill them all.
Speaker 3: While you're telling that that the means create a different
Speaker 3: end than you think.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and these this is going to like the
Speaker 1: idea that's going to be like particularly prevalent is that, like,
Speaker 1: because of the danger of Vietnam, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to do this very quickly. Right, once we get independence,
Speaker 1: we have to remake ourselves into a society that can
Speaker 1: withstand our foreign aggressors as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: In a paper on the subject, historian Andris ERR's writes,
Speaker 1: Maoism also provided the Khmer Rouge with an activist perspective
Speaker 1: on history, something that sheds considerable light upon their own
Speaker 1: year zero. This activist perspective, as opposed to the orthodox
Speaker 1: Marxist representation of history as a rational process of necessary advances,
Speaker 1: emphasize human will and the triumph of determination over material conditions.
Speaker 1: Put differently, not so much learning from history as overcoming it,
Speaker 1: diverting history in the right direction, as it were, by
Speaker 1: means of superior will and resolution. The French Revolution is
Speaker 1: already noted, had met with failure by stopping halfway. Yet
Speaker 1: even maw argued q sum Fan, the movement's chief theoretician,
Speaker 1: had not been radical enough to overcome history by definitively
Speaker 1: abolishing private property. The family received knowledge and traditional teaching.
Speaker 1: So again this is where we see, like the real
Speaker 1: dangerous thing is there's like number one, You're never going
Speaker 1: to learn from history. It's like, no, we're going to
Speaker 1: transcend it. Not possible, No one ever has. And you
Speaker 1: really should pay attention to the shit people try to
Speaker 1: do in the history. Like, for example, every time in
Speaker 1: the past, when someone's decided, I a guy who's never
Speaker 1: farmed is going to remake how my entire country grows food,
Speaker 1: that only ends one way, and it's with everyone starving
Speaker 1: to death, right, Yeah, Like, whether it's whether it's the
Speaker 1: fucking East India Company governing in Bengal, whether it's fucking
Speaker 1: like the Sanchoism in the Soviet Union and China. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it always ends in mass starvation, don't do it?
Speaker 3: I mean Listen, we're on the A side of this
Speaker 3: proposition with you know, guys that don't know what the
Speaker 3: fuck they're talking about and deciding how social security should
Speaker 3: be distributed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can fix all this because I'm good at
Speaker 1: video games. Yeah, it's it's fucking every people, a lot
Speaker 1: of people. This is a very attractive thing to think
Speaker 1: that you can do, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for sem Fan, who's again he's one of you know,
Speaker 1: Polpot's peers in this period of time, and he's like
Speaker 1: kind of the chief theoretician of what becomes the Khmer Rouge,
Speaker 1: the task of making communism reality entail an ideological zero
Speaker 1: point zero for him and zero for you. That is
Speaker 1: true equality, right, And this is zeroing in the sense
Speaker 1: that you like zero a rifle, Right. We're zeroing right
Speaker 1: right to a point where everyone is in the same place,
Speaker 1: and then we can build up right now. To be clear,
Speaker 1: these conclusions I just related aren't all fully sketched during
Speaker 1: the years they're in Paris, right, But this is they
Speaker 1: start on that road in Paris, and as these guys
Speaker 1: filter back into Cambodia, they're going to continue working to
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Paris starts the process that ends in the ideology of
Speaker 1: what we now know as the Khmer Rouge. As things
Speaker 1: actually stood in nineteen fifty two. Sar and his comrades
Speaker 1: were committed communists, but not particularly well read ones, and
Speaker 1: his writings from this period don't sound like what you
Speaker 1: would get from an avowed Marxist. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the weird things is that, like Polpot's first political obsession
Speaker 1: seems to be with democracy, which he called quote incomparable
Speaker 1: and as beautiful as a diamond. And democracy and communism,
Speaker 1: in his eyes, are very not just compatible, they're the
Speaker 1: same thing, and they're the same thing in that they
Speaker 1: stand in opposition to the monarchy. He published his first
Speaker 1: political article, the first thing we know he wrote, was
Speaker 1: called Monarchy or Democracy, and it was a strident argument
Speaker 1: against the king in favor of a democratic system. And
Speaker 1: he gives examples of democratic systems that Cambodia should be
Speaker 1: made the image of. And his examples are China, France,
Speaker 1: and the USS are all classically democracy.
Speaker 6: Well, at a king, you know, everything looks like peratively right,
Speaker 6: and his actual knowledge of what's going on in China
Speaker 6: and the US s are had to be honest, Like
Speaker 6: France is not perfect right, But this is how he's
Speaker 6: thinking at the time.
Speaker 1: So while they're reading and talking, events back home have
Speaker 1: continued to evolve. Sun Nach Than, the nationalist leader, got
Speaker 1: allowed back into Cambodia by the King and the hope
Speaker 1: that he could be used as a figurehead. Right, the
Speaker 1: King is like, I think that, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to say of this nationalist thing, because maybe that's
Speaker 1: gonna work out better for me, you know, having more
Speaker 1: powers the king. So I'll bring this guy in who
Speaker 1: is popular, you know, after the Japanese got kicked out.
Speaker 1: But Than is a very smart guy who really believes
Speaker 1: in something, and he realizes the king's just using me.
Speaker 1: So he fucks off into the jungle to fight with
Speaker 1: the guerrillas. And again, he's not an ideolog. His goal
Speaker 1: was to unite the communists and the nationalists of other
Speaker 1: stripes into a broad anti French coalition.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Again, he's a let's get our independence from these fuckers,
Speaker 1: and then I don't care, we'll figure it out. Whatever works,
Speaker 1: we'll do, you know, King Sahanak respond to getting our freedom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Sahanak responds by carrying out a coup against the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party when it wins the elections that year and
Speaker 1: backed by the French, he sets him up as the
Speaker 1: absolute ruler. Right the French begin conducting pacification campaigns against
Speaker 1: the Vietmen and Fans rebels, who had not yet managed
Speaker 1: to agree on the whole coalition thing. The circle back
Speaker 1: in Paris only learned what was going on in snatches
Speaker 1: of brief, conflicted reports. It was unclear which groups were
Speaker 1: doing what and who was who, and who this circle
Speaker 1: of educated young communist radicals could support. Right, It's very
Speaker 1: hard for them to tell who's actually fighting, what do
Speaker 1: they actually hold. You know, they don't have great infants,
Speaker 1: not like they could look at like the telegram chats
Speaker 1: for these different groups from the jungle, right, Like they
Speaker 1: have very little telegrams or even the telegram telegrams. Right,
Speaker 1: So they're like, we need on the ground intelligence. One
Speaker 1: of us needs to go there and figure out who
Speaker 1: we should be backing. And Salothsar this is really the
Speaker 1: first time he identifies himself as special and not just
Speaker 1: another dude sitting around bullshitting. Is like, I'll go right
Speaker 1: and let that be a lesson to you kids. If
Speaker 1: you want to one day kill a third of the
Speaker 1: people in your country, you gotta start by volunteering. You know,
Speaker 1: no one ever got anywhere sitting out there, but right,
Speaker 1: get out, be active, starve your entire country to death.
Speaker 1: I probably probably bad things to encourage people to do.
Speaker 2: Get out there in the community. You know, make a difference.
Speaker 1: He made a difference. You can't say Polepot didn't make
Speaker 1: a difference. He left a very different Cambodia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to make a difference part of just get involved. Really,
Speaker 3: I feel like the public messaging we should be concentrated
Speaker 3: or in the direction you make a difference.
Speaker 1: That is one of my big issues with like a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff we were raised with as kids
Speaker 1: in like the nineties and early two thousands is like
Speaker 1: anyone can make a difference. That's true. We should have
Speaker 1: higher standards.
Speaker 2: Than just different different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can leave ground to beef out overnight and
Speaker 1: it's different, but that doesn't mean it's better. Speaking of
Speaker 1: rancid ground beef, here's our sponsors. Oh boy, howdy, we
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Speaker 1: because look, the FDA is no longer going to be
Speaker 1: you know, and I Andrew, it's actually good that you're
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Speaker 1: air my story about eating dozens and dozens of rancid
Speaker 1: muscles at a Vegas buffet and harm with my friend
Speaker 1: in a muscle eating competition.
Speaker 2: Forgot about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, who's the smart one now? Who's getting ready
Speaker 1: for the RFK future? Now, maybe it's me. I got
Speaker 1: an iron stomach. I don't care how we don't uh
Speaker 1: huh uh. I've been I was molded by this. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had GRT. I don't give a fuck anymore. A
Speaker 1: lot of kids are gonna die anyway, back to the podcast,
Speaker 1: so it's important to note that Sala Star's back. The reason,
Speaker 1: part of the reason why you know he volunteers to
Speaker 1: go travel back home and make contact and part of
Speaker 1: why everyone agrees he's a good guy to do it
Speaker 1: is he's got the contacts, the whitest He's got the
Speaker 1: whitest breadth of contacts. Because his dad is a farmer,
Speaker 1: he did grow up in a rural village. Is he
Speaker 1: knows rural people. He's able to talk to rural Khmer people.
Speaker 1: He also is able to talk to urban people. He
Speaker 1: was educated in the city, but he also spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in the palace, so he can talk
Speaker 1: to that chunk of the popular. He he's really good
Speaker 1: at talking to everybody, right Like, that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: He's charisma, and he's charismatic in the way that matters,
Speaker 1: which means he can, within seconds of meeting someone new,
Speaker 1: figure out the best way to communicate with them, right Like,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of skill that he has. And you
Speaker 1: can't teach that almost you can't learn it after a
Speaker 1: certain point in your life. It really is just a
Speaker 1: product of during your formative years running into enough different
Speaker 1: kinds of people that you can get very good at that, right,
Speaker 1: And he salath Tsar, has that ability, and I think
Speaker 1: that's why everything else that happens to him happens to him.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, on Deptember fifteenth, nineteen fifty two, Salasar left Paris
Speaker 1: just as things in Cambodia reached a boil. Several assassinations
Speaker 1: and grenade attacks and the provinces provided the pretext for
Speaker 1: King Sahannock to announce a rule by decree and the
Speaker 1: suspension of civil liberties. His French backers express their hope
Speaker 1: that Cambodia's pacification will make continued progress. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's going to work out great for you guys.
Speaker 1: So decades later, Polpot would claim that his real political
Speaker 1: awakening came not as a result of anything that had
Speaker 1: happened in the reading circle in Paris, but what he
Speaker 1: experienced after he returned home to Cambodia during this tumultuous period.
Speaker 1: And I want to quote from an article by journalist
Speaker 1: Nate Thayer here. Before I went to France, my relatives,
Speaker 1: they lived comfortably. There were middle peasants. When I came back,
Speaker 1: I went to my village by bus. When I got
Speaker 1: off the bus, I met someone with a wagon. He
Speaker 1: asked my name, and he said, ah, you've come back.
Speaker 1: And I look at him and see he's my uncle,
Speaker 1: and he asks me, do you want to go home?
Speaker 1: I was shocked. Before he had a piece of land
Speaker 1: in a buffalo. Now he had become a rickshaw puller.
Speaker 1: I met and talked with the relatives who used to
Speaker 1: have land in buffaloes and had nothing. Now. What influenced
Speaker 1: me most was the actual situation in Cambodia. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that's untrue, but it does make me think
Speaker 1: of that is not a I reckoned with the suffering
Speaker 1: of the common man, and it allowed me to realize
Speaker 1: that I had grown up in a privileged position, that is,
Speaker 1: my family was supposed to be doing better than this
Speaker 1: or not, which is a really familiar to like modern
Speaker 1: conservative radicalism in a lot of yeah, yea, I find
Speaker 1: that interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the me of it, not to like us
Speaker 2: of it, right, And.
Speaker 1: It also is worth noting in terms of how accurate
Speaker 1: is this to what really radicalized him. This is Polepot
Speaker 1: near the end of his life in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: talking to journalist Nate Thayer, who also by the way,
Speaker 1: passed pretty recently about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: Interesting guy, but a really groundbreaking It was the only
Speaker 1: guy who got in to do this right, So we'll
Speaker 1: be quoting from Nate quite a bit here. Over the
Speaker 1: next eight years, Sar is often in the provinces, he's
Speaker 1: moving around, he's connecting these different groups. As the rebellion
Speaker 1: against the king and then the Prince Sihannak goes through
Speaker 1: several stages. The Red Khmer or Khmer Rouge proved to
Speaker 1: be the most resilient of kind of the different nationalist
Speaker 1: rebel groups against the repeated pacification campaigns. Salat Sar rose
Speaker 1: through the ranks for the same reason. He was hard
Speaker 1: to fucking kill. And it was hard to kill because
Speaker 1: from the beginning he's really he's the first of the
Speaker 1: guys in his circle who's like, well, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to ever go by my real name. I'm going to
Speaker 1: start like from that first article he writes, he picks
Speaker 1: a fake name, and he picks fake names as he's
Speaker 1: doing this on the groundwork meeting these rebels. He doesn't
Speaker 1: call himself Sala Tsar Polepot's one of the names he uses,
Speaker 1: but like he has a couple of different nicknames, will
Speaker 1: go over them later. And this this means he's anonymous,
Speaker 1: and he's good at being anonymous. He's one of these
Speaker 1: guys who's kind of forgettable. That's what everyone in Paris
Speaker 1: talks about. Is you don't notice him in a room,
Speaker 1: and that means he doesn't get spotted and killed by
Speaker 1: the security forces. Be it kind of blending in and
Speaker 1: being forgettable. Great asset for a guy who's trying to
Speaker 1: build a revolutionary movement under like constant bombardment from the French.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're blended you, but I mean that's the spy thing,
Speaker 3: that's the real life spy thing, I guess.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and again, folks, if you're trying to overthrow
Speaker 1: the government and there's a guy in your cell and
Speaker 1: you can never remember his name, you need to murder
Speaker 1: him immediately. He's going to wind up taking power, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, the problem is it's it's always one of
Speaker 3: those guys. But not all of those guys is going
Speaker 3: to become noble.
Speaker 1: Some of those guys are just really good at like
Speaker 1: keeping their mouths shut.
Speaker 2: It's done. Or they just have nothing to say.
Speaker 1: Oh they just got nothing to say. Yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just vibeing. So Sar was amongst the first Khmer revolutionary
Speaker 1: leaders to take pains to keep himself anonymous. As a result,
Speaker 1: nobody realizes that he's steadily moving up the ranks of
Speaker 1: the insurgency. In nineteen sixty, he is added to the
Speaker 1: Communist Party's Standing Committee. Now, in the same interview I
Speaker 1: just quoted from with Polepot near the end of his life,
Speaker 1: Nate Thayer writes, and this is Nate. They are quoting Polepot.
Speaker 1: The secrecy that made the Khmer rous show so effective
Speaker 1: was Polepot, said second nature to him. Since my boyhood,
Speaker 1: I never talked about myself. That was my nature. I
Speaker 1: was taciturn. I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell
Speaker 1: people that I'm a leader. I didn't tell anybody, not
Speaker 1: my brother, not my sister, because I didn't want to
Speaker 1: worry them if anything happens to me, I didn't want
Speaker 1: them to have any connection to it. So some people
Speaker 1: think that I don't care about them, But on the contrary,
Speaker 1: I respect, I love my relatives, but I never revealed
Speaker 1: my political thinking to them. And I gotta say, obsec
Speaker 1: king here that you can't take that away of a bullpot.
Speaker 1: This motherfucker would have been incredible at using signal Like
Speaker 1: nobody would have known this son of a bitch's name.
Speaker 1: He would have had burner phones for his fucking burner phones.
Speaker 1: This guy is really good. It's staying secret.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, imagine having that discipline.
Speaker 1: He's very disciplined, right like he doesn't. This isn't an
Speaker 1: accident that he winds up where he is.
Speaker 2: He's smart.
Speaker 1: He continues to live. He has in addition to this private,
Speaker 1: hidden revolutionary life, he has a very public life and career.
Speaker 1: He is a teacher at a private school, like he's
Speaker 1: like a high school teacher. During this period of time.
Speaker 1: And he's a pretty good teacher. I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from Chandler's book here. As a teacher, he was remembered
Speaker 1: as calm, self assured, smooth, feature, honest, and persuasive, even
Speaker 1: hypnotic when speaking to small groups among his students and
Speaker 1: his colleagues in the clandestine communist movement. He seemed in
Speaker 1: these years to have gained some of the moral authority
Speaker 1: and stature he enjoyed among his followers up to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven. A man who met him in the late fifties,
Speaker 1: for example, said, I knew immediately that I could become
Speaker 1: his friend for life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, yeah, that's what they say about presidents
Speaker 3: and dictators alike.
Speaker 1: And there are people he kills who like that is
Speaker 1: their recollections, like I knew he was my friend, and
Speaker 1: they diet being like, wait, this can't happen. No, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, Polpot, You've gotta let me, you gotta let
Speaker 1: me talk to him.
Speaker 2: And Polbot doesn't give a fuck. Now.
Speaker 1: What is interesting to me about Salatsar is that these
Speaker 1: recollections of him as a kindly, decent, sweet man aren't
Speaker 1: a product of later propaganda like most revolutions, the Khmer
Speaker 1: Rouge heavily attacked their own people, which caused a lot
Speaker 1: of Khmer Rouge to defect, and like, when these guys
Speaker 1: were interviewed later, basically none of them said Polepot was
Speaker 1: why they left, right And in fact, even after the
Speaker 1: exten if his crimes were known, most of the people
Speaker 1: who had defected from the Khmer Rouge, according to Chandler,
Speaker 1: described Polepot as quote a man they regarded almost.
Speaker 2: As a saint. So they're like, oh, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: The regime killed all these people, and like I had
Speaker 1: to leave it was so fucked up. But that Polepot,
Speaker 1: like basically, Jesus.
Speaker 2: Man, it's so good.
Speaker 1: He's really good at this, right, Like, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't take that away from him. The motherfucker knew his
Speaker 1: business right now. As I noted, Polepot made it to
Speaker 1: the Standing committee in nineteen sixty The party leader was
Speaker 1: a guy he'd known from the Paris days called Samoth,
Speaker 1: who was assassinated, probably by the King's security services in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, Although a lot of people theorize Polepot
Speaker 1: did it. Because Polepot succeeds Sammoths as the leader of
Speaker 1: the party in nineteen sixty three, and now he's in
Speaker 1: charge of the Khmer Rouge. Right, this is how he
Speaker 1: rises to run things, and he will retain that position
Speaker 1: for more than thirty years. He is now in sole
Speaker 1: command of the Communist revolution. Later in life, Poulpot spoke
Speaker 1: of this rise to the peak of power as a
Speaker 1: chance accident of history. There was nobody else to become
Speaker 1: secretary of the party, so I had to take charge, right,
Speaker 1: Like what else was I gonna do? You know, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't have a choice. I had to be in
Speaker 1: charge someone. And Nate Fair I really recommend we'll have
Speaker 1: it in the links there because Nate post about the
Speaker 1: article he wrote about his interview and the raw interview
Speaker 1: transcript and Poulpot's like, Samoath was my best friend. I
Speaker 1: loved him. Why would I have had him killed? And
Speaker 1: I think the broad agreement is it was probably the
Speaker 1: French security services. But I can't not be suspicious because
Speaker 1: Polpot talks about a bunch of people he loves. And
Speaker 1: then Nate there will be like, but you had his
Speaker 1: entire family killed, including his like infant grandchildren, and he
Speaker 1: will be like well yeah, like yeah, well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just how things go sometimes here in the Khmar Rouge, Right,
Speaker 1: you gotta kill someone's own family. Sure, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I didn't love him, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Imagine getting like, yeah, the genocide conducted by like not
Speaker 3: I was gonna say ned Flanders, but not even that,
Speaker 3: just like a like a mister rogers ass.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He was getting up there and being like,
Speaker 1: you guys are my best friends. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: enough how grateful I am. Now you're all going to
Speaker 1: be a machine gunned in a second. Right, But don't
Speaker 1: think that means I don't love you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's nothing. That would mean it has.
Speaker 1: Nothing to do with me. This has just gotta happen
Speaker 1: for reasons I can't really explain anyway. I'm gonna go bounce.
Speaker 1: I got to change the way we farm so everyone
Speaker 1: starts to death. Oh well, I think that's a good
Speaker 1: place to end for part two. We're gonna just run
Speaker 1: all three parts this week because it was a longer
Speaker 1: script but not quite enough for a four part er,
Speaker 1: So you fuckers are getting a bonus. But you know,
Speaker 1: as we end, Polepot his listeners, the leader of the
Speaker 1: Khmer Rouge, and I think it's gonna go well, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, I wrote another nine pages. But my guess
Speaker 1: right now now is everything's good. You know, it could
Speaker 1: possibly go wrong and he becomes the world's greatest industrial
Speaker 1: and agricultural power. Nobody dies. In fact, they invent the
Speaker 1: curreity immortality. That's my assumption. We'll see how it bears out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything could happen. That's the important thing. Find next to.
Speaker 1: Me called the killing Fields, and I think it's because
Speaker 1: they made a killing in the biotech. Yeah, they're killing it.
Speaker 4: Show is called chext notes Behind the Best.
Speaker 1: Oh no, is that what we call the show?
Speaker 2: Fuck?
Speaker 1: Oh no, Andrews, how are you feeling?
Speaker 2: Oh man, I mean you know we're still still positive?
Speaker 2: Still positive? It is the important thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, great guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah great, good dude.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is so bizarre, truly, I never I guess
Speaker 3: I my knowledge of Pulpot not sufficient because this is
Speaker 3: fucking fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he is a really interesting monster. The degree
Speaker 1: of agreement that like, yeah, he was really chill as
Speaker 1: far as I knew him.
Speaker 2: It was nice.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who like when they finally
Speaker 1: see him on TV, are like, wait a second, that
Speaker 1: guy has been killing everybody like, yeah, it'd be like
Speaker 1: if you had like a friend that you like, smoked
Speaker 1: weed with and played Grand theft Auta when you were
Speaker 1: like nineteen, and then like forty years later he winds
Speaker 1: up killing a million people like him.
Speaker 3: But that is most of those guys like right, right, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: or yeah, most of that situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you never know. He was always nice to me.
Speaker 2: He was always so nice to me. He seemed chill.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, we didn't ever talk about how
Speaker 1: many people he wanted to kill. Yeah, how many people
Speaker 1: do you want to kill?
Speaker 3: Andrews less than twenty k?
Speaker 2: Where we left?
Speaker 3: Listen, that's where we left at some point. I can't
Speaker 3: remember his last episode or.
Speaker 1: Someone's in the position of I don't want anyone to
Speaker 1: be killed exactly.
Speaker 3: If he says, if you say zero, it's more suspicious
Speaker 3: than if you say.
Speaker 1: Ye, zero is suspicious. Yeah, less than twenty k, I'd
Speaker 1: say that's very very you know, that's not that's that's minimalist, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that qualifies she was a good person. I bet the
Speaker 1: Pope would want to kill less than twenty k people
Speaker 1: if he had his choice.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Well, you know, Pope's.
Speaker 1: That would make it problem still on the lower end
Speaker 1: of pope body.
Speaker 3: The pope means pope would say I would love to
Speaker 3: only have to kill twenty thousand people.
Speaker 1: But see, that's the great thing about being a pope
Speaker 1: is you're grading on a curve where if you were
Speaker 1: to kill twenty thousand people as a pope today, you're
Speaker 1: still in like the upper twenty percent of popes in
Speaker 1: terms of not.
Speaker 2: Killing hortile pope. That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like being the leader of Germany. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of room where you can like, yeah, I fucked
Speaker 1: up on some things, but no one's going to remember
Speaker 1: me as the worst.
Speaker 3: I mean, or owning an American auto manufacturer, right, it
Speaker 3: makes you like more Nazis than not in.
Speaker 1: The future if we have those Nazis being the president
Speaker 1: of the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we'll see or whatever the position is called
Speaker 3: after this.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah whatever. Anyway, Andrew T, where could people
Speaker 1: find you?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, it is this racist Andrew T on whatever
Speaker 3: social media? I'm not looking at it that much.
Speaker 1: M hmm, yeah, well do that and uh let's all
Speaker 1: go not Well, you know what if you know somebody
Speaker 1: who's quiet and nice and.
Speaker 4: And that's the episode.
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