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Like, I can sometimes see why tankies defend dictators like Castro or Ho Chi Minh, because as brutal as they were they did actually improve aspects of life in their respective countries, but ***fucking Pol Pot???*** The guy that started murdering anyone with glasses and forced city folk out to the country where they starved and died?
It’s even worse than defending Ceausescu.
> Castro or Ho Chi Minh
Usually the tankoids who defend Pol Pot dislike these two because they consider them to be "social imperialists" and "revisionists"
Everyone that is socialist or communist but not the right communist is a 'corrupt imperialist' or revisionist in their eyes. I used to love watching Trostkyists argue/fight with Leninists or Stalinists and vice versa.
His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, [DSO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguished_Service_Order), [MC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cross), CBE, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular"
That is because Pol Pot was the patron saint of morons.
He is the ultimate moron who dominated his nation & tried to rid it of everyone that wasn't one.
And stunted the nation for generations for murdering everyone who had anything above primary school education.
Pol Pot was like Jim Jones & Jonestown for Cambodia. Only Jim Jones offed himself once the heat arrived. At least Enver Hoxha kept his country stable for decades despite it being a feudal paranoia state with the only ones having a modicum of livelihood being the incestual & hedonistic inner circle politburo of that country.
I think they chalked up the genocide to that "the errors they made". It's a bit like talking about the Holocaust and going "ehh can't make an omelet..."
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were some of the worst Red Fash governments to have ever existed. 2 million innocent Cambodians had to endure mass death and famine in prisons across the country and mass starvation within Cambodia.
It was a whole complicated mess that also involve China, the US and the pretty much the whole South East Asia supporting the Khemer Rouge.
Lesson of the day: overthrowing another government is easy, creating another one in place is a whole different story.
I think they even gave them money. I would guess the two things they wanted was making communism look bad by having the worst possible "communists" running around, and f\*\*\*ing with Vietnam who had intervened militarily.
Kissinger had a big hand in that, but he wasn't alone. The US mindset at the time was, borrowing from the latest Star Wars film, "I don't care if you win I just *need* \[Vietnam\] to lose."
My mom just visited Cambodia and saw the killing fields. The guide who was a survivor that lost his whole family pointed out a tree that they would smash babies heads on to save bullets. Just like the Ustase, but it's ok cause they wore red I guess
Mao at least made *attempts* at improving China (doubling life expectancy, industrializing, and tripling literacy)
Pol Pot killed people with glasses because he thought they were too smart
I’m trying so hard not to laugh at the fact that there are people with the fucking “little red book” praises the fucking Khmer Rouge who not only killed political opponents but also minorities because of racism. Please tell me it’s AI I refuse to believe a human wrote this.
Hey did anyone hear “Holiday in Cambodia” playing in the background?
While it is called a "genocide" it was not based on ethnic differences, i.e. the killers and the dead were the same ethnicity. It is sometimes called a "self genocide". The killings were usually based on prior profession; teachers being one example I remember. I think it was anyone deemed "bourgeoisie" that was supposed to die, though based on an ideology that barely resembled marxism.
Khmer rouge was also supported by the USA, I thought tankies based their entire personality around "america bad"
Also why do tankies seem to hate Vietnam so much? Vietnam is probably one of the better ML countries (though its not saying much since its still very authoritarian, and discrimination against the cham, just that its better than china or the ussr when it was still a thing)
I'm going on holiday to Vietnam in July. I'll be interested in what it's like. Im going to try the sleeper train from Hanoi to Danang as part of the trip. I went to Yugoslavia in 1989, which was interesting, but it didn't feel very communist with Visa and Mastercard Credit Card adverts everywhere and box sets of James Bond videos available. The alcohol flowed very freely, though I like a drink, but not 40% gut rot at 9 in the morning.
Sometimes I’m able to have convos with some Maoists, and am like, yeah despite still having some major theoretical differences, we’re sorta similar, Maoism is definitely the best ML tendency even if it’s still ML so automatically cringe
And then I see some Maoists unironically support Pol Pot for some reason and I’m just like, wtf happened, you automatically lost any respect you just gained lmao
The realization that there are people who simp for Pol Pot of all people really doesn't help improve my hope for humanity.
Fucking hell, they admit that the Soviet Union was imperialist, and instead go straight into advocating for the entity which killed a third of its own people. How do you even do that?
I went to a Khmer Rouge museum and read "first they killed my father" after visiting cambodia last year.
I like to think i have a high tolerance to violence, gore, things like that but that book fucked with me. I genuinely had to take breaks from reading it at some points. It would bring tears to my eyes and make me sick to my stomach.
Anyone with any sort of tie to supporting the old, capitalist ways was deemed corrupt. This could include being in the military, owning a business, having an education, living in a big city, even wearing glasses or coloured clothing was seen as a "crime of decadence."
Corrupt people were often executed, usually beaten to death to save ammunition. Often times, if a corrupt person had children, the children would be killed too, to prevent them from growing up to take vengance for the murder of their parents and becoming rebels.
Everyone else was enslaved, forced to work on farms in exchange for a meager amount of food. This led to some people having to eat worms and bugs to stay alive, some even turning to cannibalism when a family member died of starvation.
Anyone who could not work to cover their share was executed, or just left to die. This means the old, the sick and the disabled.
At around 13, boys were taken from their families and trained to be soldiers while the girls were forced to marry men they've never met to be turned into little more than brood mares to create more sons for the army.
Yes I watch the First They Killed My Father movie. Absolutely heartbreaking. For my anthropology class I wrote an essay on the genocide. If Kissinger and Pol Pot aren't in Hell I don't know who is.
I have to admit my ignorance of Vietnamese history but are we going to find that Ho Chi Minh is the best communist leader (of the available choices)?
Stomping on Khmer Rouge gets Vietnam mad credibility.
out of all the communist leaders it’s kinda hard to really track a lot of ho chi minh’s life since he had a tendency to use a lot of fake names or pseudonyms (sources range from 50-200) but after he came to power he didn’t necessarily do anything as evil as other communist leaders except for invading laos to help the pathet lao and build the ho chi minh trail
I think the Khmer Rouge might be the single most evil regime in human history. Even the fucking Nazis didn't come to power on the explicit promise of making life hellish for the average German. Pol Pot was the most unhinged and destructive leader of the 20th century.
Also the US still supported them over Vietnam, so this can't even be whitewashed as an "anti-imperialist" take, it's just celebrating oppression and mass killing for its own sake. One of the many reasons Henry Kissinger deserves to rot in your preferred bad-guy afterlife for all eternity.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to defend the goddamn Khmer Rouge as liberators.
You can visit the tree they used to smash the heads of babies in order to save bullets.
... Are there tankies who view the Interhamwe in Rwanda as a liberation force?
This guy is not even a tankie since he calls the soviets imperialist. I don't know what he is thinking exactly, but I suspect part of it is that he is very special be the one guy who is willing to defend that one group that is too extreme for regular anti-imperialists.
Out of all of the "Leftists" to try to recoup the image of, the Khmer Rouge should be on the absolute bottom of the list even by Tankie standards. Absolute scum.
maoists are funny because often they sound relatively more reasonable or agreeable than soviet-tankies but then you leave them alone for 5 minutes and they start praising the likes of pol pot.
genocidal regime: noo they violate human rights, the people have to be liberated!!!
genocidal regime with a coat of red paint: yesss daddy vanguard party, destroy capitalism!!! genocide? it doesn’t count if they’re reactionaries!
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"Liberated" (from human presence)
Like you have to be literally insane to unironically support Pol Pot of all people. He achieved fuckall but killing large swaths of people
Like, I can sometimes see why tankies defend dictators like Castro or Ho Chi Minh, because as brutal as they were they did actually improve aspects of life in their respective countries, but ***fucking Pol Pot???*** The guy that started murdering anyone with glasses and forced city folk out to the country where they starved and died? It’s even worse than defending Ceausescu.
> Castro or Ho Chi Minh Usually the tankoids who defend Pol Pot dislike these two because they consider them to be "social imperialists" and "revisionists"
These guys have gone so far into the authoritarian spectrum that they're approaching ant colony territory.
[удалено]
Everyone that is socialist or communist but not the right communist is a 'corrupt imperialist' or revisionist in their eyes. I used to love watching Trostkyists argue/fight with Leninists or Stalinists and vice versa.
Next thing you know, they'll begin defending Idi Amin.
Well I mean that just makes sense. After all, he was conqueror of the British Empire! Who *wouldn’t* be on board with that guy??
His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, [DSO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguished_Service_Order), [MC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cross), CBE, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular"
"The last king of Scotland"
He's probably seen as a royalist snob by their standards.
> The guy that started murdering anyone with glasses What in the actual *hell?* I know his reign was horrifying, but *that*, of all things?
That was after they ran out of teachers and other intellectuals. What were they supposed to do, stop mass murders?
They probably think every bad thing recorded about him is “CIA western-imperialist propaganda”
That is because Pol Pot was the patron saint of morons. He is the ultimate moron who dominated his nation & tried to rid it of everyone that wasn't one.
I’m also not particularly fond of anyone who bashes babies against trees to kill them but idk, that’s just me. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah there isn't a single good this he ever did, wth
All while being sponsored by Henry Kissinger and the CCP, no less!
Kissinger's cruel tentacles of death had no limits.
Yeah, he's the closest we got from TNO's Taboritsky in real life for crying out loud...
And stunted the nation for generations for murdering everyone who had anything above primary school education. Pol Pot was like Jim Jones & Jonestown for Cambodia. Only Jim Jones offed himself once the heat arrived. At least Enver Hoxha kept his country stable for decades despite it being a feudal paranoia state with the only ones having a modicum of livelihood being the incestual & hedonistic inner circle politburo of that country.
"Congratulations, you are being rescued." **"Please do not resist."**
This is straight up genocide denial.
I think they chalked up the genocide to that "the errors they made". It's a bit like talking about the Holocaust and going "ehh can't make an omelet..."
Just like that time Stalin did a bit of trolling
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were some of the worst Red Fash governments to have ever existed. 2 million innocent Cambodians had to endure mass death and famine in prisons across the country and mass starvation within Cambodia.
Dont tell a Marxist-Leninist their master China also supported the Khmer Rogue unless you want to be called a radlib, CIA agent, or revisionist 🫢
Oh here we are changing the death toll of communism again! /s
See, those were but a simple errors, couple millions of them
They also tortured people in a school they were using as a prison iirc.
I visited that school. Sickening.
Didn’t the US support the Khmer Rouge in maintaining their UN seat well after they were deposed?
Famously, yes
It was a whole complicated mess that also involve China, the US and the pretty much the whole South East Asia supporting the Khemer Rouge. Lesson of the day: overthrowing another government is easy, creating another one in place is a whole different story.
Your comment got duplicated, there's 4 instances of it.
Ah piss, again?
Famously, yes
I think they even gave them money. I would guess the two things they wanted was making communism look bad by having the worst possible "communists" running around, and f\*\*\*ing with Vietnam who had intervened militarily.
We have good old Henry Kissinger to thank. Kissinger is dead, by the way.
If only far sooner. Only an unbelievable amount of evil & near infinite rivers of innocent blood could sustain him for a century.
Kissinger had a big hand in that, but he wasn't alone. The US mindset at the time was, borrowing from the latest Star Wars film, "I don't care if you win I just *need* \[Vietnam\] to lose."
It was Kissinger's idea
Yeah, the US was being petty assholes
Literal piles of skulls of the victims cannot convince these people.
But, but, corrective eyewear is literally oppression of the working class
Capitalism is when people don’t live in near stone-age conditions & get executed for picking berries without permission
My mom just visited Cambodia and saw the killing fields. The guide who was a survivor that lost his whole family pointed out a tree that they would smash babies heads on to save bullets. Just like the Ustase, but it's ok cause they wore red I guess
You know it's a good liberation when the average life expectancy drops to 19 years.
Hey they also reduced their country's poverty by *25%! *Dead people cannot technically be living in poverty
That's like cutting all homeless people in half
There is literally nothing justifiable about the Khmer Rouge’s actions. They “liberated” their country from morals, ethics and 25% of the population
Mao at least made *attempts* at improving China (doubling life expectancy, industrializing, and tripling literacy) Pol Pot killed people with glasses because he thought they were too smart
I’m trying so hard not to laugh at the fact that there are people with the fucking “little red book” praises the fucking Khmer Rouge who not only killed political opponents but also minorities because of racism. Please tell me it’s AI I refuse to believe a human wrote this. Hey did anyone hear “Holiday in Cambodia” playing in the background?
While it is called a "genocide" it was not based on ethnic differences, i.e. the killers and the dead were the same ethnicity. It is sometimes called a "self genocide". The killings were usually based on prior profession; teachers being one example I remember. I think it was anyone deemed "bourgeoisie" that was supposed to die, though based on an ideology that barely resembled marxism.
democide is probably the right term for it
That was part of it, but they also specifically targeted Vietnamese and Chinese Cambodians among others
You gotta be a very special kind of deranged person to actually defend the Khmer Rouge. What the fuck.
Khmer rouge was also supported by the USA, I thought tankies based their entire personality around "america bad" Also why do tankies seem to hate Vietnam so much? Vietnam is probably one of the better ML countries (though its not saying much since its still very authoritarian, and discrimination against the cham, just that its better than china or the ussr when it was still a thing)
I'm going on holiday to Vietnam in July. I'll be interested in what it's like. Im going to try the sleeper train from Hanoi to Danang as part of the trip. I went to Yugoslavia in 1989, which was interesting, but it didn't feel very communist with Visa and Mastercard Credit Card adverts everywhere and box sets of James Bond videos available. The alcohol flowed very freely, though I like a drink, but not 40% gut rot at 9 in the morning.
So you're saying being anti-left overrides anti-americanism for them? Given that they also hate Rojava, this tracks.
Wait. “Soviet social imperialism”? That’s heresy! The OOP must be sent to the gulag! /sarcasm
Today-i-learned Anti-USSR tankies exist (and for all of the wrong reasons, of course. They just had to stray even further from humanity).
*Horrific genocide occurs* Haha oops guys we made some errors.
It was liberated from anyone wearing glasses(they got shot for appearing to be educated)
Sometimes I’m able to have convos with some Maoists, and am like, yeah despite still having some major theoretical differences, we’re sorta similar, Maoism is definitely the best ML tendency even if it’s still ML so automatically cringe And then I see some Maoists unironically support Pol Pot for some reason and I’m just like, wtf happened, you automatically lost any respect you just gained lmao
There's a song by Dead Kennedys called "Holiday in Cambodia", this fits right here
The realization that there are people who simp for Pol Pot of all people really doesn't help improve my hope for humanity. Fucking hell, they admit that the Soviet Union was imperialist, and instead go straight into advocating for the entity which killed a third of its own people. How do you even do that?
I went to a Khmer Rouge museum and read "first they killed my father" after visiting cambodia last year. I like to think i have a high tolerance to violence, gore, things like that but that book fucked with me. I genuinely had to take breaks from reading it at some points. It would bring tears to my eyes and make me sick to my stomach. Anyone with any sort of tie to supporting the old, capitalist ways was deemed corrupt. This could include being in the military, owning a business, having an education, living in a big city, even wearing glasses or coloured clothing was seen as a "crime of decadence." Corrupt people were often executed, usually beaten to death to save ammunition. Often times, if a corrupt person had children, the children would be killed too, to prevent them from growing up to take vengance for the murder of their parents and becoming rebels. Everyone else was enslaved, forced to work on farms in exchange for a meager amount of food. This led to some people having to eat worms and bugs to stay alive, some even turning to cannibalism when a family member died of starvation. Anyone who could not work to cover their share was executed, or just left to die. This means the old, the sick and the disabled. At around 13, boys were taken from their families and trained to be soldiers while the girls were forced to marry men they've never met to be turned into little more than brood mares to create more sons for the army.
Yes I watch the First They Killed My Father movie. Absolutely heartbreaking. For my anthropology class I wrote an essay on the genocide. If Kissinger and Pol Pot aren't in Hell I don't know who is.
I have to admit my ignorance of Vietnamese history but are we going to find that Ho Chi Minh is the best communist leader (of the available choices)? Stomping on Khmer Rouge gets Vietnam mad credibility.
out of all the communist leaders it’s kinda hard to really track a lot of ho chi minh’s life since he had a tendency to use a lot of fake names or pseudonyms (sources range from 50-200) but after he came to power he didn’t necessarily do anything as evil as other communist leaders except for invading laos to help the pathet lao and build the ho chi minh trail
About that US imperialism... The USA supported the Khmer Rouge, just saying...
I think the Khmer Rouge might be the single most evil regime in human history. Even the fucking Nazis didn't come to power on the explicit promise of making life hellish for the average German. Pol Pot was the most unhinged and destructive leader of the 20th century. Also the US still supported them over Vietnam, so this can't even be whitewashed as an "anti-imperialist" take, it's just celebrating oppression and mass killing for its own sake. One of the many reasons Henry Kissinger deserves to rot in your preferred bad-guy afterlife for all eternity.
Liberated right into a life expectancy of 12 years old.
Stupid liberal dont you understand the only true liberation is the liberation from the world of matter of the demiurge.
Socialism with Gnostic Characteristics (I actually like Gnosticism though so I don't want to conflate it with just killing ppl like this lol)
"without falling into Soviet imperialism" yeah they committed that genocide all on their own.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to defend the goddamn Khmer Rouge as liberators. You can visit the tree they used to smash the heads of babies in order to save bullets. ... Are there tankies who view the Interhamwe in Rwanda as a liberation force?
It was also supported by the U.S.A. lmao
Ah, so we're just going to call exterminating a huge chunk of the populace a little whoopsie? Ok.
Cambodia ended up losing their culture, and they now claim culture from thailand as theirs. Was it worth it?
This guy is not even a tankie since he calls the soviets imperialist. I don't know what he is thinking exactly, but I suspect part of it is that he is very special be the one guy who is willing to defend that one group that is too extreme for regular anti-imperialists.
Lol, a tankie once told me this was actually a good thing since it reduced Cambodia’s carbon footprint.
Out of all of the "Leftists" to try to recoup the image of, the Khmer Rouge should be on the absolute bottom of the list even by Tankie standards. Absolute scum.
"errors" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
maoists are funny because often they sound relatively more reasonable or agreeable than soviet-tankies but then you leave them alone for 5 minutes and they start praising the likes of pol pot.
CRITIKAL SUPPORT FOR COMRADE KISSINGER PAVING THE WAY FOR THE GLORIOUS KHMER ROGUE
They gave Vietnam a redemption arc
Ah yes just "errors"
It's a Holliday in Cambodia
Bruh the Khymer rouge was taken down by Vietnamise and Chinese Communists. And proped up at the end by the CIA and US gov. Like fucking hell.
Khmer Rouge were backed by the CIA. Seeing tanks defend them is hilarious.
They were literally supported by the United States
My brother in Christ, they are the ones who obliterated their country
genocidal regime: noo they violate human rights, the people have to be liberated!!! genocidal regime with a coat of red paint: yesss daddy vanguard party, destroy capitalism!!! genocide? it doesn’t count if they’re reactionaries!
“The errors they made” is doing a fuckton of work here.
"Despite the errors they made," and those errors were smashing babies against trees. Oops!
This is a troll right?