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Pol Pot's Atrocities Still Matter, 45 Years After Khmer Rouge's Fall
Reason ^ | 1/12/24 | Steven Greenhut

Posted on 06/19/2024 8:47:40 AM PDT by DallasBiff

Forty-five years ago last Sunday, Vietnamese troops seized Phnom Penh and ended Cambodia's 45-month reign of terror known as the "killing fields." Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge government implemented policies—forced labor, resettlements, torture, starvation—that led to the death of 1.7-to-3 million people, or at least 20 percent of the nation's population. The regime destroyed the country, caused untold suffering, and left permanent scars.

Painful as it is, we should not let these grim anniversaries go unremembered. For context, imagine a "political experiment" that obliterated our society and left a quarter of our 331-million population dead. It's inconceivable. As the son of a Nazi concentration camp survivor and grandson of peasants who fled Russian pogroms, I've always been fascinated by a simple question: What are the conditions that lead to such horrors?

(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; History
KEYWORDS: antifa; cambodia; modernleftism; polpot
RIP for all those died under this communist/ leftist regime.

To the modern American left/media this has been scrubbed from history, "down the memory hole", to quote Orwell.

1 posted on 06/19/2024 8:47:40 AM PDT by DallasBiff
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To: DallasBiff

Two words
John. Kerry.


2 posted on 06/19/2024 8:49:05 AM PDT by silverleaf (“Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out” —David Horowitz)
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To: DallasBiff

The movie ‘The Killing Fields’ was outstanding, in the same way Schindler’s List was.


3 posted on 06/19/2024 8:50:06 AM PDT by Magnum44 (...against all enemies, foreign and domestic... )
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To: DallasBiff

We died by the tens of thousands in Vietnam for nothing.
We let Pol Pot kills millions just across that border and did nothing.


4 posted on 06/19/2024 8:51:24 AM PDT by CodeToad (Rule #1: The elites want you dead.)
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To: DallasBiff

Worst Genocide by percentage ever. Marxism in all it’s forms(and I include Nazism, because it turned Marx’s theory’s into race) is the deadliest virus ever known to man.


5 posted on 06/19/2024 8:59:45 AM PDT by cowboyusa (YESHUA IS KING AMERICA, AND HE WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE HIM!)
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To: DallasBiff
What are the conditions that lead to such horrors?

The author focuses on "ideas" but ideas are only the seeds that sprout.

I am convinced America's Founders were indeed inspired by God - they looked beyond the "ideas" (knowing the future would always hold new, yet undeveloped tyrannical ideas) and focused instead on the conditions and not allowing those seeds to sprout

Divided Federal government powers. Broad powers to the States. Taking money creation out of the hands of central planners (we've already destroyed that). Letting the population hold arms, confirmed inalienable rights, freedom to worship, etc.

Don't worry about "the ideas" per se - rather, focus on not allowing the conditions they need to grow into stinking weeds

6 posted on 06/19/2024 9:00:05 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: DallasBiff

And if anyone brings it up the left blame Nixon for it not communism on steroids.


7 posted on 06/19/2024 9:04:45 AM PDT by xp38
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To: PGR88

Big parts of it:

Freedom of speech and press, so people can communicate that things are going wrong.

Right to arms, so any tyranny would be outnumbered by armed populace.

Right to jury, to make it harder to imprison dissidents.


8 posted on 06/19/2024 9:31:50 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (Either you will rule. Or you will be ruled. There is no other choice.)
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To: silverleaf

bingo


9 posted on 06/19/2024 9:33:30 AM PDT by GailA (Land Grabs, Poisoned Food, KILL the COWS, Bidenomics=BIDEN DEPRESSION. STAGNATION)
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To: CodeToad

Side question: Did Vietnam overthrow Pol Pot because of his atrocities that even they couldn’t stand? Or was there a Vietnam-Cambodian war over territory?


10 posted on 06/19/2024 9:51:41 AM PDT by power2 (JMJ)
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To: DallasBiff

Fauci makes him look like a piker


11 posted on 06/19/2024 10:01:06 AM PDT by Chauncey Gardiner (Vivamus stultus ignarus mori )
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To: DallasBiff

My wife has a friend who’s parents both survived this.
Her Father was a worker in the Cambodian Embassy and was scheduled to leave to return to Cambodia where they killed everyone on the plane.
He got drunk the night before and missed the flight.
He met his wife sometime after that.


12 posted on 06/19/2024 10:21:44 AM PDT by Falcon4.0
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To: CodeToad

There were rumors of us going there, but America had had enough of South East Asia, so we didn’t. Ten divisions of U.S. Marines and we would have finished the slaughter in its infancy.


13 posted on 06/19/2024 10:44:52 AM PDT by kawhill (kawhill)
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To: Magnum44

But it didn’t explain anything to the uninformed which was probably most


14 posted on 06/19/2024 4:17:52 PM PDT by A strike (no tyranny that cannot be justified by 'climate change')
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To: DallasBiff

The New York Times called Pol Pot a “visionary agrarian reformer”.

L


15 posted on 06/19/2024 4:26:44 PM PDT by Lurker ( Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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