Alright…I’ve always heard of Pol Pot and Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge and all that. I remember hearing about a movie called “The Killing Fields” but I never did any research into it. Until yesterday…
Man Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was a horribly fucked up place. Honestly, I think Cambodia was more messed up than the Holocaust. They destroyed all the schools, churches and temples, factories, pretty much everything. They destroyed finances and money, pretty much reverting the country back to the Stone Age. Basically, gangs of soldiers would kidnap and force civilians into slaving, literally, in the fields most of the day to produce food. They were routinely tortured, killed, and starved. Foreigners, the old, the young, the sick, people with government ties or outside government ties, and intellectuals were all killed. It was really insane that people could do that to each other. You weren’t allowed to show emotion…definately not for family members. If someone messed up in the fields and was being tortured next to you, you were to continue working as if nothing was going on. Its hard to put yourself into their shoes…imagine putting up with years and years of torture and starvation and murder just because you didn’t want to die. If I were in that situation, I would surely wish to die.
Eventually, between 1-2 million people died in the country, approximately 1 in every 5 people.
Are any of you Cambodian or know anything about all this? Its terribly interesting to me and any cool links would be appreciated. I downloaded and watched a Christian documentary/evangomercial on Cambodia. It was very poorly made, and the 15 minutes of BUY JESUS at the end of the movie was lame. It did strike several emotional responses in me…especially the scene where the female soldier was suffocating a civilian with a plastic bag.
“Honestly, I think Cambodia was more messed up than the Holocaust.”
you’re bad at thinking.
pot hasn’t got shit on hitler.
I’m actually great at thinking, you’re just bad at posting.
Whether Stalin or Hitler, Mao or Milosovic, Sudan or N. Korea is worse is all just subjective opinions. While the Nazis exterminated more people than the Khmer Rouge, that doesn’t make those deaths any more or less horrible. Keep in mind that the KM killed a greater percentage of its own population than the Nazis could ever hope to do in Germany, Poland, France, and the rest of Europe. Pretty much 20% of the entire population was wiped out in Cambodia. Compare that to the total population of Europe and you will see the Holocaust was much less destructive proportionally than the Cambodian genocide. Also, the culture, both of the victems and of Europe as a whole remained relatively stable after the war. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge pretty much destroyed all that was Cambodian culture. In the Holocaust, the enemy was pretty easy to identify and we all know the ideology behind the Nazis as to why they did what they did. In Cambodia, it was different. The Nazis also seemed to just want to exterminate the Jews. The KM did alot more torturing and starving than they did killing. The Nazis wanted the Jews dead and quickly, whereas the Cambodians would take months to kill people.
Actually, Pol Pot took out a much higher percentage of the population, killed people much less humanely, and did more damage than just people. He turned a formerly semi-prosperous country into a massive ricefield, and nobody gave a shit because they weren’t white people, who are evidentally the only ones who matter to wealthy countries.
They were both messed. The Holocaust is scarier in some ways because it was so incredibly dehumanizing. In the Holocaust people mechanically and systematically massacred 6 million human beings without thinking twice or getting particularly upset or emotional. It makes you think when you learn that most of the Nazis interrogated after the war were found to be mentally healthy.
…Um, what did he use to make people even want to fight for him? He’d need a major force to force all these people to do such things, and he’d need a pretty well manufactured reason to drive folks to believe in it enough to kill folks over it, and enslave there own people over it.
I went over this in World Geography last year. They said they’d kill you for wearing glasses because it would make you seem smart. Ugh…
i dont know where to begin ripping this apart. it doesnt make a difference whether people kill between 12 and 26 million or 1,000,000? it may not make the deaths “any more or less” horrible, but gee its about atleast 12 times as much horror. think about what your saying. second of all? pol pot got a better percentage of his people? what the fuck, that doesn’t mean anything. that is a completely pointless statistic when were considering the blood on a particular group’s hands. and what the fuck. the nazis were not just jew killers, the nazi leadership wanted to make a fascist world and everyone they didn’t see fitting into their society had to be killed or euthanized. six million jews were just a fraction of the nazi agenda. your last sentences are completely obscene. ever hear of fucking concentration camps? jesus christ, what do you think they were doing in there?
all you are is just tragedy shopping and youre excited because you think you found one obscure enough. trust me and stick with the holocaust.
Its arguable, but I would say most would agree that Cambodia was much, much more dehumanizing than the Holocaust. The Khmer wanted to eradicate all pre-Khmer culture from the country. Jewish culture and European culture both remain intact. Also in the Holocaust, it was German soldiers killing off Jewish “enemies”. In Cambodia, young kids were forced by older kids to kill people, their families, and each other.
My bad…I didn’t realize you were just trolling again. Don’t you have anything better to do?
Propaganda….and a destruction of culture. Family relationships were banned and communal living was adopted. So you have young children who are not allowed to interact with their family or themselves really, being indoctrinated at such a young age into these types of killers. Since they were so young and impressionable and since they didn’t have any older family for guidance, the propaganda of the Khmer, along with increased food and privelages would be enough to change most children into killers. This type of indoctrinization has happened time and time again over the course of history. One look no further than the child soldiers of Africa (i.e. Lord’s Resistance Army) to realize its still going on.
Silhouette, the percentage is actually a meaningful statistic. Of the people he had access to, Pol Pot killed twenty percent. If he had been in Hitler’s place, probably more than twenty million, at least, would have died.
Your fact about anyone who disagreed in nazi Germany being euthanized isn’t correct. Maybe that’s what Hitler wanted, but it didn’t really happen; Germany had a fair-sized resistance movement.
Pol Pot is also scarier because he was rather like a real-life Kefka. He didn’t want to exterminate any one race, he wanted to enslave or kill everyone he could get his hands on. He dreamt just as much of a fascist world as the nazis.
Finally, you know those concentration camps. Funny thing about Cambodia: Under Pol Pot, it was one. The whole fucking country, basically.
The onyl reason Cambodia is obscure is because it’s an embarassment to many Western societies. The holocost is often brought up so your teacher can say, ‘Then, we came in and saved the day!’ In Cambodia, nobody saved the day for a long time; in fact, Pol Pot was originally supported rather widely.
What did Pol Pot gain by doing all this? Besides power over the country, was there anything that really drove him to commit such atrocities, and even worse, ruin an entire generation because of his mistakes?
I suppose it doesn’t matter, it’s still so terrible a thing to do that nothing could make it acceptable.
P.S. It matters not whether it was worse, or just as bad as the Holocaust. They were both tragidies, and they both display the most wretched parts of human nature at work.