"Kampuchea: The Revolution Rescued" (1986 PDF book on Pol Pot's rise and fall)

[Mrdie]

https://archive.org/details/KampucheaTheRevolutionRescued

This fairly short (148 pages) book I scanned a few days back does a good job exploding claims that Pol Pot was some sort of "pure Marxist." It points out that he was only able to take control of the Cambodian communist movement by appealing to xenophobia on one hand and killing his many opponents on the other. It also points out that after his downfall he received diplomatic and (covert) military backing from the USA to fight Vietnam and the pro-Vietnamese government that came to power in Cambodia. This went so far that Ieng Sary (the Khmer Rouge's second-in-command) praised Reagan's 1980 election victory and the KR dropped any remaining socialist pretenses not long afterwards, declaring it was interested only in "democracy" and fighting the communists.

It's a polemical piece, but should still be of interest.

For anyone wanting more detailed analyses of Pol Pot and Cambodia see: http://michaelvickery.org/

An article from 1990 on Western backing of Pol Pot: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/polpotnus.pdf

[MisterP]

1. it's always strange to look at Heritage Foundation newsletters where "more money for the Shuttle" is

right next to "more money for Pol Pot"

[Mrdie]

2. That's because...

funding terrible human beings became as American as apple pie. Pol Pot joins the list together with Jonas Savimbi's UNITA (which carried out witch-burnings), the Contras (rape and murder of mothers and children), the likes of Hekmatyar in Afghanistan (threw acid onto women to teach them what "modesty" is all about), not to mention leaders of countries like Suharto, Pinochet, Mobutu, the Shah, Batista, etc.

[MisterP]

3. Savimbi was in fact a Maoist who declared he was God, and the Contras managed to be less popular

than ISIS, since at least ISIS is building legitimacy of a sort by providing policing, while Somoza's bandits and those they conscripted at gunpoint weren't able to capture an inch of land in 10 years of heavy warfare (in fact "Nueva Nicaragua" ended up being a hundred square km of *Honduras*: drugrunning assassin Ollie North even made photos)

many analysts actually agree that Reagan was enforcing *Beijing's* foreign policy (and yet his bestie was Gorbachev, thanks to his astrologer's manipulation)

[Mrdie]

4. Quite right

One amusing thing about Savimbi is that as late as 1989 Western anti-communists were visiting his territories (aka "Free Angola&quot and noting the distinctly Maoist rhetoric used by his cadres, the blatant tendency to have the entirety of UNITA revolve around him (e.g. soldiers had to stand up whenever mentioning his name, his portrait was everywhere, the radio always addressed him in laudatory terms complete with his many titles, etc.), the fact that using any currencies in his "free zones" was prohibited, and so on. A lot of Democrats were skeptical about the whole Savimbi-as-free-market-savior image conservatives were pushing on people, which makes it funnier.

Also funny was how Jesse Helms back in the day was criticizing Reagan as a "useful idiot" because both Reagan and Thatcher were willing to work with the Frelimo government in Mozambique. Renamo was so lame (and I guess there was no convenient pretext like Cuban troops in Angola) that even the Reagan Administration kept a safe distance.

[MisterP]

5. personalism is a real big problem in postcolonial Africa (and postcolonial Latin America 19th c.)

no kings, no gods ... only warlords

by '87 Reagan was indeed being called a Red by those who'd supported his new Cold War (I guess in an alternate dimension RR's the most hated Pub today, rather than someone who pooped rainbows and ended the deficit (yes I've heard GOPers say that))

[Mrdie]

6. Speaking of Reagan's conservatism

There's a pretty good book called "The Illusion of a Conservative Reagan Revolution" which shows that pretty much none of Reagan's stated goals in his 1980 campaign were met: government spending rose, the deficit rose, taxes rose, trade didn't get "freer," he rather infamously went from calling the USSR an "evil empire" to explicitly saying it wasn't (effectively distancing himself from the rest of the GOP which trying to score political points by calling Gorbachev's policies "refined Stalinism," as Dan Quayle termed it), etc.

In other words, the Reagan Administration didn't carry out some far-reaching conservative transformation of government and society, even if the soundbites were unmistakably conservative. Our political system values style over substance.