Was recently watching a documentary on the rise and fall of Pol Pot. And was astonished to note the similarities between his moves and policies and the group known as ISIS.
Both garnered support from the teenaged community.
They destroyed cities is a sort of Luddite fashion, desiring a world structure of medievalist endeavour. All machines, electronics destroyed. People clothes simply. Only bicycles allowed, hand or man made farming equipment.
After taking control of a city there would be a short celebration, where everyone seemed to agree things were going to change for the better, then came the destruction, the carnage and the genocidal rage.
Killing Fields. ISIS also a genocidal killing machine. Hatred for the intellect. Only the Koran allowed, no medical text books or scientific endeavour.
Again, I will repeat, the attraction of a death cult to a teenaged boy.
I think it is possible you are perhaps being unfair to ISIS, as the Khmer Rouge was a "special" kind of crazy even when compared to the Nazis or the Russian and Chinese Communists. It was a strange blend of Khmer Nationalism, (Peasant based) Maoism/Stalinism, with possible unintended residual influences from Buddhism, as well as french philosophy (as most of the Khmer Rouge were students educated in Paris). It was easily the most extreme communist revolution in the 20th century in trying to achieve full communism over night from "year zero", including abolishing money (by not circulating the new paper currency that was printed in China and simply left there). Of hand, I'd say one of the worst things they did was treat people as state property and therefore forced complete strangers to marry each other in mass ceremonies and then rape each other to consummate the marriage. the notion of "consent" was considered spiritually capitalist and individualistic. This didn't happen in other Communist regimes because they still believed in some degree of personal autonomy, although there is an instance of
a single province in the USSR declaring "nationalising" women as state property during the Russian civil war.
There are some vague ideas about "eliminating the distinction between town and country" in Marxist texts which we treated as distant goals dependent on technological change by most communists. the Khmer Rouge believed that they had to achieve Communism as quickly as possible, so they took the most extreme ideas and put them into practice. The "lie" used to empty the cities was that Phnom Penh was going to be bombed by the Americans, and this appeared pretty rational given that the Americans
had bombed Cambodia to a very great extent. Those who left the cities were considered the "old people" who were contaminated by the corruption and decadence of urban life, who were then forced to live amongst the "New people" who were peasants who had already lived there but were treated as role models for rural life in the regime.
Pol Pot died in 1998, but the second in command Noun Chea, is still alive and was found guilty of Crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Before that, an extremely brave survivor of the Khmer Rouge befreinded and got to know many of the executioners themselves and used the material as part of the documentary "Enemies of the People" (2009). Its very "difficult" viewing because it shows the banality of evil. The film-makers allowed one the executioners to demonstrate how they slit the throat of people, by standing on their back and using a knife accross their throat. I flinched at that point as it was so uncomfortable. He was also able to interview Noun Chea and the clip below explains some of the rationale behind what happened.
Pol Pot was a monster in every sense of the word. I read that he went after people who wore glasses because it gave the impression that they were readers, therefore they must be educated.
There may have been similar instances that occurred in the USSR in the 1920's based on very vague ideas such as if someone had a monocole they must be "bourgeois". As a social revolution, communists have sought to change the way people speak, think, dress and feel. Those who did not "conform" could therefore become suspected counter-revolutionaries and be treated accordingly.
I can't vouch for its accuracy, but the link below is an article from redditblog using accounts from people on reddit. It would appear to fit with what I already know about the period.
Why Did Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Regime Murder People Who Wore Glasses?
May also be useful:
Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime - BBC News
I think the best indicator of just how damaging the whole experience was for Cambodia isn't the death toll, but the rates of mental illness amongst survivors that are
still going on in the country in response to it. Based on surveys. 2.7% of the
entire population may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or 11.4% amongst survivors, whilst 30% have depression and 36.4% have anxiety disorders. The psychological damage is generational, so the sons and daughters of the survivors
also have mental problems so that is the ultimate legacy of the regime is a collective trauma passed down through the generations.
Cambodia suffers from an appalling mental health crisis
