The Khmer Rouge and religion.

[BurtWorm]

According to Philip Short's biography of Pol Pot, which is actually more of a history of 20th-Century Cambodia filtered through the skimpy details we have about the life of the Khmer Rouge leader and mastermind, Cambodian communism was profoundly influenced by Theravada Buddhism, which is the Buddhism of Cambodia. Pol Pot was trained in it as an adolescent in a parochial school before going on to a more typically French style academy and then to a kind of glorified trade school for upper-class sluggards. (He was a member of the upper class, but he didn't grow up wealthy.)

I haven't finished reading the book, so I can't say I have a firm grip on how "religious" Pol actually was. He certainly was a thoroughly commited communist. I also can't get a clear bead on how "theistic" Theravada Buddhism was. But Cambodian communism, according to Short, was not doctrinaire Marxism. It borrowed as much theory from Kropotkin as from Lenin, and descended historically as much from the Angkor Empire as from the Chinese Revolution. And the Khmer Rouge were careful not to destroy the ancient Buddhist statuary and monsasteries even as they treated the people like their personal oxen. They did raid some modern monasteries and Catholic churches, but Stone says it was not for anti-religious or even anti-Catholic reasons, but because they needed the materials.

I post this here because I think it's a topic worthy of discussion, considering how I've come upon arguments that the Khmer Rouge, as communists, were representative of an atheistic attitude that resulted in some of the worst genocide in history. This argument frequently comes up, here and elsewhere, when someone--usually a theist, of course--wishes to make the point that "atheist" regimes have committed worse crimes against humanity than Christian or other theistic ones. In the interest of accuracy, I wanted to suggest that the Khmer Rouge at least were not exactly hostile to religion, and in fact seem to have been profoundly influenced by Buddhism. This of course doesn't mean that religion or Buddhism is to blame for the atrocities they committed--any more than atheism is to blame.

[ButterflyBlood]

1. well you still have Stalin and Mao Zedong

at least 50 million between the two of them.

[BurtWorm]

2. Nice reasoned response.

:thumbsup:

Very helpful and insightful.


PS: And you have Abu Ghraib?

[htuttle]

3. Stalin drew heavily from historical Russian autocracies & authoritarianism

...and Mao used a heavy dash of Confucianism in his Communism.

Both were attempts to 'rule', and used whatever was at hand to do so.

[murdoch]

4. was there a Khmer Rouge?

I don't think people in the US know almost anything about Cambodia or the so-called Khmer Rouge. There never was a "Khmer Rouge", just like there never was a "Viet Cong". Well in a sense there was, you could say there are "wops" meaning there are Italians, or "kikes" meaning there are Jews, but these references can be confusing. The Khmer Rouge never called themselves the Khmer Rouge and the Viet Cong never called themselves Viet Cong. The Communist Party of Kampuchea is what the US press called the Khmer Rouge, just like the US press called the National Liberation Front in Vietnam "Viet Cong" which means Vietnamese communist (although not all of them were communists). So the first thing people know about this group in Cambodia is wrong.

Outside of the US, the CPK is not really thought of as having committed the "worst genocide in history" and that sort of thing...well, maybe some sections of France. Most of the atrocities happened when peasants realized there would be no retribution towards them for acts against their landlords, since the government disintegrated, as opposed to being directed by the CPK. This is common in a peasant revolution, the same thing happened in China.

I see those silly POW/MIA flags wherever I go, and remember when I was younger all those movies with Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris about how the Vietnamese were still keeping American POW's, although why they would was never explained. It's probably some psychological thing for a section of the US population, that felt a need that something had been left behind in Vietnam or something.

The US population laughed off demonization of the communists of Vietnam by the end of the war, so as soon as the US retreated from the invasion of Vietnam it had started a decade before, they began demonizing the communists in Cambodia, whom little was known about. When the US announced it had invaded Cambodia, it also killed American students who protested against this in Kent State and Jackson State, Cambodia wasn't much in the news until the US retreated from Saigon.

From my readings, the US air force probably killed more Cambodians from a combination of bombs and starvation (fields were so heavy bombed people fled, they were unplanted, and, since the foreign food aid was cut off the day the CPK took over, people starved) than the CPK did, even when all the independent of the CPK peasant retribution is included.

The main problem for the CPK is not what they did, but their PR. The US didn't like them, the French didn't like them, the Vietnamese had a falling out with them, the USSR didn't like them, and with Mao Zedong dying in 1976, their supporters in China disappeared as well. This, plus the emotional need in the US for some new yellow communist menace to demonize (along with silly ideas about POWs still in Vietnam), caused them to have pretty bad PR.

Another thing to consider is if one looks at the CIA figures for the number of people executed by the CPK, it's quite low - less than 100,000. And the CIA began working with them in 1979 - if they were such supposed monsters, why did the US become friendly with them so soon after their alleged genocide? Any genocide in Cambodia was due to malnutrition, not execution, and the US culpability in that is quite great - in that case, the genocide began in non-CPK areas before the CPK took over.

[BurtWorm]

5. Very interesting points you make.

Philip Short apparently (according to William T. Vollman's review in the NY Times Book Review--I haven't finished the book so I can't say), argues that the CPK didn't commit genocide. Over and over he makes the case that the CPK had no program to murder hundreds of thousands, that most of the deaths resulted from extremely poor planning--moving thousands of people into areas where there wasn't sufficient food--and that most violence occurred in certain Zones (in the North and West in particular) that interpreted the dictats of Pol Pot rather brutally.

Still, hundreds of thousands dead as a result of poor planning or brutal execution of Pol Pot's decrees is not exactly innocent behavior. I don't think most people would choose to be under a regime that thought of them as oxen or slaves.

[theharbinger]

6. for what its worth,

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/theravada.html

this site gives a little information about Theravada Buddhism. It literally means "Doctrine of the Elders" and is the oldest school of Buddhist thought.

I'm really not sure how it could be used to justify anything other than its own code, given that the core of Buddhism is following a set of guidelines for self improvement. More than likely it is simply a case of those who wanted power and used the native religion as part of their propaganda, much like the US today.

[BurtWorm]

7. Interesting. Thank you.

And welcome to DU. :toast:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. I know more about Mahayana Buddhism

the kind that prevails in China, Japan, and Korea, than about Hinayana Buddhism, which is the kind that prevails in Southeast Asia, but as I recall, the major dividing line is their differing views of the goal of englightenment.

In Mahayana Buddhism, once you have achieved enlightenment, you move on to a kind of heaven-like state instead of being reincarnated, unless you choose to become a bodhisattva and act as kind of supernatural helper for troubled humans.

In Hinayana Buddhism, enlightenment brings you relief from endless reincarnations in the form of annihilation. But my impression is that Hinayana Buddhism also has bodhisattvas.

In either case, the ethical ideals for daily life are the same, even if they were not always honored in practice.

[Zynx]

9. Pol Pot did not believe in God, but believed in an afterlife.

I remember reading that somewhere that he himself was atheistic, but thought he would reach paradise somehow. That kind of reminds me of all of Hitler's conflicting statements on religion. At their cores, I'm not sure either man believed in much of anything except murder.