WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are wading 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:06.719 into some truly dark waters, but also some incredibly 00:00:06.719 --> 00:00:10.300 confusing ones. We're talking about a man responsible 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:12.919 for one of the most brutal regimes of the 20th 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.960 century, yet for the longest time, the people 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:18.179 suffering under his rule didn't even know his 00:00:18.179 --> 00:00:20.660 name. It's a study in invisibility, isn't it? 00:00:20.719 --> 00:00:23.160 Yeah. We're talking about Pol Pot, the leader 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:26.140 of the Khmer Rouge. Right. But to really understand 00:00:26.140 --> 00:00:29.420 him, or to even try to... You have to get beyond 00:00:29.420 --> 00:00:31.539 the simple caricature of a monster. You have 00:00:31.539 --> 00:00:33.939 to grapple with the fact that Pol Pot was barely 00:00:33.939 --> 00:00:36.799 a person for much of his life. He was a ghost, 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:39.000 a shadow. Exactly. I was reading through the 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:40.420 source materials, and the thing that just jumped 00:00:40.420 --> 00:00:42.640 out at me immediately was this obsession with 00:00:42.640 --> 00:00:45.640 identity, or maybe the complete lack of it. Before 00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:47.920 the world knew him as this tyrant, he was just 00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:50.079 nothing, or he was everything, you know? It's 00:00:50.079 --> 00:00:51.619 like trying to catch smoke. That's a perfect 00:00:51.619 --> 00:00:53.479 way to put it. To the Cambodian people during 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:55.939 the genocide. He wasn't a man with a face or 00:00:55.939 --> 00:00:59.020 a backstory. He was Onkar. The organization, 00:00:59.259 --> 00:01:02.119 just this faceless, all -powerful thing. The 00:01:02.119 --> 00:01:05.299 organization, yes. A faceless, omnipotent bureaucracy 00:01:05.299 --> 00:01:08.879 that decided if you lived or died. And even inside 00:01:08.879 --> 00:01:11.659 the party, the core group, he used this dizzying 00:01:11.659 --> 00:01:14.200 array of pseudonyms. It wasn't just one or two 00:01:14.200 --> 00:01:16.299 aliases for security. No, it was a whole list. 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:19.439 It was. He was Pook. He was Hay. He was Paul, 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:21.640 which is where the final name comes from. But 00:01:21.640 --> 00:01:25.969 he was also just numbers. 87. 99, or these strange 00:01:25.969 --> 00:01:28.489 familial titles, Great Uncle, Elder Brother, 00:01:28.769 --> 00:01:31.909 First Brother, and then others, like Femme. It's 00:01:31.909 --> 00:01:33.750 like he was deliberately trying to erase himself 00:01:33.750 --> 00:01:35.849 while simultaneously controlling everything. 00:01:36.299 --> 00:01:38.299 It sounds exhausting, honestly, just trying to 00:01:38.299 --> 00:01:40.060 keep track of who you are supposed to be on any 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:42.099 given day. And it goes right back to the very 00:01:42.099 --> 00:01:45.000 beginning. His birth name, Salah Sarr, feels 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:47.099 like a completely different person. And get this, 00:01:47.159 --> 00:01:50.620 even his birthday is up for debate. It is. The 00:01:50.620 --> 00:01:52.340 French colonial records, which are usually pretty 00:01:52.340 --> 00:01:56.000 meticulous, say May 25, 1928, but his main biographer, 00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:58.879 Philip Short, argues it was actually 1925. Which 00:01:58.879 --> 00:02:01.430 is just... perfect in a really dark way. It fits 00:02:01.430 --> 00:02:03.590 perfectly, doesn't it? For a man who built a 00:02:03.590 --> 00:02:06.909 regime on total secrecy and paranoia, it's only 00:02:06.909 --> 00:02:09.189 fitting that we can't even pinpoint his exact 00:02:09.189 --> 00:02:12.069 arrival in the world. It sets the stage for everything 00:02:12.069 --> 00:02:14.490 that follows. If you can't even pin down his 00:02:14.490 --> 00:02:17.090 birth, how on earth can you pin down his motives? 00:02:17.310 --> 00:02:21.129 So here is our mission for this deep dive. We 00:02:21.129 --> 00:02:23.069 aren't just going to list the atrocities, though 00:02:23.069 --> 00:02:25.270 we absolutely have to talk about them. We can't 00:02:25.270 --> 00:02:27.870 look away from that. But we really want to try 00:02:27.870 --> 00:02:30.590 to figure out how this guy. who, by all accounts, 00:02:30.610 --> 00:02:33.629 was a mediocre student and a soft -spoken, even 00:02:33.629 --> 00:02:37.229 genteel teacher, ended up orchestrating one of 00:02:37.229 --> 00:02:39.610 the most radical and brutal social experiments 00:02:39.610 --> 00:02:42.050 in human history. It's the ultimate question 00:02:42.050 --> 00:02:43.990 of mechanism, right? How do you actually go from 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:46.270 a classroom to the killing fields? What are the 00:02:46.270 --> 00:02:48.370 gears that have to turn inside a mind like that? 00:02:48.490 --> 00:02:50.469 And maybe more importantly, how did he stay in 00:02:50.469 --> 00:02:52.669 the game for so long after he fell from power? 00:02:52.990 --> 00:02:54.729 Because that part of the story, the geopolitical 00:02:54.729 --> 00:02:57.030 twist, is so often just left out of the history 00:02:57.030 --> 00:02:59.150 books. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's start at 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:01.629 the beginning. Section one, the student, the 00:03:01.629 --> 00:03:05.069 carpenter, the revolutionary. Because the myth 00:03:05.069 --> 00:03:08.310 Pol Pot built for himself was that he was a man 00:03:08.310 --> 00:03:10.590 of the people, right? He wanted everyone to think 00:03:10.590 --> 00:03:12.610 he just rose up from the mud. Oh, absolutely. 00:03:12.909 --> 00:03:16.189 That was central to his persona. He claimed in 00:03:16.189 --> 00:03:19.490 a 1977 interview on Yugoslav television, of all 00:03:19.490 --> 00:03:22.289 places, that he was from a poor peasant family. 00:03:22.750 --> 00:03:25.849 It was part of the brand. Authenticity was currency 00:03:25.849 --> 00:03:28.409 in the communist world. You had to have the right 00:03:28.409 --> 00:03:31.030 credentials, the right class background. Exactly. 00:03:31.349 --> 00:03:33.969 But the reality, as the source material shows 00:03:33.969 --> 00:03:36.969 so clearly, was starkly different. Yeah. Poor 00:03:36.969 --> 00:03:38.810 peasant seems like a bit of a stretch when your 00:03:38.810 --> 00:03:41.330 dad owns nine hectares of rice land and draft 00:03:41.330 --> 00:03:43.610 cattle. That sounds like a pretty comfortable 00:03:43.610 --> 00:03:45.569 setup for Cambodia at that time. It was more 00:03:45.569 --> 00:03:47.719 than comfortable. It was prosperous. He was born 00:03:47.719 --> 00:03:50.840 in Prikspov to a prosperous farmer. His family's 00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:52.199 house was one of the largest in the village. 00:03:52.340 --> 00:03:54.659 They didn't just work the land themselves. They 00:03:54.659 --> 00:03:56.599 hired their neighbors to do the hard labor during 00:03:56.599 --> 00:03:59.479 harvest. He wasn't the downtrodden worker. He 00:03:59.479 --> 00:04:01.800 was from the employer class. So he grew up with 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:04.000 this level of privilege that he would later try 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.919 to completely scrub from his own history. He 00:04:06.919 --> 00:04:10.560 had to. His entire ideology was based on destroying 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:13.840 that class. But the connections go even higher 00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:16.379 up the social ladder than that. This is the part 00:04:16.379 --> 00:04:18.759 that's really stunning. He had a direct line 00:04:18.759 --> 00:04:22.459 to the royal palace. This blew my mind. He wasn't 00:04:22.459 --> 00:04:24.959 just a rich farmer's kid. He was connected to 00:04:24.959 --> 00:04:27.620 the very monarchy he would eventually help dismantle. 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:31.160 He was. His cousin, a woman named Meek, was a 00:04:31.160 --> 00:04:35.600 royal consort to King Sisawith Monion. And Salathzar, 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:38.420 the boy who had become Pol Pot, actually lived 00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:40.839 in the royal palace compound for a while as a 00:04:40.839 --> 00:04:43.699 child. Wait, he lived there? In the palace grounds. 00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:46.399 He did. He was surrounded by the very elite, 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:48.639 the opulence, the rituals that he would later 00:04:48.639 --> 00:04:51.220 vow to completely annihilate. The sources even 00:04:51.220 --> 00:04:53.439 mention he had some of his earliest sexual experiences 00:04:53.439 --> 00:04:55.759 with the king's concubines there. He was swimming 00:04:55.759 --> 00:04:57.879 in the deep end of the royal pool, so to speak. 00:04:58.060 --> 00:05:00.420 That creates this incredible tension right from 00:05:00.420 --> 00:05:03.290 the start, doesn't it? He's adjacent to royalty, 00:05:03.470 --> 00:05:06.110 living in the palace, yet he becomes the face 00:05:06.110 --> 00:05:09.730 of this radical peasant revolution. Do you think 00:05:09.730 --> 00:05:11.689 this is a case of him rejecting his upbringing, 00:05:11.829 --> 00:05:13.610 or was he always sort of an outsider looking 00:05:13.610 --> 00:05:16.069 in? I think it's very much the latter. He was 00:05:16.069 --> 00:05:18.850 close to power, but he wasn't of power. He was 00:05:18.850 --> 00:05:21.490 a spectator. He saw the luxury. He saw the rigid 00:05:21.490 --> 00:05:23.930 class structure. But he was always the cousin, 00:05:24.029 --> 00:05:27.689 the visitor from the provinces. And that theme 00:05:27.689 --> 00:05:30.550 of not quite fitting in, of not quite measuring 00:05:30.550 --> 00:05:33.449 up, continues with his education. Right, because 00:05:33.449 --> 00:05:35.629 he wasn't some intellectual heavyweight. Not 00:05:35.629 --> 00:05:38.389 at all. He spent about 18 months as a novice 00:05:38.389 --> 00:05:40.910 monk, which is where many say he developed that 00:05:40.910 --> 00:05:44.769 famously calm, almost serene demeanor. But academically, 00:05:45.050 --> 00:05:47.250 he struggled. He went to a good Catholic primary 00:05:47.250 --> 00:05:49.649 school, the École Michée, but he was held back 00:05:49.649 --> 00:05:51.889 two years. He wasn't a gifted student. So he's 00:05:51.889 --> 00:05:54.750 seeing all the success and power around him in 00:05:54.750 --> 00:05:57.029 the palace at these elite schools, but he can't 00:05:57.029 --> 00:05:59.430 quite grab it for himself. And then he fails 00:05:59.430 --> 00:06:01.939 the big one. He failed the entrance exams for 00:06:01.939 --> 00:06:04.540 the prestigious Lisei Sisawa. Which was the golden 00:06:04.540 --> 00:06:07.139 ticket in Cambodian society at the time. If you 00:06:07.139 --> 00:06:09.699 got into the Lisei, you were set. It was the 00:06:09.699 --> 00:06:12.220 pathway to a government job, a position of respect, 00:06:12.319 --> 00:06:16.560 of legitimacy. He failed. So instead of a classical 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:19.100 education, he ends up studying carpentry at a 00:06:19.100 --> 00:06:21.519 technical school. The irony there is just so 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:24.170 thick. The man who would later target anyone 00:06:24.170 --> 00:06:27.230 with an education, anyone who wore glasses, anyone 00:06:27.230 --> 00:06:30.189 who spoke a foreign language, was himself a student 00:06:30.189 --> 00:06:33.509 who couldn't quite make the grade. It feels personal. 00:06:34.089 --> 00:06:36.410 It suggests a deep -seated resentment, doesn't 00:06:36.410 --> 00:06:38.069 it? When you look at the psychological profile 00:06:38.069 --> 00:06:40.389 of so many tyrants, it's often the people who 00:06:40.389 --> 00:06:42.569 feel rejected by the intellectual elite who then 00:06:42.569 --> 00:06:44.290 want to tear it all down the most violently. 00:06:44.550 --> 00:06:47.370 It sort of validates their own mediocrity if 00:06:47.370 --> 00:06:49.269 they can prove that all that book smarts is actually 00:06:49.269 --> 00:06:51.980 dangerous or corrupt. But he did eventually get 00:06:51.980 --> 00:06:54.079 a break. Right. He gets out of Cambodia. He does. 00:06:54.259 --> 00:06:57.540 Yes. In 1949, he somehow gets a scholarship to 00:06:57.540 --> 00:07:00.500 study radio electronics in Paris. Oh, Paris, 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:03.879 the great. incubator for so many 20th century 00:07:03.879 --> 00:07:06.939 revolutionaries. You had Ho Chi Minh there as 00:07:06.939 --> 00:07:10.019 you online. It's like the university for dismantling 00:07:10.019 --> 00:07:13.120 empires. But Salaf Sarr wasn't really there for 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:15.339 the radio electronics, was he? No. And it's a 00:07:15.339 --> 00:07:17.339 good thing because he failed his exams there, 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:19.759 too, and ended up losing the scholarship. He 00:07:19.759 --> 00:07:21.899 clearly had no interest in circuits and wires. 00:07:22.180 --> 00:07:24.560 But what he found in Paris, the real education 00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:28.319 was the circle Marxist. a clandestine cell of 00:07:28.319 --> 00:07:30.879 radical Cambodian students. And this is where 00:07:30.879 --> 00:07:33.259 the ideology starts to really form. But the notes 00:07:33.259 --> 00:07:35.620 say he found Marx himself to be dense and didn't 00:07:35.620 --> 00:07:37.860 really get it. That seems like a bit of a hurdle 00:07:37.860 --> 00:07:40.579 for a future communist leader. I want to lead 00:07:40.579 --> 00:07:42.379 the revolution, but I can't really get through 00:07:42.379 --> 00:07:44.939 Das Kapital. It's a fascinating detail, isn't 00:07:44.939 --> 00:07:47.560 it? He wasn't a theoretical Marxist. He didn't 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:49.600 seem to care about the dialectic or the complex 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.199 economics or the nuanced philosophy. He preferred 00:07:52.199 --> 00:07:55.139 Stalin. He preferred Mao. specifically Mao's 00:07:55.139 --> 00:07:57.240 essay on New Democracy. He liked the practical 00:07:57.240 --> 00:08:00.060 stuff, the how -to guides. Exactly. He was looking 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:02.439 for a manual on how to seize and hold power, 00:08:02.600 --> 00:08:06.040 not a dense philosophical treatise. But there 00:08:06.040 --> 00:08:09.439 is one very specific intellectual influence mentioned 00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:12.199 in the sources that I think explains so much 00:08:12.199 --> 00:08:15.259 of the horror that was to come later. Peter Kropotkin. 00:08:15.439 --> 00:08:18.899 The anarchists. That's a curveball. Usually communists 00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:21.300 and anarchists do not get along. They absolutely 00:08:21.300 --> 00:08:24.509 don't. But Pol Pot. read kropotkin's book the 00:08:24.509 --> 00:08:26.730 great revolution which is about the french revolution 00:08:26.730 --> 00:08:30.129 and the takeaways he got from that were terrifyingly 00:08:30.129 --> 00:08:32.509 simple he ignored all the anarchist utopia stuff 00:08:32.509 --> 00:08:34.570 and he focused on the method he came away with 00:08:34.570 --> 00:08:37.870 two core beliefs one a successful revolution 00:08:37.870 --> 00:08:40.590 requires an alliance between intellectuals and 00:08:40.590 --> 00:08:43.330 the peasantry okay that makes sense and two and 00:08:43.330 --> 00:08:45.960 this is the crucial one A revolution must be 00:08:45.960 --> 00:08:48.259 carried out without compromise to its absolute 00:08:48.259 --> 00:08:51.299 final conclusion. Without compromise. That phrase 00:08:51.299 --> 00:08:53.360 just sends a chill down your spine. That seems 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:55.320 to be the key to the whole lock. That was the 00:08:55.320 --> 00:08:58.480 lesson he learned. If you stop halfway, you fail. 00:08:58.840 --> 00:09:01.159 If you show mercy, you fail. If you let the king 00:09:01.159 --> 00:09:03.919 live, he comes back. That idea of total revolution, 00:09:04.100 --> 00:09:06.460 of taking it further than anyone else had ever 00:09:06.460 --> 00:09:09.500 dared, that planted itself in his mind in Paris. 00:09:09.960 --> 00:09:11.840 He looked at the French Revolution and thought, 00:09:11.940 --> 00:09:14.519 they didn't go far enough. He wanted to succeed 00:09:14.519 --> 00:09:16.980 where history had failed. And what was he like 00:09:16.980 --> 00:09:19.940 socially? Was he a firebrand in Paris? Was he 00:09:19.940 --> 00:09:21.919 the guy standing on tables screaming about the 00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:23.879 proletariat? Because I always picture a future 00:09:23.879 --> 00:09:26.720 dictator as someone loud and charismatic. Not 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:29.429 at all. By all accounts, he was charming. but 00:09:29.429 --> 00:09:31.970 elusive. He hung out almost exclusively with 00:09:31.970 --> 00:09:34.809 other Cambodians, especially Aung Seri, who had 00:09:34.809 --> 00:09:36.330 become his brother -in -law and his right -hand 00:09:36.330 --> 00:09:38.950 man. He didn't try to become French. He didn't 00:09:38.950 --> 00:09:41.830 assimilate into the culture. He was there, observing, 00:09:42.049 --> 00:09:45.210 learning, but keeping to the shadows even then, 00:09:45.370 --> 00:09:48.230 he was building a network, not a public profile. 00:09:48.529 --> 00:09:50.549 He was the guy quietly nodding in the corner, 00:09:50.629 --> 00:09:52.929 taking it all in. So he flunks out of school 00:09:52.929 --> 00:09:55.950 in Paris, loses his scholarship, and has to head 00:09:55.950 --> 00:10:00.450 back to Cambodia in 1953. This brings us to section 00:10:00.450 --> 00:10:03.450 two, the double life, because he doesn't just 00:10:03.450 --> 00:10:05.690 come back and immediately put on a uniform and 00:10:05.690 --> 00:10:08.529 start a guerrilla war. He becomes a teacher. 00:10:08.590 --> 00:10:10.970 It's the perfect cover, isn't it? He returns 00:10:10.970 --> 00:10:13.409 to a Cambodia that is just gaining its independence 00:10:13.409 --> 00:10:15.570 from France. And for the better part of a decade, 00:10:15.710 --> 00:10:18.789 he lives a complete double life. To the public, 00:10:18.909 --> 00:10:21.370 he's a teacher at a private school called Chamron 00:10:21.370 --> 00:10:24.250 Vichaya. He taught history, geography and get 00:10:24.250 --> 00:10:27.519 this. Morals. Morals. You just can't make this 00:10:27.519 --> 00:10:29.799 stuff up. The man who would go on to abolish 00:10:29.799 --> 00:10:32.159 religion and the family unit is teaching morals 00:10:32.159 --> 00:10:34.159 to high school students. And by all accounts, 00:10:34.259 --> 00:10:36.659 he was beloved. His students described him as 00:10:36.659 --> 00:10:39.240 good -natured, honest, and persuasive. He had 00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:41.440 this genteel charisma. They said he would quote 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:44.460 French poetry. Verlaine was apparently a favorite. 00:10:44.600 --> 00:10:46.559 He was the nice guy, the teacher you respected 00:10:46.559 --> 00:10:48.480 and liked. It creates this really disturbing 00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:50.820 picture, you know, that evil doesn't always look 00:10:50.820 --> 00:10:52.500 like a monster. Sometimes it looks like your 00:10:52.500 --> 00:10:54.320 favorite teacher. It really makes you question 00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:57.539 how well you can ever know anyone. It does. Because 00:10:57.539 --> 00:11:00.039 meanwhile, by night... He's a completely different 00:11:00.039 --> 00:11:02.960 person. Completely. By night, he's a key liaison 00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:06.080 for the underground communist movement. He marries 00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:08.580 Qu Poinery, whose sister is married to his best 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:11.240 friend Ng Seri, which cements that core inner 00:11:11.240 --> 00:11:13.850 circle that will run the country later. He's 00:11:13.850 --> 00:11:15.750 building the party structure brick by brick, 00:11:15.850 --> 00:11:18.230 right under the nose of Prince Hinnok's secret 00:11:18.230 --> 00:11:21.049 police. He is organizing the cells, writing the 00:11:21.049 --> 00:11:23.429 pamphlets, doing the slow, patient, logistical 00:11:23.429 --> 00:11:26.009 work of an insurgency while grading papers during 00:11:26.009 --> 00:11:29.070 the day. But eventually, that can't last. The 00:11:29.070 --> 00:11:32.370 heat gets too high. In 1963, his name appears 00:11:32.370 --> 00:11:34.690 on a list of suspected communists, and he has 00:11:34.690 --> 00:11:38.370 to flee foam pen. He goes into the jungle. This 00:11:38.370 --> 00:11:40.289 seems like a major turning point for him, not 00:11:40.289 --> 00:11:42.590 just practically, but mentally. It is the crucible. 00:11:42.919 --> 00:11:45.740 He establishes Office 100 on the Vietnamese border. 00:11:45.860 --> 00:11:48.179 And living there for years with the isolated 00:11:48.179 --> 00:11:51.399 indigenous hill tribes, the Khmer Luu, his ideology 00:11:51.399 --> 00:11:54.080 begins to radically shift. He starts to idealize 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:56.659 their life. What was it about them that he latched 00:11:56.659 --> 00:11:58.860 onto? They were completely self -sufficient. 00:11:58.940 --> 00:12:00.879 They didn't use money. They lived communally. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.320 They were cut off from what he saw as the corruption 00:12:03.320 --> 00:12:05.639 of the cities and Western influence. They were 00:12:05.639 --> 00:12:08.840 tough. silent, and lived in what he saw as a 00:12:08.840 --> 00:12:11.740 pure pre -industrial state. So he looked at these 00:12:11.740 --> 00:12:14.940 small, isolated tribes and thought, this, this 00:12:14.940 --> 00:12:17.080 is what the entire country should be. Exactly. 00:12:17.460 --> 00:12:20.039 The hill tribes became the model for his pure 00:12:20.039 --> 00:12:23.220 Khmer society. He romanticized their poverty 00:12:23.220 --> 00:12:25.580 as a form of moral purity. He thought if these 00:12:25.580 --> 00:12:27.960 tribes could live without markets and money and 00:12:27.960 --> 00:12:31.000 foreign ideas, why could the whole nation? But 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:32.820 there's another element cooking in the jungle 00:12:32.820 --> 00:12:36.740 at the same time. A deep... profound hatred of 00:12:36.740 --> 00:12:38.940 Vietnam. Yeah, the source material mentions he 00:12:38.940 --> 00:12:42.559 visited Hanoi and came back furious. Why? Vietnam 00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:45.240 was a communist ally, at least in theory. In 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:47.759 theory. But he came away from that visit completely 00:12:47.759 --> 00:12:50.139 convinced that the Vietnamese communists didn't 00:12:50.139 --> 00:12:52.620 respect Cambodian sovereignty. He believed they 00:12:52.620 --> 00:12:55.220 wanted to create an Indochinese federation where 00:12:55.220 --> 00:12:57.299 Vietnam would call all the shots and Cambodia 00:12:57.299 --> 00:13:00.080 would just be a vassal state. This fueled an 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:03.200 intense, paranoid Khmer ethno -nationalism. So 00:13:03.200 --> 00:13:05.299 he wasn't just a communist anymore, he was a 00:13:05.299 --> 00:13:07.340 Khmer supremacist. That's a great way to put 00:13:07.340 --> 00:13:09.840 it. He believed the Khmer race was ancient and 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:12.100 superior, but was threatened with extinction 00:13:12.100 --> 00:13:15.200 by the Vietnamese. This paranoia became a central 00:13:15.200 --> 00:13:18.139 pillar of his entire worldview. And then he takes 00:13:18.139 --> 00:13:22.320 another trip to Beijing in 1965 and 1966. Right 00:13:22.320 --> 00:13:24.720 at the start of the Cultural Revolution. Timing 00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:27.360 is incredible. He sees Mao purging his own party. 00:13:27.399 --> 00:13:30.059 He sees the chaos in the streets, the Red Guards, 00:13:30.059 --> 00:13:33.500 the total destruction of the four olds, old customs, 00:13:33.679 --> 00:13:37.679 old culture, old habits, and old ideas. And instead 00:13:37.679 --> 00:13:40.539 of being horrified by this chaos, he takes notes. 00:13:40.679 --> 00:13:43.860 He sees it as a viable strategy. Yes. Mao's officials 00:13:43.860 --> 00:13:46.480 literally train him on the methods of political 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:48.960 purge and the dictatorship of the proletariat. 00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:51.399 He comes back to the Cambodian jungle with a 00:13:51.399 --> 00:13:53.960 practical toolkit for terror. He's seen that 00:13:53.960 --> 00:13:56.259 you can use chaos as a political tool to remake 00:13:56.259 --> 00:13:58.840 a society from the ground up. So he has the ideology 00:13:58.840 --> 00:14:01.240 from the hill tribes, he has the paranoia about 00:14:01.240 --> 00:14:03.220 Vietnam, and now he has the toolkit from China. 00:14:03.399 --> 00:14:06.100 But he's still just this guy hiding in the jungle 00:14:06.100 --> 00:14:09.200 with a relatively small ragtag group. He needs 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:12.779 a catalyst. A massive catalyst. And that brings 00:14:12.779 --> 00:14:16.279 us to section three, the unlikely alliance and 00:14:16.279 --> 00:14:18.600 the rise to power. And what a catalyst it was. 00:14:18.740 --> 00:14:21.100 In 1970, while Prince Sihanouk is out of the 00:14:21.100 --> 00:14:23.759 country, his prime minister, General Lon Nol, 00:14:23.940 --> 00:14:27.080 launches a coup and kicks him out. Lon Nol is 00:14:27.080 --> 00:14:29.620 pro -American, right wing. And this is where 00:14:29.620 --> 00:14:32.159 regional politics in the Cold War get incredibly 00:14:32.159 --> 00:14:35.700 messy and cynical. Sihanouk the king, the man 00:14:35.700 --> 00:14:38.259 Pol Pot's cousin served, the man the communists 00:14:38.259 --> 00:14:40.360 have been fighting against for years, suddenly 00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:42.600 needs an army to get his throne back. The enemy 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:45.179 of my enemy is my friend. The ultimate example 00:14:45.179 --> 00:14:48.279 of it. Sihanouk is in exile in Beijing and the 00:14:48.279 --> 00:14:50.360 Chinese convince him to form an alliance with 00:14:50.360 --> 00:14:53.879 his old enemies, the Khmer Rouge. Sihanouk gets 00:14:53.879 --> 00:14:57.019 on the radio and in his capacity as the revered 00:14:57.019 --> 00:14:59.480 god king, calls for the Cambodian people to go 00:14:59.480 --> 00:15:02.100 into the jungle and join the Khmer Rouge to fight 00:15:02.100 --> 00:15:04.179 Lan Nol. That must have been a total game changer. 00:15:04.259 --> 00:15:06.059 The peasantry in the countryside revered the 00:15:06.059 --> 00:15:07.600 king, right? They weren't reading marks. They 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:09.659 didn't know who Pol Pot was. It was everything. 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:13.059 It was the single greatest gift the Khmer Rouge 00:15:13.059 --> 00:15:17.139 ever received. The peasants loved the king, so 00:15:17.139 --> 00:15:19.000 they enlisted in droves to fight for the king. 00:15:19.179 --> 00:15:20.980 They thought they were restoring the monarchy, 00:15:21.080 --> 00:15:22.779 but they were actually being funneled directly 00:15:22.779 --> 00:15:25.399 into Pol Pot's army, which he kept hidden in 00:15:25.399 --> 00:15:27.879 the shadows. A classic bait -and -switch on a 00:15:27.879 --> 00:15:30.360 national scale. The Khmer Rouge exploded. They 00:15:30.360 --> 00:15:33.179 went from maybe 12 ,000 troops to over 40 ,000 00:15:33.179 --> 00:15:35.539 almost overnight. And while all this is happening, 00:15:35.679 --> 00:15:38.100 you have another major factor pouring gasoline 00:15:38.100 --> 00:15:40.820 on the fire. The American involvement, the bombing. 00:15:40.899 --> 00:15:42.960 You can't really explain the recruitment numbers 00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:45.340 without that context. You absolutely cannot tell 00:15:45.340 --> 00:15:48.220 this story without it. The U .S., under Nixon 00:15:48.220 --> 00:15:50.759 and Kissinger, began a secret massive bombing 00:15:50.759 --> 00:15:53.220 campaign in Cambodia. They were trying to hit 00:15:53.220 --> 00:15:55.620 Vietnamese supply lines, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 00:15:55.779 --> 00:15:58.399 but they ended up decimating the Cambodian countryside. 00:15:58.759 --> 00:16:01.740 The numbers are just... Staggering. The U .S. 00:16:01.740 --> 00:16:04.000 dropped three times as many bombs on neutral 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:06.960 Cambodia as they did on Japan in all of World 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:11.059 War II. Let that sink in. Three times the tonnage 00:16:11.059 --> 00:16:14.460 on a small agricultural country that wasn't officially 00:16:14.460 --> 00:16:17.000 at war with the U .S. It completely destabilized 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:20.299 the entire rural society. And for Pol Pot, it 00:16:20.299 --> 00:16:21.879 was the greatest recruitment poster he could 00:16:21.879 --> 00:16:23.759 have ever asked for. He can just point to the 00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:26.090 sky. He'd point to the sky and say. Look what 00:16:26.090 --> 00:16:28.230 the foreign imperialists and their puppets in 00:16:28.230 --> 00:16:31.009 Phom Penh are doing to you. Only we can protect 00:16:31.009 --> 00:16:34.850 you. Every bomb that fell created fresh hatred, 00:16:35.029 --> 00:16:37.889 fresh grief, and fresh recruits for the Khmer 00:16:37.889 --> 00:16:40.950 Rouge. It validated his entire narrative that 00:16:40.950 --> 00:16:43.250 the outside world was evil and had to be rejected. 00:16:43.710 --> 00:16:45.509 So you have the King's endorsement pulling people 00:16:45.509 --> 00:16:47.549 in from one side and the U .S. bombing pushing 00:16:47.549 --> 00:16:49.350 people in from the other. It's a perfect storm. 00:16:49.509 --> 00:16:52.769 It is. The Civil War rages for five years. And 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:56.409 by April 17th, 1975, Lanul's regime collapses 00:16:56.409 --> 00:16:58.950 and the black clad soldiers of the Khmer Rouge 00:16:58.950 --> 00:17:01.509 march into the capital Phnom Penh. And what was 00:17:01.509 --> 00:17:03.509 the mood like? What was the reception? Initially, 00:17:03.509 --> 00:17:06.400 the people cheered. They were exhausted by war 00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:09.099 and starvation. They thought peace had finally 00:17:09.099 --> 00:17:11.619 arrived. There are photos of soldiers riding 00:17:11.619 --> 00:17:14.700 on tanks, people waving flags. There was this 00:17:14.700 --> 00:17:17.619 huge collective sigh of relief. But the betrayal 00:17:17.619 --> 00:17:20.059 was immediate. It wasn't weeks later. It was 00:17:20.059 --> 00:17:23.200 right then, that same day. Immediate and total. 00:17:23.339 --> 00:17:26.579 Within hours, the order comes down over loudspeakers. 00:17:26.980 --> 00:17:30.170 Evacuate the city. All of it. Two and a half 00:17:30.170 --> 00:17:32.170 million people. And the pretext they used was 00:17:32.170 --> 00:17:34.309 a lie, wasn't it? They told people the Americans 00:17:34.309 --> 00:17:36.769 were about to bomb the city. A complete fabrication. 00:17:36.890 --> 00:17:39.089 They told people, don't pack anything. You'll 00:17:39.089 --> 00:17:41.190 be back in three days. They said, just lock your 00:17:41.190 --> 00:17:44.349 doors. But the reality was a death march into 00:17:44.349 --> 00:17:46.390 the countryside. They emptied the hospitals. 00:17:46.589 --> 00:17:48.349 They forced patients who were still hooked up 00:17:48.349 --> 00:17:51.210 to IVs to walk. Women in labor were forced out 00:17:51.210 --> 00:17:53.769 onto the road. It's estimated that 20 ,000 people 00:17:53.769 --> 00:17:56.150 died just on the road out of the city in those 00:17:56.150 --> 00:17:59.039 first few days. It's just... Madness. What was 00:17:59.039 --> 00:18:01.039 the strategic goal? I know we talked about his 00:18:01.039 --> 00:18:03.339 idealization of the Hill Tribes, but emptying 00:18:03.339 --> 00:18:06.319 an entire capital city. It was the literal implementation 00:18:06.319 --> 00:18:09.779 of that year zero ideology we talked about. Pol 00:18:09.779 --> 00:18:11.880 Pot believed the cities were the source of all 00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:15.460 evil. Capitalism, corruption, foreign influence, 00:18:15.859 --> 00:18:19.579 intellectualism. To purify the nation, you had 00:18:19.579 --> 00:18:21.740 to physically destroy the city as a concept. 00:18:21.980 --> 00:18:25.720 You had to turn everyone overnight into a peasant. 00:18:26.109 --> 00:18:27.950 You break their connection to the old world. 00:18:28.089 --> 00:18:29.890 You break their connection to everything, their 00:18:29.890 --> 00:18:32.589 jobs, their homes, their families, their very 00:18:32.589 --> 00:18:34.849 sense of self. It was a radical act of social 00:18:34.849 --> 00:18:37.410 engineering on an unimaginable scale. Which leads 00:18:37.410 --> 00:18:40.650 us directly into Section 4, Democratic Campuchea 00:18:40.650 --> 00:18:43.410 and Year Zero. This concept is just chilling, 00:18:43.470 --> 00:18:45.650 the idea that history literally stops and starts 00:18:45.650 --> 00:18:48.289 again with them. It meant that nothing that existed 00:18:48.289 --> 00:18:53.299 before April 17, 1975, had any value. Culture, 00:18:53.299 --> 00:18:56.740 tradition, family ties, religion, all of it had 00:18:56.740 --> 00:18:59.119 to be erased. They abolished money. They blew 00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:00.880 up the National Bank with dynamite just to show 00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:02.839 that money was worthless. They abolished markets. 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:05.140 They abolished private property. Even the concept 00:19:05.140 --> 00:19:07.079 of the individual was attacked. Right. I remember 00:19:07.079 --> 00:19:09.079 reading they even changed the language. You weren't 00:19:09.079 --> 00:19:11.420 allowed to say I or me. You had to say we or 00:19:11.420 --> 00:19:14.970 us. Yes. And they classified the entire population 00:19:14.970 --> 00:19:17.970 into two groups. If you were a peasant from the 00:19:17.970 --> 00:19:20.089 countryside who had been under their control 00:19:20.089 --> 00:19:23.210 before the victory, you were an old person or 00:19:23.210 --> 00:19:25.089 a base person. You were considered politically 00:19:25.089 --> 00:19:28.750 pure and therefore more trustworthy. But if you 00:19:28.750 --> 00:19:30.670 were from the city. If you were from the city, 00:19:30.710 --> 00:19:32.410 if you were a teacher, a doctor, a mechanic, 00:19:32.569 --> 00:19:34.789 an artist, or just someone who happened to live 00:19:34.789 --> 00:19:39.089 in Phnom Penh, you were a new person and new 00:19:39.089 --> 00:19:41.880 people. were seen as tainted by the old world. 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:43.799 And they were completely expendable. Completely. 00:19:44.019 --> 00:19:47.220 The famous Khmer Rouge slogan was, to keep you 00:19:47.220 --> 00:19:50.539 is no profit, to destroy you is no loss. That 00:19:50.539 --> 00:19:52.579 has to be one of the most terrifying sentences 00:19:52.579 --> 00:19:55.000 in human history. It just reduces a human being 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:57.819 to a unit of production. If the unit is faulty, 00:19:57.859 --> 00:20:00.799 you just discard it. It sums up the entire regime 00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:03.720 perfectly. Human life had no inherent value. 00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:06.480 Your value was determined solely by your ability 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:08.579 to work in the rice fields. You were a tool. 00:20:08.940 --> 00:20:11.079 And if the coup broke, you threw it away. They 00:20:11.079 --> 00:20:13.039 forced everyone to wear the same black clothes 00:20:13.039 --> 00:20:15.259 and red and white checkered krama scarves to 00:20:15.259 --> 00:20:17.099 erase individuality. They even went after the 00:20:17.099 --> 00:20:19.500 family. The family was seen as a competing loyalty 00:20:19.500 --> 00:20:22.579 to UNCR. So children over the age of seven were 00:20:22.579 --> 00:20:25.059 often removed from their parents to live and 00:20:25.059 --> 00:20:27.319 work in communal units where they could be indoctrinated. 00:20:28.059 --> 00:20:31.099 Love was a bourgeois sentiment. Your only loyalty 00:20:31.099 --> 00:20:34.779 was to the organization. And this all fed into 00:20:34.779 --> 00:20:37.299 this grand economic plan, the super great leap 00:20:37.299 --> 00:20:41.349 forward. Pol Pot had these completely delusional 00:20:41.349 --> 00:20:43.869 goals for rice production. Delusional is the 00:20:43.869 --> 00:20:46.630 only word for it. He wanted to achieve 70 to 00:20:46.630 --> 00:20:49.119 80 percent farm mechanization. In five to ten 00:20:49.119 --> 00:20:52.519 years. He demanded a national rice yield of three 00:20:52.519 --> 00:20:55.000 tons per hectare. Which was triple the average 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:57.599 yield. At least. It was physically impossible 00:20:57.599 --> 00:21:00.599 without modern fertilizer and machinery, neither 00:21:00.599 --> 00:21:02.240 of which they had because they'd cut themselves 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:04.420 off from the entire world. They were trying to 00:21:04.420 --> 00:21:07.500 farm using medieval methods but demanding superhuman 00:21:07.500 --> 00:21:10.460 industrial output. So what happened? The local 00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:13.000 cadres, the leaders of the communes, were terrified 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:15.200 of reporting failure to pull box. They were terrified, 00:21:15.279 --> 00:21:17.420 so they lied. They sent back reports of huge 00:21:17.420 --> 00:21:20.059 surpluses that didn't exist. So the central government 00:21:20.059 --> 00:21:21.980 looks at the spreadsheet, sees this imaginary 00:21:21.980 --> 00:21:25.079 surplus, and takes all the real food to export, 00:21:25.259 --> 00:21:28.019 mainly to China in exchange for weapons. Meanwhile, 00:21:28.259 --> 00:21:30.680 the people who actually grew the rice are left 00:21:30.680 --> 00:21:33.380 with nothing to eat. Exactly. It was a man -made 00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:36.430 famine driven by delusion and fear. The cadres 00:21:36.430 --> 00:21:38.210 would let their own villages starve to death 00:21:38.210 --> 00:21:40.569 rather than admit to Ankar that they had missed 00:21:40.569 --> 00:21:43.589 the impossible quota. People were literally dying 00:21:43.589 --> 00:21:45.849 of starvation in what should be the most fertile 00:21:45.849 --> 00:21:48.250 rice fields in all of Asia. And fear was the 00:21:48.250 --> 00:21:50.809 primary currency of the state. We have to talk 00:21:50.809 --> 00:21:54.829 about S -21. Tool slang. S -21 is the dark heart 00:21:54.829 --> 00:21:57.509 of the regime. It was a former high school in 00:21:57.509 --> 00:22:00.150 Phnom Penh that they turned into a torture and 00:22:00.150 --> 00:22:03.569 execution center. Between 15 ,000 and 20 ,000 00:22:03.569 --> 00:22:06.029 people are known to have entered as 21. Only 00:22:06.029 --> 00:22:08.190 a tiny handful, maybe a dozen, survived. And 00:22:08.190 --> 00:22:10.210 the haunting thing is that they kept meticulous 00:22:10.210 --> 00:22:12.849 records. The photographs, the forced confessions. 00:22:12.849 --> 00:22:15.609 It's chilling. And these weren't just new people 00:22:15.609 --> 00:22:17.569 being sent there, right? A huge number of the 00:22:17.569 --> 00:22:20.630 victims at S -21 were loyal party members. That's 00:22:20.630 --> 00:22:22.730 the mechanism of the terror we talked about at 00:22:22.730 --> 00:22:24.829 the start. Pol Pot was obsessed with rooting 00:22:24.829 --> 00:22:27.529 out internal enemies. He was convinced the CIA, 00:22:27.809 --> 00:22:30.930 the KGB, and especially the Vietnamese had infiltrated 00:22:30.930 --> 00:22:33.609 the party at every level. He purged his own ranks 00:22:33.609 --> 00:22:36.269 again and again and again. So if a rice harvest 00:22:36.269 --> 00:22:38.509 failed, it couldn't be because the plan was bad. 00:22:39.039 --> 00:22:41.740 The blame could never be bad because Ankar is 00:22:41.740 --> 00:22:44.619 perfect. It had to be sabotaged by a hidden enemy. 00:22:44.980 --> 00:22:47.299 So you arrest the local leader, send him to S 00:22:47.299 --> 00:22:50.019 -21, torture a false confession out of him, usually 00:22:50.019 --> 00:22:52.640 these ridiculous stories about being a CIA agent 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:55.160 since childhood, and then you execute him and 00:22:55.160 --> 00:22:57.460 his entire family. The details of the brutality 00:22:57.460 --> 00:23:00.059 in the sources are just. They're hard to read. 00:23:00.099 --> 00:23:02.559 It wasn't just clinical execution. There are 00:23:02.559 --> 00:23:04.799 accounts of peasant cadres eating the livers 00:23:04.799 --> 00:23:07.740 of their victims or using fetuses as magical 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:10.400 talismans. It sounds like a complete descent 00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:13.259 into absolute barbarism. It shows what happens 00:23:13.259 --> 00:23:16.099 when you strip away every single rule of society, 00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:19.940 all law, all religion, all morality, and you 00:23:19.940 --> 00:23:23.390 replace it with this. brutal paranoid survivalism, 00:23:23.430 --> 00:23:26.750 you unlock something primal and horrific in people. 00:23:26.849 --> 00:23:28.970 And the leadership knew about these atrocities, 00:23:29.009 --> 00:23:31.529 the liver eating, the insane brutality, and they 00:23:31.529 --> 00:23:33.769 did nothing to stop it. Pol Pot's philosophy 00:23:33.769 --> 00:23:36.269 was always, it is always better to go too far 00:23:36.269 --> 00:23:39.299 than not far enough. That no compromise lesson 00:23:39.299 --> 00:23:42.180 he learned in Paris, it's just haunting how that 00:23:42.180 --> 00:23:45.220 one abstract idea rippled out to cause so much 00:23:45.220 --> 00:23:47.799 concrete suffering. Precisely. He viewed mercy 00:23:47.799 --> 00:23:50.140 or hesitation as a weakness that would doom the 00:23:50.140 --> 00:23:52.440 revolution. He would rather kill 10 innocent 00:23:52.440 --> 00:23:55.240 people than risk letting one single enemy escape. 00:23:55.519 --> 00:23:57.920 But in the end, that paranoia, especially about 00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:00.160 Vietnam, led to his downfall. He just couldn't 00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:03.339 leave them alone. No. His care ethnonationalism 00:24:03.339 --> 00:24:05.519 wouldn't let him. He kept launching these incredibly 00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:08.559 bloody cross -border raids into Vietnam, massacring 00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:10.700 thousands of civilians. He thought he could bully 00:24:10.700 --> 00:24:12.900 his much larger neighbor. He had this delusional 00:24:12.900 --> 00:24:15.359 belief that one Cambodian soldier was worth 30 00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:17.339 Vietnamese soldiers. He was completely drinking 00:24:17.339 --> 00:24:20.579 his own Kool -Aid. And Vietnam finally had enough. 00:24:20.900 --> 00:24:25.299 Section 5. The Fall, the Survival, and the Geopolitics. 00:24:25.539 --> 00:24:29.319 In December 1978, Vietnam launches a full -scale 00:24:29.319 --> 00:24:31.849 invasion. And because the Khmer Rouge had so 00:24:31.849 --> 00:24:34.029 thoroughly hollowed out their own country, they'd 00:24:34.029 --> 00:24:36.289 starved the people, killed all the competent 00:24:36.289 --> 00:24:39.230 officers in purges. The resistance just collapsed. 00:24:39.390 --> 00:24:41.029 The people didn't want to fight for Pol Pot. 00:24:41.230 --> 00:24:43.769 They welcomed the Vietnamese as literators, which 00:24:43.769 --> 00:24:45.569 tells you everything you need to know considering 00:24:45.569 --> 00:24:47.829 the centric animosity between the two countries. 00:24:48.430 --> 00:24:51.230 Phanapen fell in just two weeks in January 1979. 00:24:51.869 --> 00:24:54.309 Pol Pot and the remnants of the Khmer Rouge flee 00:24:54.309 --> 00:24:56.450 to the Thai border. And this is where the story 00:24:56.450 --> 00:24:58.569 usually ends in high school history class. The 00:24:58.569 --> 00:25:01.619 bad guy ran away. The end. The reality is so 00:25:01.619 --> 00:25:03.819 much weirder and more disturbing. This is the 00:25:03.819 --> 00:25:05.220 part of the story that really shocks people. 00:25:05.759 --> 00:25:08.420 Pol Pot survived. And not only did he survive, 00:25:08.740 --> 00:25:11.960 he was actively supported. By the West. By the 00:25:11.960 --> 00:25:14.519 United States. By the United States, by China, 00:25:14.579 --> 00:25:17.380 and by Thailand. Cold War logic took over completely. 00:25:17.779 --> 00:25:20.299 Vietnam was backed by the Soviet Union. So the 00:25:20.299 --> 00:25:23.119 U .S. and China saw Vietnam as the enemy. And 00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:24.660 who was fighting the Vietnamese in Cambodia? 00:25:24.940 --> 00:25:27.809 Well, Pol Pot. So the U .S. and its allies effectively 00:25:27.809 --> 00:25:30.369 propped up the man responsible for the killing 00:25:30.369 --> 00:25:32.869 fields because he was the enemy of my enemy. 00:25:33.029 --> 00:25:35.369 That is such a bitter pill to swallow. It's one 00:25:35.369 --> 00:25:37.029 of the most cynical chapters of the Cold War. 00:25:37.410 --> 00:25:41.130 The Khmer Rouge incredibly kept Cambodia's seat 00:25:41.130 --> 00:25:44.230 at the United Nations until the early 1990s. 00:25:44.250 --> 00:25:46.549 Just imagine that. The official representative 00:25:46.549 --> 00:25:49.170 of a genocidal ghost regime sitting in the U 00:25:49.170 --> 00:25:51.670 .N. General Assembly, recognized by the world 00:25:51.670 --> 00:25:53.769 community, while the actual government that had 00:25:53.769 --> 00:25:56.349 stopped the genocide. was treated as an illegitimate 00:25:56.349 --> 00:25:59.609 puppet state. And Pol Pot, ever the chameleon, 00:25:59.630 --> 00:26:01.849 sees the writing on the wall and tries to rebrand 00:26:01.849 --> 00:26:04.230 himself. He realizes communism isn't selling 00:26:04.230 --> 00:26:06.450 to his new backers anymore. It's cynical beyond 00:26:06.450 --> 00:26:10.089 belief. In 1981, he officially dissolved the 00:26:10.089 --> 00:26:13.049 Cambodian Communist Party. He told Western journalists 00:26:13.049 --> 00:26:16.130 things like, we chose communism only to restore 00:26:16.130 --> 00:26:19.559 the nation. Now we want to follow the West. He 00:26:19.559 --> 00:26:21.819 started claiming he was a Democrat now. He basically 00:26:21.819 --> 00:26:24.000 put on a new suit and said, my bad. And people 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:26.319 bought it, or at least they pretended to. They 00:26:26.319 --> 00:26:28.839 found it convenient to pretend. He lived for 00:26:28.839 --> 00:26:31.359 over a decade in relative comfort in jungle bases 00:26:31.359 --> 00:26:34.000 along the Thai border, funded and supplied by 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.779 outside powers. He remarried a much younger woman, 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:40.240 Mia. He had a daughter, Sitha. Aides who were 00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:43.480 with him during this time described him as friendly, 00:26:43.480 --> 00:26:45.839 likable, a nice old man who would never scold 00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:48.180 you to your face. The cognitive dissonance is 00:26:48.180 --> 00:26:50.099 just deafening. You have this image of a gentle 00:26:50.099 --> 00:26:52.339 grandpa living in the jungle, bouncing his daughter 00:26:52.339 --> 00:26:54.619 on his knee, while millions of skeletons are 00:26:54.619 --> 00:26:56.720 being dug up from mass graves just a few hundred 00:26:56.720 --> 00:26:59.559 miles away. It's the banality of evil in its 00:26:59.559 --> 00:27:02.380 purest form. It truly is. But the world kept 00:27:02.380 --> 00:27:05.599 turning. The Berlin Wall fell. The Cold War ended. 00:27:05.799 --> 00:27:08.200 And that brings us to section six, the end of 00:27:08.200 --> 00:27:11.140 the line. Right. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, 00:27:11.440 --> 00:27:14.079 the whole geopolitical chessboard changed. The 00:27:14.079 --> 00:27:16.140 West didn't need Pol Pot to fight the Vietnamese 00:27:16.140 --> 00:27:18.559 anymore. Exactly. The support dried up. The money 00:27:18.559 --> 00:27:21.420 stopped. And the creme rouge started to fracture. 00:27:21.980 --> 00:27:25.039 Mass defections began. His old friend from Paris, 00:27:25.240 --> 00:27:28.500 Ng Seri, defected with thousands of troops in 00:27:28.500 --> 00:27:31.279 exchange for a royal pardon. The movement was 00:27:31.279 --> 00:27:33.619 eating itself from the inside. And Pol Pot himself 00:27:33.619 --> 00:27:35.940 was getting old. He's sick. He'd had a stroke. 00:27:36.119 --> 00:27:39.130 He had heart issues. But the one thing that never 00:27:39.130 --> 00:27:41.890 aged, the one thing that never weakened, was 00:27:41.890 --> 00:27:45.349 the paranoia. In 1997, he suspects his longtime 00:27:45.349 --> 00:27:48.609 defense minister, Sun Sen, of trying to negotiate 00:27:48.609 --> 00:27:50.950 a surrender. Sun Sen had been with him since 00:27:50.950 --> 00:27:53.109 the very beginning. And Pol Pot has him killed. 00:27:53.269 --> 00:27:55.630 He orders the execution of Sun Sen and his entire 00:27:55.630 --> 00:27:57.730 family, including his grandchildren. They were 00:27:57.730 --> 00:27:59.690 shot, and then trucks were driven over their 00:27:59.690 --> 00:28:01.950 bodies to make sure. But this time, he finally 00:28:01.950 --> 00:28:04.849 went too far, even for the Khmer Rouge. He did. 00:28:05.389 --> 00:28:08.470 The other main warlord, a man named Tamak, who 00:28:08.470 --> 00:28:10.609 was known as the Butcher, if that gives you any 00:28:10.609 --> 00:28:13.309 indication of his personality, realized, if he 00:28:13.309 --> 00:28:17.009 can do that to Sun Sen, I'm next. So Tamakot 00:28:17.009 --> 00:28:20.170 turned on Pol Pot. He had him arrested. And they 00:28:20.170 --> 00:28:23.410 hold this bizarre people's tribunal, a show trial 00:28:23.410 --> 00:28:26.190 deep in the jungle. It was a pathetic end. There 00:28:26.190 --> 00:28:29.750 are videos of it. Pol Pot, frail and sick, sitting 00:28:29.750 --> 00:28:32.029 in a chair while his former underlings denounce 00:28:32.029 --> 00:28:35.279 him. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. which 00:28:35.279 --> 00:28:37.619 in reality just meant house arrest in a jungle 00:28:37.619 --> 00:28:39.960 shack. He was never dragged to the Hague. He 00:28:39.960 --> 00:28:42.200 was never put in a real prison. He was just grounded 00:28:42.200 --> 00:28:44.579 by his own men. And we have to mention Nate Thayer 00:28:44.579 --> 00:28:46.740 here, the American journalist who tracked him 00:28:46.740 --> 00:28:49.059 down and got that last incredible interview. 00:28:49.200 --> 00:28:51.720 This is our only real window into his mind after 00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:54.059 the genocide. That interview is one of the most 00:28:54.059 --> 00:28:56.400 chilling documents of the 20th century because 00:28:56.400 --> 00:28:58.900 it reveals a complete and total lack of remorse. 00:28:59.339 --> 00:29:01.380 Pol Pot looked Thayer in the eye and said, my 00:29:01.380 --> 00:29:03.460 conscience is clear. My conscience is clear. 00:29:03.599 --> 00:29:06.720 After orchestrating the deaths of 1 .5 to 2 million 00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:08.880 of his own people, how does a human being even 00:29:08.880 --> 00:29:11.799 begin to rationalize that? He'd completely rewritten 00:29:11.799 --> 00:29:13.980 history in his own mind. He claimed his only 00:29:13.980 --> 00:29:15.920 fight was against the Vietnamese. He said, quote, 00:29:16.059 --> 00:29:19.339 I did not order the killing of babies. He died 00:29:19.339 --> 00:29:22.279 believing he was the savior of Cambodia. He viewed 00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:25.039 the deaths as necessary collateral damage or 00:29:25.039 --> 00:29:28.200 more often as unfortunate mistakes made by subordinates 00:29:28.200 --> 00:29:30.660 that he wasn't responsible for. He saw himself 00:29:30.660 --> 00:29:34.059 as a patriot, a martyr misunderstood by history. 00:29:34.279 --> 00:29:37.920 And then on April 15th, 1998. Just as there's 00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:39.339 talk of handing him over to an international 00:29:39.339 --> 00:29:43.059 tribunal, he dies. Heart attack or something 00:29:43.059 --> 00:29:45.359 else. The official cause was a heart attack in 00:29:45.359 --> 00:29:47.759 his sleep. But there's widespread suspicion that 00:29:47.759 --> 00:29:49.640 he committed suicide by taking an overdose of 00:29:49.640 --> 00:29:52.140 medication, perhaps to avoid ever facing a real 00:29:52.140 --> 00:29:54.759 trial. We'll never know for sure. And his funeral. 00:29:55.150 --> 00:29:57.990 It wasn't a state affair. No, it was a pile of 00:29:57.990 --> 00:30:00.670 old car tires and rubbish. They burned his body 00:30:00.670 --> 00:30:03.309 on a pyre in the jungle. A trash fire for a tyrant. 00:30:03.430 --> 00:30:05.809 It was such an ignominious end. No marble statue, 00:30:06.049 --> 00:30:07.970 no mausoleum, just the smell of burning rubber 00:30:07.970 --> 00:30:10.490 and smoke. But here's the final haunting detail 00:30:10.490 --> 00:30:13.400 that the source material mentions. Even today, 00:30:13.539 --> 00:30:16.019 there are these strange cultic activities at 00:30:16.019 --> 00:30:18.859 his crude gravesite. Local villagers go there 00:30:18.859 --> 00:30:21.599 to pray to him. They ask grandpa for lucky lottery 00:30:21.599 --> 00:30:24.380 numbers or for cures for malaria. It brings us 00:30:24.380 --> 00:30:26.140 right back to the beginning, doesn't it? The 00:30:26.140 --> 00:30:29.099 confusion of identity. To some, he's a monster. 00:30:29.819 --> 00:30:32.299 To others, a nationalist hero who fought Vietnam. 00:30:32.680 --> 00:30:35.400 To a few, he's a local spirit who can grant wishes. 00:30:35.539 --> 00:30:38.140 The man himself remains a complete cipher. It's 00:30:38.140 --> 00:30:40.200 like the ghost never really left. So when we 00:30:40.200 --> 00:30:42.299 pull back and look at the whole terrifying arc 00:30:42.299 --> 00:30:46.000 of Salaf Saar to Pol Pot, what is the final takeaway? 00:30:46.119 --> 00:30:47.799 What does it all mean? I think it's a profound 00:30:47.799 --> 00:30:49.880 warning about the danger of pursuing purity. 00:30:50.539 --> 00:30:53.220 He wanted a pure nation, a pure race, a pure 00:30:53.220 --> 00:30:55.519 revolution. He wanted to wipe the slate clean 00:30:55.519 --> 00:30:57.900 and start from year zero. But human societies 00:30:57.900 --> 00:31:00.240 are messy. They're built on history and compromise 00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:02.960 and incredible complexity. When you try to force 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:05.440 an ideology of absolute purity onto a society, 00:31:05.660 --> 00:31:08.400 the only way to achieve it is by removing the 00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:10.559 people who don't fit. And eventually you find 00:31:10.559 --> 00:31:12.779 that no one fits your perfect model, not even 00:31:12.779 --> 00:31:15.240 your closest comrades. He loved French poetry. 00:31:15.460 --> 00:31:17.940 He was a soft -spoken teacher. And in his own 00:31:17.940 --> 00:31:20.599 mind, he wanted to make his country great. And 00:31:20.599 --> 00:31:23.119 that is the terrifying paradox. He didn't set 00:31:23.119 --> 00:31:25.859 out to be a villain in his own story. He truly 00:31:25.859 --> 00:31:28.359 believed what he said in that final interview. 00:31:28.799 --> 00:31:32.119 I want you to know that everything I did, I did 00:31:32.119 --> 00:31:33.900 for my country. And that's the thought I think 00:31:33.900 --> 00:31:36.059 we should leave you with today. We often think 00:31:36.059 --> 00:31:40.119 of evil as the snarling, monstrous, easily identifiable 00:31:40.119 --> 00:31:42.630 force. But sometimes, maybe most of the time, 00:31:42.789 --> 00:31:45.789 evil is a soft -spoken teacher who believes so 00:31:45.789 --> 00:31:48.309 deeply in his own good intentions that he's willing 00:31:48.309 --> 00:31:50.970 to burn the entire world down to prove he's right. 00:31:51.190 --> 00:31:53.970 Good intentions, when they're warped by an extreme 00:31:53.970 --> 00:31:56.910 ideology and given unchecked power, can lead 00:31:56.910 --> 00:31:59.349 to the absolute worst of what humanity is capable 00:31:59.349 --> 00:32:02.109 of. Pol Pot was a ghost who ruled from the shadows, 00:32:02.190 --> 00:32:04.710 used a dozen names, and died claiming his conscience 00:32:04.710 --> 00:32:07.269 was clear. And that central mystery might be 00:32:07.269 --> 00:32:09.880 the scariest thing of all. Indeed. Thanks for 00:32:09.880 --> 00:32:11.380 Dining Deep with us. We'll see you on the next 00:32:11.380 --> 00:32:11.559 roll.