People go on and on about Nazis and their wholesale industrial genocide but never bring up the Khmer Rouge. They didn't bother with cattle cars and camps; they just beat you to death with sticks or smashed your skull in with rocks. In my opinion the Khmer Rouge is, by far, the most evil organization in modern history. The fact that Pol Pot was never executed and allowed to live out his life to his own "natural death" in 1998 is one of the greatest crimes of the century.
The industrial mechanization of the holocaust is a fascinating aspect of it that makes it very different from most genocides that involve partisan mass killing. Normally it involves an army just comming in and wiping out a people. For the Naitonal Socialists, it was an intrinsic part of their ideology, and a major aspect from socialism. They actually felt that it was so imperative to exterminate the Jews, that they realized simple brutality wasn't enough and a an industrial system had to be arranged.
With Rawanda, it was more like a traditional genocide, but the essence of mass media through the use of radios made the slaughter unique in that EVERYONE was involved in the genocide. Neighbors were out killing each other. The entire mass society was mobilized to slaughter everyone. It was a very different environment from the National Socialists who had to hide a lot of the murder from their own people who were agitated by anti-Jewish violence years earlier. Where the Nazis had to use propaganda to rationalize and then hide; the Rawandans used propaganda to incite.
However, the Khmer Rouge did something very different when it comes to genocides. They didn't do it to some conquered or subjugated people. They didn't do it with an occupying army. They just did it with the government and they did it to absolutely fucking everyone. No one was spared. Some groups were targeted more than others, but no one was safe. Genocides normally happen when a government targets someone they don't consider to be their own people. This government really did target their own people. They targeted their own party, their own government. Many surviving higher-up members of the Khmer Rouge still claim that they had nearly achieved Socialist perfection, and I tend to agree. They had truly almost become the perfect Socialist society by re-orienting everything along power dynamic lines and slaughtering everyone who showed even a hint of dissent.They didn't just kill people and depopulate cities, they devolved Cambodia into a lesser state of development than when they started in merely 4 years.
The Khmer Rouge are clearly one of the most evil organizations to have ever existed and each and everyone at the top should have been executed.
It is also not a surprise to me that Leftism was involved in one way or another with all 3 of my examples.
People go on and on about Nazis and their wholesale industrial genocide but never bring up the Khmer Rouge. They didn't bother with cattle cars and camps; they just beat you to death with sticks or smashed your skull in with rocks. In my opinion the Khmer Rouge is, by far, the most evil organization in modern history. The fact that Pol Pot was never executed and allowed to live out his life to his own "natural death" in 1998 is one of the greatest crimes of the century.
The industrial mechanization of the holocaust is a fascinating aspect of it that makes it very different from most genocides that involve partisan mass killing. Normally it involves an army just comming in and wiping out a people. For the Naitonal Socialists, it was an intrinsic part of their ideology, and a major aspect from socialism. They actually felt that it was so imperative to exterminate the Jews, that they realized simple brutality wasn't enough and a an industrial system had to be arranged.
With Rawanda, it was more like a traditional genocide, but the essence of mass media through the use of radios made the slaughter unique in that EVERYONE was involved in the genocide. Neighbors were out killing each other. The entire mass society was mobilized to slaughter everyone. It was a very different environment from the National Socialists who had to hide a lot of the murder from their own people who were agitated by anti-Jewish violence years earlier. Where the Nazis had to use propaganda to rationalize and then hide; the Rawandans used propaganda to incite.
However, the Khmer Rouge did something very different when it comes to genocides. They didn't do it to some conquered or subjugated people. They didn't do it with an occupying army. They just did it with the government and they did it to absolutely fucking everyone. No one was spared. Some groups were targeted more than others, but no one was safe. Genocides normally happen when a government targets someone they don't consider to be their own people. This government really did target their own people. They targeted their own party, their own government. Many surviving higher-up members of the Khmer Rouge still claim that they had nearly achieved Socialist perfection, and I tend to agree. They had truly almost become the perfect Socialist society by re-orienting everything along power dynamic lines and slaughtering everyone who showed even a hint of dissent.They didn't just kill people and depopulate cities, they devolved Cambodia into a lesser state of development than when they started in merely 4 years.
The Khmer Rouge are clearly one of the most evil organizations to have ever existed and each and everyone at the top should have been executed.
It is also not a surprise to me that Leftism was involved in one way or another with all 3 of my examples.
“Nazism” “Leftism” Pick One.
I don't abide by Leftist historical revisionism.
National Socialism is Leftist. It is descendant from Fascism & State Socialism.
I don’t feel like an ideology that was vehemently opposed to communism can accurately be described as “left”.