Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 133 - The Khmer Rouge Part 1: Revolutionary Snitching

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Part 1 of 4 on the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge sources for all 4 episodes: Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison A Cambodian odyssey The Pol Pot Regime When The War Was Over: Cambodia And The Khmer Rouge Revolution Cambodia: Year Zero Vickery, Micheal. Cambodia, 1975-1982 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me, as always, in this probably most depressing series we've ever done. Nick. Uh, I don't know why. Yeah, this is the good, this is the series you're like, I wish I was at NTC again.

Simmer down. Not quite. Um, so Nick, when I say the words Khmer Rouge, do rouge do they mean anything like do those spark anything in your head murder murder that's that's pretty fair actually that's the that's the entire series thank you for uh thank you for paying attention uh um so yeah i think so going into this i realized that this not only fits our podcast because it involves a lot of military

action but also um western knowledge on the cambodian genocide it's not good um it's a very complex situation that people probably don't realize the ins and outs of nor like absolutely most people just assume that, for instance, the Cambodian genocide is just the Khmer Rouge starving all of its own people, which is not true. Or they don't realize there's specific ethnicities and religions targeted during this time. They also don't realize that the U.S.

had a hand in creating the Khmer Rouge. Really? Yeah, it's not great. CIA? No, it's not great. CIA? No, not this time. Though not kind of. Well, we'll get there. And I've

been researching this for a couple months since normally these long series require a couple books to go through. Yeah, I imagine. How's your brain? I am psychically damaged this is the most depressing amount of research I've ever

done and it's weird because like you know my the thesis that I had to write in order to get my degree was on the Armenian genocide because I studied genocides this is worse really for so much it's just so bleak and hopeless um so i'm gonna start off i'm

gonna start off every episode of the series with a content warning or a trigger warning of everything just fucking everything just so much just if you have some kind of trigger this series will do it um and also, someone that knew that I was researching this requested that we do another fun animal fact thing. So a long time ago, Rich and I talked about Unit 731,

which before now was probably... Bullshit, I wanted to do that one, but I missed it, of course. The NTCE, which was probably the bleakest episode I believe someone's trying to do like a March Madness bracket of our most depressing episodes I look forward to seeing it

after the series and whenever she had heard enough she could request a fun animal fact so Nick that power is now in your hands all right so how do I use this power do I

it's like taking a knee like I'm gonna need an animal fact oh there's no like secret word for it like platypus and then it just happens I need explicit commands that you need an animal fact how many do you have already lined up I have a website called

goodnews.org of 10 animal facts to make you smile, which should be enough to get us through the first episode. Yeah, like I said, I have a pronunciation guide, so I'm going to try not to fuck up Cambodian names. We all know that's not going to work. I'm going to fuck them up. I'm sorry. If there's any cambodians listening i love y'all i apologize ahead of time um also this is not going to be an exhaustive history this is not like all of this is not the cambodian history podcast i'm my main goal was attempting to do the most easily... That'd be something. Right. Woefully unqualified. Right.

What my goal was is to create an easily consumable primer on the Cambodian genocide and maybe the most easily consumable one in the Western world in English. I don't know if I'm going to... I'm not sure if I'm going to hit that, but I'm going to try. So the reason

why we're doing this is that this genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge is one of the worst crimes in modern history carried out by a government by its own people. And the Khmer Rouge is one of the most insane homicidal governments in human history.

So much so that even ISIS would probably think they took it a bit too far. Yeah. Now, this genocide and the Khmer Rouge is probably the first thing, or like the killing fields or S-21, which we'll talk about in episode three um it's probably the first thing when western minds think of cambodia think of because this is very recent history like this shit was resolving itself while i was alive um you only missed it by a couple years uh so like this is very recent history fucking recent yes um like most people think that like when we think of genocides we're thinking the holocaust or the Armenian genocide which

are you know 100 years ago in some cases obviously the Rwandan genocide happened and you know the Bosniak genocide happened and things like that but most people like to think that we are so far past that.

But we are not. We're definitely not. So in genocide studies, which is the field that I come from, the actual... That's going to be the worst studies. It's real grim. It's a study of history, obviously, but it's more of a study of historical human psychology. The actual acts of killing or the industrialized violence that some of these regimes create is not the most important part of the study or the crime, in my opinion. It's how a nation of normal people tore themselves apart and how we always generally think.

I know I've had Rich on this show a whole bunch of times. And we've talked about Nazis fucking for probably 50 hours at this point. And we always come to like, oh, they must be fucking crazy people. They're not that's why one of the most uh aptly titled books ever is a book called ordinary men about people who committed the holocaust uh it's the study of how you take like normal functioning rational human beings and turn them into animals um and it's because humans are kind of bleak if you push them the right way and And we're going to talk about how exactly that happened. Isn't that fun, Nick?

Aren't you happy? Yay. Yeah. I'm so sorry. Where's my whiskey? There it is. But in order to get to what became democratic Kampuchea, we have to talk a little bit about the history of cambodia

uh cambodia has had many different names over the years um has had several different empires and kingdoms uh the most important and the one that pol pot the leader of the khmer rouge would attempt to um kind of reflect is the khmer empire though he's a big dumb idiot and completely misunderstood a lot of things. So a lot of these different places encompass what we consider Cambodia or bits and pieces of it. But for simplicity's sake, there's only a few names I'm going to use for Cambodia during this podcast. Cambodia, Angkor, and Kampuchea. I will use those terms interchangeably. I know the Cambodia one. Yeah, that one sticks out.

Angkor is used... Keep us ships there. So it means Angkor Wat, which is a religious site. And it is used interchangeably by the Khmer Rouge to mean the government, the people, and also the nation, despite the fact that they changed the name from Cambodia to democratic

Kampuchea. So like there's some, at some point they'll be like, do not do X and Y to anchor. And it means like the government, it's supposed to sound like an organic drink. Yeah, it kind of, yeah yeah it's the one

that will kind of make you blow slightly over in a breathalyzer test um yeah now uh cambodia has a long history of conflict for the most part against its neighbor vietnam uh and thailand uh which was then called siam these conflicts eventually led to the Cambodians being gang-stomped by pretty much all of their neighbors and losing control of their own affairs. And at one point, the Thai and the Vietnamese controlled Cambodian affairs together, leaving the Cambodian king in place as a powerless figurehead. This carried on until the 1800s. The Cambodian king was worried that eventually the two countries would get sick of all the red tape of like playing that they have a king in place and just kind of absorb

them officially and more importantly the king was probably worried that he wouldn't get to be king anymore which is what most kings are worried about I have to get a fucking job fuck that that's when the Europeans saw an end. A British agent noted that the Cambodian king would easily throw himself at any European power in order to preserve what he considered Cambodia. They eventually found that power in France. Thankfully, France has a not problematic history in Southeast Asia. Oh, wait. Yeah, it does. France

had already been over the border in what we consider Southern Vietnam, which would actually become South Vietnam for a very short period of time. And we're making plans to take over the rest of it, so moving next door to Cambodia would only make things easier for them.

The king invited the French in to become Cambodia's official protector in 1863. He thought the French would be there to ward off invasions and threats, which is just very naive. That's when the king got a taste of good old European colonialism. The French were not believing. Yeah. Steel. european colonialism uh the french were not believing yeah um that steel it's like you know they obviously were only being nice to southern vietnam why don't we invite them next door meanwhile the the the vietnamese in the south are like you fucking idiots you fucking losers wonderful self-owned um that's that's what we call an own goal of history. And like the French did this a lot.

Like they kind of snuck their way into Vietnam through Catholics. Those bastards. Like they had like Catholic missions because, you know, normally religious missions are, are one of many like fingers on the hand of, of white imperialism. And they have like going somewhere else with that.

Normally, the Catholics do. And what would happen is the Catholics would have a mission there, and then it would be attacked by the locals, because like, get the fuck out of here. We don't want you here. And then they would reach out and be like, hey, we're being attacked for just being Catholic. So the French would send soldiers in to be like,

hey, if you attack the Catholics, you attack France. And they're like, oh, wait, we actually need more room to secure these churches. We should probably expand up. You know what? We should just make a settlement. Sounds awful. The roots are just in too deep at that point. At that point, it's cancer and you can't cut things out anymore.

cancer and you can't cut things out anymore um so yeah the french took over everything while the monarchy remained and the king's power extended literally as far as the house he lived in um you know just which honestly he was probably fine with he's like wait i don't actually have to do anything and i can still be king word this works fine for me yeah well colonialism is terrible and imperialism is evil the french should carry out some reforms that i guess we have to point out are good like outlawing slavery so good job i guess all right you know then unfortunately they didn't just like leave uh they continue to be there and do french stuff um throughout all this time there's a cut there's constant revolts in indo-china which is what the French called all these areas.

And these revolts would eventually be taken over by the Japanese during World War II. And there was some anti-Japanese movements that were fomented by the French, the US, and Japan being shitty. But there was also pro-Japanese parts, mostly because the Japanese would be like yeah if you side with us we'll let you be independent but in reality it means it's like a puppet government and then you know Japan lost so like the Cambodian Japanese puppet

state was in place for about four months and then Japan tasted nuclear hellfire and surrendered and then they weren't a state anymore and france immediately reabsorbed them all um because that's what they're gonna do um it's like your mom breaking up with the uh the guy and then getting back with the other guy yeah except like much darker way because it's not like they had a choice. That's true.

Now, there's a thing that always happens when, like, this happened throughout most places in World War II, right? Like, especially in Asia, where Japan swooped in and took over a lot of colonial territories. The people that rose up against Japan for being assholes realized, like, wait, we don't want the white people to come back either like we should just keep doing this uh so like nationalism movements start uh and that happened in cambodia and vietnam and laos um or lao sorry um and that they like these national and political movements warmed their way back into cambodian life, all while France was trying to control it. And the French allowed them to form a government and found political parties and stuff, hopefully to try to keep them to stop shooting at them, which wasn't going to work because they're still there and they're still in obvious control. But in the middle of all of this was a king, King Sihanouk. King Sihanouk was a fucking asshole.

He was technically the head of state, and trying to juggle politicians, the French, and various militant groups that wanted Cambodia to be free and independent. The king wanted independence, and he told them that. But he didn't want to throw his weight behind any movement in particular for fear he would lose so like he didn't yeah he didn't want to be like actually the French

are good because like all these dudes have guns over here but he didn't want to be like actually independence is good because then all those dudes have guns over there so he was a huge douche about it and just kind of played both sides he talked to the French about constant backpedaling yeah yeah he I mean he's So he was a huge douche about it and just kind of played both sides.

He talked to the French about... Just constant backpedaling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's a king, but he'd make a great elected politician, which he will try to do. Spoiler alert. So he talked to the French about gradual movement into independence slowly over time, but also hung out with the Viet Minh, uh, who like were a militant group against the French in Vietnam, but in Indochina in general, and they had camps in Cambodia.

Uh, so like he would go hang out with militants actively fighting the French and then go talk to the French. Like, no, you're right. The Viet Minh are bad actually. Uh,

and he wasn't like, some people would consider it being like a sly politician, but he was actually just a giant fucking coward, as we'll find out. One of the groups operating at the time was a loose collection of leftists and non-leftists, whose main goal is to kick the French out and get rid of the king.

They became known as the Khmer Isarak, or the Free Khmers. Khmer being the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia, hence Khmer Isarak or the free Khmers. Khmer being the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia, hence Khmer Rouge, all this other stuff. Yeah. This would become the gene scene of the Khmer Rouge. One of the things that the French had done in colonial rule was allow mostly Cambodian ethnic Khmers,

normally the children of the elite class, to travel to France to study. One of the men who traveled to France to learn was the son of a rich landowner who had connections to the Cambodian royal family and actually grew up in the royal palace from time to time. His name was Salath Sar,

but he would go down in history mostly known by his revolutionary nickname, Pol Pot. Because Salath Sar, but he would go down in history mostly known by his revolutionary nickname, Pol Pot. Because Salath Sar kind of sucks. I mean, it's... I forget exactly why he changed his name, because he didn't need a nickname, but most people in Cambodia did

not know his real name. Actually, most people didn't even know his fake name, but whatever. I mean, nom de gares are fucking cool. They make you feel like a spy and shit uh it like it's kind of funny because he'd end up going to like the same circle of schools and stuff as like ho chi minh just several several years later uh yeah um so he studied radio electronics in paris but was a terrible fucking student um in high school he was held back for a couple years and in college he kept failing due to him being a cambodian elite however he was given multiple

chances to pass each test uh while he was there he joined some marxist reading circles uh and admitted he didn't actually care all about reading about karl marx saying he didn't understand it but that didn't stop him. He was a guy that to me really seemed like he wanted to be like an academic or like an ideologically heavy brain man or

whatever. He wanted to be like the guy but he was really dumb at everything he fucking did. He failed like every until he got his like his teaching certificate he pretty much was known as being untrustworthy and dumb uh he wasn't like charismatic at all um yeah like he failed his way through reading circles in school and college and the only reason he kept staying afloat is like he had money.

Well, his family had money. He didn't have money. Van Wilder vibes. I cannot imagine Pol Pot being that much of a party animal because he was such a downer. No, I definitely would believe he's such a downer. Yeah.

He ended up joining the French Communist Party, though, like, because it just seemed like the right thing to do for him. However, he didn't really seem to understand any of it. And some... I've talked to people about this. They said this might have thing to do for him. However, he didn't really seem to understand any of it. And I've talked to people about this.

They said this might have something to do with him not understanding French. It's complete bullshit. He spoke fluent French from the time he was a child. So he knew exactly what was going on around him. Now, one theorist and asshole he did fall in love with and completely understood was Joseph Stalin. It's going to be a bit of a problem. He also

dabbled in reading some Kropotkin, but he kind of missed some lessons there. And Pol Pot watched as things got worse and worse in Cambodia and decided that he should return and become a full-time revolutionary, or at least

dabble in it in real life like he wanted he wanted nothing more to do to be like in a band of militants out in the jungle and shit like for like clout i guess um because he wasn't like an ideological heavyweight he barely could have a functioning like theory-based argument about anything he believed in which is something that happened... We'll talk about it a little bit more. When he goes to China and meets Mao Zedong and stuff, everybody's like, this guy's a fucking idiot.

Who invited this guy? Yeah. But he decided he should return. Well, I mean, things had changed a lot while he'd been gone. While he had been in school in france the the french had gotten their head kicked in by the vietnam at dnbn fu and they could no longer continue to fight uh for control for the colonial territories so it gave cambodia

full independence in 1953 and things had immediately gone fucking nuts so like the the political life of cambodia is absolute chaos right now. Everything that has... Anything that anybody knows how to work and everything since they've been alive is now completely uprooted. So the political realm of everything in Cambodia is uncharted waters. And he knew that he wanted to be there to try to, I don't know, instill his version of communism. Though that's the Khmer Rouge side of the story. What really happened is he failed every single fucking test

he took for two years and got kicked out of school and could no longer stay in France because he had a student visa. The independence thing just kind of gave him a good excuse. So Pol Pot returned to Cambodia the same day the king had fired the entire

government and began ruling as a dictator yeah so good timing during and since the end of the first Indo-Chinese war the second being the American war in Vietnam in some circles Cambodia had found itself in the middle of a

multi-sided civil war and things had only gotten worse with the king acting like a dick all the time as kings generally do we don't talk about good kings no such thing because even if they're a good king they're only good for a king because they're still a king I played civilization

I was a pretty good king I mean look I know we're both biased here but we both make terrible kings actually yeah you're right I kind of fucked my society. Yeah, I mean, like, because even like Empire Total War, I'm like, everybody has a ton of money. This is great. And I realized, like, the only reason why I have so much money is because I conquered the entire fucking world. And the tax rate in my, like, colonized area is like 90%.

But yeah. colonized the area is like 90 percent uh but yeah um like what happened was the king was being such a dick that other princes because he has several uh sons all started their own armies to try to overthrow the king who remember they're all related to so like yeah that's awesome um whole on the rest of his reading circle members who had returned with him decided to join the Khmer Viet Minh, the Cambodian offshoot of the boys who had killed all my grandpa's friends and led him into a death march. No shade, just facts. And I,

with a few episodes I could bring that up, like, I'm connected to this one, kinda. I mean, that's a good connection, I guess. Yeah, I mean, like, eventually we're gonna do a whole series on Dien Bien Phu, and like... Ooh, I can't wait. Yeah, and like, I can't call up my grandpa and be like, Hey, what happened?

One, he's dead. And two, when he was alive, he told me to go fuck myself. So, like, it isn't really a matter. Go ahead and get a hold of the medium. Yeah. The medium's going to be like, Hmm, you're not going to want me to repeat this. It's all just French slurs.

mediums that'd be like, hmm, you're not going to want me to repeat this. It's all just French slurs. So, what happened was is the Viet Minh who had kicked out the French and were now attempting to form governments in North Vietnam also had branches in Cambodia.

A lot of Cambodians fought with the Viet Minh, so they're like, okay, let's get some of that over here in Cambodia. And most of this is Vietnamese controlled. Their cadres are all commanded by veterans of the war in Vietnam. Very few Cambodians are pretty much promoted, which is one of the huge problems that Pol Pot has. And it's a problem that both sides kind of have um they kind of fucking hate one another okay i see yeah a lot of hate going around yeah and like historically i mean even though like you know one of the major

parts of communism technically is like international solidarity the vietnamese and the cambodians fucking hate one another um this because like that's just like national history going way far back in time uh it's like you know during the soviet union times armenian azerbaijan were technically brothers and communists but communism but then immediately started murdering one another like oh it's all window dressing uh you you can't paper over a thousand years of animosity with like karl marx's book it doesn't work like people really like for it to work in their heads but then it never does people fucking hate one another um and you know there's legit there's legitimate historical beefs and then there's illegitimate historical beefs this is mostly on territory

uh so you know take that for what you will um but well all this is going on um Pol Pot decided to back out of the Viet Minh the Cambodian branch of the Viet Minh here because he

realized that he was never going to get anywhere he really hates Vietnamese people personally. He saw that they were mostly being used as grunts, which I don't know why he considered himself above that. He was just a fucking college dropout.

He wasn't like a fucking veteran of a grizzled war or a tactician. He was just some guy. I once had to take a test for three hours and just did patterns on the test. You have any idea how many tests I failed in France? That's the case.

I'd be pretty high up there. In that case, call me the Viet Minh fucking commander. Eventually, the king of Cambodia and Hanoi, North Vietnam at the time, came to an agreement where the North Vietnamese government pulled all of their agents and stuff out and stopped supporting the Cambodian-Vietnam branch. That was in 1954.

So all the people on the fence of bailing out kind of had no choice uh and they also didn't have a lot of their own grassroots networks because they've been kind of working with uh uh the the vietnamese communists this whole time right so like that uh fuck what now uh well thankfully for them there'd be more driving forces uh mostly the king again because he decided it'd be a great time to get involved in electoral politics uh because he realized there's a lot of groups in cambodia that were pro-independence really liked how like certain things are being ran but also didn't like a king so he's like cool i won't be a king i'll be a fucking dictator instead same thing different title same Same, but different. So he quit being king, demoted himself to being a prince,

kept the monarchy in place just without a king, and then stole an election. Sounds like he just did extra steps. Yeah, he absolutely did. He was just as bad of a technically civilian head of state as he was a, a King. Um, but people actually still liked him. It's really,

some people liked him. Yeah. Uh, I don't get it, man. There's, there's a lot of really big bastards from throughout history. People like Bill,

people will fawn over them when they walk through the streets and shit. And that's even people that, you know, aren't, you know, if you don't fawn over them your family disappears or whatever you know um if he was good

looking i guess he's better looking than pol pot i'll give him that much um now meanwhile pol pot wouldn't get his teaching license and began teaching history french and morals at a private school which i don't know about you pay for that license yeah yeah

his family had money all right yeah I forgot which all sound like you know wonderful things you want your future communist revolutionary leader teaching French and morals at a private school and the

the government continued to go to hell around him see anuk it turned out had a very impressive ability not in governments but in pissing people off um the south vietnamese government attempted to sponsor a coup against him which failed the the north was funding pretty much all leftist opposition and the u.s was fueling a right-wing movement led by a guy named sam sorry um so like if you have like your fingers in the in the cambodian pie at this point that certainly couldn't mean anything worse than how i just worded it um i don't know if i would want that pie everyone is attempting to to oust cyanide from power like there's like five different sides that all fucking hate him.

It's great. Now, Sari had previously been the ambassador to London, but was fired after running a pepper smuggling ring and lashing his servants with a whip. That's a thing? He was running it out of the embassy.

Incredible stuff. Absolutely incredible. I mean, honestly, running a pepper smuggling ring and abusing people below you sound like two things that make you very popular in london um but it made him very unpopular uh in cambodia because when he returned uh he realized that cnuk really fucking hated him and the the CIA approached him to overthrow Cianuk because they realized, well, this guy's lived in the West. Obviously, he enjoys capitalism because he's smuggling shit and beating people.

This guy's pretty cool. They're like, look, you're a big dumb idiot, but we like you more than Cianuk. You want to be on our side? He said, sure. But Sam Sar sorry was so bad at being like a secret squirrel guy leading a coup uh that seenook immediately found out about it and uh how the fuck are you that bad i don't know uh and he openly talked about sam sorry's

uh plot to overthrow him in public during a speech like imagine you're an ambassador like in the crowd with like all the other dignitaries and stuff and like this motherfucker right here's plotting to kill me and you're like ah fuck i gotta leave the country uh nobody knows what happened to him he vanished so we can assume he is very dead uh almost certainly assassinated by by uh the king or sorry the president whatever king president how do you when you get out of it like that like what's your i don't even know what my first reaction would be i'd be like i mean it's one of those like record scratch bet you're wondering how i ended up here yeah like oh man i'm fucked i am so fucked you know and that's

when you like turn around to look for your ca handler and just see a cartoonish dust cloud from where he ran away. He gives you the thumbs up before the speech, like, you're doing great. And then you turn back, he's gone. Just going into the bush dressed in CIA stuff and coming back out, dressed as a Cambodian clapping his hands. Yeah.

Now, eventually, Sihanouk decided to stop playing around this electoral politics thing and just made himself president for life um yeah which is just a thing that you can do apparently uh after this polpot ran off from his day job uh to rejoin a vietcong camp and dedicate himself to revolution full-time according to him at this this point in time, while all this is going on, Nikita Khrushchev began his process of de-Stalinization of the USSR. Now, like we had pointed out, that Pol Pot was a huge Jay Stahls fan. He saw this as a betrayal, so he turned his back on the idea of Marxism

or Soviet-style communism as a whole. You know his back on the idea of marxism or soviet style communism as a whole he thought the soviets keep getting brought up this will not be the last time um well this is like you know that meme like friendship with this guy over new best friend this guy this is this this is this part of the story where he's like i'm fucking swearing off the soviet union they suck uh and he thought that they needed to come up with their own version of cambodian style communism which he would end up just being like really into maoism uh instead so he just took china's idea and called it cambodian for the most part um now pol pot and his fellow revolutionary Sen, believed that the revolution could only come to Cambodia if all had come before it,

that being the king, the Cambodian state, all of that would be destroyed first. So like Cambodian communism to succeed, everything else had to die. Pol Pot's version of this would ignore city dwellers entirely, considering them enemies, poisoned by modern life.

You're in a city? Anybody in a city. You're an enemy. Oh, fuck. I grew up in a city. Nick, I have to tell you something. There's so many points of this story where I realize, like, I'm dead. We would not have made it for for three fucking days after camaro

would have been elected or not elected but come to power uh like just they believe just living in a city would make you counter-revolutionary somehow oh cool instead he would try to grow his movement in the rural areas from rice farmers who are very very poor and destitute he decided that the vmds government's goals were completely incompatible with his own, despite the fact that they kept bankrolling everything he did to own the king. Pot wanted to overthrow the government, but Le Juan and Ho Chi Minh didn't want him to start another war, revolutionary or otherwise, because it's

1963 right now, and Vietnam is going through some shit. And they're like, look, we really don't need this to get any worse. Just pipe the fuck down and let us handle our business. We'll get back to you, Cambodia. It turns out that he wouldn't

listen and things would only get worse. He pressed on the gas. Pot. gas pot, pull pot. That is, I feel weird calling him pot, like some level of familiarity or something like pot short for something. Pull pot,

pull pot, travel to China and made friends with many of the ruling members of the country. And that it's there that he witnessed the cultural revolution. Now i'm not going to do like a history lesson on the chinese cultural revolution but it was a nationwide purge aiming to destroy remnants of the past and end traditions thought to be kind of revolutionary which ended up just being an insane orgy of violence and famine it turns out um and when he's when pol pot saw the cultural revolution he really liked what they were doing like he's like this is a very good idea but they didn't go far enough uh which is a huge fucking problem and he spoke to various members of the chinese government

and they kind of realized like this guy's really dumb we can use him like there's no light behind those fucking eyes he returned to Cambodia and broke up with the VC deciding it was time to start a war in his country in 1969 nice I have to say it whether North Vietnam

liked it or not so the North broke off the relationship entirely refusing to give them any weapons or or money or or food at that point anything breakup yep fortunately for pol pot china was like we got you guys don't worry about it okay because remember he's like we have a useful idiot in place at this point it's important to remember that china is like we don't give a fuck about this guy we don't care about Cambodia, but he wants to fight. We'll give him weapons. And then he, one, he owes us.

And two, he's a fucking idiot. So we can control him. Like they do not think highly of Paul fucking pot at all. Imagine how many times they said he's an idiot. Come on, come on. And like, it should be clear. Pol Pot thought himself equal to Mao Zedong during all of this he's like no I am I am as smart and capable as this and I mean I'm not a Maoist by any means

I have no nice words to say about Mao Zedong but for Pol Pot to say that is like to think that and act like that is kind of incredible that would be like a Maoedong bag? I bought it in Chinatown in Vancouver, Canada. I had to. I remember when you got it. Yeah. It would be like Enver Hoxha of Albania thinking he's on level with Joseph Stalin. Oh, Albania. Shout out to you.

Yeah, yeah. What up, Albania? The whole concept is kind of out there. But Pol Pot got guns from China, so he went and did gun stuff. While China was lining this up, someone else had another idea of a way to overthrow the government.

The United States! Go ahead and hit the CIA bell, because they're back. The CIA and the United States backed nationalist Lon Nol, who was the head of the Cambodian military, to lead a coup to take over. So Sihanouk fled Cambodia and jumped on a plane to China, where he met with Chinese

officials who were also in talks with Pol Pot at the same time. They urged Pol Pot to work with the prince and to take down Lon Nol. Now, remember, the prince is pretty popular. I mean, I would say moderately, people were not a fan of Long Nol, fucking hated him. And obviously, people were not fans of what was happening in Cambodia. But they realized that Sihanouk, he's a bastard, but he's stable. With everything going on around us, Sihanouk's our best bet. So the US kicked him out using law and law. And this isn't much of a secret, even at the time.

So when I say that the Chinese urged the prince, king, dictator, whatever the fuck he's calling himself this week, to work with Pol Pot, they're giving him legitimacy. Most people in Cambodia have no fucking idea who Pol Pot is almost nobody more people

know who I am right now but everybody knows who fucking Sihanouk is it's like when a nobody politician from like some bumfuck nothing town runs for an important political office and like Barack Obama endorses

him now Pol pot originally wanted to tell the prince to go fuck himself because he didn't want to work with him he's a monarchist you know and not to mention he was just plotting a civil war against him but zhao enlai who was the premier of china at the time told him it'd be a good idea for the legitimacy that they work together uh now so so with, not to mention, Cianuk didn't know the fucking first thing about Pol Pot.

He just knew that he was plotting something and also kind of saw him as a useful idiot. They're like, well, if China says that he'll work with me, I'll work with him. Everybody knows who I am. Clearly, I'm going to be the one in charge. Plot twist. Spoiler alert.

That does not fucking happen. Oh, I imagine. The world would have been a much better place if someone just put Seadook's dumb ass back in power. But they decide to work together, despite the fact they never fucking met or spoke directly. So with that, the two former enemies got together under the grand unifying theory of fuck that guy.

In this case, law null. They formed the National Unified Front of Campuchea. Or by its French initials, wait for it, FUNK. Oh my god. Hell yeah. I laughed way too hard when I found that out it's in french its initials were funk like imagine you're living in like a capital under siege or whatever which happens right and they're like we're surrounded who are we surrounded by the funk and they're just blaring fucking come on

down to funky town the the funk is all around us you cannot stop the funk um and they went to war um now to rally behind uh rally people to this new cause cnk was the face of it he gave long radio broadcasts to people telling them to support his new comrade pol pot and their arm struggle despite the fact he had no fucking idea who this guy was uh and most people who joined had no fucking clue who pull pot was what's incredible is like we talk about dictators we've talked about dictators a lot in this show there's always some form of personality cult right like you see in just a stalin uh saddam hussein you name it you see in all these people none of that shit happens here Pol Pot doesn't

want anybody to know who the fuck he is which is very strange is that his strat we'll go a little into it a little bit more when we talk about how they start administering their new country that they took over but Pol Pot is not one for the spotlight which is very

weird for a dictator especially with the funk. You gotta put a face to the funk. Now, with this new legitimacy, the funk rapidly grew in size. I'm not gonna not laugh at that. I'm sorry.

It's awesome. But something else happened that probably made all of this possible and would certainly change the course of Cambodian history for all time. As we talked about, Cambodia had long been a hideout and stronghold of the VC and the NVA in the Army of North Vietnam. Use it at various points as well. For resupply, hiding from American patrols, bombers, etc. That was actually one of the reasons that the US

supported law in Knoll. He was a hardline anti-communist and would not technically allow them to set up shop in the country anymore. And he promised to use the army to root out the communists, VC, whoever the fuck they call themselves. he was going to kill them all. And he did this through terrible military operations and also just horrible human rights violations, crimes against humanity, extrajudicial executions, secret spy shit, disappearing people off the street. If you were going to make a regime that was scientifically proven to turn people against it, you'd make this fucking government. Oh, wow. Not to mention, we're going to talk about a lot coming up when it comes to the US being involved in Cambodia, invading and dropping ungodly amounts of bombs on it. The law no government was in support of this. Really? Because remember, they're not targeting the Cambodian military.

They're targeting the VC in Cambodia. Oh, right, yeah. So while Cambodians saw American planes bombing the fucking shit out of them, their own government was like, yeah! Which is bad. So even though Pol Pot and the Vietnamese had a falling out, the VC needed Cambodia to keep being a VC stronghold to kind of be a side door to fight the American supply lines.

The works. So the regular North Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia. This led to a massive bombing campaign by by the u.s and cambodia as well as spillover from the vietnam war including a land invasion um the u.s could not have picked a worse person to get a handle on cambodia law noel was cartoonishly corrupt and only appointed people he liked uh to important positions were as corrupt as him or paid him directly or were just his family members. Also, he was

huge into astrology and he had a government-funded sage that would tell him who he should employ based on their star signs and shit. He's very fucking weird. He's a cavercorn. You him yeah yeah like oh he just like green lit a bombing run on that entire village of innocent people cancer move yeah oh what a cancer

yeah uh so that's the u.s opened like a fire hose of money at him as they do uh in situations like this mostly just to keep the government running because law noel was stealing so much money the government was fucking bankrupt despite the fact that like he had a blank check from the united states like look we will give you as many weapons and as much money as you need just keep fighting communists and law noel's like sorry lost that last hundred billion could you send me more it's like cartoonish amounts of money coming out of his pockets yeah um this led to his uh his army completely ignoring even the most basic training because he had stolen all that money too uh yeah as well as their paychecks so like people would be conscripted or like kidnapped off the street to fight in the army and then they just not get paid for it because all of their

money would get stolen by their commanders or whatever um nobody's really sure how big of law how big law knoll's army ever truly was given like so how the money system worked is like it's actually the exact same thing that happened in afghanistan so i know this intimately because i had to live in this um the logistics system is bad right they're not just sending out checks to people you'd have actual pay officers like the u.s army used to have so like um you know you're the the lump sum for your company or your brigade whatever's money would be given to the brigade commander and he would steal some of it before passing it down and then they would steal some before passing down they would before you get to the actual soldiers nothing would be left so it became the best interest of the overall commander to inflate

how many soldiers he had because he would be able to steal more money i can't imagine the soldier all the way on the bottom here's your bobby pin at that point it's just one real soldier like i am the only soldier in this division, and I'm still not getting paid. Everybody else, they call them ghost soldiers. Soldiers that only exist on the books so commanders can steal more money and then sell more supplies. Could you imagine he's the only one in line and the pay officer is just calling up random fucking people's names? I saw this firsthand with the Afghan National Police and for lesser except the afghan civil order police where like we would have to go these police stations to take roles and there'd be like three people there and they're supposed to be 25

meanwhile the commander pulls up on like a brand new toyota crow he's like what's up guys like you motherfucker fucking balling dude and nobody has weapons because they all mysteriously disappeared and the commander have like a glock handgun that costs more than like his his yearly paycheck like oh cool all right um but uh yeah it was it was all bad um and that meant like the he functionally had an army that only existed on paper. Um, though the U S had been dicking around in Cambodia for years to classify documents show that they had been bombing the country at a somewhat limited basis since 1964. Um,

it really ramped up from 1969 to 1970 under president Richard Nixon. Uh, this bombing campaign was supposed to target the NVA and VC forces in support of Law and Knowles' ground attacks, but it overwhelmingly impacted civilians as well as crops because it was literally

carpet bombing by the very definition of it. So we're just destroying everything out in these rural areas, which is where the food is made. So we're just destroying the countryside. By the end so we're just destroying the countryside uh by the end of the american involvement in the vietnam war three times more bombs would be dropped on cambodia than japan during all of world war ii including the nuclear weapons oh cool um that's a lot yeah and that the u.s would also launch a horribly planned and thought

out ground invasion of cambodia in 1970 that accomplished absolutely nothing. But what this did do, all of this did do, was drive popular support away from Lon Nol if he was ever going to get any and directly towards the funk. Gotta use it while I can because they're not going to be the funk for much longer. Because at this point, the Khmer Rouge is becoming the funk. Like he is like most of the people that this place is recruiting from is the countryside. The same people who Pol Pot wants, like the cities are held by a law null because almost like most guerrilla wars,

the cities are held by the government and the countrysides, you know, Indian country, so to speak. So the countryside's military-age males are flooding into the ranks. And almost immediately, these guys would be taken away from anything that was not Khmer Rouge-based and given political training. and give him political training. Sat down and be given long Maoist and Pol Pot thought speeches rather than anything to do with what Sihanouk probably had in mind. So the Khmer Rouge is vastly more powerful than the rest of this coalition force.

And they're a coalition in really name only because Pol Pot knew when the time came, we got to kill these guys. Fuck. Fuck. Yeah, and in two years, in just two years, the Khmer Rouge quadrupled in size. And by now, Pol Pot, who was officially calling

himself by that name and not Salah Tsar, he had a few other nom de guerres at some point, but they're all important. They pretty much controlled the entire country that wasn't a city. Now, in areas under control by the Khmer Rouge, at this point, the funk is fucking done. They pretty

much don't exist. They've been muscled out. The officers who were like Sihanouk loyalists are fucking dead. So at this point, you can just consider the funk gone. The funk is dead. It at this point, you can just consider the funk gone. The funk is dead.

It always happens. Yeah. The Khmer Rouge is the disco of this coalition, I suppose. I don't know what came after funk. It was disco, I think. I don't know. Clearly not music historians.

Good thing we're not a... Although I did say we should be a Creed tribute podcast. I guess that's not going to happen anymore. Yes. So I would say that the Khmer Rouge did not welcome the funk with arms wide open. No. So they weren't Creed.

No. They welcomed them like Scott Stapp on a meth bender. Fuck. So in areas under control by the Khmer Rouge, they would draft everyone, military-aged males into their army and most boys,

underage people, into the cause. These are what were known as liberated zones, quote-unquote. But the rules they put in place while in control looked like something you'd expect to see in ISIS-administered Raqqa in Syria. Gambling, divorce, and drinking, and all use of narcotics was now illegal. Because when I think of communism, I think fun being illegal, not just like healthcare and food.

being illegal and not just like healthcare and food. I don't know. Yeah. Um, there was, uh, you know, forced communalization of goods. Um,

and like, they also, uh, like you couldn't have extramarital sex anymore. Like you couldn't, like if you were single hooking up, got, got you the wall.

It was really weird. It, which, which is why I actually think of like the khmer rouge almost as a cult more than the government because most governments don't control you like this even right like even the soviet union like if during like stalin's time if you fucking spoke up you'd get shot but you could fuck if you wanted like thank god i mean you don't have to hand it to stalin but at least he wasn't sending you to gulag for fucking um but like yeah like you at the time there's you know the the the

loose coalition is still trying to knit itself way together and the marriage is trying to centralize power but um they weren't very nice about it this is how you can see like they're not good at politics they don't the Khmer Rouge doesn't do politics. If you're against the Khmer Rouge, the Khmer Rouge simply kills you. That's just how it worked. This doesn't sound fun at all. It should be noted, in the

beginning, if you were a destitutely poor farmer, which a lot of these people were because bombs destroyed their food, people were starving to death. At first, the Kh lot of these people were because bombs destroyed their food. People were starving to death. At first, the Khmer Rouge was an improvement because at the time, they'd been raiding so many government stockpiles and shit. They had

food to hand out. They had rice and stuff, which nobody fucking had at this point because it had all been destroyed or centralized back to Phnom Penh, the capital, for defense and stuff. Right. So at this point, everybody's like, you know, it's kind of weird that we can't jerk off

or drink anymore, but at least we can eat. And that's the thing. Eventually, they were all thinking, this is just bullshit. Just because our leaders can't fuck doesn't mean we can't fuck. Right. And this is the case with a lot of how despotic groups or agencies or governments or whatever take over. It's like, okay, they fucking suck, but they're better than what came before. People even said this about ISIS. Obviously, ISIS is bad. However, when they took over, at least we didn't have to worry about bombs going off in the street and we got food. food so like if the bar is set that low not many people are gonna fuck that up so now let's talk

about how the khmer rouge fucks this up really i mean the existence of these farmers is incredibly insecure right like uh law and nobles forces are going to accuse them of working with the khmer rouge burn their fucking village down or they'll like americans are gonna carpet bomb their fields like at least the khmer Rouge being in charge, like, okay, we don't like them, but nobody's like shooting someone for just being here or blowing my

goddamn rice crop up. so like, like I said, aim so low that like you, it's hard to fail, but the Khmer Rouge fucks this up. That's my lifestyle. That's what I go by.

Yeah. It's like the Simpsons says aim so low that if you fail nobody even notices but you know as long as you told the line at this point existence in one of these quote unquote liberated zones

is better than it probably was before even if you couldn't jerk off or roll dice anymore but I'd be dead god damn it yeah like going through all the porter potters and randomly opening doors look for people jerking off every so every soldier is now executed um this is see this is like part two of why we die you first getting there you're just like why is there no locks on these portage ons oh you just wait actually one one of our comrades is going to stand in front of us and watch to make sure you're only pooping.

Fuck! When you pee, don't tap it more than twice. Yeah, if you tap it twice, it's kind of revolutionary. Shit! So this is where things get weird. Soon, they even controlled how people dressed. You couldn't dress any way you wanted. Instead, you'd have to dress like what they considered a traditional

peasant, which was like black pajamas, a scarf, and a hat. I'm a pretty simple guy. I like simple things. That's not... Alright. Even things that could be considered somewhat bourgeoisie were off-limits. This included

any jewelry or even normal shoes. Yes. The only shoes you could wear were sandals made from old car tires sounds like my mom she's like you can only have air walks growing up and they're passed down from your brother so they're already fucked god damn it heirloom air walks

oh fuck um another aspect of their life was collective self-criticism sessions um i believe these are these are called in other circles of leftist thought uh struggle sessions um now what these looked like was groups of soldiers farmers or whoever whatever your group was. If you're a farmer, you'd be around other farmers. If you're with soldiers or fighters, you'd hang out with other fighters, whatever group you found yourself in. Would we force this? Yeah. Because that's one weird thing about this is even though they're like, we're all in this together. Now let me divide you into groups. You'd be forced to sit daily in a room and point out everything that you did wrong that day everything people would also help you in this like actually you

fuck this up uh i looked at my penis in intimately today i got a boner kill him yeah um if you refuse to take part in this like you know fuck i'm not airing my dirty laundry out i'm not gonna narc on nick or whatever like if we're in a struggle session together because that's what this is it's it's enforced snitching so bad um if you refuse to take part or refuse to bring up anything anybody else did or brought up things like the deemed unimportant because like just to try to like get you to get the khmer rouge off your back like uh well you know like i i pooped more than twice today they're like that's not that important tell me about when that time you jerked off or whatever or like you drank or you gambled or you took more than your allotted amount of food like they wanted the serious shit you'd be punished like they thought that you'd be you're getting around this so you'd get punished so soon enough people were turning against everybody

in their circle to include themselves to narc against one another the the only person that was free from criticism and no criticism could be brought against was pol pot himself oh so that guy could just jerk off whenever he wanted to oh he was probably jerking off like mad uh and like it should be pointed out that if someone narked on you for something serious enough, you'd just get fucking killed. I'd be on the other side of the room if I got narked and be like, bro!

Really? I thought we were cool! That's the thing. They pretty much made friendships illegal in a certain sense because if I saw you do something bad, I have to fucking narc on you I would narc back if it was a lie on that guy that narc me out well that

you got it already that's when the problem is like that motherfucker I'm taking him down with me I saw him suck a dick like I bet you're gonna get executed with me motherfucker like people will legitimately do that but they would also do that against people they just didn't like oh yeah like you created like it's it's a culture of untrustworthy snitching all around.

So that's fun. Now, as the Khmer Rouge's power grew, they absorbed other factions within their unit, like Sianuk's Funk, other fringe groups there. At this point, you can consider the only opposition group to Khmer Rouge. They took more and more lands from Law Nul's government, and then private property became illegal, and then forced collectivizations began. At this point, they were...

Well, at least before this. They're erring on the way of like, actually, it's your choice. But it's one of those... they were using peer pressure at first. And then it was like, well, it's not really working enough anymore. So we're just going to steal it. And now, like, if there's someone like hoarding a ton of food and people are starving enough. OK, I agree with that.

That's not what was happening here. They were doing forced collectivization from villages that were already starving most of these villages already didn't have food because it already been stolen from them by law and null so like you are you're already victimizing people who have already been victimized against um though this was in line um with like one of pol pot's plans is like they believe that like oh we have to strangle off the government one of the ways we can do is we control all the all the the food uh creating areas now even if a lot of them are fucked up like some amount of food right mostly rice is being grown out here uh well now we control it so now we can strangle off

the panama we can strangle off the regime in Phnom Penh. The Viennese soldiers who had been sent over to topple Llan Nol came into conflict with the Khmer Rouge, leading to firefights between the two sides, as well as massacres. Oh. There wasn't a lot of prisoners being taken. One of the ways that the Khmer Rouge fought was like if you say like you're an nva garrison in some cambodian uh village if you get taken out they're gonna kill your the entire village too just because um and that goes into one of the things that one of the very weird

beliefs that pol pot believed in was that like he hated Vietnamese people. He hated Thai people too. Pretty much hated anybody who wasn't Cambodian. But he hated people from Vietnam even more. And just by being around them, he believed that you could be what he called a Cambodian with a Vietnamese person's conscious

or like a soul. You could be metaphysically infected just by being around a guy which is very fucking weird it's like communism woo pseudoscience I don't know so like if you know the

NVA or the VC took over your village you've been infected yeah it's very strange but we'll talk about that more because we'll talk more about his ideology next episode. I'm glad I haven't had to use the fun facts yet. I think the fun facts are really going to hit by episode three.

Okay. That's the, I think episode three is the worst podcast I've ever made in my life. Oh, okay. So we're done after episode three. There's a fourth. Oh,

okay. That's even better. Sweet. So, yeah. So that happened. But you'd be not super shocked because at this point, they've been working kind of unofficially

because North Vietnam doesn't like them. However, they're like, if we got rid of Long Nol, that'd be pretty sweet. So Vietnam is still working with them to some extent. But Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge started purging those elements from the ranks to include trainers that Vietnam sent over, actual military trainers. They got chased out of garrisons or shot.

They purged anybody with any connection to Vietnam, which will probably not shock anyone. When I say Pol Pot himself and his various connections to the Viet Minh and the Viet Cong, we're not purged weird. Right. Um, you know,

purge for V not for me. Um, this led to mass killings, um, which turned into a genocide, uh, against Vietnamese people in Cambodia. Um,

by the end of the Campuchian government, which is the Khmer Rouge government, nearly 100% of, uh, Vietnamese people in Cambodia, that includes Cambodians of Vietnamese descent, uh, would be forcefully removed or killed.

Um, even those of Khmer descent, but close to them and considered, uh, Vietnamese in consciousness would also or killed. Even those of Khmer descent but close to them and considered Vietnamese in consciousness would also be killed. This became one of a very strange part of a multifaceted genocide that would claim

millions. You could be considered Vietnamese for being married to someone from Vietnam, from being loosely related to someone from Vietnam, from being loosely related to someone from Vietnam, from having business connections or, you know, whatever. Did you touch a Vietnamese person? We got to kill you.

So that is one part of the Cambodian genocide. They also eventually banned religion. Monks were stripped naked and murdered. Pretty much all Buddhist clergy were killed. Faithful families were broken up and sent to different villages. Entire villages were moved around just to disorient people and make them helpless. Soon, even voicing your support for Seenook would end badly for you. Normally, pickaxe into the back of the head so they could save ammunition.

Yep. It's not that they ever had a shortage of ammunition. They just didn't believe in using it for that purpose. The only real penalty for breaking the law seemed to be a death sentence. And because they didn't want to waste their ammunition on anything other than war,

like I said, their death sentences were pretty much always carried out through a pickaxe or an axe handle to the back of your head. The Khmer Rouge now controlled the entire countryside, meaning they controlled the food supply for the entire country. Floods of people fearing reprisals for whatever connections they had to Vietnam or the old government, and terrified of this weird rubber sandal-wearing brigade,

flooded into Phnom Penh. Like all these people who had loose connections to the government or whoever was considered an enemy of the people to the Khmer Rouge, which was everybody at this point, ran to the capital for safety. This had the side effect of... Because the city had stockpiled food for the final battle, ran to the capital for safety. This had the side effect of... Because the city had stockpiled food for the final battle, so to speak, but not for this many more people than they originally had. So this burned through the city's food supply within days,

and there's no hope of anything else coming in. People were starving and demanding the government do something to protect them. The problem was, K Null's entire government both militarily and economically was propped up by the US and now the US is trying to get the fuck out of Vietnam and have nothing left to do with the

Southeast Asia region at all his army was running out of ammo and Null began to retreat into his own brain he began to only listen to soothsayers and mystics and once attempted to protect the capital with a circle made of magical

sand it did not work magic I assume it was imported by Saddam Hussein's personal wizard that's fucking awesome Saddam's like don't wizard. That's fucking awesome. Saddam's like, don't worry, I got a wizard for that.

Yeah, I got a guy. The U.S. said it would stop bombing Cambodia so the two sides can come together for peace talks. So when they stopped bombing, the Khmer Rouge just ignored it and attacked the capital. This oncoming horde of weird murder cultists terrify the cambodians of the capital the khmer rouge is unique in the annals of history that their leadership was mostly entirely known at least publicly um like some people in the khmer rouge kind of knew who was in control like at this point they they didn't even call themselves like Communist Party. They didn't publicly call

themselves anything. There was no... Yeah, they can't be a party because they can't have fun. Fun is strictly kind of revolutionary. So they just saw what amounts to be a faceless horde of people that they don't know who's in charge, except

they just know wherever they go, people die. So people are freaking the fuck out at this point uh even cnk who remember worked with them and was still tactically their ally admitted that he had no fucking idea who pol pot was what he looked like or what he stood for so they still don't know what this guy looks like yeah even within the liberated zones like they weren't in control of like the funk they weren't in control of the khmer rouge they simply called themselves the organization which is the most super villain ass shit on earth like you know the the organization is in charge now that's all you would know about them you didn't know who the

organization was or how many people was in it or anything. Right. That's super Illuminati. Right? It's Illuminati, but tie your sandals. The Khmer Rouge was as a group. The inner circle is known as the organization.

The Khmer Rouge was simply known as the Priyap Prey or the Forest Army. Yeah. that Khmer Rouge was simply known as the Priyap Prey, or the Forest Army. Ooh. Yeah. The people of the capital just knew that there's weird-ass motherfuckers coming from the forest, and I should be afraid.

And mostly because, remember, they're sweeping through these villages, taking what little food they have, killing anybody who stands up against them horribly. If they're just shooting people at this point i think most cambodians would have been like that would have been normalized because the massive amount of violence going on but like they're beating people to death that disagree with them which is like another layer of fear on top of that

plus they all look the same like wearing black pajamas fucking tire sandals the exact same scar absolutely no everybody just has a turgid heart on from not jerking off in eight years or black pajamas, fucking tire sandals, the exact same scarf. Cassidy belts. Everybody just has a turgid heart on it from not jerking off in eight years or whatever. Nobody's having fun. Permanent scowls on their face because they can't drink or gamble or whatever. They had to be terrifying. It's like a faceless enemy.

Now, on April 12th, 1975, the the u.s knew phnom penh was fucked and they evacuated every u.s citizen from the area which is not what you want to see if you live there like no the government itself fled uh setting up a government in exile near the thai border noel himself ran as fast as he fucking could. And when he learned that his name was on a Khmer Rouge execution list, he eventually made his way to the US. And he lived

at various points in Hawaii, Michigan, and California until he died in the late 1980s. Fuck, that's where we used to live. Yeah, we as a team are long Noel, except still alive. We'd be on the execution list. Fuck. Oh, we would

definitely be on the execution list. Now, one of the weird parts about this is he left behind his army to continue fighting, because of course he did. I would too. You guys keep on fighting. You guys got it. Yeah. I'll be in my palace

as you're stepping on a helicopter the first half kind of shaky you guys got him in the second yeah yeah uh get him right where you want him all over the place all right later uh now the that actually had a side effect at this point the soldiers knew that like we can't surrender we'll fucking die so this led to a battle in like Phnom Penh where like individual groups of soldiers and shit pretty much fighting

totally unorganized because all their generals have run at this point too like fighting to the death like hand to hand combat because they know if they surrender they're going to die anyway um last bit of masturbating off like the people that like i'm only a uh like an admin clerk i'm probably live i should probably crank one out now as i'm losing all these leave forms now um some people were captured, but they were almost uniformly executed

immediately after. So what remained of Law Null's Cambodian army fought to the death. But by April 17th, the fighting was over, and the city fell to the hands of Pol Pot and his weird pajama cult. And that is where we'll pick up next time. So this does not portend to good things, Nick.

No. Despite how comfortable pajamas are, that doesn't sound too comfortable. Yeah, it's almost like the Khmer Rouge could have ruined pajamas if they tried it harder. Oh, yeah. They didn't need to try any harder. If I was ever going to be sworn off in aesthetic

by someone who's doing something shitty in it, pajamas would be fucking illegal. You're only allowed to wear wolf-printed pajamas. I can live with that. I have a very, very shitty Walmart brand wolf pants that I swear by. Didn't you rip them? I did.

Yeah, it turns out when you buy shitty clothes from Walmart, they last exactly as long as you expect them to. I have an old shirt with a wolf howling. Like the two wolf moon? Yeah, kind of like that. So, Nick, that's part one. How are you feeling so far? So far, pretty good.

Not too bad. I could foresee some facts in the future. They might start next episode, to be completely honest. Oh, okay. So, Nick, thank you for joining me. Until everybody else, I don't have a helpful quip. Oh, yeah. Don't use magical sand to protect yourself from insurgents.

Stupid. Later.