Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 178 - Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Genocide

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Genocide. An insane, Cambodian tragedy that was oh, so avoidable. Saloth Sar, aka Pol Pot, was a man with a dream. A horrible, delusional, misguided dream. He wanted to turn Cambodia away from being a constitutional monarchy and into being a Mao-influenced, agrarian, communist society where basically everyone was either a soldier, a rice farmer, or dead. He wasn't very smart, he was ruthless, and he was in charge. And a couple million people died. Find out how the term, "the killing fields," came to be, today, on Timesuck. Check out Lynze and I's new horror podcast Scared to Death. Listen on Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, Youtube, and more! Here's the iTunes link: https://apple.co/2MRMgai We're donating $4,200 to the Equal Justice Initiative Dedicated to freeing wrongfully incarcerated inmates. To find out more, go to https://eji.org/2020 Toxic Thoughts Tour Standup dates: http://dancummins.tvHuntington Beach Feb 14-16 The Rec Room CLICK HERE for tix! St Louis Feb 20-22 Helium CLICK HERE for tix! Salt Lake City Feb 28-29 Wiseguy's CLICK HERE for tix! Nashville March 12-14 Zanies CLICK HERE for tix! Huntsville, AL March 15 Stand Up Live CLICK HERE for tix! Philadelphia March 26-28 Punchline CLICK HERE for tix! Listen to the best of my standup on Spotify! (for free!) https://spoti.fi/2Dyy41d Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3l9LTzshxpwMerch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 7000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

It's not easy to commit so many horrible atrocities that people say this guy is just as bad as Hitler, maybe worse. But Pol Pot pulled that off. If we're talking about the most evil people of the last hundred years, people whose leadership led to more death and despair that anyone else is in the world, we should mention the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin. Bad dude, very bad. We've covered him here on time, suck. China's Mao Zedong, another terrible, soulless, heartless bastard. And we should also mention Pol Pot.

Cambodia is still recovering from what he did in the 1970s. All these guys arguably as bad as Hitler, and other than Hitler, all three were communists. It's almost like communism is not a good idea. It's almost like it's a horrific form of government that no one should ever try again, ever. Under the Khmer Rouge's short and terrible reign led by Pol Pot, the Cambodian state controlled all aspects of a citizen's life.

Money, private property, jewelry, gambling, most reading material, religion, all illegal. The punishment for just about every crime, death. The punishment for being just about anything other than a farmer before the Khmer Rouge took over death. So much death under Pol Pot. Agriculture was collectivized, children were taken from their homes and forced into the military, even strict rules governed sexual relations, vocabulary, and clothing all laid down by the state. Between 1.4 million and 2.2 million people would lose their lives from execution disease, starvation, and overwork under Polpots, horrific vision and terrible delusional leadership.

He thought all of what he did would make the people happier, at least that's what he told himself. The dude was an insane bloodthirsty idiot and we're gonna learn all about him and what he did to Cambodia in today's, how the hell does this shit ever happen? Edition of TimeSuck.

This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to TimeSuck, you're listening to TimeSuck. To TimeSuck. Workin' wait, mate Sacks, it's time for Time Suck. Happy Monday, you motherfuckers! You beautiful bastards comin' in hot today! I'm feelin' got some new headphones, got some new in-ears. Feelin' like I'm just talkin' to you guys now.

I feel so different. Dan Cummins, brother suck, the master sucker, suck nasty. You're listening to Time Suck. Yeah, yeah! Hail Nimrod, be gone, Lucifer, and I can't're listening to time suck. Yeah, yeah. Hail Nimrod Begon, Lucifer, and I can't focus with you around it. Praise both jangles. Don't know the comedy talk today. Rally you up to bad, but jangles and glory be to triple him. Hope I had fun and Brooklyn and Washington DC this past week and I had to record this last week. Did have

fun in Las Vegas. Six fun shows at Kimmel's comedy club. All fun crowds. I just might come back to Vegas after all. The toxic dots tour heads to the rec room and Huntington Beach, California for Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day weekend, head to the OC, at least one show sold out there already. Then it's off to St. Louis and Salt Lake City, where multiple shows have already sold out. So get those tickets. They are, they are truly going fast. Then it's Nashville, Philly, Honolulu, Hawaii, and so much more, all the tour dates up at dandcomments.tv. And now let's talk charity.

Love that we can give. Given $4,200 this month to the Equal Justice Initiative, a 501c3 nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails in prison. EGI dot org head there to learn more link in the episode description. More dirt bags on shirts this week.

The class of hell yearbook yearbook series continues this week. Albert showbiz fish. Joseph Worst dad ever Fritzel and Andre Waltz is big deal. She can tell all they're on They're on on shirts now get them before they leave the store at least look at them. They're ridiculous. They're there some funky looking shirt. I really, I yeah, I really like them. They're dark, but we goofed them up. So they're not too dark. Finally, quick note about an audio issue. We've been receiving some messages about we are aware that for a small percentage of our listeners, these

episodes seem to have been randomly glitching and skipping around lately. Why not know we have complained to our hosting platform, that's for the problem lies. They are aware of the issue. They have a lot of other shows, shows like Small Town Murder, Crime and Sports, right? James and Jimmy deal with the same shit. Other people experience the same thing. And they're supposedly currently trying to sort it all out. That's what they tell us.

So sorry, unfortunately, the issue is out of our hands. It doesn't seem to be directly linked any single streaming platform, and hopefully they just fix that annoying bug soon. So much technology, it's so wonderful when it works. More cool stuff, we get the more things that can go wrong, but I'll take it. I'll take the bag with it good.

Oh well, thanks can be much worse than occasional audio skippage. Way worse, like, um, Kumair Rouge worse. Let's get into it. Since the mass deaths, uh, the, since the mass deaths carried out by the Kumair Rouge while underpull pot's leadership have come to be known as not only the killing fields, but also as the Cambodian genocide. Let's start off by defining genocide. The term genocide was coined by a Polish writer and attorney, Rafael Limpkin in 1941, which

makes sense. Mr. Limpkin was the first Polish person ever to learn how to read, write, walk upright, go to school, graduate from law school. He was his first public person to do a lot of things for the Polish people. Before this, you know, for this guy, Polish people all they ever did was catch and eat rodents with their bare hands, play with their dirty butts, and try with limited success to set everything they could find on fire. Anyway, Mr. Lemkin formed this new word genocide by combining the Greek word genose, meaning race with a Latin word side, meaning killing.

Of course, he couldn't build the word out of two words in the same language. I'm not a fucking idiot. Ah, if you're a little shocked by my Polish sentiments, well, listen up, new guy or new gal. Sometimes I take cheap shots on my wife's heritage here on the suck. As opposed to just being, you know, Randall me racist.

Try not to think too much about it. I know that Raphael Lemkin was not an idiot not at all. He was amazing actually. He was a successful prosecutor attorney in Poland before World War II. He was the public prosecutor in Warsaw became a private attorney in addition to being Polish. He was also Jewish and he was just barely able to escape to Sweden when the Nazis invaded Poland. While he would survive the war, he lost 49 relatives to the Nazis. 49 holy shit. Only his brother, sister-in-law, and their two children survived the concentration camps out of his family tree. The entire rest of his living family tree died. How crazy is that? Imagine if everyone related to you outside of one brother, right? Your brother's wife and their two boys were killed by some crazy regime. After escaping

to Sweden, I made it to the US, joining the law faculty at Duke University in 1941. In November 1944, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published Lemken's most important work entitled, Access Rule and Occupied Europe. The book included an extensive legal analysis of German rule and countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the course of World War II, along with the definition of this new term, genocide. Lemken's idea of genocide as an offense against international law was widely accepted by the international community and was one of the legal bases for the post-World War II Nuremberg trials. Notable for sentencing many Nazis to death for, among other war crimes, engineering the Holocaust genocide. Genocide is defined by the United Nations in 1948,

means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mentally harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Basically being accused of committing or conspiring to commit genocide means that if you are guilty, you've about maxed out on how evil one person can be.

A little more serious and say, you know, Jay Walker or not Panty Parking Ticket. And the Cambodian genocide was one of the, which one of numerous genocides and mass killings carried out in the 20th century. It's terrible how often these type of things have occurred overall. Here's just a few other examples of terrible mass killings and orginocides from the last hundred years or so. The worst mass murder on record in the 20th century

took place in China under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The bulk of the killings happened between 1958 and 1961 and then again between 1966 and 1969. No one really knows what the real numbers are, but it's estimated that as many as somewhere between 49 and 78 million people were exterminated under Mao Zedong's heinous totalitarian rule. From just 1958 to 1961, at least 45 million Chinese were worked starved tortured and beaten to death during Zedong's great leap forward.

45 million. Great leap forward China's brutal effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, Mow to creed that an increased effort to multiply grain yields. An industry should be brought to the Chinese countryside. And chaos and death followed his decision. A third of all Chinese homes were destroyed to obtain raw materials for collective projects. How insane is that? They need to build material, they need it quickly for industrial improvements and agricultural improvements so they just took motherfuckers homes, just kicked them out, used the building materials to build factories, storage silos, you know, shitty state housing units, et cetera.

Yay communism. Private farming was now prohibited under Mao Zedong's rule. Rural farmers were forced to work on collective farms where all production, resource allocation and food distribution was centrally controlled by the barbaric communist party there. Local officials were terrified of the consequences of not fulfilling insane agricultural quotas based on what the delusional mouth thought could be accomplished. So to cover their own asses, to save their own lives, these administrators collected surpluses that in fact did not exist. So they ended up taking all or damn near all of the food from rural farmers, leaving millions

who hadn't already been worked to death to starve and the irony of farmers starving to death when they're harvesting all these crops, crops that they would be executed if they were found eating more than their ration. Now, rations weren't enough to live on. The Great Leap Forward is more of a giant kick in the dick. It's one of the greatest tragedies in history of the world. In the history of the world, I mean, the lives of tens of millions of real peasants completely and totally disposable in Mao's eyes. We had a succ-they-dong one of these days,

and yes, I know how that sounds. I got a succ-they-dong. That did help build China into a world power. China wouldn't be the superpower of this today without him, but it was also a huge piece of shit. Millions and millions sacrificed for what he thought was a greater good. Needless mass death also occurred in Africa, the Congo genocide, aka the rubber terror

of the late 19th and early 20th century lasted from 1886 to 1908, thought to have taken as many as 8 million souls wiped them from the face of the earth. This massive loss of life occurred under the reign of Leopold II, King of the Belgians. The Congo free state was at the time of Belgian colony. And the Belgians wanted to make as much rubber money as possible and make it as quickly as possible and make it at any expense to local Congolese life. The ruler of the Belgians truly did not give a single fuck what happened to those people.

Rubber suddenly became highly in demand for various industrial uses, various commercial uses worldwide, and the Congo had a shell out of rubber trees, which was terrible news for almost everyone living there. Millions of locals went from being really, really poor to really, really dead. Now just, yay, there's a market for rubber, who ran for the Congo. Finally, my people will be rich. Not so fast, local. The Belgians control this land, and even though many of you have never even seen a Belgian,

and will never see one, they are going to make all the rubber money, like literally all of it. But don't worry, you'll get at least to be a very important part of the new rubber trade. So that's pretty cool. The Belgians are going to work you to death, getting out all that rubber. Harvesting rubber isn't going to make, Belgian, industrious, more rich. Not unless they can access free labor. That's gonna make them filthy, rich, just silly goose, and you're gonna be that free labor.

Thanks to this new market, you're gonna remain just as poor as before, if not more poor, but you can have to work oh, so much more. Slavery is technically over, but you're gonna be slaves, you motherfuckers, and you're gonna die. Now get to motherfuckers, and you're going to die. Now get to work. It's basically what it was.

The Belgian government gave Belgian industrialist free fucking reign to do whatever they wanted to do to produce as much rubber as possible. Force labor, violent coercion, used to collect rubber cheaply. A native paramilitary army was created to enforce in human labor policies. Any individual workers who were refused to participate in rubber collection could be and often would be killed. Sometimes entire uncooperative villages were just burnt to the ground just destroyed to send a message to other villages to either you know do your fucking rubber work or everyone you know will be executed.

Makes our current you know polarized political system not seem so bad, right? And that's not an endorsement or a complaint about Washington DC. It's just saying, uh, you know, we don't have the same kind of political problems Right, my god Holy shit, do we have a lot better than those poor bastards did? Now let's head to Russia. Can't talk about mass killings without at least touching on good old blood, thirsty 20th century mother Russia. Stalin's forced Ukrainian famine of 1932 and 1933, known as the holodomor. Another example of millions of people viewed as being entirely disposable by

you know, their government needlessly dying. And this is just one of many really shitty things Stalin did. He put so many people to death. The hallamador might be the worst atroxy that evil shit lord signed off on. We talked about this particular genocide in our KGB suck, 138. Also in the Chiquitilo serial killer episode way back in suck 57. What is big deal? Hallamador is big deal.

That's not hallamador happened. Maybe Chiquitilo, parent of, had better nourishment. Maybe Cicatillo of, better gene pool water. Maybe Cicatillo have been born not with limp soft shimcock. Maybe Cicatillo have been born with great hearted penis and the Russian leader instead of a creeper rassler. The holomodora was a really big deal. It's a man-made famine.

It's been recognized as a genocide by 16 different nations, somewhere between three and 12 million Ukrainians starved to death, holed to more, Ukrainian for death by hunger, and ethnic Ukrainians were worked to death on communist communal farms, where the food they planned and grew and harvested was sent to the Communist Party members in Russia, whose lives were deemed more valuable, very similar to Mao Zedong's great leap forward, right? Make these poor peasants harvest all this shit, but then don't let them eat it.

Let them starve. Let some other people eat it. The Nazis, as I imagine we all know, certainly no strangers to genocide and mass murder. Around six million Jewish people put to death by the Nazis. For no other reason than the fact that they were born Jewish. We touched on the Holocaust and a number of sucks. Reason recently as well. So no need to go further into it here. One of these days, we do need to do Jewish. We touched on the Holocaust and a number of sucks, recent recently as well, so no need to go further into it here.

One of these days, we do need to do a full suck on just the Holocaust. Too many deniers out there who don't believe it happened, so insulting. And before the Holocaust, another mass genocide occurred in Europe, the Armenian genocide doesn't get talked about enough. This is the topic we need to do down the road.

The Ottomans committed the Armenian genocide in, where over 1.5 million Armenians were systematically rounded up and killed or deported from 1915 to 1918. After the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide is the second most studied genocide in the world. This genocide was carried out during and after World War I implemented in two phases, the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to force labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert.

Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. Why? Essentially, because the Ottomans were Muslims, and the Armenians were Christian. And even worse than the Ottomans' eyes, they were successful Christians. The Armenians were flourishing, living in a Muslim nation, and many Muslims who weren't doing as well greatly resented them for their success. Historically, a minority ethnic or cultural or religious

group seeming to be more financially successful than the majority culture around them hasn't worked out well. That little group tends to become a perfect scapegoat for politicians looking to easily improve their lot in life via a revolution, get some quick votes by shitting on some people, putting the blame you know, non-sensically. The Ottomans were worried that during World War I, the Armenians would betray them inside with nearby Russia at the time, another Christian nation. So there's a little paranoia going on. The Ottoman rulers also felt that some of the Armenians had been getting a little fucking up aty lately. Another place, how dare they not accept being second-class citizens, because that's

what they were at that time. The Armenians have been taxed more than the Muslims for generations, banned from holding certain political offices, denied other basic citizen rights that were afforded, you know, to Muslims, and they just recently began to push to have more rights, have the same rights as their Muslim neighbors, how dare they want to be treated fairly. Rather than trying to work things out with them, rather than treat them equally, the shitty rulers of the day, the young Turks, these ruthless bastards decided to kill and expel the Armenians and mass.

There have been many other mass killings and genocides. The governments of North Korea, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Iran, Kurdistan. So many other nations have all directly caused hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens to die just in the last century. And genocide's continued to this day. We made a list of every mass murder over two,

that, you know, where over 20,000 people died, that have occurred in the last 120 years. And it was so extensive, we decided not to include it. Because it would just be reading this very, very long, repetitious list of, and then this piece of shit killed these people. And then this piece of shit killed those people. And then you wouldn't believe what this piece of shit did and on and on for like an hour. Super long, tedious list would also do a grave disservice to the victims of pole pots regime.

But make mass murder almost feel like it wasn't that big of a deal. You know, it is a very big deal. But I did want to include at least some other atrocities to remind you that it's insanely tragic as the Cambodian genocide was. It was far from the only extremely tragic event in the world that occurred in the 20th century alone. Historically, people just haven't gotten along with other people who don't look, speak, act, or think like they do.

That's why racism is so dangerous. That's why xenophobia is so dangerous. It's called tribalism. And we as a species have still not figured out how to get the fuck over it. That's why racism is so dangerous. That's why xenophobia is so dangerous. It's called tribalism. And we as a species have still not figured out how to get the fuck over it. Right, trying to get past tribalism, trying to get away from that us versus them mentality

is one of the reasons I like to throw around the term meat sack. What if we eased up on defining ourselves by racial and cultural and religious and political lines? What if we, you know, we're just team meat sack first and foremost, humans first, everything else second. Everything else, even being a citizen should come second. The world's gotten smaller, you know, smaller than it's ever been in so many ways.

And I think the, you know, that more of us who can think of ourselves as global citizens, the better off Earth will be. Someone born inside a different board of the new isn't all that different from you. Now, when you strip away a lot of this shit that, you know, that they're different government or their culture, you know, that they're different government or their culture, you know, pushed into the soft spots for head when they were

developing underneath it all. There's another carbon-based mammal hoping to get in as many smiles and feel good moments as they can before the Reaper brings his damn siphon by. Do I think that means we should open up our borders, you know, to anyone and everyone. Just get rid of our military hope for the best fuck no. But it should remind us to be a little more compassionate and empathetic to others who don't belong to, you know, what we think of as our tribe, whatever that may look like. Okay.

Now, before we get to know Polpa, and the first of today's two time suck timelines, let's take a quick gander. It's something that's several of the genocidal countries of the 20th century had in common. Good old communism. Oh man, if you happen to be pro-communists, this is not going to be a fun episode for you. Easy, Bojangles. Oh, Jesus Christ. Our one eyed three-legged pit bull suck mask.

I just took an immediate shit on the rug and protested communism even being brought up. He's fired up. He's ready to head back to the jungles of South America or Vietnam, wherever he thinks some commies might be hiding. But Bajangles hates communism. We've gone over communism in his definition several times on episodes in the past, including our Vietnam suck, KGB suck and our Stalin suck and more. Let's just go over the basics today.

According to communist writers and thinkers, the goal of communism is to create a stateless classless society And like I've said so many times okay, maybe that sounds nice in theory, I guess it fucking blows in practice Communist thinkers believe a classless society can happen only if people take away the power of the bourgeoisie the ruling class Who own the means of production and establish worker control of the means of production. And again, that sounds nice and theory. The little guy gets to run the show, yay! Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy!

But the problem here is that whichever workers, whichever little guys end up getting put in charge of everything, end up getting charged of, you know, overseeing the transition from capitalism to communal living, will they end up becoming the new rulers? Every time, to establish and maintain rule, they seem to damn their always resort to becoming ruthless rulers themselves. And now instead of being beholden to the factory owner,

now you're beholden to the Communist leader. And while the factory owner maybe didn't pay you enough, while the factory owner, you know, they could fire your ass even unfairly. And that could, you know, cause a lot of harm in your life. Well, the communist leader can fucking kill you. And they, that's 10, that tends to be what they've done over and over again. Well, the term communism can refer to specific political parties at his core communism is an ideology, an ideology of economic equality through the elimination of private property, which again,

in my opinion is shit. But of course, I think that I guess I'm an American owning land part of the American dream, a dream I've bought into heavily. Call me crazy, but I think dangling the carrot of property ownership in front of the average citizen encourages them to work a little harder. So that one day, they don't have to pay a mortgage and can dream of passing something on to their children or to a charity of their choosing as opposed to working their whole life and hoping the state honors its deal to take care of them. Once they retire and become of little

use to the state and then not be able to pass on anything to anyone when they die. Hope, humans live so much on hope for a better future or a future that continues to be good. Communism doesn't leave a lot of room for hope. I'm gonna try and keep the rest of my opinions to myself on communism, at least while I'm just trying to explain what it is, I just fucking hate it so much. The more I study it, the more I hate it. It reminds me of group projects, I had to do back in school.

I hated group projects because I seem to end up doing most of the work most of the time. So everyone in my group could get a good grade because I wanted a good grade. Maybe I was just unlucky, like kicking stuck with other kids who didn't give a shit, uh, about the report cars, not as much as I did. You know, pissed me off that even though like, yeah, one of the kids in the group, you know, it's literally, but just dick around and not do shit.

That clown will get the same grade as the rest of us. Another reason I hate communism and individual effort not rewarded enough. And I say all this is someone who is not opposed to having, you know, more socialist policies in America, like, like, you know, I wouldn't mind a bigger base layer of healthcare coverage. A bigger base layer of free higher education for legal citizens. Not some elitist, not some fucked the little guy class as capitalistic pig. I'm in favor of the little guy and the little gal I've always rooted for the underdog and communism, it pretends to be in favor of the underdog. But in reality, it fucks over the common man

and the woman more than any other system of government I've ever studied. It's phony, it's a lie, it's bullshit. Now I'm gonna try and get out of my soapbox for real. The beliefs of communism, most famously expressed by Karl Marx who I wish I could go back time and fucking chuck the death, center on the idea that inequality and suffering result from capitalism. It's a party, my tongue. Under capitalism, communism leave private business people, corporations, you know, the owner of the factories, equipment,

other resources, the means of production. These owners, according to communist doctrine, can then exploit workers, sure, who are forced to sell their labor for wages. Yeah, okay. The working class is never perfect. The working class or proletariat has to rise up against the capitalist owners. The bourgeoisie, according to the ideals of communism, institutes a new society with no private property, no economic classes, and no profits. No profits.

Just trying to bite my tongue. Communist theory predicts that after the proletariat revolution, special leaders must temporarily take control of the state, leading it towards an eventual true communist society, where everyone's really equal, there's no leadership. Right, the government's the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, they were just supposed to be provisional. Just temporary You know these temporary governments, you know, you know, they're just supposed to kind of you know get things going on the right course and then step back

Let it hasn't happen. Has it now these temporary governments have held on to power and become ruthless like every fucking time And why have they held on to power? You know every time that I'm aware of because it goes against historical human nature For those who have a lot of power to relinquish it and become the powerless. Powerful leaders do not ever seem to just want to step down and just become a common citizen again. It's nice thought for someone to be like, well, well, set now. You'll enjoy this fine commune. I hope you all keep things running.

I'm going to leave my fancier state behind and just, you know, let go of being able to pretty much boss everyone around and do whatever I want. I'm just gonna step down and, I don't know, go make soap or some shit with some other villagers and sleeping hot. Ha ha ha. Sounds great. That shit doesn't happen. Communist ideology also states that these revolutions should spread across the globe rather than be limited to individual countries. If the world was communist, the whole world, there would be in theory no need for ruthless leaders because the state would not have to be protected

from and prepared for war because there would be no opposing factions. This belief in a world takeover helps explain the historical antagonism between capitalist and communist nations, right? Particularly the long cold war between the US and the Soviet Union. The big red scare man, that was a valid fear. It was something we should have been afraid of. I'm glad Bojang was left for a while. I wasn't able to hear all of what I just said. He would have gotten so round up.

He would have chewed his way out of the fucking suck dungeon, just eating his way right to the wall or something. Now before we go and do a Cambodia story, let's meet this week's piece of shit, Pol Pot, first a little overview. Then our first of two timelines for the week. Pol Pot, he's always been somewhat of a mystery. He used a lot of names during his life, was always careful to hide his motivations, believing that secrecy was the key to gaining the upper hand and conflict. Well, after he used our best guesses

to piece together certain moments from his timeline, he tried to rewrite his narrative several times. He's like a real-life bond villain. Until he was elected prime minister, no one knew who Pol Pot was, not at least his Pol Pot. For over two years after his takeover in April of 1975, he revealed almost nothing about himself. The world didn't know who this dude was. It was super weird. I mean, imagine if the US or Great Britain or Russia, China or some other superpower

announced tomorrow that they had a new leader, but they just wouldn't say who it was. Just like someone in a cobra commander mask or some shit sitting on a throne, just telling people what to do. Someone fine, that's true. Telling to stop fooling around with Baroness and help me destroy the citizens of Earth. Not saying can, buddy Cambodia was a superpower, you know, it wasn't, and it isn't, but super weird for that to happen just in any country

in modern history. Paul, he kind of was like a co-oper commander. When he made a state visit to China in September 1977, we photographed there, Cambodia Watchers identified Pol Pot as a 52 year old former schoolteacher named Saloth Saur, who had been the secretary of the Central Committee of the Klandestine Communist Party of Camp Chia, former name of Cambodia, since 1963. Pol Pot had announced the existence of the CPK to the outside world for the first time

in a triumphal speech recorded from radio, recorded for radio, Nampen, just before he left China, or left for China, excuse me. And even after he visited China, very few Cambodians knew that Pol Pot was Salazar. Most didn't know who this dude was until after he was overthrown a few years later. When he finally admitted, admitted his former identity, Pol Pot was his revolutionary name. When he announced his student in 1976, He followed precedence set by several communist leaders, including Lenin Stalin, Ho Chi Min. The intentions of these other communist leaders was to conceal their true identities from

the police and the days leading up to their, you know, respective revolutions and also to inspire their followers. You know, Stalin, for example, means steel. Ho Chi Min means enlightened one. Pol Pot has thought to have been short for the French word politic, potential, potential politics. Right? This is like this is a new type of politics. So who is Saloth Sard? Who's the man behind Pol Pot? Why did the everything communism was the answer to Cambodia's problems? Let's get to know this ding dong. And today's time suck timeline. this ding dong and today's time suck timeline. Pope Pot is believed to have been born May 19th, 1925 in the Compong Tom province in Cambodia, though his official birth date is May 25th, 1928

A lot of mysteries around this guy. We're gonna proceed as if he was born in 1925 That's what most people seem to kind of believe His birth name as you just learned, you know, Saloth Saur Which to me sounds kind of a Star Wars character, right doesn't it? Sounds like a Sith Saloth Saur Horned dude, you know fights with you know, maybe three lightsabers, H.J.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E. Saloth saw. Horn dude, you know, fights with, you know, maybe three lightsabers, H.J.I.'s and E.W.O.X. strongly sexually attracted to Chubaka. A princess of Darth Bane rides a hoverboard.

Rocks a rat tail. I don't know. I'm paying the picture in my mind. Anyways, Saloth saw his parents were ethnic, a Kumair 97% of Cambodia are ethnic Kumair. The Kumair speak the Kummer language are typically Buddhists. And by the way, it is pronounced Khmer. Watch a lot of docs for this one. There's several pronunciation guides.

It seems to be said that way every time. And I say this is a preemptive strike. Got some emails, give me some. This is how you say it, advice, which is nice. But this week the suggestions seem to be wrong. Maybe said definitely in French or native Cambodian, pretty sure it's Kumar in English. Love you guys. Okay, there are over 15 million Kumar people living in Cambodia today with about 1.5 million

living in Vietnam, over a million in Thailand, over 300,000 in the US, most of whom are either people who fled Polpots, Khmer Rouge or their descendants. After that, there are about 80,000 in France, 50,000 South Korea, 40,000 in Australia, 30,000 in Malaysia, 25,000 in Canada, and then a dip substantially. There aren't many other Camarer Rouge in the world. No other country has more than 10,000.

Overall, the Camarer people, fairly small, Asian ethnic group, comparatively. Salas was born in the village of Preg Subau, tiny fishing village, less than 10 houses today, and by houses I mean tiny dilapidated dwellings instead of top of stilts, so they don't get flooded by the river below them, buildings and what looks to be some kind of tropical swamp,

buildings I would ask for my money back if I bought one to use as a shed. Looks pretty rough there. Things were a bit better than this village when Pol Pot was a child They were definitely better for him and his family They were big fishes in this very small pond They may have lived in a little village, but they weren't hurting for money. You know, right? They were connected more on that in a bit So lost little village that less than two miles west of the provincial capital of Compampong, Tom, a little city of about 30,000. Very rural, you know,

it got a rural vibe, a lot of open air markets, still mostly dirt roads based on some travel videos I watched. Some 90 miles north of Nampen, Cambodia's largest city, a city of over 2 million. Nampen was once known as the Pearl of Asia. It was considered to be one of the loveliest French built cities in Asia in the 1920s, back when the French were all up in southeast Asia's ass.

Cambodia had become a French protectorate, being essentially colonized back in the late 19th century. So, last father, Penn Saloth, was a prosperous farmer with 50 acres, 10 times the amount of land possessed by the average farmer at the time. So, he had rice land, he had several draft cattle, comfortable tile roofed house.

His neighbors may have lived in sheds, unstealed God damn it, but he lived in a sweetest tile, super cool shed, like a luxury shed, kind of like a gated community type shed. Salat Sarr's mother, Suck Namm, was widely respected in the district for her piety community involvement for being hottest fuck.

She apparently was a looker. Philoth was the eighth of nine children, two of whom were girls, five of the nine survived all the way into the 1990s. In addition to having a little more land in their neighbors, something else that set Pol Pot's family apart from others in the region, where its connections to the royal palace in Nampen. Cambodia had and still does have a royal family. The Cambodian royals when Saloth was born

were basically puppet leaders while the French really controlled things. Before the French controlled Cambodia, it was a proper kingdom. Back in the 12th century, the Khmer Empire was actually Southeast Asia's largest and most powerful kingdom. They had a good run.

Over 1,100 square miles in size, its capital, Angar, was the largest pre-industrial city in the entire world. And it's 12th century temple, Angar Wat, is the largest religious monument existing in the world. It's beautiful. I hope to see it firsthand someday. So, last star is cousin, Meeke joined the royal ballet in the 1920s in the closing years of the reign of King Cisawath who reign from 1904 to 1927.

Meek was another hot little thing, Hail Liste Fena, and she soon became a consort. The King's eldest son, Prince Cisowath, Monavong. She bore him as son, Kossarak. Shortly before Monavong became King in 1927, he would rule until 1941. Dude had lots of contorts, which was totally allowed and normal, even expected for Cambodian royalty. He had at least six lots of contorts, which was totally allowed and normal, even expected for Cambodian

royalty. He had at least six officially recognized contorts, letting the French actually run things while he lived in luxury and had sex with his contorts and occasionally put it on a crown and waved to his people. That was his life. Seems like a pretty cushy life. In the late 1920s, SARS older brother, lost swung, went to Nampen to work as royal palace clerk.

Swung worked in the palace as a clerk until 1975, actually. In the early 1940s, married another royal dancer, Che Sami. Again, his family was connected. They existed on the periphery of luxury. Sala sister, Sala sister, Sala sister, Rang, Rweng also joined the ballet. And at some point, 1930s became a consort as well, consort of King Monovong, a lot of hot ladies related to Pol Pot. When he was a young man, he was said to be extremely handsome.

There were lookers, the pots. It wasn't really the pot, so it was the SARS. They had a good, lots of land connections, attractive. Why would Saloths have to go fucking full commulator, ruined it, ruined all this stuff? Interesting that Pol Pot seemed to have had so many connections to the Cambodian monarchy. He never spoke much about these connections later, emphasizing his humble beginnings and roots as a farmer, which wasn't really that true. He wasn't the son of a humble farmer.

He was the son of a prosperous farmer closely related to the royal family. In early 1934, when Salas Star was eight, he and an older brother went to live with his cousin and consort of King Monavong in Nampen, living in a royal residence for an unknown period of time. Some sources say he was six when he went in the timeline of his early childhood, a little inconsistent from source to source, because as I pointed out earlier, we don't know exactly when he was born, 1928 or 1925. Some biographies also say he spent a year going to school at a Buddhist monastery when he first moved to Nampen, then later went to Catholic school. More biographies say he went to a Roman Catholic primary school when he first arrived in Nampen, the Ecole Mish, while his cousin

Miek paid his tuition fees. Most of his classmates were the children of French bureaucrats at the school and Catholic Vietnamese. He became literate in French and familiar with Christianity at this time He also struggled heavily in school. Saloth was not academically gifted all sources seem to agree on that It was held back two years in school When Pol Pot lived there You know non-Pen was a sleepy sundaerentown that had been established as the capital of a French protectorate in 1866. The city was built in the shape of a rectangle, running north, south along the western bank of the Tonle Sap river, which flowed into the much longer Meekong River at that point.

Lots of the public buildings, such as the post office, library, railroad station, resembled buildings in France, so did the tree-lined avenues, radio from the public gardens to the north, and the shaded promenades along the river. Unlike the Cambodian countryside, which is almost exclusively populated by Khmer people, the capital city was ethnically mixed. In 1936, roughly half of its population of 100,000 people were immigrant Chinese and Vietnamese, and these people dominated the commercial sector of town. 45,000 Cambodians lived around the palace as monks and monasteries or as bureaucrats, farmers, artisans, petty traders and the southern and western sectors of the city. Many of them were poor and not as prosperous as the Chinese and Vietnamese living there. At the western edge of the city, the Cambodians,

bamboo and wooden houses raised on stilts surrounded by mango and banana trees with domestic animals roaming underneath were indistinguishable from rural dwellings. Good old sheds on sticks. Living that jungle shed life. Can only imagine how hot it was inside these sheds and that human jungle climate. I think I said banana. Let's go with mango trees. It's in my notes, but I'm questioning it. I don't think it's a raise banana trees. Maybe there is, but scratch that from the record. Mango trees. Yeah, can only imagine how hot it was inside those shed zone, that humid jungle climate.

A lot of sweaty butt cracks back then. Unless you were royalty, your butt crack probably was literally always sweaty. From birth to death, just be to sweat. Run it down your butt valley. At the northern edge of the city, the small hill, non-pen, or non-excuse me, the gave the city's name, non-pen,

means the hill of the lady pen. The hill was crowned by 17th century monastery, several Buddhist reliquaries. The area had been landscaped by the French into a 25 acre park with a small zoo, floor clocks, statues, bandstand, several outdoor cafes. It was really pretty, it was beautiful. Sounds lovely.

You know, later on, Paul Pot would fuck a ruin all this. Roughly half a mile south of NOM, facing the river was the Royal Palace, whose main buildings had been designed by French architects and a Thai Cambodian style in the early 1900s, set back from the foreshore behind manicured lawns, the white and cream buildings with their green adorned tile roofs Delittering in the sun resembled the Buddhist temples scattered throughout the city

Give a pastor by a glimpse of resplendent a ethereal wealth Must have been a cool place for polpa to grow up especially since he was you know, you know connected to the royalty Beginning when polpa was in elementary school the first stirrings of nationalism in Cambodia had started to arise Opa was in elementary school the first stirrings of nationalism in Cambodia and started to arise. Three young Cambodians affiliated with the Buddhist Institute in Nampan received permission from the French to publish a Khmer language newspaper, Angor Wat, the first of us kind in Cambodian history. Angor Wat reported the activities of Cambodia's elite, reprinted the texts of regulations and decrees, and in editorial's urged Cambodians to awaken,

to catch up with the Chinese and Vietnamese who dominated commercial life. Come on, right? Let's have some pride. Why are they doing better than us, kind of thing? The paper had a circulation of over 5,000 copies as weekly readership, particularly among Buddhist monks who passed copies from hand to hand, probably much higher.

So, Salas is born during a period when Cambodians are wanting to regain their cultural identity and autonomy. Which sounds familiar to me. It sounds like Germany in the 19th century. Uh-oh, people who feel like they got something to prove. 1941. When Slaus was around 16, he finally completes his primary studies. Initially, he fails his entrance exams for high school.

Again, he's not a good student. Following year 1942, 20 boys from various Cambodian provinces are selected as the first class to attend a high school. Again, he's not a good student. Following year 1942, 20 boys from various Cambodian provinces are selected as the first class to attend a new school. The college, Nordum, shu, and swanuk, which was a really good, which was really a high school. All of them were to be borders. Salah star chosen as part of the contingent from Kampong Tom. Ironically, in view of the past, they follow later Salah star's closest friend of the school was Lon compang tom ironically in view of the past they follow later salas stars closest friend of the school was lawn non an official son from compang tom lawn non's uh... oldest brother lawn nal would later become president of the command republic in nineteen

seventy get his ass kicked by polls uh... come can body and communist clearly even though he was not a good student he was he was uh... you, going to a good school, sharing classes with the Cambodian up-or-crust. In 1945, France was invaded by Nazi Germany and the French briefly lost control of Cambodia. German ally, Japan kicked the France a fuck out of Cambodia. Cambodia and King, Swanauk, Swanouk, proclaimed independence. Let me get his name right later. I don't have the pronouncing guy on this one, but stay tuned on that name. I'll nail it in a second half.

He proclaimed independence for his country, but then the very next year the French were back. Damn it. The French would rule differently now, allowing for a Cambodian constitution, the establishment of various political parties and democratic elections. Salas was witnessed in a lot of political changes. He came into his independence as a young adult, and I'm sure he was having all kinds of discussions about what type of government was the best kind. Was it okay to be a protectorate of France?

So they'd be independent of France, so they'd be a monarchy, a capitalist democracy, should they be communists? 1947, Pol Pot leaves the college of Swanek in this year and graduates high school. If his 1925 birth date is to be believed, he graduates a wee bit late at 22 years old. So let's put that guy in charge. If anything screams future leaders, graduating high school at 22 years old. 1948, he does not pass an exam that you're supposed to pass

to go on to a liberal arts college in the French educational system of Cambodia. So his academic studies come to an end in a certain way, right? Again, put him in charge. He can't get into literally any college. Sherry, he's been held back to school numerous times, you know? But why? Because he was born to lead.

What could go wrong? Take the kid consistently, not paying attention. Doodling the back of the class and put that fucker in charge. Paul took exams to be enrolled in a vocational school now, which was his other option. And he becomes a carpentry student at equal technique uh... located in a no northern suburb of nampen salas star sent at this uh... school places him for the first time in consistent contact

with less privileged young people most of whom who had a little contact with the french or other members of the country's traditional elite so he's a right he's around the peasants now for the first time in his adult life. Really the first time in his life. I mean, yeah, he's born in a little fishing village, but as a young child, he went to non-pen. It was around royalty.

So now he's having his hands dirty for the first time, stepping down from his French education and his palace connections. Late 1948, he applies for another technical school this time in Paris, France. He's among 77 students in the protectorate who took entrance examinations for this school. He does pass this one. It is a technical school. Year later, 1949, he's among the first 100 men and women sent to France with government trade school scholarships. His royal family contacts undoubtedly probably helped him, you know, get this going. It's not like his kick ass academic abilities were pushing him along. Before heading

to France, he meets Ling Sri, another vocational student. The two would spend time together in Paris, where they would become members of the French Communist Party. They would end up marrying sisters, returning to Cambodia in 1957, where they would become Communist militants in Nampen, with a handful of other close associates. They would later guide the Cambodia Revolution and the affairs of the Communist Party of Kapuchia, C.P.K. 1949, Salaz heads to Paris, the studio to study radio electronics on a scholarship.

Starts off in Paris as many Cambodian students did by taking a room in an Indochinese pavilion, complex of dormitories for French and foreign students on the southern edge of the city. Pullpot later recalled 1978, in the first year I worked the city. Pull Pot later recalled in 1978. In the first year, I worked rather hard. I was a fairly good student. He was a fairly good student, you guys, put him in charge. He only got held back a few times, graduated high school four years later,

something didn't get accepted into college, and he was a fairly good student at a trade school. Fit to lead, come on. Aside from a few short holidays, he spent more than three years in Paris. We know that he enrolled for courses connected with radio electricity. We know he met other young Cambodian youth. I'll fire it up to come communist and overthrow their colonial masters.

We know he lived in Paris, yeah, from 1949 to 1952. We don't know everything he did. We do know that he returned to Cambodian 1952 without ever getting his radio electronics degree. Again, killing the game. Before he came back home, we also know in 1950 he spent a summer volunteering in Yugoslavia. The details are a little fuzzy about what he did. No one knows exactly what he was doing as a volunteer. It seems as if he worked for a month as a manual laborer in the communist country, an exciting stage of its development. The regime was led by the

World War II resistance hero, Joseph Braz Tito, gave pot an intimate view of what a communist leader looked like. Tito, seen by Moses, having been a pretty benevolent dictator. He was a popular public figure, both in Yugoslavia and abroad. He was beloved. He may have given Salat a false sense of how cool and how good it could be to be a communist leader. He deserves his own suck, but basically he saved his people from other dictators more ruthless than him. Don't go thinking he's a shining example of how awesome communism is. He was still ruthless, just not a total shipper.

Saloth also took an interest in the writings of Karl Marx around this time. He was over in France and Yugoslavia. Speaking of reading, Pol Pot told journalist Nate Thayer in 1997 during one of his final interviews, I looked for secondhand books that were on sale along the sign, the old books that I love to read. When I got money for my scholarship, I had to spend it on rent and food. I only had 20 or 25 francs to spend, but I got a lot of books to read. He must have also absorbed a good deal of French literature, because when shortly, or I guess the out of those books, a lot of it was French literature because when shortly, or you know,

I guess the out of those books, a lot of it was French literature because when he returned to Cambodia and he became a teacher and non-Pen later, he knew enough 19th century French poetry by heart to impress, you know, to regale his Cambodian students. One of his favorite authors was the 18th century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the beliefs of Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced Salas greatly. Jean-Jacques was a philosopher that believed as laid out in his work to social contract, the people were better off living a primitive lifestyle. And before society began to modernize and industrialize, people were more moral, they were happier,

everything was better. I'm guessing previous SUCK subject Ted Unibomber Kaczynski, also a big fan of Jean-Jacques Rizzo based on his opposition to technology. Goddamn it, Jean-Jacques! You push Ted out into the Montana fucking cabin to write his manifesto and you push Paul Pot towards a terrible, agrarian, simple living experiment led to millions of deaths and absolutely nothing good. I'd simplify. People wanted to go back in time.

All right, you want it just like I said, you know, Kaczynski suck. All right, if you want simple living fine, but don't make the rest of us try and subscribe to it. 1951, probably 26 year old Saloth met his wife, Q. Penaeri, who had come to France with her younger sister, Q. Therith. Penaeri came to had come to France with her younger sister, Q. Therith. Penaeri came to study Cumaire linguistics. The Rith came to study English literature. That's like one of those ladies should have returned to lead Cambodia. Not a communist, you know, obsessed far below average student. In 1952, Salas has his political musings published for the first time. He writes an eight-page essay titled Monarchy or Democracy.

And he has a published and a special issue of Kameir students magazine, Kameir Nusut, under the pseudonym Kameir Daum, meaning the original Kameir. And I'm realizing, yeah, if you actually happen to speak Cambodia, I'm sure you're like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I didn't get a degree in Cambodia. This past week, I didn't speak fluently. Cambodia. This past week I had to speak fluently. Some of these words is much easier to find pronunciation guides for than others.

Paul Potts' handwritten article accusing Sonook of being an absolute monarch and defined monarchy as a doctrine, which bestows power on a small group of men who do nothing to earn their living so that they can exploit the majority of the people at every level. Monarchy is an unjust doctrine,

a maloderous running sore that people must eliminate. Didn't like them not monarchy, okay? Interesting that the guy who benefited numerous times from royal connections, so anti-monarchy now. I don't think he's wrong. I'm not into monarchy either, just interesting for him to essentially be biting

the hand that has fed him there. February 12th, 1952, Grammy winner Michael McDonald's snuck in there. Okay. Now we're back to Cambodia. When Salat returned to the Cambodia January, 1950, 1953, after flunking out of trade school and losing his government scholarship, he stays for a while with his brother, Loth, Swang, and Nampin.

His brother notices that Sars is becoming very interested in politics. I think about the people Sarsol him. He also praised Russia. He bragged about Russia and talked about working on Yugoslavia. Oh man, those commies really did a propaganda number on him. He was in France in Yugoslavia. Stalin's gulags, you know, they were still in effect in the early 50s.

It hadn't been that long since Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians with his man-made famine. What the fuck was so impressive about Russia? What did he see there? They were so great. I can't believe it. It was a fucking shithole, the fifties. Politics was on everyone's minds in Cambodia

in January 1953. That month, the Cambodian king, Notre Dame-Sronoc, dissolved the national assembly declared martial law and freedom from the French. The French did not fight Cambodian independence and the nation return briefly to become a monarchy, a constitutional monarchy to be specific. Less than a month later, Saloth leaves Suong's house as brothers' house to join the resistance. He travels to the capital,

makes contact with a man named Fambon Ba, the local representative of the Indo-China Communist Party, and he has to be inducted into the Communist Party. Ba then inducts Saur into the ICP, leapfrogging the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, Salas travels to rural Eastern Cambodia, which he reaches in August of 1953. At first, he joins forces, you know, joins up with forces who are allied to the Viet Minh, Communist Vietnamese forces operate in the rural areas of Compong Chon province, forces that would push the French out of Vietnam, beginning in 1954. After fighting with Vietnam, Saloth moves back to a non-pen to be part of a communist urban committee.

There was the urban committee and the rural committee, underground networks around Cambodia are preparing for eventual revolution, they're having to work in secret. Saloth becomes an important point of contact between above ground communists or communist leaning political parties and the underground secret communist revolutionary movement. From his Vietnamese trained mentors, he learns about party discipline, organization,

more communist theory, as well as the importance of being clandestine and being concealed. Salas and his fellow conspirators would work largely from the shadows for a long time to get things ready for the revolution. Salas are now, you know, he's beginning to morph into this poll pot character. He starts to develop his own political aspirations, he along with the group of Cambodian leftists

began to plot a new kind of Cambodian independence independence from the monarchy independence from the US who, you know, quickly swooped in after Cambodia broke off his relationship with France. The US was worried about Cambodia falling into communist hands so they began to supply Cambodia's new government with military aid. In the 1950s, Cambodia adopted an official position of neutrality in the Cold War. The monarchy didn't want to get in bed with the communist or the capitalist. So of course, the CIA showed up.

Since America this time, terribly concerned about the communist domino theory, right? To frame the Russia and or China is going to turn all of Southeast Asia into communist satellite states, which was a valid fear. Pol Pot has no interest in this happening to Cambodia. He doesn't want, you know, to always be tied to China or to Russia or or Vietnam, especially not Vietnam. He's working with them in the moment, but he doesn't want to be aligned with him later.

He wants to have his own independent communist goals in Cambodia. He wants Cambodia to be an independent communist nation, not another colony. Now, they just moved away from foreign rule. He doesn't want to move back in that direction, even if that direction is communist. Vietnamese Communist guidance begins to grade on Pol Pot and his colleagues with the Vietnamese treating them not as fellow revolutionaries, but as younger brothers in the build up to their all absorbing war against the US. 1956 Saloth marries his wife, Q Pena Penaari.

Q described it being small, neat, even elegant in a simple natural way. Prior to her marriage, she wore no jewelry or makeup. She cut her hair in an old fashioned Chinese style. It said she preferred somber clothes. She sounds super fun. Um, maybe Cambodians found her hard to fathom. They called her the old virgin behind her back. So not exactly kicking out of Lucifer in a type energy.

More of a, I'm going to lay my back and quietly hope for a child type of sexual energy. A student of cues in 1956 later recalled that in the moments or the months before her marriage to Saloth, the old virgin began to wear lipstick and a little jewelry. For a time she seemed warmer and more accessible. She said she seemed so happy. We were happy on her behalf. We're about this time. Still in 1956, Saloth embarks on a career teaching French history, geography, and civics

in a newly established private college in Nampen. The terrible student becomes a teacher. So now he appears to be living a pretty normal life, and he appears to be pretty successful. He's married. They seem happy. He's a teacher. Things are going well.

There are countries in dependence, but then behind the scenes, he's plotting his revolution to make the country be what he wants it to be. It turned out to be a terrible vision. Sometime after his marriage, 1956, 1957, he cuts himself off from relatives who've helped raise him, cuts himself off from the royals.

He's changing. He has to shed his old skin to become something new. He'd see most of his relatives for the last time in 1959 when he attends his father's funeral and then he disappears. Dedicate himself to work towards Cambodia and communism. He helps form a network of future militants, gathering and mobilizing Cambodia's proletariat, which includes railway workers and long shoresmen and the farmers. The Cambodian communist insisted the proletariat will make up the vanguard of the revolution.

After a party leader disappears in 1957 or 1958, Pol Pot becomes the acting secretary of the leader of the party's central committee. He's leading two separate lives, right? He's Salasar, the schoolteacher still during the day, Paul Potts, the revolutionary at night. Like he was Bruce Wayne and Batman. If Bruce Wayne was a schoolteacher and Batman fucking sucked, I began to give occasional seminars on civic virtue,

justice and corruption that were attended by amongst students, military men and bureaucrats. He continues to teach, unlike Stalin who based his identity on being a big tough military dude, Paul Potts authority came from being a respected teacher. Despite all the shit I've given him about being a terrible student, he apparently was a charismatic teacher. We're on in a classroom letting practice given his speeches, letting work on his rhetoric. Yeah, you tell students stuff like how unjust it is for the government to charge Cambodians fees when they're born,

when they get married and even when they die. No one can do anything, he says, unless the government gets its fee. He suggests that the government is rotten and leading the people into deeper poverty. He speaks of a new society where fees will not be paid because everyone will be working and sharing the fruit of their collective labor together. And his students listen. In 1963, some high school students revolt and carry banners saying that the monarchy is corrupt and effective.

The King demands a list now of communist organizers in Cambodia. Pol Pot is on that list. We know from government records that he was their party secretary. After being put on a list of rabble rousers, you know, the top dog on a list, he decides to bounce. Leave the city before he's thrown in jail and locked up. He and some fellow revolutionaries take refuge in the eastern part of the country, hiding out in the jungle, joins up with former Khmer militants and Northern Khom Khom Chom.

And his own words talking to Yugoslavian journalists in 1978, Pol Pot said, in 1963 I could not stay anymore in Nampen. I was not very well known to the public, but Lon Nal's police followed my activities. They knew me, but they did not know exactly who I was. In Nampen, I was the general responsible for movement in the capital. I was also in charge of liaison with the countryside. 1963, a big year for Salasar. It was the year Salas fully completed his metamorphosis. To become in a revolutionary, he abandoned the double life. He believed in since 1953. No longer restrained now by his career.

He's no longer a teacher. No longer restrained by family connections. He just takes off, does his own thing. You know, it's fucking see wife. I'm gonna go be in the jungle doing my shit. Good luck with whatever you want to do. As a revolutionary now, he's officially on the run, hiding in camps in northern and north Eastern Cambodia, traveling back and forth between Cambodia and Vietnam, depending on the safety of the camps.

Spending time in Vietnamese camps firmly, Semenz is already existing desire to break away from Vietnamese Communists. It doesn't like the way they treat them. Pol Pot secretly visits communist China in 1965. He stays there until 1966. He's loving. What Mao Zedong is doing up there. Big fan.

Inspired by the dude who just pulled off that disgusting, forward that big old giant kick in the dick the lead to the deaths of Summer between 15 80 million people another nice role model. He's like, yeah, if that's great first Stalin then Mao fuck yeah, awesome Clearly Paul Pot not afraid to sacrifice a lot of lives to achieve his vision During pole pot absence and Cambodia the Vietnam war is escalating to achieve his vision during polepods absence and Cambodia the Vietnam war is escalating. It's escalating back in Vietnam, spilling into Cambodia by the end of 1965 some 300,000 US combat and support troops had poured into South Vietnam, more were on the way. US and South Vietnamese infantry attacks on Vietnamese communist forces were accompanied by intense aerial bombardment, some of the fighting spilling across the border into Cambodia,

not officially, but it was. Pol Pot wants to return home. The time now is, it was almost right to overthrow the Cambodian government, bring a shattery regime into the light, or at least he had to be there for the preparation. Now, let's pop out of this Pol Pot timeline. Then we'll jump into the history of the Cameroos timeline in just a bit that will reconnect with Pol Pot's ascent. So that'll, that'll be in just a moment.

Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

BAM! Before I go further, I've done a lot of info out. I think we need to do a little recap. And also, I'd like you if you're not watching the video version to please listen to a brief word from a few awesome sponsors slaying some sweet ass deals your way. Hail Nimrod for sponsorship.

Never thought I was a kid, I'd end up getting sponsored by anything. I was just something cool, you know, pro skateboarders or NASCAR drivers got. And I couldn't skate for shit and drive in a Hyundai. Didn't exactly prepare me for the race track. Somehow worked out for the silly nerd. Life is funny sometimes.

Okay, so brief recap on what we've gone over so far. Pol Pot was not originally Pol Pot. He was born into a small fishing village, born into a family that was doing far better than the average peasant, born into a family connected to Cambodian royalty, and then he was raised around royalty in the capital city of Nampen He was given the best educational opportunities Cambodia had to offer He was unable to take advantage of all those opportunities because he was not a good student. Why wasn't he good? We don't know we don't know if he had limited intellectual abilities or if he didn't pay attention

I wouldn't I'm gonna demonstrate going forward that I do think he was kind of a fucking dummy Which worked out terribly for Cambodia. You know, he ended up getting to study in Paris where he continued to not do well in school, but he did really get into communism at a time when Cambodia was transitioning from being a protectorate of France returning to a monarchy. The Cold War was happening all around him at this time in 1954 after a long war against France. The first Indochina war, North Vietnam had become a communist nation.

Laos became a communist nation in 1953. China had become a communist nation back in 1949. Thailand had allied itself with the United States. A large contingent of communists were fighting for control of Burma. The South East Asian Peninsula was very much caught up in the Cold War. So much of Asia was. North Korea became a communist nation. Following World War II at the end of 1945, it was becoming impossible for Cambodia to not

pick a side. You had to align yourself at least somewhat with a pro-communist nation or a pro-capitalist nation. There was no third option. Pol Pot would push Cambodia into communism with horrible results. So let's explore that push now while also learning more about the history of Cambodia as we launch into our second time suck timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier.

We're marching down a time suck timeline. Let's go way back for this one. Let's start somewhere between 11,702.5 million years ago. There's some evidence for I say human occupation of present day Cambodia, which includes quartz and quartzite pebble tools found in terraces along the Mekong River and Stung Trang and the Krati provinces and in Kampot province, although their dating is unreliable. So great crystal. Please don't tell my wife Lindsay. So convince yourself these early Cambodians were fucking wizards or something.

By 6000 BCE, they were for sure ancient people living somewhere, you know, living where present day, excuse me, Cambodia is signs of early humans found in the cave in the Batumbong province. The first rice farmers migrated down into Cambodia from the north, beginning in the cave in the Batambang province. The first rice farmers migrated down into Cambodia from the north, beginning in the late third millennium BCE. And the second millennium BC, iron, beginning to be worked with in Cambodia, some iron age settlements found dating back

to roughly 4,000 years ago. Barriels from this time testified to an improvement of food availability and trade. By the fourth century BCE, trade relations with India had been well-established. Different kinds of glass beads showed that there were several active trading networks. trade. By the 4th century BCE trade relations with India had been well established. Different kinds of glass beads showed that there were several active trading networks. Excuse me, during the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries CE, the Indianized states of Phunan and its successor,

Chenla, coalesced in present-day Cambodia and southwestern Vietnam. For more than 2,000 years, what was to become Cambodia absorbed influences from India passed them on to other South East Asian nations or civilizations like Thailand and Laos. Cambodia was the next between Indian culture and Southwest Asian culture, a link between different traditions. Cambodia is the next, excuse me, Indian culture and South East Asian culture. An 802 CE, the Khmer Empire, grew out of the remnants of Chenla when King Jaya Varman, the second declared independence, and proclaimed himself a godlike monarch. He and his followers instituted the cult of the god king and began a series of conquests that

formed an empire which flourished in the area from the ninth to the 15th centuries. He presented himself as did many of his descendants as a living God. Sweet! That is about the most devotion a human can achieve here on earth to become a God king. I will be a terrible God king. Do moody. I like to be left alone too much. And I probably become pretty corrupt if I guys do whatever I wanted, no one could question

me because I was God. I mean, who wouldn't become corrupt in that situation? God is hangry, so everyone't become cropped in that situation? God is hangry so everyone needs to leave God to fuck alone. Don't God's done anything sandwich. And then God's gonna probably take a nap for a bit. So keep keep leaving God alone. God stick your questions. God's sick of your prayers. Well, help me. I'm starving. McKitsa. God could give me legs. God's sick of it. Every day after my nap, God's probably gonna want to spend some time with this with this consort with his hair and private. Then I'm Go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go talking about it, 30 peasants. By the 12th century, the Royal Cameroot God King Empire had become Southeast Asia's largest empire. The Empire

Center of Pyrrhus Anger, where a series of capitals were constructed during the Empire Zenith. We talked about that earlier. Around the 13th century, monks from Sri Lanka introduced Buddhism to Southeast Asia. Buddhism spread and eventually displaced Hinduism as the popular religion. And just like that, no more God-kinks. Just regular old shitty kings. 1432, Angore was sacked by the, Iuthia kingdom that originated Thailand.

Shortly after Sack and Angore, the city was abandoned because of ecological failure and infrastructure breakdown, which led to a long period of social, economic and cultural stagnation. Queue the Cambodian dark ages, over 400 years of continually shifting leadership and the land of Cambodia being ruled by a variety of other nations. For most of this dark age period, Cambodia was under the thumb of either the Vietnamese

or the Syemese. And by Syemese, I don't mean that they were ruled by a bunch of conjoined identical twins. No, not that Syemese, although that would be super awesome for storytelling purposes. Now, Syme's in this context means from Siam, which is what Thailand used to be called. And why were conjoined twins? By the way, twins whose bodies fused together in some way,

who generally share certain organs or in some cases share an entire body. Why were they called Syme's twins? Take an intertinal detour, okay? Just for funsies. Because I got into a weird wormhole and I want to share this with you. Siamese twins that comes from the first

internationally known conjoined twins were from Siam. They were Thai, right? Chang and Ang Bunker, born in 1811, lived until they were 62 years old, permanently connected to the sternum for 62 years, right? From the middle of the chest, they were connected by a flexible, circular band of flesh and cartilage about five inches long, right? They were five inches away from being like chest bumping for 62 years. Tragedically, had they been born today, they could have

had easily been surgically separated. And I know again, this has fucking nothing to do with pulpit. But I just want to tell you this story, just a quick little like suck within a suck, because this shit is crazy. At the age of 18, these twins moved to the US, toured in a freak show for about a decade, made a shitload of money, held onto that money, then settled down near Mount Erie, North Carolina. They became slave owners. They got married.

Each of them got married. Their wives or sisters, fathered 21 children between the two of them. Their families lived in separate houses and these guys would take turns living in each house. They spend a few days in one house, so one dude could be with his wife. It's been a few days in the next house, so that guy could be with his wife. Today they have over 1,500 descendants, most of whom still live in North Carolina.

Man, what strange lives they led. Think about father and those kids. When one of the brothers was having sex with his wife, the other brother was right there. Because of the way their sternum were connected, he couldn't even turn away. His dick was no more than like, what? Fucking three feet from another brother's dick

at all times. Each brother for sure heard the other brother having sex and unless they kept their eyes closed each and every time they watched, did they join in? I don't know, maybe reach over for a ass laugh from time to time. Sneaking a little help or did one brother lay on the bed and maybe had a blanket thrown over him

while his other brother got busy? What about masturbation? My mind goes to the Sony weird places. Like, what about taking a shit? One brother would have to sit in a chair, or not even that, because of the way that they were connected. He would kind of have to face his brother,

kind of lean down. So the one brother would take a shit and he would just be like, fucking, looking right at his brother's face. Jesus Christ, what a weird existence. Good for them for carbon regular lives out for themselves. I guess they never knew any different. I go mad, never be able to get away from somebody.

Weird ending that didn't die at the exact same time. One brother died in his sleep, the other brother woke up, talked to some other family members, his dead brother's connected to him, and he died a few hours later. I'm sure because of some weird situation where the tissue's going back and forth.

I just blew my mind, going in that little side road for a second. We're going to do a suck something and can join twins. Can we? I find it so fascinating. It's just a weird concept to be connected to somebody. To share part of your body with somebody for your whole life. Okay, back to the Cambodian dark ages. All right.

All right. For around 400 years, Cambodian dark ages. All right, all right. For around 400 years, Cambodia was under the thumb. As I said earlier of either the Vietnamese or the Symes. In the 19th century, struggle between Siam and Vietnam for control of Cambodia resulted in a period when Vietnamese officials attempted to force the Khmer to adopt Vietnamese customs. This led to several rebellions against the Vietnamese

beginning in 1841. They would appeal to Cambodia would to appeal to Thailand for assistance. The the Siamese Vietnamese, you know, war, the Thai Vietnamese war kicked off ended in 1845, which in agreement to place the country under basically joint custody. That's what we're that's pretty rare rare, right? To, for one nation to be overseen by two separate countries who don't even really get along. I like like like a, like a, like the weird fucking nation kid of divorced nation parents, right? Cambodia is with Vietnam, Vietnam during the week, you know, Vietnam is making sure that Cambodia is doing his homework, eating three square meals a day, going to bed on time.

Then weekend dad, CYAM shows up and fucks everything up. CYAM, let's Cambodia step way too late. Let's Cambodia have pop culture breakfast and dinner, hot dog, potato chips and mountain dew for lunch. CYAM, let's Cambodia watch our Rita movies, ride his bike around without a helmet, come on CYAM. You're making Vietnam look like an asshole. All she's doing is try to make sure Cambodia has all the tools

that he needs to become successful grown up country someday. 1863, the Thai King, Nordum, decided he needs protection. The Symees and the Vietnamese are going to keep fighting over Cambodia and Cambodia is going to keep asking them for help. So we reached out to France by 1867, the Thai King assigned a treaty with France and renounced its custody of Cambodia. You know, I can, you have them. We can dance out in exchange for control of some other provinces, custody of Cambodia is now officially given to France. Now, Vietnam really increases it. Cambodia is going to be a protectorate

colony of France from 1867 to 1953 now, part of French Indochina, although it was occupied by the Japanese Empire just for a bit, just for a little, little, little wee bit during World War II, which we already went over. Why did France want land? All this land in Southeast Asia? Well, money. It's always about money. High taxes on the local consumption of goods like salt, opium and rice alcohol filled the

coffers of the French colonial government. Then we talked about this in the Vietnam stock. Right, just those three items comprised 44% of the government's budget by 1920. The French then began in the 1930s to exploit the area's natural resources. What has now Vietnam became a rich source of zinc, tin and coal, as well as cash crops such as rice, rubber, coffee, and tea. Cambodia supplied pepper, rubber, and rice. The availability of plentiful high-quality rubber led to the establishment of famous

French tire companies such as Michelin. This whole time during the Dark Ages, during the French Protectorate period, Cambodia continues to have its own royal family. They don't always get the lead, but the lineage continues. They get to, you know, sitting on a little thrones and fucking wave sectors time to time. 1941, the Japanese Empire invades French Indochina,

takes over for a bit. Their occupation ends in 1945. 1946, followed in the Second World War, France expects the other allied powers to return its Indochinese colonies to its control, but the people of Indochina have different ideas. They expected to be granted independence after the war, and this difference of opinion leads to the first Indochina war and eventually leads to the Vietnam conflict.

France re-imposes this protectorate in 1946 on Cambodia. As I touched on earlier, a new constitution permits Cambodia to form political parties. This includes communist parties. The decision comes back to haunt the French. Communist guerrillas begin an armed campaign against their French occupiers and overlords. 1950 Cambodian communist joined force with Vietnamese communist against French colonialism.

In 1953 as I touched on earlier as well, Cambodia wins its independence from France. Most Cambodians are super happy, not all are. When French Indochina has given independence, Cambodia loses hope of regaining control over the Mekong Delta, as that land is awarded to Vietnam, it was disputed. Formally part of the Khmer Empire, that Delta had been controlled by the Vietnamese since 19 or 1698, but tens of thousands of ethnic Kamehra still lived in the area. Q tension between the Cambodians and the Vietnamese that still exist to this day. In 1954, Vietnamese Communists under Ho Chi Minh defeat the French and the French give up their claims to the former protectorate of French Indochina.

The US fearing that Ho Chi Minh will add Vietnam to the communist bloc enters the war, the French abandoned, giving us the beginning, the very beginning of the French or of the Vietnam excuse me conflict. As I also mentioned earlier, as the Vietnam conflict intensifies in the late 50s and the early 60s, Cambodia tries to stay the hell out of it, maintain a position of neutrality, but they can't stay out of it. You don't get to stay out of the Cold war when you're in a place like Cambodia. The Cambodians allow Vietnamese communists to make some concessions

to use Cambodia as a sanctuary and as a supply route for their arms and other aid to their armed forces fighting in South Vietnam. U.S. doesn't like this. And this policy was perceived as being humiliating by many Cambodians, right? Just more cow-towing to Vietnam. And of course, it leads to fighting on Cambodian soil. So while the Cambodians aren't officially part of the Vietnam conflict, they really kind of are. And July of 1962, Cambodian Communist leader Tao Samus disappears.

Most think he was caught and murdered by the Cambodian government. Pol Pot takes this place, right? Making plans for rebellion. We touched on this earlier as well. 1967, Pol Pot still waiting to, right? So we've making plans for rebelling. We touched on this earlier as well. 1967, Pol Pot still waiting to make his big move in Cambodia. His Communist Party changed his name in 1967 from the Revolutionary Workers Party to the Communist Party of Campoccia, the ethnic name of Cambodia.

He wants to make it sound like there is earthy, rootsy people that is wanting to get back to the way it was, man. Let's make Campoccia, let's make Campo Chia great again, right? This kind of thing. They moved a lot of key personnel, including Pol Pot to the rural northeastern province of Rata Kiri, Rathana Kiri, I think. That could not find somebody who wasn't lunatic, saying that word correctly. Joe and I watched a video right before this recording where some American tourists was over there. Oh my god doing the most

heinous over the top like parody of a Cambodian accent and he was saying that word and yeah, I don't trust his I don't trust the way he was doing it. You make me sound like a real asshole So anyway, they move a lot of key personnel including Pol Pot to this real North Eastern Province Moves probably made to avoid US bombing raids. bombing raids. Several party leaders, including Pol Pot, shifted from rural Cambodia, where they worked amongst Buddhist Khmer peasants into a sparsely inhabited world of tribal minorities who spoke different dialects and engaged in slashing, burned kind of primitive agriculture. And this exposure, exposure to this affects Polpots communist philosophy greatly. And Marxian communist terms, these tribes people had great ideological significance for him.

Without access to money, markets or the state, they enjoyed would appear to be deeply rooted traditions of autonomy, solidarity and mutual aid. And polepots eyes, these people were participating in primitive communism. They seemed like noble savages to him, uncorrupted by social differentiation or money. They were in Maoist terms, poor and blank receptacles for communist teaching. This combination made them role models for the urban intellectuals who dominated the upper reaches of the Cambodia and Communist movement.

Pol Pot finally has a very concrete idea, very clear vision of how he wants his country to look. As Cambodia heads for civil war, torn between US promises to maintain its constitutional monarchy and those who want to turn the nation into a communist country, the communists are plenty busy. Like, in any civil war, there's a lot of different factions, students protesting the monarchy, Republicans, professional soldiers, monarchists, Vietnam, opportunists. The list goes on and on.

The communists are trying to recruit anyone they can to their side of the conflict or fight in the monarchy and nationalist general and politician, Lon Nal, a man who hates communism who becomes prime minister of Cambodia in the 1966 elections. Despite Lon Nal's victory, not everyone is on board with the monarchy and with being allied with the United States. There's a war propaganda going on between the nationalists, the Republicans, and the, and the, and the communist. And who is usually ready to revolt when there is talk of civil war, who historically is ready to fight the establishment, the poor, and the downtrodden. Of course, they are.

The current system doesn't seem to be working for them. So they, you know, they feel like they have little to lose, possibly much to gain by trying to overthrow it. That's what horribly backfire in them. They were, they were poor and they didn't think life could get worse and it turns out it would get a lot worse. In April of 1967, in Poverst, peasants, revolt in western Batamong or Batamong near the village of Samalat, over 200 local people, some bearing anti-American banners attack Cambodian army posts, violence spreads into

neighboring villages over the next few days. The army's response is swift. Hundreds of suspects are rounded up, beaten and interrogated. Hundreds of others flee their homes and take refuge in the forest. And then army units storm to the village, seeking the victims, scapegoats and loot. Who benefits from all of this? Pol Pot in the Communist Party of Campoccia. This helps C.P.K. recruiting immensely.

The C.P.K. also because now the government looks like a big bully. The C.P.K. now begins to launch their own guerrilla strikes against the Cambodian army. Great deal of combat occurs around Vichap Mountain, a former guerrilla hideout that had recently been reoccupied by radicals fleeing from Lonnall. The rebels were pursued into the forest by hundreds of local people who had been given staves and hatchets formed into, you know, militia units told to chase the reds and kill those fucking commies. Rewards are given for delivering seven heads, severed heads back to authorities.

More than 1,000 communist sympathizers die. Shit like this often gets lost in the telling of the Khmer Rouge story, but the communists would do in the communeers would be far more brutal, but the moderate constitutional monarchist, the Republicans, the anti-communists, they were no saint either. Fighting the army for more than two months in 1967 weakens the communists greatly. It was a huge drain in their limited resources. In a speech given a decade later in September 1977, Pol Pot declared that in 1967, the enemy was wavering and incapable of facing the revolutionary forces, but in fact the reverse was true.

They weren't capable of fighting the nationalists of Republicans. While the Red Cameer were struggling to stay afloat, really from attacks on Lawn Nau's Army, their principal opponent, Naradom, CNUK, was way less secure than he'd ever been. While Lawnhall was technically in charge of Cambodia, Naradam, CNUK, that's the word I was looking for earlier, former King of Cambodia was the real leader, running the show from a shadow government behind the public elected government. The Cambodian government at the time was complicated to say the least. Armed resistance for more and more peasants led to a CNUK using more and more military

repression to quell the uprisings, which pushed more people to revolt. It was a nasty cycle. Then in the middle of 1969, CNUK openly accepts diplomatic relations with the United States, alienating what little radical support he'd already had. Not that long ago, the Cambodians had freed themselves from the French. Now they were aligning with another non-Asian superpower. Were they going to be an American colony now? What's going on? Seeing no hope to be getting support, both diplomatically and economically from the U.S. to fight

the Communists. Instead, Nixon, who he didn't know, was planning to withdraw from Vietnam, dropped a ton of bombs on Vietnamese camps in Cambodia. The bombing continued for more than a year with over 3, 3000 raids against Cambodian targets and many Cambodians are fucking pissed. I get it. Right? The leader of their nation allows this other nation to drop all these bombs on their land for over a year.

This causes many to see CNN as a lap dog to the U.S. as sell out of trader. He should be protecting Cambodia for war, not allowing war to come to Cambodia. In the eastern part of the country, especially in your Vietnam, the bombing turns many young men and women into communist revolutionaries. Washington Post journalist Dan Lee Carnau was told by Cienuk in 1967 in December that if the US wanted to bomb the Vietnamese communist sanctuaries, he would not object unless Cambodians were killed. That same message was conveyed to you as president johnson's emissary chester balson January 1968. But then in order to avoid losing even more popularity of his people on March 26,

1968, senior delivers a public speech, refuting the right of the us to use any airstrikes in Cambodia, saying these criminal attacks must immediately and definitely stop. Right? He's trying to walk a weird line here behind closed doors like, Hey, no, it's okay. If you guys help us out with some aid, yeah, go ahead and just do your bombs. And then public is like, get out. No more bombs. Got it here because it was the public won't support any kind of dealings with the US at all. Two days after, you know, saying that the bomb needs to stop, uh, press conference is held and Cena appeals to the international media on March 28, 1968,

saying, I appealed to you to publicize a broad, this very clear stand of Cambodia that I, or that is, I will in any case oppose all bombings on Cambodian territory under whatever pretext. So he's just posturing here, right? He's just playing a dangerous crazy game. He's trying to appease these people and tell them one thing behind closed doors and he has to tell the public something else. CNUK, he didn't accomplish much with all of this other than just to strain his relationship with the US. The US would begin a secret bombing campaign called Operation Menu Now against North Vietnamese

forces on Cambodian soil. The following year, May of 1969, members of the Cambodian government and army began to lose faith and see a nook for a variety of reasons. Some think he's not effectively standing up to the US. Others think he's not cooperating enough. He can't win. He was stuck in a shitty situation. Cambodian was a small nation compared to the other nations around it. They had less than 7 million total people in 1969. North Vietnam alone had around 20 million. You know, Vietnam and total had over 40 million. Many millions of additional communist supporters were in China. You know, the United States had over 200 million people. It's not like he could effectively stand up to fucking any of these people.

While visiting Beijing in 1970, CNN hosted by a military coup, led by Prime Minister General Lon Nal, a guy again, and Prince Sissawath, Srik Matak, US support for the coup remains unproven, but it definitely fits US's MO and many things to CIOs behind it. They felt that, you know, Cienuk was not being cooperative enough. He was starting to lean a little communist, so we got to get a new guy in there. Got to get a new puppet government to, you know, do what we want them to do. Wall and X Island, China, Cienukaisons with Pol Pot's CPK, the US betrayed him.

Now he's over with Pol Pot, now he's in China. The Camille Rouge, they get this going there. They're forming a true guerrilla government movement now. Over the next few years, the Cambodian army will steadily lose territory more and more against North Vietnamese and communist Camille Rouge guerrillas, especially as US begins to de-escalate their involvement in Vietnam. There's a big power vacuum. The policies of the Polpots, Camille Rouge were radical adaptations of Maoist Marxist-Leninist

theories. They wanted to transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society comprised of collectivized farms. The regime focused on rural peasantry rather than on urban proletariat. It emphasized great leap forward type initiatives. They thought to abolish personal interest in human behavior, right? You're not to live life for yourself,

not to live for the self. You're to live for the nation. Your life does not matter. What matter was the life of the community. You're to be a worker ant, you're to focus on the health of the hive. Everything is about community with the. Kameh Rouge. Kameh Rouge promoting communal living

and eating, simple living, farming, more valued than technical knowledge. What it, you know, what it's not as common sense was more important than formal education. Remember how Polpa was a failed student? This feels like the kind of political system or ideological system in academic failure would create.

Fuck education, fuck technology, fuck industrialization, let's live in the past. Let's live simply. Like farmers used to live in medieval Europe during the dark ages. When life was, you know, wasn't it so great? Isn't that what the dark age is? It's known for life being great.

Now it's fucking horrible. People died, you know, young and fucking horrible ways being beheaded by this king or that king or terrible diseases. You know, fuck big cities, professors and surgeons, let's live in the country with no modern medicine and no education. Polpa was an idiot.

Back to 1970 and the coup that deposed King Cienouc by premier Lawn Nal with support of the National Assembly. Cienouc and exile in Beijing makes an alliance with the Camille Rouge. Like I said, it becomes a nominal head of a Camille Rouge dominated government and exile known by its French acronym, Grunk, back to China. So how did this coup really happen?

The road to power, the Camerruz for the Camerruz was opened by events in January of 1970. While he was out of the country, Cienhook ordered the government to stage anti-Vietnamese protests in the capital. The protests quickly spilled out of control and the embassies of both North and South Vietnam were wrecked. A Cienuc who had ordered the protest now denounces them from Paris and blames unnamed individuals in Cambodia for inciting them. These actions along with clandestine operations by Cienuc's followers in Cambodia convinced the government that he should be removed as head of state.

Right, he's doing that same thing he was doing earlier, where he's privately saying one thing and publicly saying another the people don't trust him. He gets outed. March 19th, 1970, C&O, because voted out of office by the National Assembly, Lawnall steps in his president. The North Vietnamese react to the political changes in Cambodia by sending their premiere Fam Bandong to meet C&O in China, and there he recruits him into an alliance with the Camille Rouge.

At the same time, Pol Pot is contacted by the North Vietnamese who offer him whatever resources he needs to stage an insurgency against the Cambodian government. He doesn't love the Vietnamese, but they're going to help him achieve his goals. Shortly afterwards, Siena Kanchi is issued an appeal by radio, but to the people of Cambodia or he issues an appeal by radio to the people of Cambodia asking them to rise up against the government and to support the Khmer Rouge. On March 29th, 1970, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against the Cambodian army, a force of North Vietnamese quickly overruns large parts of Eastern Cambodia, reaching

to within 15 miles of non-Pen before being pushed back. By June of 1973, months after the removal of CNUC, the North Vietnamese have swept government forces from the entire Northeastern third of the country. After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese turn the newly one territories over to local insurgents. The Khmer Rouge establishes liberated areas in the South and southwestern parts of the country where they operate independently of the North Vietnamese. In response to the North Vietnamese invasion.

US President Richard Nixon announces that the US and South Vietnamese ground forces had entered Cambodia in a campaign aimed at destroying communist-based areas in Cambodia, leading to a massive bombing campaign. In October of 1970, Pol Pot issues a resolution for Cambodia to decide its own future independent of the influence of any other country. The resolution includes statements describing the betrayal of the Cambodian socialist movement in the 1950s by the Vietnam. This was the first statement of the anti-Vietnamese policy that would be a major part of the Pol Pot regime later when he took power from night so it's kind of a weird thing right the North Vietnamese are helping him but he just also hates the North

Vietnamese from 1970 until early 1972 the Cambodian conflict has fought largely between the government and army of Cambodia, the Republican army of Cambodia, the nationalists, and the armed forces of North Vietnam. As they gain control of more and more Cambodian territory, the Vietnamese Communist imposed a new political infrastructure, which eventually the Kharroosh would be able to take over. The North Vietnamese attempts to overrun Cambodia in 1970 were apparently launched at the explicit request of the Camarroosh according to documents uncovered from the Soviet archives after 1991. So it's all, this all seems confusing.

It kind of is. You know, they're doing this publicly. There's all these things like it's all this disinformation, all this propaganda. You know, we don't like the Vietnamese, fuck the Vietnamese. Saying that to the Kimbo-Body and people while at the same time in secret, going over to the Vietnamese like, hey man, thanks so much for helping us out. Oh, absolutely. You know, we'll become comedians, we'll become trading partners, everything's gonna be

great. All these secret deletes. You know, Pol Pot publicly announced he doesn't want it. Fuck all to do with Vietnamese, but he is secretly working with them to bring comedians in Cambodia. Throughout 1971, the North Vietnamese do most of the fighting against the Cambodian government while Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge function as more of auxiliaries to their forces. As the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge take more and more of Cambodia over, Pol Pot is

able to gather more and more recruits and train them according to higher standards than were previously possible when he's working out of the shadows. Well, accepting anyone regardless of their background into the Khmer Rouge Army at that time, Pol Pot also increases the requirements for membership into the actual political party. Students and so-called middle peasants are now rejected from membership.

Those with clear, peasant backgrounds, they were included in membership, they were preferred. These restrictions were ironic in that most of the senior party leadership, including Paul Pot, came from student and middle peasant backgrounds. But he doesn't want anybody else like Kami, he wants these poor peasants to be his group. They also create an intellectual split between the educated old guard or this, creates an intellectual split between the educated old guard or this, you know, creates an intellectual split between the educated old guard party members and the uneducated peasant new party members. All part of poll pots plans. I'm going to make a little more sense later.

Fucking crazy what he did. Poll pot toward the insurgent North Vietnamese controlled areas in Cambodia in 1972. China's helping them out. They're supplying $5.9 a year in weapons. Poll pot organizes an independent revenue source for the party in the former rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia, uses forced labor, makes some money for more weapons. Meanwhile, a non-communist controlled parts of the country, a constitution is adopted, a parliament is elected, and La Nal goes on to become president from being prime minister,

which is really just a name change, doing the same shit, he's still leading. The communist still not totally in charge of the entire country yet. And then in May of 1972, after a central committee meeting, the party under the direction of Pol Pot begins to enforce new levels of discipline and conformity in areas under their control.

Minorities such as the Chom people, an ethnic group who are primarily Muslim, they're forced to conform to traditional Cambodian styles of dress and appearance now. These policies such as forbidding the chomps from wearing jewelry will soon be extended to the entire population. A haphazard version of land reform gets put underway as well. Its basis was that all land holdings should be of uniform size. Everyone gets the same amount of property. The party also confiscates private means of transportation. The 1972 policies

were aimed at reducing the peoples of liberated areas to a sort of feudal peasant equality. This would get more severe as time goes on. These policies were generally favorable to most people at the time because they were already poor peasants. But then when refugees from towns were sent out to these farms, they didn't like it as much. 1973, the CPK were fighting battles against government forces with little or no North Vietnamese troops support now. The North Vietnamese had mostly returned to North and South Vietnam to fight their own other battles.

The CPK 1973 now controlled nearly 60% of Cambodia's territory. So it took a while for this takeover. They controlled 25% of the population. USB 52 bombardment of Cambodian, of the Cambodian countryside and supportive lawn nal forces reaches its peak in 1973. 250,000 tons of bombs dropped in seven months before US Congress calls a halt to the bombing in August 15, 1973. The bombing does little to stop the progress of the cpk. If anything, it strengthens their movement. The death toll from 1969 to 1973 was somewhere between 50 and 150,000 civilian deaths from the bombing. Some sources claim

as many as 300,000 deaths. Well, Pol Pot uses the bomb means killings, you know, in destruction as recruitment propaganda, as an excuse for the abandonment of moderate socialist policies and the insurgent zones. Right, we got to, we got to do something about this. They're killing us purges of moderate communist suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot occur now more and more. It's literal do or die time, motherfuckers. You're with us.

You're against us, right? You're part of the solution or you're fucking dead. The Kamehru takes over more of Cambodia during mid 1973. They reach the outskirts of Nampen and then Pol Pot orders that the city be taken during the peak of the rainy season. Now the Kamehruz under Pol Pot control almost two thirds of the country, half the population. Late 1973, Pol Pot makes strategic decisions to determine the future of the war. He decides to cut the capital off from contact with the outside world with sources of supplies,

putting the city under siege. He enforces tight control over people trying to leave the city through Kamehru's lines. He orders a series of general purges of former government officials, anyone with an education due to still pissed about struggling to school. He wants the fucking educated killed now. All right, he's all, what about that homework now, professor? Huh? It's out back in the trash,

well, I'm gonna dump your fucking body. Hey, professor, here's your new assignment. Get stupid or fucking die quick. Bad news, motherfucker, so I'm super intimidated by anyone smarter than me or educated, and I didn't do well in school, I'm dumb. So if you're a D student or better, if you graduated from any place ever,

no algebra equation or spelling betrothes gonna save you from the polapod equation. Learning plus doing goodter than me equals bullet to brain, which I'm pretty sure is in your chest. So I'm going to shoot there. Who's laughing? How terrifying would it be to live while this is going on? If you had any education, if you're intellectually curious at all, if you're anything other than a poor villager, I mean, the lunatics are truly running the asylum now and more and more of Cambodia. A new set of prisons is constructed in areas under Camaroos controls this time to detain and torture anybody. They don't feel like killing right away.

In late 1973, the Chom people attempt an uprising to stop the destruction of their culture because, you know, now the only culture you're allowed to have is Pol Pot's Communist culture, which is no culture. Right. They've gotten rid of religion. No traditions are welcome. You're loyal to the state and the state alone. You're an egoless worker bee devoted to the hive. Well, this uprising is quickly crushed.

Pol Pot orders the harsh physical torture be used against most those involved in their revolt to send a message to others to not revolt. Pol Pot tests out harsh new policies against the Chal minorities before extending them to the general population of the country, just like he used them as guinea pigs before for his dress code. Also in late 1973, Pol Pot decides that urban dwellers are of no use to his new agrarian experiment. He starts to evacuate some towns, sending the entire populations of towns out into the rice fields, out into the countryside.

He writes at this time, if the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalist remaining control, what was the point of the revolution? In 1974, the Khmer Rouge evacuates a small city of Odong, 12,000 people are marched out into the countryside or executed for being teachers for being doctors for being smarty pantses It's just insane. It's it's rumored that a lot of people were killed for wearing glasses I'm not even fucking kidding right for looking like they were readers right they read a lot So they're probably smarty pantses and they need to be killed Oh my god imagine if like the dumb bully you went to school with was put in charge of everything

and given a license to kill. And he got all the other dumb bullies together and they just got to run the show. This is basically what life was like for these people. This might be a good place to kind of take a pause and ask what did the international community think about all this shit going on? Surprisingly, they were for it because they didn't really know what was going on. Pol Pot and the Camarroos gain the recognition of sixty three countries as the true government of can body of

at this time even the u-n gave the seat uh... for can body to the command ruch may seem surprising but remember can't be put in upheaval since at least a forties when it was ruled by france it's not like the monarchy didn't murder people uh... and communist that was really good at keeping secrets so no one in international community really knew exactly what was going on in Cambodia. And because of Vietnam and other nearby conflicts that were deemed as potentially more hazardous

to the international community, there just wasn't much focus on them. People were distracted by other things going on. In the fall of 1974, cities are emptied of their populations in Cambodia. More cities, more people purged, more people sent to the countryside. Pol Pot begins to purge more members of the Khmer Rouge. She's getting paranoid. A top party official named Praseth was taken out into the forest, shot without being given

any chance to defend himself. It's September of 1974. His death was followed by a purge of many other comrades who like Praseth were ethnically tie. Pol Pot's explanation for their deaths was that a class struggle could tear the party apart. Right, they had to stay strong. They had to cleanse the party of anyone

who could be holding on to old class ties like the Thai people. Who he'd always felt had held themselves as being superior to Cambodians. So basically he was like, listen, I'm fucking racist, okay? All right, yeah, racist, all right, sure. And I don't like the Thai people,'m fucking racist, okay? All right, yeah, racist, all right, sure. And I don't like the Thai people, so fuck them, okay? And other guys were like, all right, okay, all right, okay.

Yeah, it's insanity. By the beginning of 1975, the Khmer Rouge had gained control of nearly all of Cambodia. They positioned themselves for a final offensive against the Republican government in January of 1975. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer sees his control of the country's capital city after you know, attacking it for months. Non-Pen effectively ousting the Law and Law government.

Now as the leader of the Communist Party, Pol Pot becomes a defacto leader of the country, he adopts the title, Brother number one. He says, he's your brother. He's your fucking crazy brother who kills you if you read. Within a week, people of non-pen, bottom-bong, other cities are purged or for being too uppity or being too educated or they're driven into the countryside by the red premiere and told to take up agricultural tasks. So strange. He just emptied the cities.

Imagine if you're working as a shopkeeper. You're a car salesman, you can count to your movie theater, usher, whatever. Anything just any kind of job you could have in town or in the city. And then soldiers kick you out of your apartment or condo or house, you know, they literally take all your shit, they give you a simple peasant uniform to wear, a garden hoe, right? They tell you to get to farm and be killed. You can sleep in a big communal living space, you'll be given just enough food, not to die quickly. That was the reality for people kicked out of non-pen. Those leaving

initially were told the evacuation was due to the threat of severe American bombing. Right? This has helped to get them out there faster. It's going to last for no more than a few days. You'll get to return home. Nope. Thousands of evacuees, especially the very old and very young, died over the next few weeks. Some survivors walking towards regions where they hope the relatives welcome them, were on the road for over a month. When they asked questions of the heavily armed young soldiers who accompanied them as they're being evacuated and marched out into the countryside, they're just told to obey the revolutionary organization and that the organization will now act as their mother and father. The evacuees were called new people, or April 17 people, because they had joined the revolution

so late, so they're looking down upon. Residents of the countryside were known as the base people, and they're treated less harshly than the new people. After emptying the cities, the revolutionary organization embarks on a program of social transformation that affects every aspect of Cambodian life, money, markets, private property, nationwide or abolished, schools, universities, Buddhist monasteries or clothes. You fucking hear the school, they closed the schools.

It's like, fuck schools. No publishing is allowed. The postal system is shut down for the whole country, freedom of movement, exchange of information, personal adornment, leisure activities of any kind are over. Punishments for infractions are severe. Repeat offenders are imprisoned under harsh conditions are killed. Everyone's ordered to perform task set for them by the, by the, you know, communist

by the Camarroosh for evacuee city dwellers. These tasks seldom had anything to do with their training or skills. Now, all of them were forced to become peasants or, you know, were forced to become soldiers. They're made to wear identical black cotton clothing. The Camaro Rouge coined the phrase, year zero, to symbolize everyone's radically different new life. Forget what your life was before. That doesn't fucking matter now.

Now your life is going to be what we tell you it is. Hundreds of thousands of the upper educated middle classes are tortured and executed in special prisons and centers, other starve or die from disease or exhaustion. Tragically the international community still doesn't know that this is happening, not yet. The outside world is told the Cambodia is being ruled by the United Front government. The leftover of the Cambodian monarchy government led by the deposed King of Cambodia, Nora Dom, you know, Sienuc, when in reality he's a secret communist, the charade continues for the remainder of 1975.

January of 1976, the revolutionary organization dissolves the United Front. And the Khmer Rouge led by a poll pod officially changes the name of the country to Democratic Campo Chia, it's on a new constitution. The constitution praises collective values, identifies the revolutionary organization with the people's interests and formalizes the collectivization of Cambodian life. Soon after, radio, non-PEN announces that elections will be held for a national assembly. It broadcasts the names of the ministers in the new regime. The elections it seems were primarily for overseas consumption, primarily for an audience of people in the

UN checking in on Cambodia, which is a fake election. Most new people were not allowed to vote, base people were basically told who to vote for. Everyone who got elected was a member of the community in these free elections. In April of 1976, the newly established representative assembly holds its first session, electing a new government with Pol Pot as prime minister, right? So it's all for show. It's just the same dudes. Pol Pot's goal for this new country was to have 70 to 80% of the nation set up for mechanized,

collective farming within five to 10 years. You wanted to build a modern industrial base off the back of the farm mechanization within 15 to 20 years and then become a self-sufficient state, like totally self-sufficient. This is kind of his great leap forward plan. To avoid foreign domination of industries, he refuses to purchase goods from any other countries now. Q. Famine. The Camarroot systematically then starts to destroy food sources that could not be easily

subjected to centralized storage and control. They cut down fruit trees. They forbid fishing for some reason. They abolish medicine in hospitals because they're fucking idiots. They force people to march long distance that'll access to water, you know, and their agricultural kind of situations.

They refuse offers of humanitarian aid. Why are they making all these decisions? I mean, partly it really is because they're stupid. I'm not just saying that to be a dick. I mean, they killed the educated people. Pol Pot was not a smart man. He was able to memorize some French literature. He was able to read and absorb some communist ideology, but overall, there's a reason he was held back a couple years in school and couldn't get into college.

He just wasn't very smart. He was confident. He was ruthless. He was on the right side of the Cold War. You know, he was at the right place in time to be the kind of communist he was. He was not a brilliant leader. He killed doctors, he killed educators. He tried to turn everyone in either soldiers or farmers, regardless of their skill sets, he was a fucking idiot. He's a stupidest dictator I've ever read about. It's infuriating.

Polpots had shortly after coming into power that the first step in progress was to exterminate an entire class and he killed the smart class. In mid 1976, Paul Potts or regime reclassified camped chien into three groupings, those with full rights, those who were candidates for full rights, and those with no right to couldn't ever be given rights. They were known as Deposities. This last group, the Deposities, included new people who have been brought in from the cities into the communes, and the Deposities, included new people who had been brought in from the cities

into the communes, and the Deposities were marked for destruction. These poor bastards, their rations were two bowls of rice soup a day, which he knew was not enough for a human to live on, and he didn't give a fuck. It was intentional. They were giving just enough food to work on the farms for a little while until they starved to death and then good riddance The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state controlled radio. They would broadcast this stuff so everybody could hear that only one or two million people Were needed to build their new agrarian socialist utopia. They said this to a country that still has over six million people

Fucked up as that. They're basically at this announcing that over two thirds of you motherfuckers are completely and totally expendable and they meant it. God, man, and maybe I would get that if there was like a lot of traffic, right, if it was super overcrowded. JK kind of, but come on, Pol Pot. You won't even start off with that many people. And how do you think you defend

as little communist utopia of a million to two million people? Right, if you got down to those numbers, if someone were to attack later. Oh, yeah, he didn't think about that because he was a fucking idiot. And I asked for all the people they didn't need. Here's what he said. This is a famous Camero Rouge quote. He said to keep you is to, sorry, I'm a start over to keep you is no benefit to destroy you is no loss. That was his philosophy. After this announcement, hundreds of thousands of the new people, the depositees, those unable to work on the farms, those who they just

didn't trust for whatever reason were taken out and shackles to dig their own mass graves and then Khmer soldiers buried them alive. A Khmer Rouge extermination prison directive ordered bullets are not to be wasted. I didn't even bother to shoot these people. Mass graves such as this are often referred to now as the killing fields of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge had a diabolical disregard for human life. The mayhem that the Democratic camp which she had inflicted on his people led the French author, Jean-Lecel-Cher, to coin the word auto word auto genocide, which means the extermination of a country citizens by its own people or government, genocide of a particular group by members of that group.

It's like all obviously all genocide is terrible and horrible and evil, but this is like an especially idiot. He's killing himself. It. It's like, it's so stupid on so many levels. And less than four years more than a million Cambodians or one in seven die from malnutrition overwork and illnesses. They could have been treated if they hadn't killed the doctors. At least a hundred thousand, probably many more, executed for crimes against the state.

Tens of thousands of others perish in military conflict. Declaring that the nation would start again at year zero, Pol Pot isolates his people from the rest of the world He empties all the cities, right? He abolishes the money private property religion sets up these real collectives Black clad soldiers marching millions of people into the countryside putting them into work as slaves digging canals and tenting crops And then you know he's as I touched on earlier He's just executing everyone who's not Cambodian as well. He's because he didn't want them. They weren't part of his vision He convinces his you know fellow communists that they should exterminate all people who are not

of Khmer ethnicity, ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic chom. They've got to all be executed. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, anyone in the hearing to a belief system still, or caught worshiping, caught praying, they're executed. Nearly 25,000 Buddhists monks are executed by the regime. The Camarroos continues targeting intellectuals. Those they view as having any contact with outside governments, especially the US, right?

Teachers, doctors, lawyers, targeted and killed. If they found out that you were a lawyer before, even if it pretended to be a peasant, you're killed. Pol Pot and his comrades also set up a new judicial system that was a bit harsh. Anyone found a guilty of a minor crime is given a warning. If you got more than two warnings, you were sent off to prison for a re-education

which almost always meant death. And if you were found guilty for major crime, you were just killed immediately. People were often encouraged to confess to pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes, right? Things that happened before the Kamehruz took over. You know, which usually included just basically free market activity, right?

They had contacts with foreign sources where they trade with any other nations, where they talk and with anybody from the US, where they work with any international relief or you know, government agency, did they have contact with any foreigners at all before the Kamehruz took over? They were told they'd be forgiven if they confessed and that the slate would be white, clean they could start over, and then if they over, they were told they'd be forgiven if they confessed

and that the slate would be white, clean, they could start over, and then if they confessed, they were fucking killed. They were taken to places like S21, this notorious prison for torture and or execution, this place, the S21 prison in Nampan was once a high school, and the head of S21 was Kong Keke Lu, better known as Brother Doik, a former schoolteacher, who ran a pretty tight, scary ship. We're both guards and inmates feared for their lives. In a memo from a meeting, Doik told an interrogator, reminds him about the welfare of his wife and children.

Does he know that his wife and children have been detained? Now that he is here, does he know what will become of his wife? The guards interrogators, other prison staff at S21 were between 15 and 19 years old. Present backgrounds, brother Dwik was in charge of them, he's a huge piece of shit. He later confessed to overseeing the deaths of over 12,000 people in four years,

saying at a court where he was tried for war crimes, I am solely and individually responsible for the loss of at least 12,380 lives. Right, an average of over eight executions a day. Most were not executed at the prison. Most were tortured into confessing crimes. They couldn't have possibly committed many times. Then they were loaded on the trucks driven to the notorious Killing Fields of Shung-Eck where they were bludgeoned to death with ox cart handles or axles, excuse me, Shang-Eck is a village where mass graves containing 6426 sets of human remains were discovered

after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Of all the human remains, exhumed from Shang-Eck and orchard transformed into a mass gravesite, only one skull, one one Was discovered without indications of torture or heavy beating one skull out of almost 6500 Of the victims over 1600 were women almost 5,000 were men 17 were kids the youngest of whom was only three years old And that's just one of many mass graves in order to save ammunition the executions were often carried out using poison spades Sharpen bamboo sticks or they were just tossed in buried life. There's evidence of bayonets, knives, wooden clubs, hose for farming, curved sites being used to kill victims.

Now, there's images of skulls damaged by these encilments as evidence. Sometimes the kids and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunk of a tree, and then just tossed into the pit alongside their parents. Rashed now for the killing the children was to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents deaths. Only 12 people out of the thousands that went through S21 were alive at the end of the regime's rule. 12 are only 12 are known to have made it out. One man referred to only by his name of May, who testified at Doyle's trial was kept in a three by five-foot cell for nearly a year. Shackled by his ankles, taken out only to be interrogated, tortured, or put to work,

his ability to repair sewing machines is the only reason he was kept alive until he was evacuated in the Khmer Rouge's final days in power when they were trying to move their prisoners to another location. May recount of the torturers used to extract false confessions from prisoners, forced them into implicating others as CIA spies. They were paranoid about the CIA. He was beaten with bamboo rods, forced to eat human shit, given electric shocks. Right? He had his toenails ripped out with pliers.

God damn, it's not like the fucking show bees. Albert Fish was brought over to oversee torture. He's one of the dudes who lived. Others were water-borted hung upside down and beaten, had their heads, hands crushed and clamps, amongst other horrors before being killed. Children were witnessed being literally tossed by guards off a third story balconies to their deaths. May recorded the Camero Rooja's final cruelty inflicted upon him during the regime's last days.

March from prison by his jailers, via other Vietnamese forces are closing in on him. They're trying to get to a new location by sheer chance. May comes across his wife and the young son he'd never met born weeks after he was sent to prison. They're marched north at gunpoint for two days. Then without warning, they're woken up at midnight, ordered to run into a rice field. At once they start to run into the rice field, the soldiers opened fire. This poor bastard would say it's this trial later just a couple years ago.

As we ran, we were sprayed with bullets. My wife fell. She screamed to me, you have to escape. I look back to see another friend shot and fall to the ground. My wife was already dead. My son was crying for a moment then he was shot too. And this is a baby we're talking about. I escaped into the forest. Motherfucker. These are innocent human beings. You imagine that shit. Soldiers have been torched you for a year. Take you and your wife.

You know, they probably been torching a rape in her. They take your infant son, tell you to run out in the middle of the night into a rice paddy and then just open fire just for the fuck of it. There was no military advantage to doing this. They knew at this point the war was lost, right? This is just done out of hatred at an evil spite. So how does this insanity finally come to an end? January of 1977, relations with Vietnam began to fall apart. There were small border clashes, Pol Pot tried to prevent border disputes by sending the team of diplomats, diplomats, excuse me, to Vietnam. Negotiations failed. The border disputes continue. On April

30, 1977, the Cambodian army backed by artillery crossing to Vietnam, kicking off the Cambodia Vietnam war. Dumb move, Vietnamese much stronger, right? Classic polpot. Second massive wave of bloody purges occurs inside Cambodia after kicking off this war and attempt to eliminate all dissident communist other moderates, right? Recalcitrant, they're paranoid. They're killing their own party members. The purge is spread to the mass, the peasantry is well, they're killing their, even the peasant to evaluate the most.

It's just madness. Everyone's killing everyone. Cambodia launches military tax now against other countries, Thailand, Laos, classic pot, doubling down on madness. You just push the fuck at all button. So 10th of 1977, Cambodia launches division scale raids over the border, which once again left a trail of murder and destruction and villages. The Vietnamese claim that over a thousand of their people are killed or injured.

Three days after this raid, Pol Pot officially announces the existence of the Communist Party of Kampuchia to the world, which is weird. He waited until this point to say, like, hey, I'm in charge. You know, everybody knew by this point. May of 1978, the massive purchase sparking uprising in the Eastern zone of Cambodia in opposition to the Khmer Rouge. Of course they did.

When you start killing everyone indiscriminately, of course eventually people are gonna revolt. They have nothing to lose. Polepods armies are able to crush this revolt, or they're unable, excuse me, to crush this revolt quickly. And unable, excuse me, to crush this revolt quickly. And the people revolting sneak into Vietnam call for help from Hanoi. On May 10th, 1978, Polpots radio station broadcast a call to exterminate the 50 million

Vietnamese and depurify the masses of people of Cambodia. He's just completely crazy. Just kill all the Vietnamese, we kill them all we have kill most of the people of Cambodia. At least 100,000 more Camero are exterminated in six months, branded as Camero bodies with Vietnamese minds. Cheap, right? Now he's killing people

because he thinks they have a Vietnamese mind. Alrighty, thinks it is. He look a little Vietnamese to me. I probably don't like me. Let's kill you. December 25th, 1978, Christmas Day in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam attacks Cambodia to overthrow

the Khmer Rouge, which Vietnam justifies on the basis of self-defense. Vietnam was no longer now north and south Vietnam, by the way. They unified in 1976 into one big group of socialists who could easily crush their fucking insane Cambodian neighbors. That's exactly what they did. Barely two weeks later on January 7th, 1979, Nampen falls to the Vietnamese to install the New regime. This begins 11 years of Vietnamese occupation in Cambodia. Mom has custody of Cambodia again.

No more junk food this time. Fun day doesn't get to visit on weekends. Some Cambodians celebrate January 7th as a liberation day from the Camarroos, others market as the start of Vietnamese occupation. The Camarroos is defeated. Pol Pot is forced to flee. It makes it to the Thailand border area. The people's Republic of Campuchia is established as a pro-Soviet communist state now led by the

Campuchian People people's revolutionary party. Ah, the party was created by the Vietnamese in 1951, led by a group of Cameroon Rouge who had fled Cambodia to avoid being purged by Pompat. So that's great. So we fucking kick one group of Cameroon Rouge out and then we got a new, not as evil group. They're going to be in charge of Cambodia now. And then Pol Pot is captured and executed. I wish. No. Pol Pot regroups with core supporters in the Thai border area. He received shelter and assistance.

His plan is to get help from Thailand, which is not a big fan of Vietnam, also help from China, and then just, you know, started all over again. The People's Republic of China was the main international supporter of Mr. Pot and his assholes and the Chinese provides them a financial military support. As they hide out in the jungle, while there's a trying to capture them, back in Nampen,

Pot is sentenced to death. He found Gilky of genocide in absentia by a war crimes court, but they have to find him before they can execute him and they can't find him. Maybe they're not trying that hard for some reason. The early 80s, Pol Pot continues to hide out in the jungle. He gives very few interviews, accusing all those who oppose him of being traders and puppets of the Vietnamese. It disappears from public view. In 1995, Pol Pot's retirement from leading the Camarroos is announced, but he supposedly still retains influence over the party. Cambodia is plagued meanwhile by guerrilla warfare, making cash in him a low

priority. I think it's other problems to deal with. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians become refugees. During this time, an interview is done with one of Pot's associates about how Pol Pot felt bad about the killing fields. That's what he said. This guy speaking on Pol Pot's behalf, he said that he knows that many people in the country hate him and think he's responsible for the killings. He said that he knows many people died. When he said this, he nearly broke down and cried.

I like nearly, I didn't even cry. I didn't even cry about millions of people dying. You know, almost, he seemed like a, like a, like a, like a little bit of water in one eye for a second. He said he must accept responsibility because the line was too far to the left because he didn't keep proper track of what was going on.

He said, he was like the master in a house. He didn't know what the kids were up to. And then he trusted people too much. For example, he allowed one person to take care of central committee business from him, another person to take care of intellectuals, and a third person take care of political education. These were people whom he felt very close to. He trusted them completely. Then in the end, they made a mess of everything. They would tell him things that were not true. That everything was fine. And that this person or that person was a traitor. In the end, they were the real traders.

The major problem had been, you know, these groups formed by the Vietnamese classic sociopath behavior. Feels like some shit. One of the serial colors we cover would say just blame, blame, blame. No, man. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. I'm not some evil mother fucker responsible for the deaths of, you know, over a million innocent people. That's not me!

I put Bob in charge. I put Bob in charge of the farms. And that's, you know what, looking back, that's where I fucked up. That's my fault. Now, now I know that Bob is a murderous sociopath. You know what, I'm too trusting. I always have been. If anything, I'm guilty of being too nice of a guy.

Oh, and it's also the Vietnamese people's fault. I mean, fucking classic Vietnamese, right? They created all this. I mean, am I right or am I right? December of 1985, the Vietnamese launched a major offensive overrun most of the remaining Camero Rouge and other insurgents, but they don't get full pot. The Camero Rouge hidden headquarters, another important jungle base.

They're completely destroyed. Pol Pot is able to flee to Thailand where he hides out lives for the next six years. His headquarters as a plantation, villainy, or trot Thailand, where he continues to be the de facto leader of the radical Camille Rouge. This group is somehow still alive. He's back in Siam, back in Thailand, back with fun dad. Tratt sounds familiar because Tratt was in the news recently. The jungles around Tratt Thailand are home to the gray Kwame Tiet Spider.

Ugh, odd spider with 10 legs instead of the normal eight. Antimologist just discovered these fucking creeps about 15 years ago. Superpoys, or excuse me, venomous. I almost, you know, I almost caught me. I said venomous instead of, first thought to be very rare, but they've been, I guess, fucking a whole bunch in the jungle.

And there's a lot of them now. And some idiot tourists smuggled one of these things, or I guess several of these things, back to the US, they were found in the San Diego, or in the San Diego airport, about two weeks ago. Look like they got them all, but then a dead one was found in some ladies' home to size that in Denver a few days ago.

Time is gonna tell if they're here to stay in the United States or not. I hope not. They're twice as venomous as black widows. Their bite is said to be legendarily painful. Feels like your blood has been set on fire. If you do get bitten by one of these creeps, there's currently no anti-vendom.

In the animal world, these little bastards, which are much smaller than black widow spiders, about the size of a large carpenter ants, they prefer to crawl in a victim's ear, bite them inside their head so that when the creature tries to defend itself, it can't smush them, and then they will crawl out when the creature is dead. There are thoughts to be very closely related to the Rhoanoke recluse spider, and in a perfect storm, they work with the Rhoanoke to kill you. Teams of Rhoanokes, lifts in your eyelids, crawling in your eyeballs, little spider legs,

walking around your eyeballs. And then the gray quam, taste spiders crawling into your ears, biting you inside your head, lighting up with fire blood. I just wanted to pass that along. If you feel like something crawling on you, especially in your bed when you're about to try fall asleep, which is usually when spiders go after you, it's probably one of these fucked up, you know, gray quam, taste spiders. Also, in case you hadn't heard the Rhono Greek loose lies much earlier in the suck, I did just make all that up.

Gosh dang! It's hard for me to make your skin crawl. Let's move on. Just forget about it. Just forget about the spider stuff. 1996. Polpoth's new wife, Mia Sun gives birth to a daughter, Sita, because life is not fair.

And sometimes good people die horribly and evil fucks just live long lives. Shortly afterwards, Pol Pot moves to China for medical treatment. Oh my God, he gets medical treatment for cancer. Unreal, the dude who killed doctors. And the balls on this guy. It's getting medical treatment.

Life really not fair sometimes. Pol Pot remains in China until 1988 to 1989. Vietnamese troops withdraw from Cambodia. The country is renamed the state of Cambodia. Buddhism reestablished as a state religion. And the Khmer Rouge fucking still around. The established a new stronghold. The jungles of West Cambodia near the Thai border.

Pol Pot relocates back to Cambodia from Thailand. July 7th, 1994, the Khmer Rouge finally outlawed by a new Cambodian government. They'd never been officially totally outlawed before. A few gorillas don't surrender. One of them is polpot. The other thousands of others are given amnesty when they surrender. Polpot is still alive, still free. 1995, polpot, either 67 or 70 years old, depending on which birth date is correct, has a stroke, paralyzes the left side of his body, still alive. Still free. June 10, 1997, Pol Pot orders the execution of his lifelong right hand man, Sonsen, for attempting to make a settlement

with the Cambodian government. This guy was trying to get some amnesty and come out of hiding. Pol Pot finds out, executes not only Sons son, or son, son also executes 11 members of his family. Dude is still executing people in the Cambodian jungle in 1997. After these executions, he flees again, makes it to a northern stronghold. Nine days, he's fucking, he's like been lotting before they kill him. He's fucking sneaking around. Nine days later.

Paul Pot is arrested by Cameroon's military chief Tom Ock. Good, right? Not really. Following months, you just put through a little show trial just amongst his own little Cameroon Rouge buddies. They put him on trial for the death of Sansen

and they sent him to lifelong house arrest, which is what he's already doing. Also in July of 77, Camboa asked the UN to help create a court to prosecute the surviving top leaders of the Camero Rouge. They should have asked for help for finding these fuckers because they're terrible at it. I really do feel like killing all the country smart people

just had a lot of bad repercussions for Camboa over the next few, many years. He killed thousands of former government workers, killed all the educated. He had the detectives and stuff killed. No wonder he's able to hide so well. And again, that's not me being a dick, right? Part of the reason Cambodia's struggles to recover in the years after Pol Pot's regime

took over is truly because he killed like a couple generations of the nation's best minds. Nearly a year later, April 15, 1998, the United States ran a voice of America radio program. Pol Pot was a devoted listener to this radio program and it announced that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. Finally, after all these years, they're going to, they're the Khmer Rouge is going to turn on this guy and toss him over. According to his wife, he died in his bed that night. Said to be 78 years old, his official cause of death was heart failure,

but most believe he committed suicide, overdosed on prescription medication, value, which he shouldn't have had because he didn't like doctors. He died a far better death than he deserved, and that takes us out of our last time-soc timeline. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. So what a piece of shit, huh?

Yeah, he commented, it's so fun. It's so fun. Between 1.4 and 2 to 3 million people died between 1975 and 1979 at the hands of Paul Potts regime. Right, killing fields, reminders of the coloss colossal tragedy dot the country of Cambodia, more than 20,000 mass grave sites contain more than 1.38 million bodies according to the documentation center of Cambodia. The violent legacy of the Khmer Rouge regime and its aftermath continue to haunt Cambodia to this day.

And recent years increasing attention has been paid by the world to the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, especially in light of the Cambodia Tribunal. In Cambodia, the Tulslaying Genocide Museum, the Shung-Eck Killing Fields, two major sites open to the public which are preserved from the Khmer Rouge years and service sites of memory of the Cambodian Genocide beyond these two public sites.

Not much has been done with the Cambodian genocide beyond these two public sites, not much has been done with the Cambodian government to remember the genocide that occurred. Why? Well, because former members are currently members of the government, right? Because numerous Camero Rouge associates, you know, associated groups remain in political power in the wake of the collapse of the Camero Rouge Empire, a regime. The continued influence of the Camero Rouge in Cambodia's politics has led to an neglect of the teaching of the Khmer Rouge history to Khmer boating children. After World War II, man, the Nazis, they were stopped to fuck out,

but not so with the Khmer Rouge. It's made closure harder to attain in some ways. In 2006, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was set up to charge those former Khmer Rouge officials for war crimes, but today,, they've only convicted three men on September 19, 2007. Excuse me. Noan Chia, second in command of the Khmer Rouge. It's most senior surviving member charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity. He was convicted on August 7, 2014 and received a life sentence, big fucking deal. He was given that sentence when he was 88 years old, died last year. It's age 93. Q, some fun. The Camille Rouge Chief of State also

sentenced the life in prison for crimes against humanity in 2014. He was 85, really glad these guys are getting some justice. This guy is still alive. July 26, 2010, Comrade Wright, a duik director of that S21 prison camp convicted of crimes against humanity initially only sentenced to 35 years. And then the sentence was reduced to 19 years. What the fuck? February 2, 2012, a sentence was extended to life in prison by the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia. How was that not done immediately? Do you admit it to overseeing the executions of over 12,000 people that were going to give him 35 years and then reduce it to 19. He's 77 still alive.

No other former Camille Rouge members will probably ever be punished. The current leader of Cambodia, Hun Sen, he is a former Camille Rouge battalion commander. Is battalion fled to Vietnam in 1977 during one of Polpots and St. Purges of his own people. I mean, can you imagine that a former Nazi leader, you know, a former Nazi like a battalion commander becoming the leader of Germany in the 50s or 60s or something? It just speaks to how messy life is in Cambodia, how it was and still is. Cambodia remains one of the poorest, least developed countries in Asia. Polpa, the Camarroos responsible for so much of that.

Cambodia's standard of health, level of education, care for the environment, other indicators of quality of life still need to be vastly improved. Will this country finally really heal? Probably not until all the members of the Khmer Rouge are dead. When foreign members are no longer still running the country, right? So the people can talk about it more openly. Man, what's crazy to me is how some people after hearing stories like this, still think communism could work. No, capitalism has its evils, but communism may fuck communism. Popos version was especially brutal, but what has it ever been awesome?

Who wants to be a worker, be? Force to pretend they're the same as everyone else. That is not human nature, that's not natural. Some people are born faster, let them run. Admire them for their speed. Don't try and slow them down and not stand out just because you don't happen to be as fast because they intimidate you.

Fuck that. That's a loser mentality bullshit. Some people are born with a beautiful voice and immense musical abilities. Let them sing louder than the rest of us. It's okay. They can sing better than you can. Don't try and silence them.

Don't try and shut them up. And so they don't get more praise for singing than you or the rest of us. I don't like communism for the same reason. I don't like that every kid gets a trophy bullshit. It's dishonest. It doesn't speak to true human nature. Some stars burn brighter than others and they always fucking will. It's the way of the world. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy your life. Plenty of comics are more successful than me. I'm okay

with that. Plenty of podcasters are more successful than me. I'm fine with that. There are people who have more money who are better looking, better shape, et cetera. It's okay. I I'm so happy. There's always gonna be someone doing better than you in some way just accept it. It's okay I like what I've got. I like to like to keep dreaming of trying to accomplish more in a capitalist society I like that I can try to get my start to shine a little brighter and style others to have their stars shine a little brighter too And I'm also okay with you know others achieving more success than I ever will and you know, I just like being able to entertain the possibility that maybe I can get, you know, some more hope, man, I said that earlier, hope we need hope, me, text needed. We need to live in the real world. Communism is just, it's just not real.

It's not real to me as far as like lining up with human nature. Right? All this shit goes away. Just just, ah, fuck it. Dreams die with communism. What is the point of living? If best case scenario, you just have to work until you die and never have any more than you, and what you need to survive. We don't live in hunter-gatherer societies anymore. Why try and move back in that direction? That ship sailed. Thank God. Think life would be simpler and you'd be happier if all you had to worry about was harvesting rice every day. No way. You'd be miserable. Pol Pot's dream was a shitty stupid dream. He was a fucking terrible human being. If Hell is real, I hope he fucking is burning there.

Fuck Pol Pot, fuck Stalin, fuck Mao Zedong, fuck communism, and praise both jangles. Let's head over to the top five takeaways. Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one, while the Cambodian genocide, you know, it took, perhaps as high as as many as three million lives, it's still not even the top five mass murders, as far as overall death counts in the 20th century. Oh my heck, what is wrong with us sometimes.

Number two, communism's terrible. Have I mentioned that? I think I think I have maybe whether or not any of the shitlords like Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot ever tried legit Marxist communism or not will always be up for debate. But you know what? I mean, what? If you don't get the formula just right is gulags and genocide killing fields. Let's just end it. Karl Marx, why did you have to do that? Number three, Pol Pot was a teacher who didn't like teachers like so many dictators. He didn't want thinkers you have to do that? Number three, Pol Pot was a teacher who didn't like teachers.

Like so many dictators, he didn't want thinkers around. Why is that? Right, because they were smart enough to see through his stupid bullshit. 10s of thousands of intellectuals, doctors, teachers, political distance were executed during his purges, losing those intellectuals crippled Cambodia's recovery efforts after his regime was toppled.

Number four, this is just another sucks illustrates how wicked we meet sacks can be to one another. Tribalism is more than real as the history of humanity. Pol Pot started by getting rid of everyone who wasn't like him. And then well, you know, he also got rid of others like him, but his purges began with tribalism. So maybe no more tribalism. Number five, new info. And the years following the calamity of Cambodia began opening up the international community again with survivors sharing their stories and recollections. If you want to learn more about the Khmer Rouge and what they did to Cambodia, watch the

1984 British biographical drama film called the Killing Fields. Based off victim's first hand experiences, the film brought worldwide attention to what was just a few years prior and internationally neglected genocide. At the 57th Academy Awards, it received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture at one three. At the 38th British Academy Film Awards, it won eight BAFTAs, including Best Film, Best Actor. 1999, the British Film Institute voted the Killing Fields Z 100th Greatest British Film

of the 20th century. There's another good movie you can watch. I watched based on this subject, watched it last night. First they killed my father, Angelina Jolie directed 2017 historical thriller set in 1975, the film depicts a five year old girl forced to be trained as a child soldier while her siblings are sent to labor camps during the Khmer Rouge regime. Powerful flick, especially since shit like that is still going on today in the world, man, education. we have to keep learning. We have to keep evolving.

We have to become better problem solvers, figure out how to allocate resources more effectively, prevent desperate times that call for desperate measures. We have to keep studying histories to not repeat these same terrible mistakes. We have to work hard to prevent totalitarian mother fuckers like Pol Pot from ever gaining power again. The more logical we are, the better we get at critical thinking. The less needless suffering will occur. I truly believe that hail fucking Nimrod.

Time suck. Top five take away. Pol Pot and the Cameroos genocide sucked. And what an intense tail. I'm glad I know about it. Scary. Uh, big thanks to the time suck team. Thanks'm glad I know about it. Scary. Big thanks to the TimeSug team. Thanks to Queen of the Suck Lindsey Cummins.

High priest of the Suck Harmony Velocamp. Reverend Dr. Paisley, the Biddelixer app design crew. Logan and Casey at Spicy Club running that badmagicmerch.com. Sweetass store. The Script Keeper, Zach Flannery. Check out the Colbs and Curious Private Facebook group. If you want to make some new friends, thank you to the countess of the Colt Liz Hernandez

for being a kick-ass administrator. Well over 15,000 meat sacks to meet in there now. Thank you to the all-seeing eyes of the Colt helping Liz out. Ellie Darling, Robbie Erickson, Megan Howell, Danny Ryan, Jacob Carey, Juan, Carlos Ramirez, Darius. Also, the TimeSug Discord channel via the TimeSug app you can get in there, meet over 5,000 goofy ass meat sack suckers. Thank you beef steak for keeping discord weird and fun. Next week on time suck, we return to the Idaho Panhandle for a hard look at the Ruby Ridge

incident that culminated into tragedy in August of 1992. Some have called it, you know, the today the modern militia movement was born in America while others considered among the most disastrous examples of government overreach in recent US history. One thing for sure, everything that could have gone wrong was Ruby Ridge, certainly did. Ruby Ridge, the location of an 11 days standoff at the former Green Beret and Aryan nation sympathizer Randy Weaver, his young family and a friend named Kevin Harris, who were in an isolated cabin in boundary county Idaho. The weavers had absorbed a number of anti new world order conspiracy books, reinterpreted

a bunch of apocalyptic Christian texts for the modern area or modern era. They've moved away from society to the isolated cabin and attempt to save themselves from what they saw as an evil Zionist occupied government. It was cracking down on good Christians in an effort to create a one world government. Sometimes these kind of details get lost in their story. They were huge fucking wackadoodles. Randy was crazy as shit. Must have felt as if the end of days prophecies were coming true with 400 law enforcement

officers, including local and regional police FBI, US federal marshals were called into handle the weavers. The circus on Ruby Ridge, including the helicopters, tank, treaded armored personnel carriers, anti-government protesters from around the nation, even heraldor Rivera showed up. In the end, weavers wife Vicki, who supposedly had visions of an event like this, and his 14 year old son, Sammy and US Marshal William Digan killed during the siege. So join us next week as we investigate the appalling details of this crazy Ruby Ridge government standoff from 1992. And now it is time for today's Time Sucker updates.

First update from super Northern Sucker, Mikeador, with a message to keep on fighting through the tough times, Mike writes, dear suck master, Lord Cummins, the third Esquire, long time listener, first time writing in, disclaimer, the first bit might be a little hard to listen to, so buckle up mother suckers. First off, I would love it if you could give a shout out to my beautiful strong and intelligent wife Veronica. Hello Veronica. We've been married for almost eight years, she's about to give birth to our son Elijah.

She's doing the fourth of March. We married very young. She had a little girl Allison's the age of 15 that I'm proud to call my daughter. I know, I know. That's his, where's that my, that's a little young to have a kid, but that didn't stop my wife from becoming the best mother

I could have asked for in a partner. So throughout our lives, this young couple we have never stopped trying to get pregnant. My wife has had four separate miscarriages after the last one because of how far along she was. I could tell that it had taken a toll on her. And we both felt like we could never have another kid. We live in Alaska. I'm a mechanic in the North Slope oil field, so I'm gone two weeks at a time. I got a call from my wife while at work early last year. She told me that my cousin had given birth to a boy, a boy that was malnourished, had heroin, alcohol, and marijuana in the system.

You know, the child services was there at the time, granted his temporary custody of this little boy when she brought him home and faced time me as if those miscarriages never happened. She was glowing and ecstatic to be taking care of him. Well, my cousin got sent to jail after making no attempt to visit the baby, you go to meetings, and well, you know, getting the highest fucking assault

in my aunt, ramble on about how the shadow people told her to let him to kill her. So needless to say, we now have full guardianship of this little man. And around the process of adopting him, his name will be changed to Wyatt. Two months after gaining custody of him, we found out we were pregnant again. Now, both of us were excited, but skeptical due to our history. She is now eight months pregnant and doing a few weeks and we couldn't be happier. Your podcast seriously helps us get through some tough times.

When I felt like I couldn't laugh or put a smile on my face, I turned some mother suckin' time suck on and God damn it, you made it happen every single time. Thank you for everything you do. For every meat sack out there who's going through a tough time, just know that there's a community of people here with time suck that are rooting for you. Hopefully we'll be able to catch you

at a live suck or stand up show one day. You've won my favorite comics for years. That's all I've got. So hail, Nimrod, praises to fiend up both jangles. And peanut boat, jangles and cook cook cook cook. God damn it. Keep on suck it. I love you, Mike. You and Veronica are some fighters. I like it. Man, keep doing what you're doing, doing some good in the world, bringing this child up the right way, working hard, not giving up. It is impressive. Nimrod, Nimrod approves mightily. Next up, top shelf meat sack, Shandy Martin. Let's just know that some shame is coming

to the Golden State killer. I love it. Shandy writes, with the subject of micro-pean exposed. And then hello, master sucker. I was listening to the podcast, three spooked girls and they did an update on Joseph D'Angelo. Supposedly, the judge asked for photos of his micro-pean

to be submitted into evidence, which makes me happy. I'm not sure if it was actually carried out as the defense was saying to his violation of his fifth amendment rights, but imagine having his micro-pean blow it up to post your size to show the court. Fucking hilarious, plus I figured you enjoy this as well. Keep up the good work.

Time suckers what made me star-list into podcasts to begin with and now I'm obsessed. Time sucks my first love, of course. Shout out to Faithful Spaces or Andy Rue for turning me on to the suck. Love the suck and scared to death. Look forward to new episodes every week. Keep on sucking and hail Lucifina. Shandy.

Thank you, Shandy. Thanks for listening to Scared of Deaths as well. Thanks for continuing to listen to Time Suck and for passing that along. And thank you, Andy Rue. Oh, G time sucker. Next up, two updates left. Next up, a Joseph Duncan update from Super Sucker, Sam Wagner, who writes, I was wondering when you were going to get around to suck in Duncan.

My brother and I went to school with the groaning kids. My brother was friends with Slade. I remember sitting at home watching their amber alerts going across the TV screen. The way that it was initially reported made it seem like a love triangle murder. Excuse me. So it was assumed that the children were reasonably safe with a family member. In the following days, it was discovered that they were kidnapped by a pedophile serial killer. Our close family friend was one of the sheriff's deputies that was investigating the case. He never told us anything, but you can see that working that case took a toll on his mental health.

I remember putting Amber Ribbons on trees around school for Shaston Dylan. It was the first time I experienced the sadness that pure evil leaves in its wake. I remember putting Amber Ribbons on trees around school for Shasta and Dylan was the first time I experienced a sadness that pure evil leaves in its wake. I remember when they announced Slade's death my brother was stunned. He was in sixth grade. Had a process that one of his friends was dead and he was never coming back to school and that not only does evil exist, but it doesn't discriminate. My brother is almost 30 now has a wife and a daughter and refuses to go tent camping because he's afraid that his daughter will be taken in their sleep. Cordillane was a safe place up until that point.

On Halloween, we would go trick-or-treaten for miles without adult supervision. I never felt scared walking to school or riding my bike down to the lake with my friends the summertime. After Duncan kidnapped the gronies, my sleepy little town was never the same. Wherever I went, there was always that joy, stealing thought that I could be kidnapped and killed. never the same. Wherever I went, there was always that joy stealing thought that I could be kidnapped and killed. Whenever we went up for July pass, we would pass their vacant home, the empty windows always seemed extra dark inside.

The house was vacant for years until it was finally demolished, which was oddly relieving. It was like destroying a dictator statue. It was freeing, and the man had no power here anymore. I still live in CDA, have a wife and 10 month old daughter, and even though Duncan's evil reign is over, I still have that joy stealing thought in the back of my mind, but now it's for my wife and daughter. I am always exhaustantly vigilant when I'm out with my family in crowded places or public areas.

Joseph Duncan didn't just destroy the lives of one family. He robbed an entire city's children of their innocence. I'm glad that six son of a bitch has locked up with no chance of getting out. It'd be nice if they just fucking, or sorry, I added F. It'd be nice if they just killed him already, though. Sam Wagner. Well, thank you, Sam, for reminding us how many people these pieces of shit victimize. Yeah, I hope we hear about Duncan dying soon. Just so you know, sometimes, and though this is petty and probably doesn't really come up as much, but sometimes I still go to his blog and I leave posts. I leave posts about all the fun things I get to do

because I'm free and not in prison. And I remind him how he will never get to do any of those things ever again. And I make my life even better. I lie. According to my posts, I live near the ocean. I walk on the beach a lot. I enjoy the sunshine, the water, there's a good taco place. You know, it's not as cold as where he is. And apparently I live around a lot of cool restaurants with the food is the best food on the planet. It's delicious. And I, you know, let me know how good it is. I let me know that I have a, you know, a lot more time than I actually do in life to have tons of sex and, you know,

super awesome sex my wife and I hope you read these and I hope they fucking torture them. So I don't know, you know, if you wanna do that, it feels good for me. Last email, coming in from a young kick ass meat sack, Faith McBride, gonna end on a good one today faith rights Hello master sucker king of the suck all of good stuff. My name is faith. I'm 16 I'm writing in to tell you how a comment you made and your brother's grim suck touched me and my dad

He's not my biological father, but he is my dad his name is Stephen And he's by far the most amazing person I know and will ever know my biological parents succumbed to addiction I was homeless for all of my childhood up until that point. My mom, my four brothers and me would sleep wherever we could, friends, relatives until we couldn't anymore. It was a dangerous environment, parties every single night, strange people coming in and out, drunken high. I took care of all my siblings since I can remember. In third grade, I met a girl named Sarah. Her parents Karen and Steve realized I was in a bad situation to care me the best daycare without fully taking me in,

so not to scare my mother. My mom finally realized that she couldn't take care of us anymore so she let us go. My brothers went to live with my grandparents in North Carolina and Karen and Steve finally got legal custody of me. Last November, Karen and Sarah left. This was extremely difficult for me because Sarah was my best friend for five years straight. She brought me into a place that I felt safe in for the first time

of my life. And Karen, she told me that she would never leave me or let me go, which is and always will be one of my biggest anxieties. People I love and trust leaving so many people have walked out of my life like it was nothing. Leave me to wonder why and think so hard and so much that I turn it into my fault. Believing that there is something wrong with me, making people want to leave. Karen leaving deepened that anxiety in me, but Steve stayed. He has done nothing, but be the best dad I've ever known, the biggest supporter I could ever ask for. I sent in the timestamp of you talking about people taking in kids that weren't theirs and it made us both deeply emotional. Difference maker, you said, those words always stick with

us. Thank you, Dan. You strengthened our relationship with your words. I couldn't be more thankful Absolutely love your podcast find myself releasing the episodes when there's not a new one. Well, I love it faith love you Love the relationship you and Steve have man. Yeah, you don't need to be a blood to be an awesome parent So hug your dad for me sounds like Steve as a fucking champion Love what you just shared You know glad glad you have Steve. I hope life just gets better and better for you. And you can put all this, you know, things you've dealt with

behind you more and more as you go forward. You know, you had a rough beginning, but it sounds like you're doing pretty well now. It sounds like a lot of that, thanks to Steve. So thank you both and Hail Nimrod to you all. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Have a great week everybody. If you're able to take over a country, please don't kill the intellectuals. Please don't make everyone else starve and work in super shitty jungle rice farms. Instead, how about, I don't know, how about you just, kind of just try and keep

on sucking. Hey, I'm good at stuff. I'm good at some other stuff. It's different than the stuff that you're good at. But we should do the same stuff at the same level all the time. Yay! Communism! we should do the same stuff at the same level all the time. Yay! Communism!