Pol Pot - Leader of the Khmer Rouge Pol Pot Pol Pot Leader of the Khmer Rouge An interview with former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in the rebels' Cambodian stronghold of Anlgong Veng. Asked about his role in the killing of as many as two million Cambodians, Pol Pot said he did not wish to discuss the matter. (Jan. 8, 1998). (Photo By Getty Images) By Michael Richards, Contributing Writer Updated March 28, 2016. Who Was Pol Pot? As head of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot oversaw an unprecedented and extremely brutal attempt to remove Cambodia from the modern world and establish an agrarian utopia. While attempting to create this utopia, Pol Pot created the Cambodian Genocide, which lasted from 1975 to 1979 and caused the deaths of at least 1.5 million Cambodians out of a population of approximately 8 million.

Dates: May 19, 1928 (1925?) – April 15, 1998 Also known as: Saloth Sar (born as); “brother number one” Childhood and Youth of Pol Pot The man who would later be known as Pol Pot was born as Saloth Sar on May 19, 1928, in the fishing village of Prek Sbauk, Kampong Thom province, in what was then French Indochina (now Cambodia ). His family, of Chinese-Khmer descent, was considered moderately well-to-do. They also had connections to the royal family: a sister was a concubine of the king, Sisovath Monivong, and a brother was a court official. In 1934, Pol Pot went to live with the brother in Phnom Penh, where he spent a year in a royal Buddhist monastery and then attended a Catholic school. continue reading below our video Profile of Pol Pot At age 14, he began high school in Kompong Cham. Pol Pot was, however, not a very successful student and switched to a technical school to study carpentry.

In 1949, Pol Pot obtained a scholarship to study radio electronics in Paris. He enjoyed himself in Paris, gaining a reputation as something of a bon vivant, fond of dancing and drinking red wine. However, by his second year in Paris, Pol Pot had become friends with other students who were impassioned by politics. From these friends, Pol Pot encountered Marxism, joining the Cercle Marxiste (Marxist Circle of Khmer Students in Paris) and the French Communist Party. (Many of the other students whom he befriended during this period later became central figures in the Khmer Rouge.) After Pol Pot failed his examinations for the third year in a row, however, he had to return in January 1953 to what would shortly become Cambodia. Pol Pot Joins the Viet Minh As the first of the Cercle Marxiste to return to Cambodia, Pol Pot helped assess the different groups rebelling against the Cambodian government and recommended that returning members of the Cercle join the Khmer Viet Minh (or Moutakeaha).

Although Pol Pot and other members of the Cercle disliked that the Khmer Viet Minh had heavy ties with Vietnam, the group felt that this Communist revolutionary organization was the one most likely to take action. In August 1953, Pol Pot left his home secretly and, without even telling his friends, headed to the Viet Minh’s Eastern Zone Headquarters, located near the village of Krabao. The camp was located in the forest and consisted of canvas tents that could be easily moved in case of an attack. Pol Pot (and eventually more of his Cercle friends) were dismayed to find the camp completely segregated, with Vietnamese as the high ranking members and Cambodians ( Khmers ) given just menial tasks. Pol Pot himself was assigned tasks such as farming and working in the mess hall. Still, Pol Pot watched and learned how the Viet Minh used propaganda and force to take control of peasant villages in the region. When the Khmer Viet Minh were forced to disband after the 1954 Geneva Accords ; Pol Pot and several of his friends headed back to Phnom Penh.

The 1955 Election The 1954 Geneva Accords had temporarily quashed much of the revolutionary fervor within Cambodia and proclaimed a mandatory election in 1955. Pol Pot, who was now back in Phnom Penh, was determined to do what he could to influence the election. He thus infiltrated the Democratic Party in the hopes of being able to reshape its policies. When it turned out that Prince Norodom Sihanouk (Sihanouk had abdicated his position as king so that he could join directly into politics) had rigged the election, Pol Pot and others became convinced that the only way for change in Cambodia was through revolution. The Khmer Rouge In the years following the 1955 elections, Pol Pot led a dual life. By day, Pol Pot worked as a teacher, who surprisingly was well liked by his students. By night, Pol Pot was heavily involved in a Communist revolutionary organization, the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). (“Kampuchean” is another term for “Cambodian.”) During this time, Pol Pot also married.

During a three-day ceremony that ended on July 14, 1956, Pol Pot married Khieu Ponnary, the sister of one of his Paris student friends. The couple never had children together. By 1959, Prince Sihanouk had begun to seriously repress leftist political movements, especially targeting the older generation of experienced dissidents. With many of the older leaders in exile or on the run, Pol Pot and other young members of the KPRP emerged as leaders in party affairs. After a power struggle within the KPRP in the early 1960s, Pol Pot took control of the party. This party, which was officially renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) in 1966, became more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge (meaning “Red Khmer” in French). The term “Khmer Rouge” was used by Prince Sihanouk to describe the CPK, since many in the CPK were both Communists (often called “Reds”) and of Khmer descent.

The Battle to Topple Prince Sihanouk Begins In March 1962, when his name appeared on a list of people wanted for questioning, Pol Pot went into hiding. He took to the jungle and began preparing a guerrilla-based revolutionary movement that intended to topple Prince Sihanouk’s government. In 1964, with help from North Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge established a base camp in the border region and issued a declaration calling for armed struggle against the Cambodian monarchy, which they viewed as corrupt and repressive. A Khmer Rouge ideology gradually developed in this period. It featured a Maoist orientation with an emphasis on the peasant farmer as the foundation for a revolution. This contrasted with the orthodox Marxist idea that the proletariat (working class) was the basis for revolution. Pol Pot Courts Vietnam and China In 1965, Pol Pot was hoping to get support from either Vietnam or China for his revolution. Since the Communist North Vietnamese regime was the most likely source of support for the Khmer Rouge at the time, Pol Pot first went to Hanoi via the Ho Chi Minh Trail to ask for aid. In response to his request, the North Vietnamese criticized Pol Pot for having a nationalist agenda.

Since, at this time, Prince Sihanouk was letting the North Vietnamese use Cambodian territory in their struggle against South Vietnam and the United States, the Vietnamese believed the time was not ripe for an armed struggle in Cambodia. It did not matter to the Vietnamese that the time might feel right for the Cambodian people. Next, Pol Pot visited the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and fell under the influence of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution . The Cultural Revolution re-emphasized revolutionary enthusiasm and sacrifice. It accomplished this in part by encouraging people to destroy any vestiges of traditional Chinese civilization. China would not openly support the Khmer Rouge, but it had given Pol Pot some ideas for his own revolution. In 1967, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, although isolated and lacking widespread support, made the decision to start a revolt against the Cambodian government anyway. The initial action began on January 18, 1968. By that summer, Pol Pot had moved away from collective leadership to become the sole decision maker. He even set up a separate compound and lived apart from the other leaders.

Cambodia and the Vietnam War The Khmer Rouge’s revolution was progressing very slowly until two major events occurred within Cambodia in 1970. The first was a successful coup led by General Lon Nol, which deposed the increasingly unpopular Prince Sihanouk and aligned Cambodia with the United States. The second involved a massive bombardment campaign and invasion of Cambodia by the United States. During the Vietnam War , Cambodia had officially remained neutral; however, the Viet Cong (Vietnamese communist guerrilla fighters) used that position to their advantage by creating bases within Cambodian territory in order to regroup and to store supplies. American strategists believed that a massive bombing campaign within Cambodia would deprive the Viet Cong of this sanctuary and thus bring the Vietnam War to a quicker end. The result for Cambodia was political destabilization. These political changes set the stage for the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. With an incursion by Americans within Cambodia, Pol Pot was now able to claim that the Khmer Rouge was fighting for Cambodian independence and against imperialism, both of which were strong standpoints in which to gain widespread support from the Cambodian people.

Also, Pol Pot might have been refused aid from North Vietnam and China before, but Cambodian involvement in the Vietnam War led to their support of the Khmer Rouge. With this new-found support, Pol Pot was able to concentrate on recruiting and training while the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong did most of the initial fighting. Disturbing trends emerged early. Students and so-called “middle” or better-off peasants were no longer allowed to join the Khmer Rouge. Former government workers and officials, teachers, and people with an education were purged from the party. Chams , an important ethnic group in Cambodia, and other minorities were forced to adopt Cambodian styles of dress and appearance. Decrees were issued establishing cooperative agricultural enterprises. The practice of emptying urban areas began. By 1973, the Khmer Rouge controlled two-thirds of the county and half the population. Genocide in Democratic Kampuchea After five years of civil war, the Khmer Rouge was finally able to capture Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, on April 17, 1975. This ended Lon Nol’s rule and began the five-year reign of the Khmer Rouge.

It was at this time that Saloth Sar began calling himself “brother number one” and took Pol Pot as his nom de guerre. (According to one source, “Pol Pot” comes from the French words “politique potentielle.”) After taking control of Cambodia, Pol Pot declared the Year Zero. This meant much more than restarting the calendar; it was a means of emphasizing that all that was familiar in the lives of Cambodians was to be destroyed. This was a far more comprehensive cultural revolution than the one Pol Pot had observed in Communist China. Religion was abolished, ethnic groups forbidden to speak their language or follow their customs, the family unit ended, and political dissent ruthlessly eliminated. As dictator of Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot began a ruthless, bloody campaign against a variety of groups: members of the former government, Buddhist monks, Muslims, western-educated intellectuals, university students and teachers, people in contact with Westerners or Vietnamese, people who were crippled or lame, and ethnic Chinese, Laotians, and Vietnamese. These massive changes within Cambodia and the specific targeting of large sections of the population led to the Cambodian Genocide.

By its end in 1979, at least 1.5 million people were murdered (estimates range from 750,000 to 3 million) in the “Killing Fields.” Many were beaten to death with iron bars or hoes after digging their own graves. Some were buried alive. One directive read: “Bullets not to be wasted.” Most died from starvation and disease, but probably 200,000 were executed, often after interrogation and brutal torture. The most infamous interrogation center was Tuol Sleng, S-21 (Security Prison 21), a former high school. Here prisoners were photographed, interrogated, and tortured. It was “the place where people go in but never come out.”* Vietnam Defeats the Khmer Rouge As the years passed, Pol Pot became increasingly paranoid about the possibility of an invasion by Vietnam. To preempt an attack, Pol Pot’s regime began carrying out raids and massacres in Vietnamese territory. Rather than dissuade the Vietnamese from attacking, these raids ultimately provided Vietnam with an excuse to invade Cambodia in 1978.

By the following year, the Vietnamese had routed the Khmer Rouge, ending both the Khmer Rouge’s rule in Cambodia and the genocidal policies of Pol Pot. Ousted from power, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge retreated to a remote area of Cambodia along the border with Thailand. For several years, the North Vietnamese tolerated the existence of the Khmer Rouge in this border area. However, in 1984, the North Vietnamese made a concerted effort to deal with them. After that, the Khmer Rouge survived only with the support of Communist China and the toleration of the Thai government. In 1985, Pol Pot resigned as head of the Khmer Rouge and handed over day-to-day administrative tasks to his longtime associate, Son Sen. Pol Pot nonetheless continued as the de facto leader of the party. In 1986, Pol Pot’s new wife, Mea Son, gave birth to a daughter. (His first wife had begun to suffer from mental illness in the years before he took power as Pol Pot. She died in 2003.) He also spent some time in China undergoing treatment for facial cancer.

The Aftermath In 1995, Pol Pot, still living in isolation on the Thai border, suffered a stroke that left the left side of his body paralyzed. Two years later, Pol Pot had Son Sen and members of Son Sen’s family executed because he believed that Sen had attempted to negotiate with the Cambodian government. The deaths of Son Sen and his family shocked many of the remaining Khmer leadership. Feeling that Pol Pot’s paranoia was out of control and worried about their own lives, Khmer Rouge leaders arrested Pol Pot and put him on trial for the murder of Son Sen and other Khmer Rouge members. Pol Pot was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. He was not punished more severely because he had been so prominent in Khmer Rouge affairs. Some of the remaining members of the party questioned this lenient treatment. Only a year later, on April 15, 1998, Pol Pot heard a broadcast on Voice of America (of which he was a faithful listener) announce that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. He died that same night. Rumors persist that he either committed suicide or was murdered.

Pol Pot’s body was cremated without an autopsy to establish the cause of death. * As quoted in S21: The Killing Machine of the Khmer Rouge (2003), a documentary film Brother Number One | Foreign Policy Brother Number One Should Americans be worried about the man who might be Egypt's next president: the Muslim Brotherhood's curious second choice, Mohamed Morsi? By Shadi Hamid Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and the author of the new book: Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World. June 7, 2012 Egypt is on the cusp of its first real experiment in Islamist governance. If the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi comes out on top in the upcoming presidential runoff election, scheduled for June 16 and 17, the venerable Islamist movement will have won control of both Egypt’s presidency and its parliament, and it will have a very real chance to implement its agenda of market-driven economic recovery, gradual Islamization, and the reassertion of Egypt’s regional role.

Over the course of Egypt’s troubled transition, the Brotherhood has become increasingly, and uncharacteristically, assertive in its political approach. Renouncing promises not to seek the presidency and entering into an overt confrontation with the ruling military council, the Brotherhood’s bid to "save the revolution" has been interpreted by others as an all-out power grab. Egypt’s liberals, as well as the United States, now worry about the implications of unchecked Brotherhood rule and what that might mean for their interests. Things couldn’t have been more different two years ago. Under the repression of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, the Brotherhood’s unofficial motto was "participation, not domination." The group was renowned for its caution and patient (some would say too patient) approach to politics. When I sat down with Morsi in May 2010 — just months before the revolution and well before he could have ever imagined being Mubarak’s successor — he echoed the leadership’s almost stubborn belief in glacial but steady change. He even objected to a fairly anodyne description of the movement’s political activities: "The word ‘opposition’ has the connotation of seeking power," Morsi told me then.

"But, at this moment, we are not seeking power because [that] requires preparation, and society is not prepared." The Muslim Brotherhood, being a religious movement more than a political party, had the benefit of a long horizon. Morsi wasn’t well known back then. He was an important player in the Brotherhood, but did not seem to have a particularly distinctive set of views. He was a loyalist, an enforcer, and an operator. And he was arguably good at those things. But being, or becoming, a leader is a different matter. Despite heading the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc and later leading the group’s newly formed Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), Morsi struggled to command respect across ideological lines. He rarely spoke like someone who liked making concessions or doing the hard work necessary for building consensus. Like many Brotherhood leaders, he nurtured a degree of resentment toward Egypt’s liberals. They were tiny and irrelevant, the thinking went , so why were they always asking for so much? In May 2010, the opposition seemed to be coming alive, but in a uniquely Egyptian way. At one protest in Tahrir Square, each group — Islamists, liberals, and leftists — huddled in its own part of the square.

I asked Morsi why there wasn’t greater cooperation between Islamists and liberals. "That depends on the other side," he said, echoing what the liberals were saying about the Brotherhood. This thinly veiled disdain could be papered over when liberals, leftists, and Brotherhood members were facing a dictator they all hated. And, during the revolution, Brotherhood members, Salafists, liberals, and ordinary Egyptians joined hands and put the old divisions aside — if only for a moment. When Mubarak fell, though, there was little left to unite them. The international community, particularly the United States, shares the liberals’ fear of Islamist domination, but for a very different set of reasons. Historically, the Brotherhood has been one of the more consistent purveyors of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment. While some Brotherhood leaders, particularly lead strategist Khairat El Shater, are less strident in their condemnations and less willfully creative with their conspiracy theories in private, Morsi is not. In a conversation with me, he volunteered his views on the 9/11 terrorist attacks without any prompting.

"When you come and tell me that the plane hit the tower like a knife in butter," he said, shifting to English, "then you are insulting us. How did the plane cut through the steel like this? Something must have happened from the inside. It’s impossible." According to various polls , such views are held by most Egyptians, including leftists and liberals, but that doesn’t make them any less troubling. It is perhaps ironic, then, that out of the Brotherhood’s top officials, Morsi has spent the most time in the United States. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and, interestingly, the father of two U.S. citizens — a reminder that familiarity can sometimes breed contempt. At a recent news conference , Morsi discussed his time living abroad, painting a picture of a society in moral decay, featuring crumbling families, young mothers in hospitals who have to "write in the name of the father," and couples living together out of wedlock. We don’t have these problems in Egypt, he said, his voice rising with a mixture of pride and resentment.

I met Morsi again, a year later in May 2011, at the Brotherhood’s new, plush headquarters in Muqattam, nestled on a small mountain on Cairo’s outskirts. The Brotherhood leader seemed surprisingly calm. He punctuated his Arabic with English expressions; he made jokes (they weren’t necessarily funny), name-checked the 1978 film The Deer Hunter , and even did an impromptu impression of a former U.S. president. In the early days, in the afterglow of the 18-day uprising, the group’s leaders were still careful to say the right things. He was quick to point out that 2,500 of the FJP’s 9,000 founding members were not from the Brotherhood, and included Christians. He was also dismissive of ultraconservative Salafi movements. They weren’t politically mature yet, he said. The implication was obvious: The Brotherhood, unlike the Salafists, had spent decades first learning and then playing — rather skillfully at times — the game of politics. They learned how and when to compromise and how to justify it to their conservative base.

Now, nearly 28 years after first entering parliament in 1984, the group was taking pains to present itself as the moderate, respectable face of political Islam. But the Brotherhood soon realized that it had stumbled upon one of those rare moments where a country’s politics are truly open and undefined. So they decided to seize it, alienating many of their erstwhile liberal allies in the process. This approach was a good fit with the Brotherhood’s distinctly majoritarian approach to democracy: They had won a decisive popular mandate in the parliamentary elections, with 47 percent of the vote, so why shouldn’t they rule? Eventually, the Brotherhood decided to go for broke. "We have witnessed obstacles standing in the way of parliament to take decisions to achieve the demands of the revolution," Morsi said in March. "We have therefore chosen the path of the presidency not because we are greedy for power but because we have a majority in parliament which is unable to fulfill its duties." The more important question is: Does it really matter what Morsi thinks? The Brotherhood’s presidential campaign was never about Morsi. It was about the Brotherhood, and Morsi just happened to be the substitute candidate — an unlikely accident of history — after the charismatic Shater was disqualified from the race.

This is what makes it difficult to assess a Morsi presidency. Over the past year, Shater’s personal office has become the address for a steady stream of big-shot investors and visiting dignitaries, including senior U.S. officials. Those who have met him have come out both impressed and reassured. It was Shater who plucked Morsi from relative obscurity to join the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, the organization’s top decision-making body, and then selected him to lead the Brotherhood’s political arm. Up until now, there has been little daylight between the two men. But will Shater be able to maintain his sway if Morsi ascends to Egypt’s highest office? Some Brotherhood members are already chafing at the idea of Shater — whom supporters and detractors alike portray as a brilliant but domineering operative — serving as the power behind the throne: "If Morsi is able to free himself from the shadow of Shater, his policies will be balanced. If Shater stays in control, Morsi will become increasingly unpopular and fail to govern effectively," one Brotherhood member who has worked with both figures told me.

"Will Morsi become the son who surpassed the father?" On the campaign trail, Morsi has proved a quick study and a hard worker. Campaign aides have worked to repackage him, coaching him on his speaking style and how to use his hands in interviews. In the process, the candidate has grown more confident — and it’s starting to show. His May 30 appearance on Yosri Fouda’s television program showed a surprisingly fluent speaker, a far cry from his earlier, shaky media appearances. As one Brotherhood member remarked, "The new Morsi of today is different from the person I knew." Although Morsi outperformed most polls in coming out on top in the first round of elections, for the Brotherhood, his 25 percent share of the vote amounted to something of a shock. The group’s internal projections, based on polling conducted weeks before the vote, saw Morsi with a commanding lead — it was only a question of how close he would get to 50 percent. Morsi’s lack of charisma — as well as the lack of respect he commands among non-Islamists — was part of the reason for his disappointing showing. But it was also the result of a series of more serious mistakes and miscalculations.

Brotherhood officials had become detached from the changing tenor in the group’s former strongholds in the Nile Delta, where the Brotherhood was overtaken by Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister. The Islamist-dominated parliament had failed to pass the sweeping reform legislation that many had expected. Most controversial was an attempt to stack the constituent assembly with Brotherhood supporters, a classic case of political overreach. After the revolution, the Brotherhood — like so many other political forces in Egypt’s toxic political scene — became consumed by paranoia, fearing that some combination of liberals, leftists, and old regime elements were out to get them. A democratic opening, as welcome as it was, came with its own risks. The rise of Brotherhood defector Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh as a viable candidate was seen as an unprecedented threat to organizational unity and discipline. This paranoia, mixed with an old-fashioned dose of political cynicism, seeped into the group’s discourse on foreign policy. When Egypt’s ruling military council lifted a travel ban on American NGO workers in an attempt to defuse a political crisis, the Brotherhood-led parliament pounced, using the episode to call for a no-confidence vote and demand the removal of the military-appointed government.

Brotherhood parliamentarians blamed the Egyptian government for giving into American pressure and called on Egypt to refuse U.S. aid. "I wish members of the U.S. Congress could listen to you now to realize that this is the parliament of the revolution, which does not allow a breach of the nation’s sovereignty or interference in its affairs," said parliament speaker Saad al-Katatni, a leading Brotherhood figure, in reaction to the debate. The Brotherhood has found itself doing a difficult dance, thinking one thing in private and saying another in public. Such mixed messages are also a function of the love-hate schizophrenia that many Brotherhood members — and Egyptians in general — seem to display toward the United States. I remember the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Brotherhood officials would complain bitterly about the White House’s disinterest in democracy promotion. "For Obama, the issue of democracy is 15th on his list of priorities," one Brotherhood official told me in May 2010. "There’s no moment of change like there was under Bush." It is true that the Brotherhood, along with most of Egypt, hates particular U.S. policies, particularly those related to Palestine.

It also tends to think that somehow — usually through creative, indirect means — the United States is responsible for various nefarious plots against Egypt. But that doesn’t mean that a Brotherhood-dominated government would immediately reorder Cairo’s international alliances. For all the public vitriol, the Brotherhood actually feels more comfortable with America than it does with America’s adversaries: "The U.S. is a superpower that is there and will be there, and it is not to anyone’s benefit to have this superpower going down, but we want it to go up with its values and not with its dark side," one senior Brotherhood official told me. "What are the values driving China across the globe?… It’s just pure profit. The Russians and the Chinese, I don’t know their values! Western European and American core values of human rights and pluralism — we practiced this when we were living there." Values aside, a Morsi administration simply would not be able to afford a rupture in relations with the United States. A Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt will need to rebuild its deteriorating economy, and U.S. and European loans, assistance, and investment will be crucial to this effort.

There’s also no certainty that a President Morsi could drastically alter Egypt’s foreign policy even if he wanted to — regardless of what Egypt’s new constitution says, the military and the intelligence services will continue to exercise veto power over critical defense and national security issues. While there are limits to how much the Brotherhood can alter Egypt’s foreign policy, there are also limits to how far it can go in satisfying U.S. concerns. As Egypt becomes more democratic, elected leaders will have no choice but to heed popular sentiment on foreign policy. And in an otherwise divided polity, the only real area of consensus is the need for an independent, assertive foreign policy that re-establishes Egypt’s leading role in the region. That means tension and disagreement with the United States will become a normal feature of the bilateral relationship. The model to look to is Turkey, led by the Islamically oriented Justice and Development Party, which has employed anti-Israel rhetoric to useful domestic effect. The effect of a Morsi presidency on domestic policy is similarly hazy. Egypt’s byzantine bureaucracy remains stocked with Mubarak loyalists and could block any changes that Morsi tries to push through.

As a former political advisor to the Brotherhood predicted to me, the "state machinery will devour him." To further confuse matters, Morsi is one of the rare presidential candidates who believes in limiting the power of his own office. In his TV interview with Fouda, he again stated his preference: an interim period with a mixed presidential-parliamentary system, which would pave the way for a system in which the legislature held complete sway. A Brotherhood-led assembly is set to draft a constitution that will define the relative powers of elected institutions. But, of course, Morsi’s opinion on the matter could change once he became president. The Muslim Brotherhood’s first experience in governance will be an experiment, and one the organization may not be prepared for. Elections have consequences. We just don’t know what they’ll be. And, for that matter, neither does Morsi. Share + Which Protest-busting Dictator is Trump most Like? | Informed Comment Which Protest-busting Dictator is Trump most Like?

Retweet 18 Share 93 Google +1 4 Send via email By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump’s incitement chickens came home to roost in Chicago on Friday, when his acolytes attacked the protesters who turned up to a Trump rally. Trump chose the better part of valor and decamped. It seems obvious that Trump’s constant threatening and bullying of anyone who contradicts him and his cult have led directly to this outcome. Trump specializes in what George Orwell called in “1984” the “five minutes’ hate.” He’ll glare at journalists covering his tent revivals and call them the worst people, as though daring his followers to attack them. On seeing a protester, Trump says “I’d like to punch him in the face.” And he promised to pay the legal fees of any of his cult members who attacked another person. So it was predictable that at some point his motley assortment of neo-Nazis, KKK, and biker gangs would get physical with protesters against Trump’s bigoted hatred of minorities. Dictators have their thugs attack protesters all the time.

So here are some dreary moments in the history of modern dictatorship, echoing Trump’s call to punch people in their faces. There was that time in summer of 2009 when hard liners allied with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked protesters who believed he stole the presidential election. Then there was that time John Lewis was beaten at the behest of the Southern white establishment for trying to march from Selma, Ala. And there was that rally in Thailand against the military government, Sometimes a mob even attacks members of parliament , i.e. legislators, on behalf of the opposite party as in Cambodia, even in the absence of a dictator. You get the point . . . 2016.03.12 04:42 I’m going with Mussolini and Peron, the appeal to a masculine authoritarianism aligned with the national culture is just too obvious.

I’m trying to think of others, there were a lot of slimy characters in Eastern Europe just before World War Two, and lot of slimy Asian and African characters after World War Two, but there was a lot of reformatted-traditional nationalism going on, as well as a lot of ideology going on too, a lot of Marxism-Leninism but also local inventions. Nothing quite seems to fit. I read a lot of Napoleon III back in the day, the self-admiration may have been comparable to Trump, but my fuzzy memory sees him as more slimy, with a few extremely lucky turning points going well for him, not as emotionally connected to his base as Trump, Mussolini and Peron. phil – We can only hope Donald Trump is not an American version of Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde aka Francisco Franco who remained in office for 39 years as Caudillo of Spain. Franco got started using rhetoric not unlike Trump. 2016.03.12 04:54 And on second thought, although I haven’t studied their speeches, Mussolini and Peron were probably able to speak in coherent sentences in their languages.

They were actively engaged in the party politics of their times, and so I assume were able to make actual arguments on matters of governmental policy, without falling into an ignorant braggadocio of grammatical incoherence. Maybe I’m wrong in this, maybe Benito and Juan were just as incompetent in their basic speech, and as uniformed about how their governments actually worked, as Donald is. But he really does seem to be “sui generis,” a new and novel formation of psychologies, philosophies, politics and economics in the story of people on this planet. 2016.03.13 12:06 I don’t know as much about Peron, but Mussolini was a journalist before he entered politics, so one could assume that he could write coherent sentences and form them into logical paragraphs. One would also expect that his prose was not as rumbling and pointless as that of Trump. Other than that, I think the Mussolini parallel is best. 2016.03.12 06:02 Professor, when you start using language like Neo Nazis, KKK and biker gangs, you do an injustice to your otherwise fine journalism and informative work on this site.

Trump has no doubt got may undesirable characteristics, but whilst the Republicans mask their own anti ethnic leanings, they most certainly have them. Abu ghraib prison in Iraq springs to mind to say nothing of the history associated with the native American Indians. Whatever you think of Trump, you cannot deny he obviously has a very large following with the votes to prove it, and I doubt they are all Neo Nazis, biker gangs and KKK. and its unfair of you to imply they are are. 2016.03.13 01:11 There are many more monsters in America than the Neo Nazis, biker gangs and KKK. Nixon named his fellow, supportive monsters the Silent Majority. We’re about to find out if they are a majority or not, but they are monsters and they have put many monsters in positions of power for reasons we have been trained to accept as justifiable. 2016.03.12 01:32 Can any prospect be worse than having to choose between Hillary and Trump in November? Neoliberals in Hillary’s camp need to get in touch with reality and switch to Bernie Sanders.

He may not be perfect in the opinion of many lefties, but he might keep the United States from going over the precipice by vetoing any insanity that comes out of Congress. The chances of his programs – Medicare for All, minimum wage, etc. – coming to fruition are slim. The oligarchies in both wings of the corporate bird of prey will gang up on him and nothing will likely be done without a majority of supporters in Congress, but that will be much better than anything we can expect from Hillary and Trump. With the bully pulpit of the White House, Sanders might keep the dream of a civilized society alive – if by some divine intervention the mainstream media don’t gang up on him. 2016.03.13 12:12 I support all of Bernie’s policies, but he has serious political liabilities. He embraces his socialist label and has called for a political revolution. People like most here, I assume, know what he means by this. However, most Americans conflate socialism with communism and when you combine that with revolution, he is very vulnerable to political attack by the billionaires and their super PAC’s. I worry that if he is nominated their hate machine will swing the vote to the Republicans.

And while some here equate Clinton with the Republicans, that is a serious mistake. I remember when many said there was no difference between Gore and Bush in 2000. 2016.03.12 04:16 There is a very interesting article over at the Mondoweiss blog – Understanding the fundamental roots of conflict and suffering: An interview with Rich Forer by Katie Miranda – – that helps to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also can help us understand why so many people support Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton despite the strong antipathy felt by many others towards them in and beyond the United States. The article is a long, challenging read that will be worthwhile for many people. For those not up to that challenge they may consider a line from Aldous Huxley’s “Point Counterpoint”: “We become possessed by our possessions.” In choosing/possessing Trump and Clinton as their leaders it appears many have surrendered their own capacities to think for themselves and accept as gospel whatever comes out of the mouths of these candidates. The preceding applies to the masses of Trump and Clinton supporters, but what about people such as Meryl Streep and George Clooney who have endorsed Clinton?

These and people like them have the capacity to think beyond the campaign rhetoric coming out of the Clinton camp. So what gives? Can it be they are part of and possessors of niches in the Clinton social milieu and are, thus, possessed by it? How else can we explain Meryl Streep, who gave superb humanistic performances as the lead character in “Sophie’s Choice” and in other roles, supporting Hillary Clinton? Streep claimed before an audience of women that she supported Clinton because she heard three women from Central America claim Clinton saved their lives. But, how, other than being possessed by Clinton’s friendship, do we explain Streep being blind to the countless women whose lives have been destroyed by death and displacement because of policies supported and promoted by Clinton? 2016.03.13 01:43 Hitler’s party staged regular street gang fights against their political opponents. Probably Mussolini’s supporters as well. Suharto killed 1.5 million political opponents in Indonesia with US support. The US supported Pol Pot after he was forced into Thailand, just to oppose N Vietnam which had thrown him out, neither fact ever mentioned in US mass media.

Those are US presidents’ choices to kill anyone who opposed Republican ideology, not opponents of democracy. Apparently the US-supported 1953 anti-democratic coup in Iran involved extensive repression of opponents of the dictator Shah. The many US secret wars since WWiI have primarily opposed socialism or communism intended to benefit the poor. Those are US presidential choices to kill roughly six million innocents due solely to political preference, as there were no security threats involved outside of W Europe. 2016.03.14 10:04 I should add that the Khmer Rouge rebellion was primarily against the aristocracy, and typically of peasant rebellions, was forced to communist organization by the political repression of oligarchy. The first nation to throw off the tyranny of colonial aristocracy in 1776 was also the last defender of colonial aristocracy in NV and Cambodia, because US democracy had fallen to oligarchy. NV initially supported the Khmer Rouge (of whom Pol Pot was one of a half dozen leaders) and later attacked it, not entirely because it had gone too far against its own people. The KR actually invaded Vietnam after attacking the supporting NV forces that remained in E Cambodia to protect an ethnic group spanning the border.

It is noteworthy that the US media apparently exaggerated the KR casualties by a factor of ten or so in its propaganda. The KR opposed both presumed regime-supporters who had fled to Pnom Penh, and ethnic groups in E Cambodia presumed to be allied with NV. The fake US casualty figures of 1-2 million originated in a Reuters story by reporters who had been in Pnom Penh shortly before it fell to the KR (when its population was swollen with refugees from the conflict), and shortly afterward, who observed that approximate change of population there. The oligarchy-controlled US media picked up that figure as a casualty figure and never bothered to substantiate it. In fact most of the casualties were in the east, 100-300,000 at most. Burial pits have been found that substantiate the lower figure but are claimed to substantiate the higher figure.

So the total casualties are probably 10-20% of the US murders in Vietnam designed to prop up dictators there to “contain” the communism of NV which was in fact a nationalist movement that used communist organization and development ideology as might have been expected in a peasant rebellion against Western oligarchic dictatorship over a desperately poor nation with a long history of colonial occupation. 2016.03.13 02:09 I start by saying that I don’t support any of the above, but want to say that some candidate has a chance to win it all, if they take on one of the most despised and least effective organizations in America: Congress. The weapon: Term limits for all congress members. Two terms for the senate and out, three terms for house of representatives. This is based upon the Gallup poll which shows Americans give a 14% approval rating of congress as of Feb 3 2016. The last time it was in the 20% range was 2011 (24%) and over 40% was 2005. If you had a doctor or lawyer that proved this type of service, we would scream malpractice.

Here we just take it as the norm. I believe that if any presidential candidate took this on, the White House would be their new resident. Trump could do it, but the others are too vested to the establishment which must come down if there is to be effective change. Just a thought, not a sermon. 2016.03.13 03:44 Which Protest-busting Dictator is Trump most Like? Who among the anchors on the main television channels has the courage and integrity to address the presidential candidates and emulate Edward R. Murrow who said, “The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.” Where is a national figure to match Joseph Welch who said to Senator Joe McCarthy, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”?

2016.03.13 08:46 Just try to wrap your head around this for a moment: The likely nominee of 1 of the 2 major parties in this country is inciting people to violence on an almost daily basis. When has this ever happened in the post-Civil War history of this nation? (Remember, George Wallace ran as an independent.) As if this isn’t serious enough, there’s something else even more chilling that has yet to happen: Where is the image of a large, bipartisan group of at least 400 US Representatives and Senators – Democrats AND Republicans – standing on the steps of the US capital building, calling out Donald Trump as a dangerous, race-baiting, xenophobic, and unhinged individual who has disqualified himself from the office, and demanding that he immediately withdraw from the Presidential race? Where is that video? The fact that this has yet to happen tells us more about how quickly fascism can grow and sweep across this nation than anything Donald Trump is saying or doing. God help us if this man is elected… 2016.03.14 07:16 If we forget history, we are bound to repeat it.

Have we forgotten or it fell down the memory hole, of an America in the 1920’s that allowed and condoned the marching of 50-60 thousand Klu Klux Klan members down Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC? link to dailymail.co.uk America was built on violence, manifested itself on slaughter and extermination going westward, and had a very uncivil, civil war that frankly ended because everyone was tired and went home. It is a young country and the trials and travails that it is going through are simply teething pains. We have to keep our eye on the true enemy of the people and they are the oligarchs and plutocrats that provide us all the WMD’s (weapons of mass distraction) we can consume. We have had worse as far as leadership (Abraham Lincoln comes to mind as a tyrant) and we shall survive. What saddens me the most is with over 300 million people in this country, we are forced to pick the “Evil of Two Lessers” as presidents, (Gore V. Bush, Obama v McCain, Obama v Romney, etc) again and again. Pretty sad.

Brother Number One | History Today Brother Number One Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot David P. Chandler (Westview Press, 1992, xiv+ 254 pp.) Cambodia is one of those 'far away countries' about which thanks to the progress of the modern news media we now imagine we know a good deal. Its future may be uncertain; but most informed people have a clear image of the tragedy of its recent past, and no difficulty in recognising where responsibility lies: at the door of the 'Khmers Rouges' and their notorious leader, the ‘contemptible Pol Pot'. His rule over Kampuchea between April 1975 and January 1979 is variously but always confidently blamed for the deaths of one million – or was it two million? – ordinary people, as well as for the systematic torture and execution of perhaps 20,000 of his fellow Communists. The figures remain a matter of statistical guesswork and extrapolation rather than of detailed research, the precise extent of deliberate killing, as opposed to mortality from famine and disease, will never be known.

But the image is firmly fixed, and Pol Pot has a guaranteed place in a list of twentieth-century world villains headed by Hitler and Stalin. David Chandler's hook attempts to go beyond the simple media image to provide the first full-length biography of Pol Pot as a revolutionary leader. Eschewing the Actonian belief that 'too much understanding' will lead to 'too much excusing', he explores the enigmatic personality of his subject and places him in the political context of a real country, in whose history Chandler himself is an acknowledged expert. Saloth Sar – he called himself Pol Pot only from 1976 – was born into a privileged family in Kompong Thom province in 1925 or 1928. His sister was a royal concubine and he himself enjoyed sufficient court patronage (o be educated at an elite school before going on to study in Paris in the late 1940s. There, however, he took up left-wing politics and returned home without a formal qualification, to join the Communist-led resistance to French imperialism.

From 1954 to 1963 he lived in Phnom Penh as a school teacher while devoting himself to the highly secret Cambodian Communist movement, rising to become its secretary-general in 1963. For these early phases of Sar's career the author is able to draw on interviews with people who knew him, and the picture that emerges is one of an even-tempered, good-natured man whose deepening commitment to the extremes of revolutionary change was well concealed behind an enthusiasm for French and Khmer literature. After 1963, when he went into the Maquis, it is more difficult to distinguish Saloth Sar as a person from the Kampuchean revolution as a whole. The twelve years between then and 1975 probably shaped both his attitude to revolution and his ability to survive in an extremely brutal environment. In the same period, following visits to both Hanoi and Beijing in 1965-66 and 1969-70, he seems also to have become increasingly wary of the ambitions of Hanoi and to have found the Chinese comrades somewhat more congenial.

Nevertheless, Chandler thinks he was probably slower to rebel against Vietnamese tutelage than either he or the Vietnamese subsequently claimed. The chapters dealing with Pol Pot's period in power are for the most part extremely well handled. We get a clear picture of the austere but optimistic utopianism of the first fifteen months, including a particularly interesting analysis of his somewhat unrealistic 'four year plan' of August 1976. It is not unreasonable to wonder at that stage how far Pol Pot's failure was due to his own extreme policies, and how far to the dismal circumstances of a desperately poor country whose development had been stunted by colonial rule and then by Sihanouk’s persistent rejection of foreign aid. Whatever the explanation, that optimistic period was followed remorselessly by the paranoia of 1977 and 1978, in which nothing could be achieved and everyone was made to suffer. conflict with Vietnam, and of the alliance with China, is rather unsatisfactory especially in view of his own conclusion that Pol Pot was probably not seeking war with his neighbours. But that defect does not alter the conclusion that this is an extremely illuminating study by a scholar of great maturity.

If one has time to read only one book on Cambodia, this should be it. Ralph Smith is the author of An International History of the Vietnam War: Volume III 1965-66 (Macmillan, 1991).

Question: Which dictator called himself ‘Brother Number One’?
Answer: Pol Pot