The Khmer Rouge bashed babies’ skulls into trees, shot just about everyone who could read, deliberately killed people in the Killing Fields and concentration camps.
The Shining Path boiled babies alive, hung dogs on lampposts, (I think) did school shootings.
Most other communist movements, like the Bolsheviks, the CPC, the Viet Cong were a lot more tame and connected with the people.
I haven’t even seen that many ultras advocating for this level of violence by these dogmatic bastards.
What the f*ck caused all this ultra violence to happen?
In the first place, lack of understanding of the dialectical materialism. There is a lot of steps between this and boiling babies and shooting workers for being workers, but it starts from this.
Didn’t polpot admit to not have read any theory?
Idk, i wouldn’t be surprised.
I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen a good source saying that Pol Pot never read theory. I think he admitted to reading theory, but he discarded most of it.
So in regards to the shining path, it’s very important to understand it within it’s context. Obviously within that context they are worse than say the Bolsheviks, but you still cannot forget that they were fighting a true dictatorship that was sterilizing the indigenous to in the tens of thousands. Sadly, groups like the Shining Path are more a product of imperialism and US puppet govts than anything else. I see that left out a bit too much, and it’s important to acknowledge because then comrades in similar situations can learn from all the mistakes they made. Really the experience of the Shining Path is a textbook example of what to avoid when fighting a colonial dictatorship. The struggle in the DPRK, Vietnam, etc united the peasant and working classes while the Shining Path alienated them and even massacred them.
Do you have evidence for their atrocities?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7fI5Kcj5aMEq7gF5eL6TYd?si=H7dOwHWKS_qDcpEMjs1nmQ idk if you have spotify but I found this writing by Gus Hall informative in deconstructing Maoist, Trotskyist, and Anarchist errors.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hall/1970/crisis-petty-bourgeois-radicalism.htm
I’m not sure if I agree with it in totality. But I still believe the writing is useful.
I believe this podcast is run by a self-identified Maoist (iirc from his own words), but I also recommend listening to this with a critical ear. It’s crucial history to understanding the Shining Path’s origins and their failures.
There’s some sort of mysticism/religiousness involved in this kind of movements, when, under different words, call for holy wars and pray to some deification of some tradition or romantic views of the past under the rules of a hierophant.
While this connection is loose, and I don’t have direct evidence (while I think some will have, actually), and this is speculative… The behavior of this groups pretty much parallels groups under “divine authority” of cults and warlords in the pasts, where expansionism was enforced physically under conquest, including but not limiting to the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Old Testament, etc.
Also, specifically referring to Golden Path, the laborers movements are very, very tied to traditionalism and reactionary behaviors heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, having very critical and urgent contradictions.
And this appeal to traditions, is the prime reason of barbarities commited by the khmers. NO, I’m not saying that per se, traditions = Pol Pot, you know what I’m trying to say. Yes, trying to protect traditions at all costs is reactionary, even if our identity is based on them, we know this already.
