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Peking Yona show, Thomas is here and where are going
to pick up where he left off talking about Camier
Rouge and poulpot Ta get away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the reasons why I think this is
an important area study. It's not just because of the
obvious factors that it was an incredibly brutal catastrophe and
a tremendous loss of human life, and that the practice
of annihilation therapy as ernsonality refer to this phenomenon mass
homicide at scale, you know, derivative of categorical criteria in
the course of political practice or ideological warfare. That's keyt
understanding the twentieth century and the conflict paradigms therein, and
it's key understanding what the stakes were in existential terms,
as well as rebutting the dominant myths of the prevailing
system that was established in the aftermath of the war
by the International Military Tribunal. But also people have a
misunderstanding of Marcist Leninism and the peculiar situation that it's
standard bearers and partisans found themselves in. And this is
very much laid bare by the situation in Cambodia. I've
made the point, and I make it in my manuscript
that Marcus Lenists practice is intrinsically homicidal at masses scale.
That's not some cheap talking point over some sort of
moral posture. What I mean is that the place in
territorial and spatial terms that communism took root and where
these reelutionary enterprises were successful were places that lacked a
scaled industrial proletariat, and revolutionary conditions were present because cadres
were able to sufficiently mobilize to force outcomes and create
regimes with exclusive access to power according to the revolutionary
model that they favored, but the historical conditions weren't present
to facilitate the realization of this mission in a deep
material and sociological capacities. So there came to be an
over alliance on the application of naked violent force because
material shortages hadn't been overcome, Prosperity wasn't taken for granted,
owing to a highly developed production schema that rendered means
of exchange and privately held productive means obsolete. These were
conditions very much of deprivation, and that meant that in
order to educate the body politic and render it malleable,
really the only way that could be incentivized is through violence,
and if the subject population in categorical terms, proved to
be uneducable, they had to be exterminated. And this is
what happened again and again, and that's why it's misguided.
Although this is tangential, not in terms of significance, its
tangential to this particular discussion. It's misguided when people discuss
equivalents between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, because
the causal nexus is interrelated. But the prime move on
was the Soviet Union, and every political act within that
conflict paradigm was in response to the Soviet application of
power according to the conceptual parameters that they had devised
and that their proxies and clients had devised within their
own respective territories. And Cambodia was particularly primitive, so that
meant that there was a reliance on annihilation therapy above
and beyond even that which was characteristic in the Russian
situation or called for within the bounded rationality of political
objectives there and the person of Salasar, who can't even
known as Paul Pott, his conceptual horizon, his personality and
his psychological makeup was also an essential component of how
these things developed. And what I started to get into
last time was, you know, he held himself out as
a as a self educated, poor peasant. He was not
at all. He was the equivalent of a lesser aristocrat,
and he developed a very deep, understated a Marcis Leninist theory.
It's misguided when people claim otherwise. Selasar was very, very intelligent,
and he had a very he was every cosmopolitan person.
As a young man, he went to France to study
at the a Cole France. Their their technical program. They
had a radio, electronics and communications program. He had some
of his friends ended up studying there. And as we
discussed Salasar, some of his female relatives were royal concubines
and some of his male relatives were officers of the
palace court and things well. Owing to King Monovong's affinity
for Salassar and the fact of Salasar being friends with
some of the king's nephews, he had a leg up
and getting admittance to the cold France. I believe he
actually arrived there on the day of the successful ascendancy
of the Chinese Communist Party two absolute power in Pei King,
which is remarkable for a few different reasons, and Salasar
he fit in very well in France and among Westerners.
He became fluent in French, although he always seemed someone
ill at ease with the French language. I don't know
how much of that was an affectation on to the
nationalistic trappings that the Communist party Campuccia outwardly exhibit. Outwardly exhibited,
which was a substantial aspect of their mandate, was as
an the nationalist force of of of racial defense, and
we'll get into that. But he he also he picked
up an aristocratic girlfriend. Her mother was literally a Cambodian princess.
Her name, the girl's name was song Son Melly and Uh.
She and her family lived in genteel poverty because despite
their noble title and her great beauty, her father was
a degenerate gambler who squandered the family fortune. But apparently,
unlike some of these liaisons with palace concubines, as a
teenager Selasar he took this very seriously and quite clearly
wanted to marry this woman. So his life in Paris
was very much that of, you know, a a princely
type being educated in the West to become you know,
worldly and to receive a princely education in the Machiavilian sense.
It was really in nineteen fifty Elo Star got a
true education in communism. There was an active commun student
life in Paris, which makes sense obviously considering that, you know, Indo,
China was an important battle theater, not just because it
became the forum by what we're for a great power
procty conflict between you know three, the two superpowers plus
you know, the the other communist juggernaut of the field
as well and China. But it's it's a it has
key maritime significance just on its own terms, and particularly
as the as naval platforms became developed, you know, acquired
an outside strategic significance in terms of capabilities. In the
final a few decades of the Cold War, you know
that that was a real consideration. Plus there was the
prestige factor into China is something of the jewel of
Asia as it was historically viewed, and uh, the Europeans
were reluctant to sacrifice that prestige in the early Cold
War and to some degree even in the late Cold War,
and to some degree even today depending on who we're
talking about, that's changing and I don't want to spit
off front of their tangent, but the French effectively having
no cloud in Africa anymore is remarkable. Whenever it wasn't
getting old, and so even somebody who spends his time
studying history and historical phenomena, these sorts of shifts in
conceptual horizon are remain striking. Nonetheless, it's not just advancing age,
but nineteen fifty that was a critical year in the
Cold War, particularly in Asia. But the camer students in France,
they were very much sort of under the authority of
a Vietnamese that could dominated the academic culture. And we'll
get into what the implications that were. Clearly the Indo
Chinese Communist Party, which technically represented Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam,
the entirety of Vietnam, which is interesting because later the
fiction of the Vietnamese Communist Party being a discreete entity
and to itself that wasn't active in what you know
south of the seventeenth parallel part of that ode to
the and you know, a propaganda fiction of presenting the
NLF as a purely spontaneous phenomenon. But the part of
it also had to do with this sort of fiction
that even when the Indo Chinese Communist Party was no
longer the formal organizational mechanism, the Vietnamese were sensitive to
sustaining this illusion that there was egal representation as a
matter of fact as well as charter within the fraternal
Socialist Parties of South East Asia, and that was not true.
They were Vietnamese dominated, and that had implications for the
conflict between the superpowers and ultimately the sound of Soviets
split as well. But to bring us back in the
summer nineteen fifty, Salosar had the opportunity, as did all
freshmen foreign freshmen students who were you know, studying abroad
at the French, at the Ecole France, say, the opportunity
to study in another country. There's an entire list where
they could choose to spend a summer semester. Most of
these were very costly, the most prestige of which was
traveling Switzerland. But the Yugoslavian Communists were engaged in a
we're actively engage in this kind of outreach with the
in the age of the cadre building, in part because
you know of the that Tito is animosity towards Moscow,
but part of it was Yugoslavia never had a particularly
strong ideological mandate and such that the main three ethnicities
back the the party state. You know, Tito was a Croatian,
but the security apparatus was dominated by Serbs. Bosniacts fell
somewhere in between, but they were afforded a substantial degree
of cultural liberty and areas where they were the majoritarian population.
But essentially the real source of the mandate of the
Yugoslavian Communists was that they were protecting the Bulkans from
both the Soviets and the Americans. There was sort of
a deep freeze on power, political activity, and a garrison sensibility.
But Tito was very aware of the fact that there
needed to be more depth and relevance to the Yugoslav
Communist Party, at least superficially speaking, lest it, you know,
become dust in the proverbial wind. And so they began
a lot of outreach to try and build cadres, particularly
with students from Asia, students from Africa, places that where
the revolutionary conditions on the ground had more to do
with anti colonialism and nationalist sentiment and heterodox motivations. When
the Cold War paradigm if you followed him saying, and
the cultivation of these premier students was no exception. So
Salasar took a train to Zagreb and he got put
to work with all these other international students building up
infrastructure that had been damaged or wiped out during the war,
you know, literally building roads and stuff and wiring up
electricity and things into tenements. And this is kind of
where his political education began in concrete, practical terms. And
he relayed that the stunning difference. You know, you'd ride
just for two days on a train from Paris to
Zagrea when it was it was like night and day.
And in Eastern Europe the people were very, very impoverished,
and one wouldn't think that, you know, a partisan culture
would take root there that was oriented towards revolutionary Marxist Leninism.
But he said that the fortitude of the people and
the zealousness with which they were willing to sustain ongoing
deprivation for the promise of future liberation was He viewed
it as a you know, as a force multiplier essentially,
which contained certain discrete potentialities in and of itself. And
obviously what he had in mind was how this applied
to the Cambodian situation. And to be clear too, this
is when the Stalinism had real clout. I mean, the
East German situation was always complicated. For example, in a
Hungary there was this so ongoing memory of what a
monitor the Ross and Kreeg against Bela Kun and his
cadre versus, you know, the Magyar majority. But elsewhere communism
had a great deal of momentum, and specifically of an
orthodox perspective that held out the Moscow model of clittal
organization and revolutionary exis as being the only revolutionary modality
you know, and by by the post Vietnam War era,
you know, I there was still a great deal of momentum,
but it was basically restricted to the global South, you know,
which is one reason why Africa and Latin America became
these key battlespaces. But the world of nineteen fifty was very,
very very different, you know. And sell of Sar I believe,
I mean, as to reiterate as I just said a
minute ago, it's misguided when he's cast as this cynic
or as some sort of politically illiterate, He's notily those things.
And you know, I think he understood Mars's Leninism with
a great deal of intellectual depth and rigorous perception. But
it's not as he didn't come to this, come of
the conclusion based on some revolutionary awakening. He wasn't somebody
like Hi Guavara. He viewed, you know, Cambodia would either
remain under the boot of the white man, you know,
I mean, it was clear that the French were going down,
but you know, they did remain under the boot of
the Americans, or they'd you know, be able to liberate
themselves from occidental domination with revolutionary communism as the praxis,
you know, Ultimately, democratic Campuccia found itself in the Chinese
camp solidly in substantial measure because there they were totally
incompatible with the Vietnamese for reasons we got into the
last time we convened in this for this discussion. But
also a lot of UH, a lot of these profoundly
primitive societies like Cambodia and UH like UH, some of
these countries in sub sern Africa that gravitated towards the
the Chinese orbit. After the Senta Soviets split the they
viewed UH the Soviet Union as just another is just
another white Western power, you know. They they viewed it
as just a a sort of new Fang literation of
the Russian Empire, the sort of mass of Central Asian
and poor Slavic people with a with with a European
overcast managing it and and lieu of these people being
you know, Varangians or Baltic or Germanic aristocrats. You know,
they were the Belarusian and Ukrainian party functionaries, you know.
And that's something that's kind of underemphasized even in serious
treatments of of the Cold War after nineteen seventy two
or so. I hope to do some more writing on
that in the future in a more dedicate, specifically dedicated capacity.
That's the true, that's that's the true, uh truly significant
racial aspect of the Cold War in the in the
the tent phase and beyond, or rather the post Vietnam
phase and beyond, I believe. But yeah, it was October first,
nineteen forty nine, is when Selasar arrived in Paris, Which
was the day when Mao stood at the Gate of
Heavenly Peace in Beijing, I guess, which is outside the
early entrance to the Forbidden City. I've seen paintings of it.
I'm sure there's got to be a photograph of it
that these portraits are based off of. But I'm sure
most people have seen it. Who you know, done any
study of the Cold War, even a perfunctory one. And
of course when Selosa arrived in Paris, you know it
would be ADM. Bent fu was still five years away,
but the front already well into the the quagmire that
developed in Vietnam, and they were fighting in Algeria. You know,
the war didn't kick off officially until nineteen fifty four,
and then you know, the French pulled out. They gall
pulled out in sixty two, but the low intensity conflict
cycle was already underway in earnest. I mean, it was
true that, you know, this was the twilight of the
French Empire, and even more so than in other theaters there.
But part of it was because the French were refusing
to let go, and there wasn't a nuanced model of
establishing a proxy political culture that would be willing to
accept you know, French patronage in return or client fealty.
The French were gonna fight it out. You know, whether
that was the right player or not is arguable the
gall was a perfectest bastard and arguably a race trader.
That's not debatable. But this made it a little more
imperative for these revolutionary cadres in the colored world to
frame the political struggle in naked we anti colonial terms,
and Ho Chi Man had to try a very delicate path.
I mean, he'd always been at pains the obscure, the
reality that again the Indo Chinese Communist Party, which was
really the Southeast Asian representation within the common turn you know,
going way back. You know, he he tried to present
this as an equal partnership between you know, it became
the path at law the Camere and the Vietnamese, and
part and parcel of that was presenting his own struggle
as a nationalist struggle against the colonial oppressor, even though
I don't think he really believed that. But it wasn't
just because that's what the conceptual literacy of the body
politic would abide. It was also essential to assuaging what
seemed to be insurmountable obstacles to the diplomatic situation, particularly
visa via the Camere. And uh, they weren't they weren't.
They weren't fooling buddy on the Cambodian side, you know,
And that was I think we got into briefly at least.
And will you conclude this series, I'll explicate this further
because it's important. The America never really understood this degree
of enmity and distance between the Cameer and the Vietnamese,
and I think Kissinger did. I know he did, and
that's you know, I talked about how one of the
many things that people like to claim is evidence of
Kissinger being this boogeyman, is that he recognized the Communist
Party of Campuccia is a legitimate government to be seated
at the UN in lieu of Asa Hanno's government in exile,
which was the correct play, and that was political reality anyway.
But you know it an interesting dynamic came to pass
two as uh. It became clear that French defeat was imminent.
You know, even well before the imben Fu, the Indo
Chinese Communist Party, they outlined this statement of purpose and
their core principles, and it was the Vietnamese delegation that
was essentially responsible for devising all the substantive aspects of it.
It declared openly that Moscow is the leader of the
communist world and and they lead the way of the socials,
community and nations, and that the Indo Chinese Communist Party
is unconditionally subservient to Moscow's position essentially, you know, which
is fascinating. And uh, that doesn't just oh to the
fact that there's profound enmity between the Chinese and the Vietnamese.
But uh, it was very clear that Ho Chi Minh
job their entire cadre, who were very sophisticated politically, they
had no confidence in Mao or in the Chinese regime,
and uh, they had absolute confidence in in the Russians.
You know. It was uh something of a mirror opposite
to the view from the view of the Camee. But uh,
I mean, I I go as far as the Hochi
Menh was one of the was one of the best
men that the Communists had, and and and Jop is
along with Ferdinand Shorter, Jop I think is probably the
most criminally underrated twentieth century commander. But Thomas up there too.
But you know, the the Vietnamese were, I mean, obviously
Vietnam was highly underdeveloped even by the standards of the
mid twentieth century. But the areas that were built up,
like Hanoi and like Saigon, and to a less degree
like way you you did have a cosmopolitan class of
people which does develop under you know, conditions of traditional
mercantilist colonialism, because you have to you have to curate that.
You know, you're still seeing the effects of this to
this day. Like in the UK that that goof who
succeeded Liz trust Sunk. I mean he's a I realized
he married into some royal family or something in the
old country, but you know, guys like him, he's the
product of the British raj okay And I mean in
his case that's not that's not a particularly good thing.
But in the case of Ho Chi Minh that it
was an example of the kind of effective political soldier
that that system is capable of producing, which is one
of the reasons why colonialism is a dangerous game and
people don't understand colonialism anymore. It's some sort of stand
in for bad things or things I think are mean,
you know, they it doesn't have a parallel in the
in the twenty first century, but it's it's fascinating because
the by necessity a native element needs to be created
in one zone image yet also guaranteed to remain subservient
by way of a by way structural mechanisms that make
it self defeating to revolt. And obviously, one of the
reasons the Cold War was so fairly destabilizing is because
the ascendency of Moscow, the superpower status, removed those structural
incentives to not disturb the extant order. But you know,
the sociological aspect of this, this stuff is one of
the few ways the Soviets consistently beat United States NATO.
But I mean that's the intelligence game is the other
area at both both which are derivative of deep sociological
altitude and understanding, which tells us something about the Slavic
character obviously, but that's a discussion for another day. Interestingly, however, China,
China was for a time was North Vietnam's primary patron.
On January eighteenth, nineteen fifty, China became the first they think,
my first government to recognize Ho Chiman's regime in North Vietnam.
Moscow followed suit immediately, you know, as did the Eastern Bloc,
and it was after the French defeats the Chinese, trained, armed,
and equipped at least six divisions of the People's Army
of Vietnam. And like we talked about the other week,
if memory serves, I mean the point that three of
the long term POWs who were freed, you know, in
after the Paris Piece Accords, and it came home during
operational homecoming in seventy three. Three of those guys had
been held in China because they'd been shot down, you know,
well north of the seventieth Parallel where Triple A was
manned by the People's Liberation Army, you know, and just
a few years later, you know, half a decade later,
it would have been it would have been unthinkable for
an armed Chinese element to be in North Vietnam without
being treated as you know, a hostile and and engaged appropriately.
There's a really great book that I highly recommend to
people who've got an interest in the subject matter and
the Vietnam War generally. It's by this uh It's called
Report from Hanoi. This guy, Harrison Salisbury is you can
probably tell from his name, he was one of these
old wasp newsman types, you know, kind of like a
he was sort of a like a moderate liberal version
of Lothrop Stoddard, like that same kind of guy, you know.
He he was embedded in Hanoi before Tet and his
book mostly deals with nineteen sixty six into early sixty seven,
I believe, But there was there there was a couple
of constant fears he relayed, of the North Vietnamese, as
well as of Western journalists in the ground and and
Soviet advisors and everybody else. Those were that, uh, the Chinese,
we're gonna we're gonna intervene directly as they had in
Korea when Ewan forces crossed the Yellow Or, and then
there's gonna be a state of general war, which very
probably would escalate to general nuclear war. The other fear
was that because at that time, that was before the
moratorium unbombing the North was implemented by executive order, there's
this big fear that some Soviet hanchos were gonna die
in a bombing raid. You know, God forbid, Brethern would
be on the ground in Hanoor or something in US
and so would have flobbed it. And you know, the
Soviet General Secretary get is blown up by enough four.
But I raised that not just because it's interesting and
it shows the real stakes that were involved. But really,
in until really, until Nixon took the oath of office,
there was grave concern that, you know, the viet the Chinese,
We're gonna force a confrontation on the ground with US
forces thus deployed, you know, and and by nineteen sixty nine,
I mean that really was unthinkable, you know, And that
owes to the real uh para political brilliance a Kissinger
and Richard Nixon. But you know, the Vietnamese were in
an odd They were being cultivated by both Moscow and
pig King. You know at this time that uh Ho
Chi Minh was trying to play cap all these discrete
elements both you know, within uh the Southeast Asian theater
and without and uh the UHH the fact of I
make a point a lot that Mao was something of
an idiot, and he was, but there were some cunning
aspects to what he did, particularly on the military side
of things, I mean, which is how we I realized
that Uh Chang's forces were catastrophically weakened by combat with
the Japanese Imperial Army. But it's not the whole story,
but he it's pretty obvious that uh he uh thought
that he that enmity between the Camere and the Vietnamese
was so great, and that uh, the Camie was so
hostile about the Vietnamese and suspicions of the Soviets, that
he could exploit this enmity by arming and equipping Vietnam
to stoke the fears of uh, you know, the racial
enemy in the minds of the Camee, but at the
same time not catastrophically alienating them because there was really
no chance at the Camere being driven into the hands
of the Soviets. That uh, that suggests a real sophistication
that not just the American military and intelligence establishment lacked,
but I mean most well, most of the relevant players
representing the engaged actors lacked, you know, and it was
uh as time went on, the situation sort of took
care of itself because as Ho Chiman realized that Vietnam
would stand or fall based on how events we have
resolved in h Laos and Cambodia, he'd given up on Thailand,
and uh, in the view of the Vietnamese, the ties
were just basically, you know, a corrupt mercantile race who
never give up at at least a formal and and
cosmetic belief in the monarchy and things. Plus, uh, they
were geographically distant enough that even if America could base
forces there in a perennial capacity, it wouldn't constitute a
catastrophic threat, or at least no greater a threat than
you know, the surface warfare vessels in in the this
so I'm trying to see and what have you. But
the uh, well as as America took on the role
of you know, per the Truman doctrine of holding the
line of the seventeenth parallel to preserve the status quo,
and you know, getting commitments from the Republic of Korea
as well as Cito. Superficial as that alliance proved to
be in in terms of its military capabilities and political
will therein it had, it had significance in terms of
what was viewed as a legitimate application of force by
America in a theater that theretofore had not been viewed
as within its precedent of sphere of influence. You know,
this delicate minuet was something that Ho didn't really have
to continue because by default you were in the Soviet camp.
If you were resisting the United States, and you didn't
need really declare allegiance to commitments beyond that. And as
Pey King gravitated towards Washington, and as early as sixty eight,
late sixty eight, early sixty nine there have been skirmishes
between the People's Liberation Army and Soviet forces on the frontier.
It was no longer a concern of trying to rationalize
Hanoi's welcoming of Moscow's patronage, you know. And that's a
fascinating aspect to this, which, as we talked about last time,
led to what amounted to a proxy war between the
communist juggernauts in the Vietnam, you know, the v which
culminating the Vietnamese assault a democratic Campuccia was the People's
Army of Vietnam occupied until nineteen ninety and an attempt
to mitigate the strategic loss they absorbed in seventy nine
owing to the defeat of the Khmune Rouge. Obviously, China
assaulted Via and Vietnam really broke their face, which is remarkable.
You know, the the Vietnamese are a genuine mercial race
in my opinion, and uh, one thing I found really
interesting I mean, the point before, in my opinion, Robert
Gates was the shadow was the shadow president at least
done foreign policy and more in peace matters. You know,
it was Gates, you know, through you know, uh Obama,
because Obama was, you know, formally the president. You know,
we arm and equipped Vietnam with some pretty serious hardware,
especially cutting edge commanding control stuff. And uh, you know,
the Vietnamese were American helmets. Now you know, they they
ditched those pith helmets that were so iconic like now
they now the People's Army of Vietnam looks like the
South Korean Army or something. And I don't even think
they pack AK seventy fours anymore. They don't. They don't
use an ArmaLite platform. But it's some it's it's some
kind of ancient k or pseudo or some sort of
like knockoff European rifle. One of the one of the
gun guys in the comments will know. But you know,
I found that fascinating. But and that's actually that's one
of I can count in the last thirty years. I
can count the number of rational things that the US
defensive stablishmen has done literally on one hand. That's one
of them. America should be cultivating henoi, you know, and
they're uh. And in Vietnam's are really big country. I
think people have this idea. Oh and it's on that
poemic around the war when they read history books, or
because it's remote and people know much about it, they
have this idea of something like little country. It's not.
It's huge, you know. And I think I think the
population now is about one hundred million people.
Speaker 1: Oh. By the way, Yo, I looked it up. I
actually kind of knew this. The Vietnam uses the STV.
What all it is. It's it's just an it's an
AK platform seven sixty two by thirty nine.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, But something really interesting happened to in nineteen fifty.
This was the final sort of formal meeting of the
Indo Chinese Commune Party where all factions were represented, you know,
the Vietnamese, the Camie, and the Lotians. It was a
ten day meeting near the Cambodian border in a town
called High Ten. The Vietnamese delegation dominated the proceedings. The
keynote speech was by a man named When Fansun, who
was a close comrade of General Jiop and Jeop had
gone as far as the place I'm in charge of
Cambodian affairs and the subject of his speech. He made
four main points, the first being that there wasn't that
a Cambodian proletariat did not exist, so the Kremure Revolution
it had to be base on the peasantry as the
as the partisan element and the overriding priority. The second
point had to be to train Cambodian cadres to carry
out political action among the premier masses and educate them
adequately to support the communist party camp with Chia such
that the party can move within the population according to
Maoist doctrines of asymmetrical warfare. He made the point that
the Vietnamese could help and will arm and equip these cadres,
but ethnic camer need to take a lead, otherwise there
will be no legitimacy and is the third point is
really fascinating. He said, the best way to win camer sympathy,
you know, the hearts and minds, was through Buddhist monks,
because Buddhist monks after the king wilded the most authority
and the minds of of camer villagers. So some by
some means or some combination of incentivization and threats and cajoling.
The Buddhist monasteries had to be brought in line with
the revolutionary cause that had mixed success as the situation resolved.
And finally, and this was actually very forward looking, the
Vietnamese idea of communism and the Soviet idea of Marxist
Leninis practice for that matter, it had to be dramatically
modified to make it conceptually intelligible to the camere, and
it had to be tailored to reflect Cambodian political and
social reality. There's a particular emphasis on not attacking the
king and Sahanok's bizarre relationship with the Khmer Rouge as
well as the Vietnamese as well as the Americans as
well as Beijing. As a testament to this, Cambodians wouldn't
follow anybody who who identified the king as an enemy
or as an obstacle to national liberation. What job his
delegation and his and is Uh and the Vietnamese cadre
representatives at this conference said, the coruct sloan needs to
be something on order of we must, we must liberate
our king from the colonial yoke, you know, because the king,
our king has been maimed for all practical purposes by
the occidental oppressor, and that suggests a very very deep
insight into the reality of revolutionary praxis in theater. And
I believe Look, I mean one of the things that
separates me from court historians. It's not just the fact
that they're ideologically compromised and they're not really studying history
either're just presenting political narratives, but this idea that historical
occurrences are derived from intentional conspiracies. And I mean that's nonsense.
I mean, that's beyond nonsense. It's preposterous and suggests a
total conceptual literacy. But the way that political warfare is
pursued and developed and implemented as practice absolutely owes to
discrete decision making by command and control elements, and that
malability that was taken for granted, or that need for
unconventional solutions to exigencies presented by the unique situation of Cambodia,
and frankly primitiveness and the lack of educability of the
body politic going to the absence of a proletariat that
was whose lives and conceptual horizon was being molded and
informed by historical forces. I think this was a perfect
storm of factors that made possible homicide and absolutely massive
scale that in percentage terms, obviously not in raw numbers,
but as persiatrician as a percentage of the overall population.
What happened in Cambodia in three short years, I mean
it dwarfed even the sot megaside from nineteen seventeen until
nineteen thirty three, approximately. I realized I talked more about
the Vietnamese and Hochi Minh than I did Paul Pott.
It was a simple foundation I believe in context. I'll
conclude next episode, and I promise we'll get into the
nitty gritty of the killing fields and the Battle of
Ko Tang and these things. The feedback on the first
episode was very positive, at least from what the subs
related to me, and I mean, I'm very honored by that.
But also I want to make sure that people are
are you know, benefiting from this. So I worry sometimes
that I'm not emphasizing the subject matter addequately, because I
get bogged down in foundational aspects. You know, that's kind
of them that that's that's something that I think a
lot of historical writers fall pray too, but yeah, that's uh,
that's only good.
Speaker 1: Well, knowing the subs, I think that if they were
if they were displeased with anything you were presenting, they
would certainly let us know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd probably call me up and say, m A
fagut or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Go to Thomas's substack well Thomas seven
seven seven at substack dot com. Go to his website
Thomas Thomas seven seven seven dot com. It's he's a seven.
Check out everything Thomas has got there. You'll be able
to click with them there and yeah, until the next time, Thomas,
thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you man,