The Fall of Phnom Penh: Short Memories and Outright Spin

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-fall-of-phnom-penh-the-left-has-a-short-memory/

Lately, I've been reading a lot of articles at The European Conservative and similar publications, trying to get inside the heads of these people and how they frame history and revise it. This article was no exception to what seems to be an established rule.

Right-wing authors have been fairly vicious with regard to voices on the Left that initially praised the rise of the Khmer Rouge and defended them - until that is, the extent of their crimes became clear. Articles like this want to place all the blame on the Left and yet the author conveniently ignores the crimes of French colonialism, and the American War in Indochina which created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to emerge. When societies are destroyed, the monsters and barbarism emerge.

The US manipulated the politics of Cambodia and overthrew its government. It bombed the country relentlessly, and well before Nixon's public invasion in 1970. It continued to bomb and so devastated Khmer society that it provided a fringe leader like Pol Pot the fertile ground he needed to build and advance his movement. Without Johnson and Nixon and the great lie and slaughterhouse that was the Vietnam War, there would have been no occasion for the likes of the Khmer Rouge to succeed.

Once in power, the disciples of Pol Pot were indisputably brutal, an expression of hyper-literalist, extremist peasant communism that had little to do with Marx. For Pol Pot and other leaders like him throughout the Third World, communism was the vehicle for resistance to colonial domination - a means for nationalism to unite the peasants under non-traditionalist frameworks - old paradigms that had been corrupted if not smashed by colonialism and multi-generational war. Communism was a veneer for peasant nationalism and totalitarian rule. Everyone saw what happened in places like Guatemala in 1954 and the way in which the West could manipulate an open society. Vanguardism and the need to raise a new and 'pure' generation drove regimes like the Khmer Rouge to great violence and absurdity.

The article then completely ignores the fact that after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, two things happened that are very telling, events that revealed the farcical nature of the entire Indochina conflict and which incidentally take the wind of this Right-wing critique.

China invaded Vietnam in early 1979, revealing the narratives the US had so long relied upon regarding Domino Theory and the like were false. The US had long known the communist world was not united and the PRC and USSR had almost gone to war in the late 1960's - something Nixon exploited by re-opening diplomatic relations with Beijing (or Peking as it was then known). The Communist world was presented as a monolithic red blob on world maps. This was propaganda. The 'red' world was not united. History did not evaporate. The Soviet Union was still undergirded by historical Russian interests, as was China, as were the nations of Indochina.

Further the fact that China would attack fellow communist Vietnam revealed in tangible terms that US strategic thinking was flawed and decades of propaganda sold to the US public was a pack of lies.

Second, when the Khmer Rouge was defeated by Vietnam and the remnants of the regime took to the jungle along the Thailand frontier - the US provided support for them and would continue to provide diplomatic cover and aid throughout the Carter and Reagan administrations. This wasn't because the US liked Pol Pot but it hated the regime in Hanoi and wanted revenge. The fact that the policy was completely amoral had no bearing. Isn't that what the author is trying to suggest by invoking repentance - that such policies and ideological stances have a moral component?

But The European Conservative isn't actually interested in history, fact, or truthful reporting and interpretation. One is reminded of the forgotten history of Right-wing movements in Europe and America that were keen on 1930's fascism and openly supported Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler's Third Reich. These same 'conservatives' fall silent when their own connections to these movements and the various fascist satellites such as Vichy are brought up. I see no repentance when it comes to the likes of LePen, Meloni, or Hungary's Viktor Orban when he invokes the likes of Horthy. With regard to the latter, the history is complicated to be sure. It's one thing to admit this, but another to celebrate and/or endorse these figures.

The Khmer Rouge was monstrous and no justification can be given. The history is complicated and there's plenty of blame to go around. When it comes to Western politics, there are no innocents or good guys. Each side has supported its evils and been blind to others - sometimes willingly so, sometimes out of naivete.

But this kind of selective and partisan pot-stirring and finger wagging serves no purpose other than to reinforce false narratives and buttress a false sense of moral uprightness that they believe their movement possesses. But they must stand in doubt, because they are relentless in pursuing these types of exercises. Are they afraid that anger will cool or that without constant reminders someone might read the wrong article or pick up the wrong book?