A documentary of Pol Pots life & controversial death filmed at his secret bunker, his house, his grave etc. There is even an interview where he explains how the death of 2 million people was not his fault. It may well shock you.






Well done MrB, that was interesting indeed!

Thanks Mr B, great to see somebody still interested in this.
I will just make a few points if i may.
- Everything in Cambodia is more complicated thhan what it seems to us westerners. What is on the surface is often just the first layer of truth.
- Personally i think you place too much emphasis on this being all Pol Pot's work.
I don't think he walked away after 15 minutes of Marxism lessons - at all. He was surrounded by a coterie of dedicated Marxist, Stalinist and Maoist scholars. The ideological, and then the actual, madness came out of years of these guys studying this stuff.
- Nuon Chea was probably far more influential in setting the national course. A dedicated, committed Marxist for decades. He out ranked Pol Pot in the Party structure for most of the KR and pre KR period.
Increasingly more scholars are suggesting that he always remained in charge, even after he supposedly stood down.
He was a shadow master and a man to whom deception and secrecy were EVerything. Stepping back into the shadows would be right up his alley.
- in all my reading, i almost never come across reports of Pol Pot developing or initiating developments or directions.
His role is always just to make the pronouncements.
Personally i believe he was a puppet - although i am still open on this.

After sitting thru huge slabs of both KRT trials, i almost never heard any of the witnesses or defendants point to Pol Pot as the instigator of whatever deeds were being discussed.
It was always others in the inner circle that everybody was trying to please - by carrying out their instructions, not Pol Pot's.

The finger points to Nuon Chea mostly (and a few others) in almost every insiders account.
You follow the chain-of-command for the orders of every dirty deed - and they almost always stop short of Pol Pot.
I have no doubt in my mind that Nuon Chea was the ideologue who, with his highly developed Khmer brand of Maoism, was directing the whole show. Ideologically and administratively.
Pol pot was a perfect puppet in many ways.

I am not arguing this case. As i say, i am still working thru the layers after many years, and am still not certain about many things.
One thing i am sure about - the traditional western narrative is very rudimentary. and sometime completely wrong.
Thanks again, and keep putting your boundless curiosity and energy into your vids, Mr B. Fab stuff.

I m glad you said it first @SternAAlbifrons .I have not spent the time you have on this because I am not open to altering the narrative that I go with, my mind is made and I'm going with your angle, that Pol Pot was a puppet, someone to blame. All of the KR were strong Nationalists and some were hell bent in that way to the point of harming other Khmer that they deemed were not the right kind of Khmer for whatever reason. Nothing ever shows up that Pol Pot behind the trigger or decision or certainly direct action as one who harmed his fellow Khmer or any other people.

The story about Pol Pot the tyrant, devil man does not add up, people who met him don't describe him as anything but a Khmer gentleman who held his tongue and never showed emotion. He loved his Nation and he was willing to make sacrifices for it, but that did not include wholesale murder of anyone. What is shocking is how the story has been bought outright and not challenged.

My teachers on this subject will remain anonymous because I wouldn't want to be known for mis characterizing someone well versed and deeply respected on these subjects. From what I have been told and what I have read and discussed with others, the story went this way from the first days of the Cambodian-Vietnamese War commencing in December 1978. The Vietnamese army were keen to be seen as liberating their neighbor from the horrors of the Pol Pot Regime. There were, in fact, many horrors during this short period in the KOW, however they were not as widespread as one is led to believe. There were huge amounts of politically motivated murders, many who died of starvation due to the regime's gross mismanagement of resources. I am going to stay away from the numbers in each category all together but I will say that to the Vietnamese "liberators" fresh off an Epic war with the Americans AND heading into a ground war with China in early '79, you can see why it was in their interests to release information that would make the KR regime seem drastically more awful than the awful they were in reality. Vietnam began to inflate numbers then and that has continued to this time.

Vietnam had just beat back a full on concerted war effort against the USA, the unilateral leader of the world, they did it by fighting tough and sacrificing huge amounts of lives. With such a victory behind them they needed as much good PR as they could muster and they found their bad guy in Pol Pot. The worse they made Pol Pot out to be the better they appeared. We have inherited a strong PR campaign as a narrative to what occurred here from 1975-1979.

I had better make it clear - i think Pol Pot was as guilty as sin.
but not for being the puppet master. He was the fully informed figurehead of the system - and so imo, fully culpable.
(but he actually comes up as almost a complete vacuum to me)

An NRP candidate in 2018 elections, knowing of my interest in the trials, once said to me..
Who was the not guilty one?
The king, Pol Pot, or HE?

According to him, and we talked about this for days, the Pol Pot faction was betrayed by "Huon infected saboteurs".
Exactly the line Nuon Chea relied upon, and continued to propagate, in his defence.
I came to realise that this revision of history is quite common amongst the opposition, and apparently increasing.

With this line of reasoning, they probably would have given Duch his old job back.

So Bosso, just be aware of that - and who and why is telling you this.
For some of them Pot Pot is now a veritable saint. For base party political reasons.
- and don't be fooled by the smile. It got him the Top Puppet job.

Nb. I do also believe the Vietnamese were nefarious - but that doesn't make Pol Pot and the Central Committee any less guilty imo.

Yes, I was light on him, but was he fully aware of the goings on ? Can we know that? I d have to ask you as you are the most current and alive of the ones I have relied on before. I think maybe there is quite a bit of true in this VN PR angle and, no, these are not local sources, my "teachers". My spin on it is more likely mine than theirs and it is not meant to lessen the horrific acts against Khmer people in that period and I want to make that clear too. I also want to make clear that I am not re telling this in this way to make the Vietnamese look like ogres either.

Fair enough. ?

Before we go any further with this discussion, i am going to flick back to the OP for a minute.
I sent this to him in a PM because i did not want him to think i was being dismissive. I will post part of it here because i would like everybody else to know what i think of his vid. He deserves it.

I love your attitude of curiosity, discovery, and the drive to tell those stories. That's inspiring for me personally.
I am also very impressed with the production values. Given the conditions especially.

I hope i didn't seem critical or dismissive in my response to the "Pol Pot" video.
I too have the impulse to explain, and to explain deeper again, but unfortunately i know i sometimes come across as a bit of a know-it-all.
lol. when actually, i regard myself as the perennial first year novice.

If i step away from my own views and understandings about this subject - i have to say the video is an excellent piece of work. - Despite, as i admit, thinking there are more and differing layers beneath.

I am really grateful for it - for telling the story. And indeed, for addressing some of the 'weightier elements' with deadly clarity. You managed to paint some (horribly) graphic pictures even in this world/KR-weary old blokes mind's eye.
It must be transfixing to the many who know surprising little about the whole KR/Cambodian history of that time. So, Fab for that!

We have to remember that you don't have to be too much younger than us to be totally removed from this story. It was contemporary for us.
I am sometimes reminded that even some old expats seem to be forget that Cambodians of our age lived through it all.
They seem to regard it as a more ancient history, or more removed - and so they don't see its effects still playing out all around us every day.

a BIG tick for B
imo