So, a while back my wife, her friend and I had this chat about...
...well some irrelevant bullshit. Honestly, I was a bit tipsy at the time, so I can't clearly remember the entire conversation. But anyway. At some point we came to the topic of politics. Wonderful! How better to spend a night out than discussing politics with two Khmer women that know fuck-all about politics. But I digress.
So, her friend just kind of casually mentioned how france is a communist country, where upon the flow of the conversation came to a screetching halt because I couldn't get over this bullshit. I'm not even french, but I just felt like I had to get this clear. "No, barang is not number one communist!" I tried to retort. My wife however, wasn't a big help. In fact, she sided with her friend. "Yes, barang communist." she argued and that's how it went on for like 20 minutes or so. At some point I pressed them on it and asked: "Who told you that the french are communists?" and I got the same answer from both of them. They learned it in school. "Great! They're lying about france in school and tell the pupils that the french are communists so that they have a reason to dislike the 'barang'." I thought and I left it at that.

A couple of weeks later, we went to her parents home in the province. Her unkle who fought in "the war" and his wife also live there. So at some point I figgured "This guy must know a thing about communism or two. He was fighting in Pol Pot's Army after all." and so I decided to open this can of worms again. When I asked him in Khmer whether the french are commies or not, he gave me a very clear no. My wife was stumped by this. She literally didn't know what to say. It was only later that evening, when we were already lying in the bed, that she sort of adressed what had just happened. So we talked a little more and as it turns out, she, her unkle and I mean different things when we say the word communist. A communist in her mind is any person who is very authoritarian. You know the type. Some police officer for example, who is an asshole to people just because he's got a badge and a gun. That sort of guy. Her unkle means people who belong to a communist party or nation. I mean people who follow Marx' ideas of class struggle, worker controll of the means of production and all of that fancy stuff.

So, yeah. What am I trying to say here? Maybe it's just an example of how similar words can mean different things to various people. Maybe I'm trying to make a point of how my wife just would not believe me when I told her that the french aren't communist because I'm a barang and there seems to be a general dismissal going onnwhenever a foreigner disagrees with a Cambodian on a matter such as this. Or maybe it's just another example of stupid shit that you can argue over here. I'm not sure what I've learned from this experience, but Orcs are still a bunch of dicks and Elves can suck my nuts. That's it

You're aware that Pol went to France to learn how to be a nasty bastard, right?

I was going to guess she thought you said, "French people are CARTOONISTS," and after all the publicity Charie Hebdo has been getting I'd agree with her that, "yes, the French are indeed cartoonists."

Jacket wrote:So, a while back my wife, her friend and I had this chat about...

And congrats!

Jacket wrote:...So we talked a little more and as it turns out, she, her unkle and I mean different things when we say the word communist. A communist in her mind is any person who is very authoritarian. You know the type. Some police officer for example, who is an asshole to people just because he's got a badge and a gun. That sort of guy. Her unkle means people who belong to a communist party or nation. I mean people who follow Marx' ideas of class struggle, worker controll of the means of production and all of that fancy stuff...

That still wouldn't make them French communists.

No insult intended Jacket (it's an interesting story), but isn't it a sad, sobering moment when one finds out that the person one is married to is an utter idiot ??? Truth is....this is what you get when you marry a Cambodian. Sometimes I really don't understand you guys.......you are intelligent, relatively young and mostly good looking, and then out of the blue you switch off your brains and begin to think with your dicks.

StroppyChops wrote:You're aware that Pol went to France to learn how to be a nasty bastard, right?

No, he went to France to learn radio electronics.
http://www.history.com/topics/pol-pot

He went to China during the Cultural Revolution to learn how to be a nasty bastard.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/indi ... indid=1998

neuropathic wrote:

StroppyChops wrote:You're aware that Pol went to France to learn how to be a nasty bastard, right?

No, he went to France to learn radio electronics.
http://www.history.com/topics/pol-pot

"Their army was led by Pol Pot, who was appointed CPK’s party secretary and leader in 1963. Pol Pot, born in Cambodia as Solath Sar, spent time in France and became a member of the French Communist Party. Upon returning to Cambodia in 1953, he joined a clandestine communist movement and began his rise up the ranks to become one of the world’s most infamous dictators."
http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history ... e-history/

I also went to school and i had never been taught that French is communist. It is true that France had colonized Cambodia and yes it had taken valuable things from Cambodia and was taking advantages from Cambodia like taking tax. There was a famous khmer literature about France colony. It talked about how French treated Cambodians and took advantages from us. Other things we learned at school about French colony is that France had never wanted to colonize Cambodia, but our king asked them to colonize us in other to have them protect us from Thailand and Vietnam invasion. Furthermore, we also were taught that France had cut our lower Cambodia to Vietnam, on the other hand, it had withdrawn our Angkor Wat and four provinces from Thailand. Nothing about whether France is a communist country.

StroppyChops wrote:

neuropathic wrote:

StroppyChops wrote:You're aware that Pol went to France to learn how to be a nasty bastard, right?

No, he went to France to learn radio electronics.
http://www.history.com/topics/pol-pot

"Their army was led by Pol Pot, who was appointed CPK’s party secretary and leader in 1963. Pol Pot, born in Cambodia as Solath Sar, spent time in France and became a member of the French Communist Party. Upon returning to Cambodia in 1953, he joined a clandestine communist movement and began his rise up the ranks to become one of the world’s most infamous dictators."
http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history ... e-history/

Being a member of a communist party doesn't mean that you have learned how to be a nasty bastard. On the contrary, being a communist means showing empathy with the downtrodden masses. Becoming a Maoist in the worst way does not equate to communism. The Khmer Rouge were only communist by default, they can be better likened to Jim James's Jamestown cult or Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's gate cult than to rational communists.