Thursday 5 May 2011

Marionettes


To mark the thirteenth anniversary of the death of Pol Pot, the face of genocide, the Spectator Coffee House Blog recently published an article by Michael Sheridan, which originally appeared in September 1996. In this he maintains that France had a part to play in the formation of the murderous politics of the Khmer Rouge.

The thesis is superficially attractive. A number of the senior apparatchiks of this frightful movement were educated in France, not just Pol Pot, whose real name was Saloth Sar, but Leng Sary, Khjeu Samphan, and Hu Nim. They were all there in the late 1950s, imbibing, according to Sheridan, the politics of the Left-Bank during its unyielding existential period.

They absorbed much of their theory, he continues, from the French Communist Party, a thoroughly Stalinist body, steeped in hatred of the bourgeoisie. The Party’s programme included the collectivisation of agriculture, which the Khmer Rouge carried through with a literal-minded and barbarous rigour after they captured Phnom Penn in 1975, which, so says the author, even Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier at the time, found terrifying.

As I say, it’s superficially attractive…and utterly unconvincing. Unconvincing at least so far as a specifically French dimension is concerned. Why on earth should Zhou Enlai, of all people, have found the Khmer Rouge actions ‘terrifying’? After all this man, no more than the abject dog of Mao Zedong, belonged to a government whose actions were no less horrific in the Great Leap Forward, a more exact model for Pol Pot than any theory he absorbed in France. The French Communist Party may have talked about collectivisation – luckily for France it never got beyond talk – but it was Stalin and the Soviets who carried it into practice, with total disregard of the human consequences.

No, the rot is not in France; it is in Marxism itself, in the different mutations of Marxism, - in Lenin, Stalin and Mao, those three monsters of the twentieth century, the Red Century, the most murderous in human history. I suppose it’s possible, though, to argue that there is a more precise French root to the politics of the Khmer Rouge in the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the original monster of the idea, who advanced a thesis based on human perfectibility, an abstraction which turns the real world upside down, one that makes dispensable marionettes of us all.

18 comments:

  1. Rousseau and Hegel are the architects of statism.

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  2. The French SS tried as did the Spanish division 250 blau but no, the Feemason/Zionists had to enable the spread of communism all over the world.

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  3. Calvin, yes, Hegel; God laboured, the spirit evolved and reached its highest expression in...the state!

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  4. Anthony, I see Hitlerism as another product of the Red Century.

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  5. Ana again you expose the superficial theories that abound. You mention Rousseau, and it is interesting to ask how pernicious Benthamite Utilitarianism would be if imposed. There is no standard for happiness that applies to all, Bentham also came up with the Panopticon, a surveillance system for prisoners that would create paranoia if it weren't already there. These belief structures and those you mention are based on ideals and idealism is perhaps one of the most dangerous forces on the planet.

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  6. Ana, sorry for being off-topic but I've heard that the separatists of the Scottish National Party may score a 'historic' victory in the elections for the Scottish parliament. Could you write an article about the birth and rise of Scottish nationalism and separatism in the British isles general? I'm very interested in that topic and I'd love to read an article by you about that.

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  7. The part that was trying to stop communism.

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  8. It is probable that bankers and western industrialists like having the challenge of communism and terrorism. This justifies the expendetures of the military industrial complex which is quite profitable for many.

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  9. Anthony,
    Zionism is a movement for the development and protection of a Jewish nation in Israel. Israel is a democratic State, not a communist State.
    :-)

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  10. Before the Stalin famine in the Ukraine in 32-33 was the Lenin famine in the lower Volga River region and the Ukraine in 21-22. Devils both.

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  11. Duot, that's fine. I have an article in the pipeline on the outcome of the Scottish election which I intend to publish tomorrow. It should go some way towards answering your question, but once you've seen it let me know if you would like any further clarification.

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  12. Anthony, it was Hitler's 1939 deal with Stalin that handed over a good bit of eastern Europe to communism. It was his precipitate invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which served to hand over the rest.

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  13. The die was cast, Hitler had to try to take out Russia or Russia, the UK and America would have attacked Germany by 1842.Hitler had freed Germany from the stanglehold of the Jewish bankers and they wanted it back under their controll.Hitler invaded poland because the Poles were commiting attrocities against German civilians. Russia invaded poland and the west said nothing.The Russians killed 5000 Polish officers and intellectuals at the Katyn and the west said nothing.Hitler did not want war with England and made many offers for peace which were ignored. The west went to war with Germany over Poland then turned half of Europe over to the Communists. 70% of the NKVD officers were Jewish and they killed more people than the Germans ever did. If not for Freemason treachery communism would have been destroyed and Europe would still be European.The muslims are burning churches in Egypt now, soon it will be in England, all this enabled by the communist goverments. Hitlers visions were beyond the understanding of most, then the snow fell covering the dreams and ideals. Dismal future now.

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  14. Not so dismal, Anthony. One lives in hope.

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