Socialization in the home and schools stressed authority. Until recently Cambodian schoolchildren memorized a collection of informal laws, the chbab, which clearly delineated conduct. Social status determined conduct; for example, the status of a speaker in relation to the person addressed determined the mode of address.
The ideology of antagonism toward Vietnam. Among the Khmer Rouge’s many irrational policies, the most self-destructive was its provocation of Vietnam, such as border attacks in which soldiers raided inside Vietnam, a country with ten times Cambodia’s population and a powerful army.
Hatred of the Vietnamese had a long history and was shared by people across the political spectrum, except for communists who worked with the Vietnamese after World War II. Although the Pol Pot group also worked with Vietnamese communists until about 1973, for them it was only a marriage of convenience. Once they gained power most members of the party who had been associated with Vietnam were killed.
There was a long history of conflict between Cambodia and Vietnam. In the 1620s the Vietnamese moved south to the Mekong Delta (now part of southern Vietnam), pushing back the Khmer people living there. Subsequently, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and supported dissenting elements within Cambodia. In the 1830s and 1840s the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia, substituting Vietnamese for Cambodian provincial administration. They ruled brutally, desecrated pagodas, persecuted monks, and rendered the royal family powerless. Osborne wrote in 1969: “It is difficult to exaggerate the searing effect of the Vietnamese occupation.... the Vietnamese struck at the vital roots of the Khmer state.”31
He described Vietnam and Cambodia as two cultures in irreconcilable conflict. In the 1860s the Cambodian king, Ang Duong, asking for French help, referred to the Vietnamese as traditional enemies. The main reason Cambodia accepted the French protectorate was a wish to be protected from Vietnam. One reason for Sihanouk’s overthrow was his apparent support for Vietnam in the war. Upon gaining power Lon Nol expressed intense anti-Vietnamese sentiments, insisting that the Vietnamese were racially inferior to Cambodians. His rise to power was followed by murderous attacks on Vietnamese in Cambodia. In 1970 Pol Pot described Vietnam as the traditional enemy.
Cultural devaluation can be directed at another nation as well as a subgroup of society. An ideology of antagonism (see Chapter 16) may evolve, a way of thinking that represents the other (accurately or inaccurately) as an extreme threat and gives rise to the motivation to diminish or overcome or even exterminate the other. Such an ideology of antagonism motivated the actions of the Khmer Rouge toward Vietnam.
Cultural self-concept. The Khmer Rouge had a sense of superiority, combined with underlying feelings of inferiority and vulnerability. This arose from a combination of long past glory, recent history, and present circumstances.
Cambodia had once been a great and powerful empire. Angkor was rich and had conquered large territories. According to some writers its wealth was due to highly advanced agricultural techniques, especially irrigation systems that increased rice-growing capacity.32 A symbol of this past greatness was Angkor Wat, a magnificant complex of temples and other buildings. The French enlarged the memory of past greatness by beginning the restoration of Angkor Wat and writing the history of the empire that created it. According to one writer, “By the time their work was halted in the 1960s, the French had proved the Khmers ranked with the Romans and Greeks as unrivaled artists and innovators of the ancient world.”33 Each of Cambodia’s four national flags since 1970 “has featured a stylized representation of Ankor Wat’s three towers.”34
Pol Pot (or Saloth Sar as he was originally known) and his associates were strong nationalists from the start, and this may have gained them support early in the civil war.35 Their identification with the past greatness of Cambodia, combined with their success in the war against the United States, the giant, may have led them to believe that Cambodia could bring about a total transformation without any external support. With proper guidance, they thought, the people could accomplish anything. That the past greatness of Cambodia was rooted in agriculture probably contributed to their nearly complete reliance on agriculture in creating the new Cambodia.
On the other hand, for several centuries, Cambodia had been dependent on external powers and suffering at their hands. This, together with mistrust of all outsiders and many Cambodians, made the Khmer Rouge feel weak and vulnerable. The small size of their army added to their insecurity. Their divided identity, their lack of integration of feelings of strength and weakness, interfered with a realistic assessment of themselves and their circumstances. This was one cause of their violent and self-defeating policies, including constant purges of communists.
A tradition of violence in Cambodia. Chou Ta-Kuan described the brutal penal system of Angkor in the thirteenth century. People convicted of serious crimes were buried alive; lesser crimes were punished by the amputation of toes, fingers, and arms. When a new king was proclaimed, all his brothers were mutilated. At the beginning of large construction projects Khmers of low status were ritually decapitated. People believed they could gain power by cutting off parts of another person’s body – genitals, organs, or head.36
The Issarak, the anti-French freedom fighters, were also extremely violent. Bun Chan Mol was the political leader of a group carrying out executions in the 1940s. He wrote in his 1973 book, Charit Khmer (Khmer mores), that he left the Issarak in 1949 because he could not restrain the brutality of his men, their gratuitous use of torture, and their pleasure in violence.37 They were suspicious of everyone, including their leaders. Banditry was also long practiced in Cambodia, sometimes the Issarak a cover for it.
Referring to David Chandler’s dissertation on life in nineteenth-century Cambodia, Vickery writes:
Patterns of extreme violence against people defined as enemies, however arbitrarily, have very long roots in Cambodia. As a scholar specializing in 19th-century
