The third major influence on the peasants was exerted by the communists. They destroyed the traditional structures of life in territories they occupied, creating total dependence on themselves. They executed some and terrorized all, broke up extended families, forced peasants to move to new villages, and drove people from worksite to worksite under constant supervision. They erased many of the traditions in the occupied territories between 1970 and 1975 and many more after the victory in 1975. All this increased disorientation and susceptibility to the communist movement.
Ith Sarin, a school inspector who joined the communists and then abandoned them and wrote a book about them, wrote that the communists understood and worked to enlarge the peasants’ deep dissatisfaction with the corruption, arrogance, cruelty, and incompetence of the Phnom Penh government.56 Having enhanced the needs created by difficult life conditions, the communists offered ways to fulfill them. In place of the authority of the king, they offered the authority of Angka Loeu (the “organization,” their central authority). They linked some of the traditions and myths of the culture to the new system. While they changed the village administrative system, they maintained and even strengthened certain traditional elements such as communal ownership and communal work. During the civil war, while they acted with severity and enforced discipline, they also worked together with the people, while maintaining a modest demeanor.57 They offered a movement and ideology that could provide connection, comprehension, and even inspiration, and they propagated it through an extensive program of political education. Like other totalitarian systems, they used songs to unite and energize people. They used myths and traditions to gain support, but once victorious, they vanquished the king and the vestiges of the old culture.
The communists paid special attention to youth, creating youth groups as early as 1962. Young people have a less fully formed identity, and their minds are more open to new ideals. Armies like young soldiers because they are easier to mold and have a sense of invulnerability that makes them worry less about dying. They have a need to separate from parents and old traditions (although this depends on the culture), but they also need emotional security. An authoritarian system that proclaims higher ideals and provides membership in a group can fulfill deep needs for youth, especially in the midst of societal turmoil, and gain their commitment. Plato’s dictum in the Republic for those seeking to build the perfect city was a psychologically sound recipe for exerting influence: “Taking over their children, they will rear them – far away from those dispositions they have now from their parents – in their own manners and laws.”
Many Khmer Rouge fighters were very young; some were children. There are reports of children who killed their parents. How did they come to this? The breakdown of social structures, including the family itself, affected children and adolescents especially strongly. Starting in 1970, parents lost the power to support and protect their children or give them a sense of belonging, especially in communist-occupied areas. Young people could gain this feeling of protection and belonging from the Khmer Rouge, as well as a sense of power from wielding a gun. Some were so successful at extinguishing all former ties while adopting a new group identity that they were able to kill their parents.
The role of specific individuals
A small number of individuals had an essential role in bringing about the genocide: Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim, Son Sen, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Koy Thuon, Pol Pot, and Hou Youn (who was himself murdered soon after the 1975 victory). Do specific characteristics of these individuals help to explain the genocide? Certainly they were different from Cambodians who were not sent to study in Paris and who did not become members of the Communist party and devote their lives to politics and revolutionary activities. A few of them went into the government; for example, Khieu Samphan was at one point Sihanouk’s secretary of state for commerce. Others started to organize the revolutionary force in the jungles and the countryside, where they were later joined by Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn, and a third member of the group, Hu Nim. Although I discussed their ideological and experiential evolution, we do not know enough about them as people to identify what childhood experiences and personal characteristics prepared or predisposed them for their genocidal ideology and cold-blooded determination.
We have anecdotal information, which is of limited value. Barron and Paul write that in the context of their values and beliefs, apparently all were principled, honest, brave, and almost puritannical.58 Both Pol Pot and Ieng Sary have been described by some as friendly and even gentle.59 We get a different view of Pol Pot through an outburst during a study group meeting of communist students in Paris. He attacked Hou Youn’s more democratic views: “It is I who will direct the revolutionary organization. I will become the secretary general. I will hold the dossiers, I will control the ministries, and I will see to it that there is no deviation from the line fixed by the central committee in the interests of the people.”60
Khieu Samphan was described by a contemporary who attended school with him in both Cambodia and France as sickly, quiet, and passive. He was ridiculed and teased by classmates and did not defend himself. He was sexually impotent.61 At one point while he was in public office, security agents stripped him naked in the street, photographed him, and showed the photograph in government circles.
Of somewhat more value is the information that Pol Pot and Ieng Sary managed to get scholarships to study in Paris without an elite background and, in the case of Pol Pot, in spite of a mediocre academic record. University education was the privilege of the aristocracy, and they must have received their scholarships through connections, by clever maneuvering. Gaining this privilege, studying in Paris, associating there with Cambodians of aristocratic background, and participating in public activities in the Cambodian and
