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History’s Out of the Ordinary Radicals

Khalid Elhassan June 29, 2020 33 min

Lebensborn - Schutzstaffel — Kidnapping of Polish children for the Lebensborn association. Wikimedia

24. The Southeast Asian Genocidaires

Skulls from the Cambodian Genocide. New York Times

Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge was one of the twentieth century’s wackiest – and deadliest – extremist groups. They were led by Saloth Sar, better known to history as Pol Pot (1925 – 1998), a communist revolutionary who led his extremist followers into seizing power in 1975. The Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, then transformed it into a nightmarish ideological tyranny, masterfully depicted in the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields.

During the Khmer Rouge’s years in power, about a quarter of Cambodia’s population was killed in a horrific genocide. The horror was made even worse by its irrationality. In an attempt at social engineering, Cambodian cities were evacuated, and the urban masses were forcibly converted into peasants toiling on poorly run collective farms. Roughly three million were murdered or starved to death before the nightmare ended when the Khmer Rouge were driven from power in 1979.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.