Though sensitive and proud Pol Potists would perhaps be loath to admit it to themselves, when it comes to a modernising influence on Cambodian politics, lets look at this, the beginning of the chapter The Nature of the Cambodian Revolution, taken from Michael Vickery’s important 1984 book Cambodia 1975-1982, dismissed by lazy people as “denial” literature. Serving as a brief outline, and maybe a point for discussion, the below doesn’t show what is developed further by Vickery in that chapter, but suggests for the Khmer Rouge a by no means cast-iron synthesis of quasi-Marxist economic theory, Leninist ideology and the general influence that one man’s earlier political activity had on Cambodian nationalism among intellectuals:
Once upon a time, before the revolution in Cambodia, a European journalist visited the Phnom Penh office of an opposition newspaper which was believed to be the legal organ of an illegal guerilla organization, in order to enquire about the organization, its leaders, and its aims.
His first question, about the leaders behind the newspaper and its organization, met with an evasive answer, and it seemed much easier to draw out his informants on the aims of the group, of which some of the salient points were: to lead the Khmer people to wake up, be aware, know their own and their country’s value, to dare to face their own and their country’s problems, to dare to work for the good of the country and the people.
They claimed to have created an army to fight to serve the people and the nation without accepting any foreign advisers or organizers.
They were developing the people — old and young, men and women — to serve the nation without thinking of their personal interest or rank.
They boasted of using the national language for all purposes, and of having developed new vocabularies for fields, such as diplomacy and military affairs, in which French had formerly dominated.
Other elements of their program were the suppression of physical, moral, or vocal oppression of one person by another; the suppression of all superstitious beliefs; the suppression of unemployment; the elimination of unused land and equipment; and the suppression of such moral evils as gambling, drinking, drugs, fighting, banditry, and rape.
They also gave much importance to the defense of the national interest through teaching people true Khmer history and inculcating mutual trust among Khmer, so that they would dare to fight, relying only on themselves.
The name of their organization was Angka …
This interview did not take place in the late 1960s or early 1970s between a “new left” journalist and a front man for the Pol Pot Communists. This journalist was Dr. Peter Schmid of Weltwoche and Der Spiegel, the Cambodian newspaper was Khmer Thmei (“New Khmer”), and the interview was published in November 1954. This paper was able to start publication as a result of the democratic measures imposed on Sihanouk’s Cambodia by the Geneva acords against the objections of the king and his conservative coterie; and it was the political and intellectual heir of another newspaper, Khmer Kraok (“Khmer Arise”), which published from January to March 1952 and was then closed down following the mysterious disappearance of the man whose mouthpiece it was believed to be.
That man, about whom Dr. Schmid was having some difficulty in getting information, was Son Ngoc Thanh, and the full title of his Angka (“Organization”) was Angkar tasu prochang ananikomniyum (“Organization to combat colonialism”), formerly Angkar prachea cholna (Organization of the people’s movement”).
To the extent that Son Ngoc Thanh is known at all to the non-specialist, it is probably as a World War II collaborator of the Japanese and from about 1958 to 1970 as a putative collaborator of the CIA, and then during the Cambodian war of 1970-75 as a collaborator — and short-term prime minister — of the Lon Nol government. Even less well known is that he was the first important modern Khmer nationalist, an intellectual leader in the development of modern Khmer-language journalism (1936-42), organizer of the first modern anti-French political movement (1942), and a leader in the effort to modernize and democratize Cambodian society. During his years of nationalist and anti-colonialist activity, his enemies considered him on the left of the political spectrum. He was qualified by the French as Vietminh, and at one time by Sihanouk and Lon Nol as “certainly Communist …. allied with the Viet Minh,” and “working with Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung.”
Implicated in an anti-French demonstration in 1942 he fled to Japan, returning in 1945 to become minister of foreign affairs, then prime minister, of a Japanese-sponsored independent Cambodian government. When the French returned later in that year, he was arrested and taken to France, but was eventually released and returned to Cambodia in 1951 to resume political activity. His principal effort was directed toward the achievement of full independence, and he went about it in a way which cast aspersions on Sihanouk and the Cambodian political elite as being too opportunistic and uninterested in resisting the French. In March 1952 Son Ngoc Thanh and a collaborator, Ea Sichau, disappeared in Siemreap province and were reported by Khmer Kraok as having been captured by a band of Issaraks who were not known to be operating in that area.
That was of course to cover those of his collaborators in Phnom Penh against a charge of abetting illegal activity, for in fact Thanh and Sichau went on to the Dangrek foothills to establish a “liberated zone” and work for true independence and revolution. Over the next two years Thanh was joined by numerous patriotic middle-class youth attracted by his high ideals and anti-colonial patriotism. There in the forest they established self-sufficient communities where they farmed, engaged in military training, and occasionally sallied forth to attack the Cambodian armed forces of Lon Nol. They also tried to bring modern ideas to the peasants among whom they lived and to unify and reorganize the various Issarak groups scattered around the country.
In retrospect they had little lasting success, but they were undoubtedly a catalyst which pushed both Sihanouk and the French toward independence. They also attracted international attention and in November 1954 Nehru stopped at Siemreap to meet Son Ngoc Than, who in Asia was of interest as a combative nationalist both non-Communist and honest. The interview with Dr. Schmid was a direct result of the publicity attendant on Nehru’s visit.
Son Ngoc Thanh’s movement eventually fell apart. Full independence in 1953 and the new democracy imposed by Geneva in 1954 took much of the meaning away from his activity. Most of his young men returned to Phnom Penh, went on to higher education, and became teachers, bankers, or businessmen, while Thanh himself returned to southern Vietnam where eventually, working for the interests of the local Khmer, he became deeply involved in the American side of the Indochina War.
It is obvious that the aims and principles enunciated by the Khmer Thmei representative in 1954 bear many resemblances to principles held by the Democratic Kampuchea forces, particularly as they were interpreted by the Pol Pot faction. Sihanouk, to be sure, has already said that the DK leaders used to be Thanhists, which for him is ipso facto a negative assessment since Thanh was anti-Sihanouk. Sihanouk’s allegation, even if entirely untrue, is not very significant, since in a way nearly all currents of Cambodian nationalism, left or right, go back to or touch on the activities of Son Ngoc Thanh, and as “Thanhists” at various times one could lump together such disparate figures as Thiounn Mum, Penn Nouth, and Nhiek Tioulong (although not Lon Nol, so far as I know). The putative former “Thanhism” of the leaders is only interesting to the extent that some of their significant principles, aims, and policies can be seen to derive from or closely resemble the non-Marxist or marginal Marxist principles, aims, and policies of Thanh’s political movements; and it is particularly interesting to examine such features now when the DK group has failed in its larger goals, has turned to anti-Vietnamese chauvinism as a raison d’etre, and seem willing, even eager, to enter into whatever wild schemes the CIA may be cooking up. Pol Pot, since 1978, has nearly duplicated the shifts of Son Ngoc Thanh — from genuine revolutionary of the left to ultra-nationalist to intriguer in exile eager for support from whatever quarter it might come.
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Didn’t the ‘first’ Cambodian Communist guerilla leader capitalise on Thanh’s name?
A Buddhist lay teacher called Achar Mean, also known as Son Ngoc Minh. From the Viet Minh-influenced sections of home-grown Issarak guerilla bands against the French, to titular leader of the Cambodian Communist movement, or rather the older generation of Communists politically oriented towards Hanoi. Those who lost influence to the younger generation, through the rise of the Pol Pot group and their peasant allies in the maquis, with the spreading of the 1960s rural insurgency and the beginning of civil war.
Pineapple, have you read Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation 1860-1945 by Penny Edwards?
I haven’t, no. I know of it though.
Thanh certainly flirted with the left, as well as with the Japanese right, and he had some confirmed leftists (of the Pracheachonesque variety) in his entourage at various points. The main point of consistency in his outlook – given the small-scale and rather insular nature of Cambodian politics in those days – was that he seems to have hated Sihanouk, which is entirely appropriate as Sihanouk reserved his greatest vitriol for Thanh. Kiernan puts this down to Thanh’s behaviour during a minor ‘coup’ attempt in the 1940s, in which a handful of students and civil servants managed to storm the royal palace.
I can’t help thinking that Thanh’s eventual reward for all those years of anti-colonial and anti-Sihanouk ‘struggle’ – several months as prime minister under the crippling Lon Nol / Lon Non regime before being packed off to Vietnam – was rather poor.
I guess you’re referring to the umbrella revolt.
Although despite years of French rule with their imported Vietnamese mandarins, Cambodian royalty was still imbued with an ancient legitimacy, but Sihanouk could not counter Thanh so easily, him being viewed as some kind of popular folk hero. The Japanese advised Sihanouk to appoint Thanh in charge of ministerial posts in a puppet government, but with their defeat in the war, the return of the French to claim ‘their’ Indochina, and the independence which followed, Thanh eventually lost much of the wind that had carried his movement. Like with the later leftists in the Sangkum’s National Assembly, Sihanouk would steal some of Thanh’s political clothes and tailor them for his conservative elite’s own grubby, intolerant purposes. As said above, sallying forth in ragtag bands with clapped-out muskets to attack the French; hiding in malaria-ridden jungle bases making illegal radio broadcasts, calling on patriotic youth to to leave the towns and join his movement; or, receiving support from the CIA, in their obsession with dominoes, his achievements were more general in influences on seemingly disparate branches of modern or modernising Cambodian politics. Rather than, as you say, much of anything concrete for himself.
A good summation of his position in history.
Thanh’s modernising instincts were, I think, entirely sincere. He had a terrible habit, however, of picking the wrong friends – first the Japanese and then the CIA; neither proved of much value for advancing his own version of Khmer nationalism very much, and ultimately contributed to his squalid end in a Vietnamese prison cell. On top of that, his cultivation, through recruiting activities, of the Khmer Krom militias would have made him seem even more of an outsider to a Cambodian population when he finally got a sniff of actual power under the Republic. Even Lon Nol mistrusted the Khmer Krom troops, by all accounts.
I guess the final verdict would be that he displayed very poor political judgement.
By the way, the coup I referred to wasn’t the Hem Chieu – Pach Chheoun ‘umbrella war’ thingy but another, later one, while Thanh was briefly Prime Minister under the Japanese occupation. IIRC Mey Pho (who you’ve no doubt heard of in other contexts)and a few other individuals, mostly students, stormed the palace. It was a very minor affair but apparently Thanh pretty much sat back and did nothing, hence Sihanouk’s later vendetta against him (as with so many of Sihanouk’s political activities, I guess we should assume that a vendetta of some kind was behind it anyway).
I’ve found a reference to the coup – August 1945, apparently. The 10th or 9th, depending on who you read.
Whatever happened to Mey Pho in the end, anyway? I assume he was quietly got rid of during the DK years.
Yes, thanks for the additional info on the 1940s palace incident. I think it’s mentioned in Ben Kiernan’s doctoral work, How Pol Pot Came to Power.
I’m not sure about the fate of this Pho. When the Geneva accords saw no place for Communism in Cambodia, I believe it was Mey Pho and Keo Moni who tried to argue in Switzerland the case for a Communist regroupment zone named Khmerland, similar to what happened with the Pathet Lao, but their claims and indeed they as delegates were ignored.
I’m just looking through my copy of Sihanouk’s garbled and preposterous yet oddly compelling My War with the CIA, and as expected it’s full of anti-Thanh vitriol. He accuses Thanh of being a “puppet” of the Japanese, a “sort of guru” and “spiritual advisor to the Democratic Party”, of demagoguery, and of having Sam Sary done away with in Laos. Moreover, Sihanouk states that he personally “interceded with the French to have [Thanh's] death penalty commuted, and later to have his exile annulled”, which I’m not entirely sure I believe.
Later on he appears to accuse Thanh of the terrible crime of promising the Khmer peasantry, er, tangible material benefits.
I’ve haven’t read it. Also, with reading a Serge Thion article, when Thanh was in France from 1947-51 under house arrest in Poitiers, a young student named Salot Sar – before his revolutionary name-change in 1969 would associate him with infamy – had a few discussion meetings with him and his collaborator Ea Sichau, when the young Khmer intellectuals and future DK leaders were still finding their feet in diverse surroundings – either as members of a marginal cell attached to the French Communist Party, or with their own study groups, the Cercle Marxiste among others. The likes of which had the involvement of that other, and ‘greater’ Cambodian moderniser, Keng Vansak. Although Thanh had some political firsts under his belt.
Thanks for the info on Sary, although, according to Philip Short several of his associates were handed death sentences when, following a palace bomb attack, and the uncovering of a supposed coup plot, Sihanouk clamped down big-time on Left/Right opposition in 1959/60. I don’t know if Sary was in the pay of the CIA. That of course could be a link to Thanh, as from the late 50s his Serei rebels or ethnic Kmer ‘Krom’ fighters and saboteurs trained in south Vietnam (that you mentioned earlier) seemed like useful tools for the Americans. I can shy away from ‘cloak and dagger’ stuff, however, when without decent sources, or that I can judge as trustworthy (because lets face it, a layperson has mainly access to secondary information). Undoubtedly the intelligence services of powerful states meddle in the affairs of others, as can be amply demonstrated in Indochina, but sharp eyes need to search for nuggets of truth concealed in what can otherwise be a pile of fantasist bullshit. And I need some stronger lenses in my glasses.
I don’t know whether it is accurate or not, but from an amusing Time article, it appears Sary’s home life was colourful to say the least; with one proper wife, two mistresses (both young beauty queens) and a live-in maid (who he made pregnant and severely physically abused) living under one roof in London. Out of interest, what is your take on that infamous 1997 grenade attack on a Phnom Penh political demonstration in support of his son Sam Rainsy? Pretty tense times, what with the Khmer Rouge old guard trying to find some way out of a jungle cul de sac, and fears all round, of double-crossings and out-manoeuvrings.
Mid to late 1990s. That’s when Son Sen, his educationalist wife Yun Yat (“Comrade At”) and scores of others associated with them were murdered on the orders of Pol Pot. Shot and crushed under the wheels of a Chinese army truck. Not a nice way to go. Thion still viewed as a revisionist of Nazi crimes? A Holocaust denier?
Most of them were ‘educationalists’ mate. Pol may have been among the least academically able of his comrades, but worked as a school teacher. Son Sen was head of the capital’s teacher training college before his career change; which involved ordering teenage peasant conscripts, too poor to have had access to schooling, to spread out like insects across rice fields to be maimed or killed by mines and mortars. He was under a political cloud in 1978, so the Vietnamese invasion probably saved him for the time being, with their Blitzkrieg disrupting the Party’s purification drive. He skulked about in the jungle for several months, surrounded by bodyguards, until cropping up again in a regrouped DK government. It doesn’t take much of an education to realise that the label ‘traitor’ can make a person’s value in life depreciate considerably when in such pleasant company. As for Thion, I’m not sure about his reputation since being cast as the above. His articles on Cambodia, though, are not only informative but contain dry humour. Which gives me an idea …
Lastly, I’m going to make a slight change to the post title. It’s been doing my head in. What is nationalism, if not a modern concept? My excuse is the effects of tiredness on my mind, from the increased activity at work, with Christmas approaching.
Not sure what I think of the grenade attack on Sary, though I guess it needs to be looked at in the context of the supposed 1997 ‘coup’, or whatever it was. Part of a CPP attempt to destabilise the existing political structure (not that it needed much of a push) and do whatever was necessary to ‘calm the situation’ (i.e. grab power) I guess. All speculation, though.
The senior Sary, on the other hand, did seem to be a ‘colourful’ figure – to describe it charitably. What actually happened to him is anyone’s guess, given that he had any number of dubious contacts, but frankly Sihanouk was as likely as Thanh to have been responsible. Contrary to what Sihanouk says, I’ve seen no particular evidence that Thanh was ruthless enough in his ambitions to do away with his colleagues. Sihanouk, on the other hand, was all too happy to let people take violent revenge on his behalf, and Sary had been firmly identified as a coup plotter.
Er, the grenade attack on Rainsy, I mean. Pretty tired myself today.
Ah, here we go. A glance into Corfield’s history of the Khmer Republic mentions Lon Nol, presumably at Sihanouk’s bidding, sending assassination squads after Sary at one point. I guess they must have finally got him in 1962, though it’s typical of Sihanouk to imply that Thanh did it.
Excellent, you have a copy of Khmers Stand Up! That’s his doctoral work. I’ve been wanting to get hold of a copy of that for ages but had no luck. I have his Short History of the Cambodian Non-Communist Resistance, a Monash University working paper, which he wrote as a side-line when working on the above. His writing style isn’t so good, but it has plenty of useful information. I’m guessing his study of the Khmer Republic is the same.
Yes, his writing style is rough, but so is Kiernan’s, for that matter – typical academic mush. Still, it’s about the only source on the Khmer Republic that there is, right now, and it is packed with information.
Come to think of it, the disappearance of Sary in 1962 ties in with a whole lot of other stuff – the curious arrest and public execution of Khmer Serai cadre Preap In (mentioned in gloating detail in My War with the CIA), the flirtation with North Vietnamese links, the final crushing of the Pracheachon and the 1963 (IIRC) declaration of Sihanouk as Head of State indefinitely – which hints at a lot going on beneath the surface of pre-1967 Sangkum-era Cambodia – still inevitably (and wrongly) depicted as a placid idyll, when the Prince was increasingly turning to saxophone playing and bad dance-band crooning instead of the business of governing. My feeling is that Sihanouk was actually trying to cook up some sort of bid to really consolidate his power, both personally and regionally, and get rid of any internal opposition. Still, no-one has ever looked in any of these things in any great detail, so perhaps we’ll never know.
A shame, really, as I think the Khmer Rouge need to be understood in the context of the Sihanouk years. Like Thanh, he was probably more of an influence on them, in shaping their nationalism and conceptions of both society and authority, than he cared to admit.
I think people who’re often lazy rather than unintelligent, view the words Socialism or Communism as too dirty to bother contemplating any understanding of their meaning in differing contexts – except in perhaps a knee-jerk fashion – and so can wrongly ascribe an almost natural inevitability to the horrific disaster that unfolded in Democratic Kampuchea. ‘Communism? I told you so.’ I agree with the above about trying to seek the local causes of the Khmer Communists’ jungle mutation into a highly militarised and doctrinaire bunch trapped in a psychosis of fear and paranoia. All this suspicion of what wasn’t under their full control or what they viewed as a potential threat; a state of mind formed by what, in my view, is a catalogue of past repressive abuses against them, of which people should see as genuine cause for grievance. The more sophisticated may cite particular influences, accurate or bogus. Three things in mind are the Marxist-Leninist Asian variant known as ‘Maoism,’ and other intellectual influences such as French Revolution-era personalities like Louis Marie Babeauf and Third-World liberation writers such as Frantz Fanon. Although there are similarities between a forced barracks-style egalitarianism espoused by Babeauf , and Khmer Rouge practice, that is all they are. And the DK leaders probably wouldn’t have even heard of people such as Fanon, nor been influenced by them, the Khmer Communists being as they were, deeply involved in Cambodian politics, legal and clandestine. Thinking of physical survival.
As for the former, Maoism was indeed a significant influence, but with that said people have wrongly blamed the Cultural Revolution for Khmer Rouge extremism. Aside from being an influence regarding the primacy of ‘class struggle,’ what’s left is irrelevant. The main battles of the CR were fought in the urban centres, between middle school and university students. The Chinese peasantry was largely insulated from such things. KR ‘class analysis,’ if you can call it that, was focused squarely on the peasantry as a motor for change, or rather the poorest uneducated sections of it. Where this correlates with Maoism is through finding a revolutionary constituency and the mobilisation of it for waging war. Even when the peasant troops recruited on the North China Plain rolled into places like Shanghai to secure the Communist victory of 1949, the CCP was still focused on the development of China’s minuscule proletariat and expanding it further with the help of those categorised as old-society exploiters. I’m sure you know what ‘building socialism’ means in a Leninist context. Surrounding and strangling urban areas may have been part of military strategy, but emptying them wasn’t part of the CCP’s long-term revolutionary goal of forcing through changes which would have happened under capitalism anyway, but under revolutionary control. A way to link one stage of social evolution appropriately to the next.
The CPK were using a peculiar interpretation of the Leninist paradigm. I personally believe their efforts in finding a path to communism were sincere and that their vast infrastructural program was for bringing eventual modernity to the country with the creation of some sort of ‘transitional’ socialist state within a national framework. But they went about it in a fashion which brought nothing less than utter disaster. Something which contained the seed for future tragedy was a strong moral tendency – oversimplifying their ‘Maoism’ into a strict set of ethical rules so rigid they severely hampered their attempt at progress. It is this voluntarism which fascinates me about the Khmer Rouge, of jumping into modernity, and speculation that maybe they could have actually done it, sort of, if the intra-party terror had run its course and their differences with Vietnam could somehow have been sorted out. That last bit does seem highly unlikely though, given the history between them. I do not support the Khmer Rouge, however, as their new society would have resembled no doubt yet another variation of a heavily centralised ‘socialist’ state with an unacceptable level of repression. Sadly, though, the puzzle of Khmer Communism will probably never be solved.
As for Kiernan, I’ve found his writing fairly easy to digest, and he does fit a lot in. Of particular interest to me in thankfully gaining some understanding of the 1960s rural insurgency, his two-part study of the 1967 Samlaut rebellion is very good indeed. In fact the only detailed study on the rebellion so far. It does have a thread of young idealism running through it though. Mind you, he was in his 20s when he wrote it. He was also involved in an academic bulletin called News from Kampuchea, which was a (perhaps naive) source of information on the revolution occurring in Cambodia. I think people later tried to use this against him as ‘evidence’ that he was an apologist for Khmer Rouge crimes and a Pol Pot supporter.
Has Rhoda violated you again with her razor-sharp wit?
I’m shaking like a skinny shitting dog. She’s so ‘cutting edge’ in the liberal meejah that she no doubt considers Adam Curtis a worthy successor to Guy Debord.
I’m off to eat my tea now. Cottage Pie (sorry Christine), in fact.
But, because I’m working class I made it using one of them packet mixes.
“I personally believe their efforts in finding a path to communism were sincere and that their vast infrastructural program was for bringing eventual modernity to the country with the creation of some sort of ‘transitional’ socialist state within a national framework”
Yes, you’re quite right – and this is the particular bit people always fail to understand: the Khmer Rouge were not seeking to create some kind of anti-intellectual agrarian utopia, and when even the BBC parrots this kind of ‘analysis’ it makes me want to bang my head against the nearest wall. As you said elsewhere, an individual’s reconfigurability for manual work – whether they were an intellectual or not – was ideologically significant to the KR, and they were suspicious of ‘foreign’ intellectual influence, but ultimately they were looking to drag the country out of the Stone Age (in which it had been kept by a combination of French regional policy, Sihanouk’s conception of the Cambodian peasantry’s ambitions, and lastly thousands of tons of American explosive) rather than send it back there. Moreover, they were attempting to do so without outside help, even at a terrible cost, and here’s where the unique mix of domestic influences, whether positive or repressive – Thanh, Sihanouk, Khmer conceptions of nationhood, etc etc – become most important.
I’ve yet to lay my hands on Keirnan’s study of Samlaut, but it’s on my list of texts to get hold of soon.
As for the KR’s overwhelming stress on personal and insitutional moralism, I always wondered if one element of it was a reaction against the way the Khmer people had been culturally defined by the colonial power within the artificial construct of Indo-China: the Khmers were usually depicted by the French as indolent, pleasure-seeking Buddhist yokels. Having received most of their education via the French, the KR leadership must have been exposed to an awful lot of this kind of stuff. A hardworking and austere lifestyle was no doubt an antidote to the sort of patronising stereotypes that had kept the peasantry in their place for decades – something Thanh seems to have recognised early on, as your original post points out.
“…ultimately they were looking to drag the country out of the Stone Age.”
I agree with your comment. The Pol Pot group did not suddenly appear from the jungle to fulfil some ancient prophecy, or act like some weird abomination, independent of the conditions that helped create their political outlook. Bolshevism, or variations of it transmitted by the French Communist Party or ICP, may have provided a political ‘structure,’ of Party and organisation etc, but also aside from interpretations of Maoism – the peasantry as revolutionary agent through warfare, mental reform of the individual and associated efforts to close the social gap between intellectual and worker etc – you’re very much correct in home-grown factors importantly helping to shape what they became. And their turning to ultra-nationalism has to be viewed not only in the light of conflict and competition with the Vietnamese Communists, but placing it into the context of Sihanouk’s anti-democratic Sangkum era. There is still, as you’ve already said, some idea that Cambodia was some tranquil, harmonious place destroyed by a murderous Khmer Rouge watershed, with little thought given to understanding their origins. Nationalism is evident no matter the political colouration, the blunt Lon Nol with his mumbo-jumbo Neo-Khmerisme also holding close dear dreams of establishing some new Mon-Khmer empire, or at least to transform Cambodia into an important regional power. It is probably true that the DK leaders knew of the sophisticated irrigation system built by slave labour under the Angkor Kings, enabling up to three or more harvests per year, and which was a key to the success of the old Empire. But with their attempt to build their own country-wide irrigation system under centralised state control for the purposes of mass rice production, they didn’t want to take society backwards, but to surpass that more glorious Khmer past. Similar to what you put above, the significance of Angkor is misunderstood, instead of being the intellectual rallying point for a new nascent nationalism. After all, Thanh the moderniser’s first newspaper evoked the memory of Angkor in its title.
As for Kiernan’s Samlaut study, then you may be able to get hold of a copy by ordering it through the Monash University website. I think they still sell copies from their working papers series. If not, then if I get a decent scanner bought in the new year, then I can make a copy, convert into PDF format and send it to you.
“Has Rhoda violated you again with her razor-sharp wit?”
Oi Pineapple! Here’s some middle class media totty:
Sorry, I think that’s a different type of meejah. But I do love the BBC trade union cliche by the way. Very working class. And we all know how balanced and impartial they are when it comes to reporting industrial action. For example, there was no mention of those dirty proles displaying Italian-language placards, calling for solidarity between workers during that wildcat strike at the Lindsey oil refinery. Summat about ‘Eye-Ties’ was mentioned though, in the interests of balanced reporting. Do you remember that god-awful ‘White’ season of programmes they did a while back? They just can’t help themselves. Yep, thanks for the lecturing me on views I don’t hold, but deciding for me without my consultation that I do. This bollocks top-down forced multi-culturalism where the liberal middle class thinks it’s okay that you’re poor, but don’t mention class and instead have lot’s of identity politics because someone with a darker skin tone or a funny-sounding name is quite the novelty at parties. This set-up doesn’t seem to have a place for my family, considering that although I am indeed a white prole with rough hands, my partner isn’t white, and neither is my son. And sadly, it isn’t a question of if, but rather when I’ll have to explain to him what racism is.
OK, away from the telly or internet you might like this then. A serious newspaper. I remember the middle class hate fest over the tabloid-linked paedophile protests on that housing estate back in 2007.
The idea of a working class, without erroneously dividing it into differing sections of interest and novelty depending on skin colour is something which frightens white middle class people. And you know as well as I do that the UK, England especially has one of the highest interracial relationship rates in the world, most of these occurring among the uncouth masses. It’s higher up the social ladder that things become hideously white.
So,
“although I am indeed a white prole with rough hands, my partner isn’t white, and neither is my son.”
what’re you saying is that your family isn’t white trash with a fear of the other?
She is sexy though eh?
I’ve read that very good post you linked to, before.
“So what’re you saying, that your family isn’t white trash with a fear of the other?”
Nah mate, sort of a yellow colour, but goes darker when caught by the sun. I just turn red.
Yes, concerned parents protesting that local authorities had decided to secretly place convicted child sex offenders on social housing estates. Until uncovered by the tabloid press. Imagine, the brain-control waves being beamed out from Wapping. One of the photos taken at what appears to have been a peaceable protest, had an Asian family at the head of the crowd of families, which must have caused some annoyance to certain people. But let’s be straight here. If the inarticulate masses are unable to know what is best for themselves, being as they are, uneducated, narrow and full of irrational prejudices, then surely such people as misunderstood sex beasts could be accommodated in the nicer parts of town. The liberal middle class types living in these areas would be able to come up with ‘progressive’ solutions to the problem of what to do with known sex offenders in the wider public. Instead of dumping them on housing estates, without bothering to tell the residents.
Mrs Reid? She’s one of my favourite pieces of ‘meat.’ She’s going grey too, and looks nice with it, when she doesn’t colour her hair. All this talk of objectification reminds of that band formed out of Big Black, controversially named Rapeman. Some campus-style feminists (cushioned middle class ‘mummy and daddy wouldn’t buy me a pony’ types) would disrupt their gigs, heckling and so on. I was told that Steve Albini once retorted at one of these demos, when the band played in the UK, that he couldn’t make out what they were saying to him, asking one woman if she had a cock in her mouth.
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