Speaker 1: Mmm, Hello friends, and welcome again to Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, your host on yet another journey into
Speaker 1: the life and mind of one of the worst people
Speaker 1: in all of history. My guest today is Caitlin gil. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's me. Caitlyn gil is a comedian. Yeah, presumably some
Speaker 1: some would argue that. And you're involved in a television production. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's happening now, it happened, and it's about to come
Speaker 1: out July. Levans. Tune into True TVs, Misfits and Monsters.
Speaker 1: Bobcat Goldwhite made a fun TV show and I bet
Speaker 1: you're gonna like it, so watch it when it's on.
Speaker 1: So on this episode of the show, I will be
Speaker 1: talking to a vastly more accomplished comedian and reading a
Speaker 1: story about a bad person in history. I live in
Speaker 1: a backyard, don't worry about it. We all live in yards.
Speaker 1: That's not bragging that yours is a backyard. It's true.
Speaker 1: I have moved back from the front yard. That feels good,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I'm living on a porch for a while,
Speaker 1: and it is not ideal. Um. Speaking of porches, Uh,
Speaker 1: what do you know about the Cambodian mass killings in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. I know that it is one of
Speaker 1: the most nineties brutally depressing aspects of history you can
Speaker 1: look at. Wasn't it like fifties forward? It was long
Speaker 1: and really dad, there was a lot of ship going
Speaker 1: on from the fifties forward. It's like a million plus yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The mass killing started in nineteen seventy five, went through
Speaker 1: to like seventy seventy nine, but three and a half
Speaker 1: years the Camar Rouge was in power. What do you
Speaker 1: know about the camar Rouge and pol pot lit um?
Speaker 1: I mean some I have a political science degree and
Speaker 1: I paid attention in those classes, but that was fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, so my updated history not so great. But
Speaker 1: in the past I was disgustingly fascinated. It seems like
Speaker 1: one of the most cruel Oh yeah, regimes that has
Speaker 1: ever gotten to spend some time in power. Real bad,
Speaker 1: real real bad, real bad people, And it was one
Speaker 1: of those things. So when we started this podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: I had some some people that I clearly had plans for.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about Hitler's favorite young adult novels
Speaker 1: and Saddam Hussein's erotic memoirs and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and then there were people where was like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: probably gonna do a Pulpot episode at some point, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really know anything more than like what I
Speaker 1: had learned in high school about him, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he killed like a million and a half people. They
Speaker 1: had people with glasses murdered for some reason, like and
Speaker 1: that's that's the end of the And you figure it's
Speaker 1: like the same story with a guy like Hitler Stalin,
Speaker 1: where it was just some asshole who wound up in
Speaker 1: charge and just started murdering the groups of people they hated.
Speaker 1: And so I I didn't really know much about pol Pot,
Speaker 1: and I started reading into the story recently, and I
Speaker 1: read a great book called pol Pot The Anatomy of Terror,
Speaker 1: And then that set me down a whole reading hole.
Speaker 1: In anyway, I wound up realizing that the most interesting character,
Speaker 1: the most terrible person behind all of this is not
Speaker 1: pol Pot himself. Uh, And instead it's a different guy,
Speaker 1: a different person entirely. Prince nor Dam saynok, have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of that? I have not heard of this?
Speaker 1: Prince well? Uh, somdetch. Priya Nora Dam Sahannak was born
Speaker 1: in Nonpen, Cambodia on October thirty one, nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 1: He was a member of both of Cambodia's two leading
Speaker 1: royal families, the Sissoots and the Nora Dams, but he
Speaker 1: was not born as the heir apparent. So Cambodia has
Speaker 1: like a different sort of way of appointing their kings. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: there's like a royal council that sort of is a
Speaker 1: mix of elected and unelected people who votes on the
Speaker 1: new king. Back when he was born, the French were
Speaker 1: in charge of Cambodia and so they would appoint new
Speaker 1: kings when the king died. Um. Yeah, so Nordon was
Speaker 1: an only child, uh, and since this was the twenties,
Speaker 1: his parents were terrified he was going to die on them.
Speaker 1: They consulted an astrologer, which was a normal thing to
Speaker 1: do at the time. Like everybody in Cambodia right after
Speaker 1: the Russians thought it was a good idea to talk
Speaker 1: to rescue and yeah, this is within five years of
Speaker 1: that is almost happening. But mystics are still like maybe
Speaker 1: I'm medicine. Yeah, it's like you get a flu in
Speaker 1: your families, Like, well, I guess that's it for you,
Speaker 1: and single prince and only child. Prince can't have any
Speaker 1: appearance of injury or illness anyway, So you get real
Speaker 1: creepy about how you know. It's a lot of secrets
Speaker 1: really early, especially if you're talking to mystic. Something's wrong
Speaker 1: with that kid, Yeah, I don't know. It leads a
Speaker 1: lot or like can't breathe good or I don't know.
Speaker 1: They were just worried and the ast you have to
Speaker 1: assume they're all lumpy babies. Every baby is lumpy. How
Speaker 1: are you the only child and not in line for
Speaker 1: a throne? Well he was in line for it, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't a guarantee. So he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got a certain who could could be there. The
Speaker 1: flies are big, and so the prince are like, okay,
Speaker 1: well there's like nine or ten kids we get to
Speaker 1: pick from um, And he was obviously like it wasn't guaranteed,
Speaker 1: but he was in the running. So his parents were
Speaker 1: very concerned about him and the attack to an astrologery,
Speaker 1: and the astrologer warned that if he was raised by
Speaker 1: his mom and dad, he would die early. So as
Speaker 1: a young boy, Noradam was raised by his grandmother, Madame Chauhunt.
Speaker 1: She was like, you're describing a very bleak version of
Speaker 1: the movie big Yes, that's this entire story. Uh, there
Speaker 1: is a giant. Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Oh
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking about big Fish, Big Fish, very
Speaker 1: different films. Yeah. I just like that, Like I don't
Speaker 1: let him grow up with my parents anymore. I want
Speaker 1: to be a big kid right now. Only a very
Speaker 1: dark evil version. Yeah. Um, those old hand it's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a source, you know, an astrologer screaming
Speaker 1: your parents. Boy, I really got that movie wrong. He's
Speaker 1: talking about the Tom Hanks film. Oh yeah, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the Yeah, the piano. I'm talking about a Cambodian dictator.
Speaker 1: You did bring up another one of history's great monsters.
Speaker 1: But we haven't done our Tom Hanks. Um, but he
Speaker 1: definitely belongs. Oh the tea you could spill. Uh. So
Speaker 1: his grandmother's really religious. Uh. She's a Buddhist known for
Speaker 1: giving a lot of money to monks, which was, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty popular at the time. Uh. She dies when he's
Speaker 1: a young boy. Um, and immediately after she dies, he's
Speaker 1: ordained as a monk for exactly twenty four hours. Um.
Speaker 1: That was like a thing in Cambodian culture where everybody
Speaker 1: was and it was really common for like if your
Speaker 1: family had any money at all, they'd send you away
Speaker 1: to learn how to be a monk for a little while.
Speaker 1: So it's not like the universal Church that you sign
Speaker 1: up for just to marry your friends. It is it
Speaker 1: is for him, so for a normal camp, so for
Speaker 1: the for the prince, because he might be the king.
Speaker 1: Anytime you might be a leader, they send you off
Speaker 1: to be a monk for exactly a day, um, just
Speaker 1: so he can say like, no, he's enlightened, he's been
Speaker 1: a monk, like he's he's a he's a monk king
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I was important. If you were a
Speaker 1: normal Cambodian who was like middle class or up, you'd
Speaker 1: also be a month but monk, but you'd be there
Speaker 1: for months. And the training for non king monks was brutal.
Speaker 1: Here's how a normal Cambodian at the time explained, like
Speaker 1: what the actual monks went through. If you came to
Speaker 1: the wat as a novice, you had to study for
Speaker 1: three months before you were allowed to wear the robe.
Speaker 1: You were taught the etiquette of a monk, how to
Speaker 1: put on the robe, how to speak, how to walk,
Speaker 1: how to put your palms together to show respect. And
Speaker 1: you were given a thrashing if you didn't do as
Speaker 1: they said. If you didn't walk correctly, you were beaten.
Speaker 1: You had to walk quietly and slowly, without making any
Speaker 1: sound with your feet, and you weren't allowed to swing
Speaker 1: your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to
Speaker 1: learn by heart in Poli the rules of conduct and
Speaker 1: the Buddhist precepts that you could cite them without hesitation.
Speaker 1: If you hesitated, you were beaten. Yeah, that's like getting
Speaker 1: an honorary degree from like the worst university. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: Cobra Kai University. Everybody's everybody's getting beaten except for the prince,
Speaker 1: who shows up for one day and he gets to
Speaker 1: be a monk straightaway. Um. So, as a young child,
Speaker 1: the prince goes to school in Saigon, over in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and then he goes to France. He gets a really
Speaker 1: nice Western education. He develops a love for the arts
Speaker 1: and for French cooking. His mother nicknames him tool or
Speaker 1: Tubby on this but at this point I'm on his side.
Speaker 1: I get it. France is pretty irresistible. If you're just
Speaker 1: like a portly rich Cambodian prince, honestly just kicking in France. Baby, Like,
Speaker 1: if that's what you're into, then be there. There's a
Speaker 1: food is great in both places, but so different. Go
Speaker 1: be a tubby in France. Yeah. So he spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time as a young man being a fat
Speaker 1: kid in France, while other young Cambodian kids are getting
Speaker 1: beaten to learn how to be monkst So so far,
Speaker 1: I'm just jealousy. Everybody's probably jealous. Um So in nineteen
Speaker 1: his grandfather, who was the current king, dies and the
Speaker 1: French you know, have to pick from the options in
Speaker 1: the royal families, and one they decide to bet on
Speaker 1: Nora dam Sando because he seemed like the choice who'd
Speaker 1: give them the least grief. Uh, this is what he
Speaker 1: looked like on the day he was ordained. And we'll
Speaker 1: have these pictures up on the behind the pastors. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to shame him, ye, I feel like this
Speaker 1: is what makes me feel like his mom is probably
Speaker 1: giving him a complex because that's not a fat kid.
Speaker 1: He does have evil eyes. I want like, when you
Speaker 1: look at the picture, it looks like even just printed
Speaker 1: out on computer paper. I feel like he is across
Speaker 1: a bar and like raising his eyebrow at me. There's
Speaker 1: something for a while. Yeah, it's like a painting that
Speaker 1: looks at you when you move across the room. This
Speaker 1: is the guy that leers at you from across the bar,
Speaker 1: only in in photograph form. But he's kind of hot,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not Maddie's looking at me, except I know
Speaker 1: he's trouble, you know. Yeah, and if you knew that
Speaker 1: his mom had called him fat his whole childhood, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's some arness going on, there's issues. I don't want
Speaker 1: to I mean, this is a good time for me
Speaker 1: to assess that he's kind of handsome and say that
Speaker 1: out loud before I hear about all the horrible things
Speaker 1: that he did hesber. Handsome people can be really bad,
Speaker 1: bad people. Handsome people with it has to be said.
Speaker 1: Fabulous beautiful people are evil, never forget. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: tell by his cheekbones that he's dangerous. So one the
Speaker 1: French government that appoints him isn't really France, it's visu France.
Speaker 1: You know, the Germans had conquered them. So he was
Speaker 1: appointed king by the puppet government for the Nazi occupiers.
Speaker 1: Their leader, Marshall Pataine, became the leader of Cambodia as well.
Speaker 1: The children who grew up in Cambodia's public schools at
Speaker 1: the time were educated to pertain as standards which emphasized unity, order,
Speaker 1: and labor. The city was seen as the incarnation of
Speaker 1: all evil, and peasant life was highlighted as the soul
Speaker 1: of the nation. One of the children in these schools
Speaker 1: was a guy named Saloth Sar who would grow into
Speaker 1: a guy named pol Pot. Um. Just a little bit
Speaker 1: of foreboding there. Um, So Cambodia is in an awkward
Speaker 1: position nearing World War two. Pol pot came from a
Speaker 1: much different social status, not a prince, not a prince,
Speaker 1: kind of upper middle class, not rich, but but his
Speaker 1: family is doing okay, Yeah, he's still Yeah, he comes
Speaker 1: from a pretty bougie little background. Um. But he had
Speaker 1: to do the full monk training too. So he's the
Speaker 1: guy getting the ship kicked out of him by monks
Speaker 1: and learning about how cities are evil in school, while
Speaker 1: the actual king is flying to France and developing a
Speaker 1: complex because his mom calls him fat. So Cambodia is
Speaker 1: in an awkward position during World War Two. France is
Speaker 1: technically an access ally at this point like the VC France,
Speaker 1: but the Japanese eventually went up conquering Cambodia just a
Speaker 1: couple of months after the prince gets coronated, so Siano
Speaker 1: now becomes Japan's puppet and proclaims Cambodian independence. Obviously, that
Speaker 1: didn't last longer than five As soon as the war
Speaker 1: is over, Sianic starts advocating for more independence from France.
Speaker 1: He introduced universal male suffrage to his country and press freedom,
Speaker 1: and he establishes an elected parliament. So so far, he
Speaker 1: seems pretty enlightened for a king in Cambodia in the forties.
Speaker 1: If you're a Cambodian dude, if you're a Cambodian dude, well,
Speaker 1: you can't just go from zero to letting women vote.
Speaker 1: You can't just go from siero to human writes for humans. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I know. Also bleating rag feminist over here? What are
Speaker 1: you huh? Sorry? I mean it was this was twenty
Speaker 1: five years after we decided. When we just love the
Speaker 1: phrase universal male suffrage, Like you don't get to universal
Speaker 1: and then immediately qualified universal to specifically when it's just
Speaker 1: a funny universe people I like suffrage. Yes, that's all
Speaker 1: the people I like it to vote. Yes, Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: all universally invited to my birthday party, except only ten
Speaker 1: if you can come. Yeah. But he's woke by forties standards, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's woke if you lower the bar, yes, so so
Speaker 1: our forties woke king is uh. A lot of Cambodians
Speaker 1: at the time, the ones who were living in like
Speaker 1: cities and towns, who were educated and kind of plugged
Speaker 1: into the world, it probably seemed like they were slowly
Speaker 1: sort of joining modernity and heading towards the kind of
Speaker 1: system England has where you get a king, but the
Speaker 1: king's kind of a just a figure to yeah, look pretty.
Speaker 1: We care about their weddings and ship but like that's
Speaker 1: kind of what people were hoping for, what a lot
Speaker 1: of people were hoping for. But it's very different outside
Speaker 1: of the city's so in rural Cambodia, probably about a
Speaker 1: quarter of Cambodian peasants of the country, like the real
Speaker 1: deep peasants had never used money at all in their lives. Um,
Speaker 1: the burning Man, I'm just that was terrible. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like burning Man, but with subsistence. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you don't farm enough rice, you starve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't spend seven thousand dollars to get there, and you
Speaker 1: don't have like a dust mask, and there's no glowsticks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's otherwise you have to assume there's glow sticks.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I love it if somebody who's never used
Speaker 1: currency in their entire life and has just lived from
Speaker 1: the land that they're on for generations and you happen
Speaker 1: to be passing by and they're just glows sticking, Like
Speaker 1: where did you get those silent rave that's been going
Speaker 1: on for millennia that we just didn't know about a
Speaker 1: thousand year old rave. It's like the thousand year old
Speaker 1: had only so much more fun. So the king is
Speaker 1: not a figurehead to the peasants. He's he's kind of
Speaker 1: he's seen. He's seen a sort of a figurehead in
Speaker 1: the cities. To the peasants. He's semi divine. I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a description of royal court life from that
Speaker 1: book Pullpot The Anatomy of Terry, that I think sort
Speaker 1: of sets up kind of how the king is seen
Speaker 1: by the country people. Each spring crowds gathered to watch
Speaker 1: the royal oxen plow the sacred furrow, and all of
Speaker 1: those things are capitalized, from which the king's astrologer would
Speaker 1: divine whether or not there would be plenty or famine
Speaker 1: in the year ahead. And at tank talk the king's birthday,
Speaker 1: the provincial governors came to pay homage. Royal protocol was
Speaker 1: draconian in his palace. If no longer in the colonized
Speaker 1: state over which he reigned, the king was still an
Speaker 1: absolute ruler. The Master of life, venerated by the populace,
Speaker 1: is a sacred, quasi divine figure. At royal audiences, the
Speaker 1: prince's mandarins and other dignitaries crouch on all fours, with
Speaker 1: their knees and elbows on the floor and their hands
Speaker 1: raised together before their heads. The King sits above them
Speaker 1: and throned on a dais, sitting cross legged like an
Speaker 1: Indian idol. When he enters or leaves, all present prostrate
Speaker 1: themselves at three times. No one has the right to
Speaker 1: speak unless the King addresses him, and no one may
Speaker 1: publicly disagree with anything the King says. So you're already
Speaker 1: saying sort of a disconnect between you've got the people
Speaker 1: in the cities who are like listening to the radio,
Speaker 1: they're watching TV, they're getting the newspapers, and then you've
Speaker 1: got the people who and then there's people still on
Speaker 1: the farm. Yeah. Yeah, the king makes the rain come, um,
Speaker 1: which is not like a joke. That's like, that's like
Speaker 1: a widespread belief. So there's already a big disconnect here. Um.
Speaker 1: So the camera language and the camera like the majority
Speaker 1: of people of Cambodia has its own special sub language
Speaker 1: for how to talk to the king. So there's like
Speaker 1: a separate dictionary of words you just used to refer
Speaker 1: to the king and his family. The king was seen
Speaker 1: as impossibly high above even as high ministers, who are
Speaker 1: known non jokingly as quote, we who carry the king's
Speaker 1: excrement on our heads. So that's I mean, it's come on.
Speaker 1: That is a little bit tongue in cheek, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you we got your ship on our head, buddy, like you.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit and a few more pages
Speaker 1: if you think that was joking, or if you think
Speaker 1: that it wasn't literally even, but it's got a there's
Speaker 1: a wink in there somewhere. There's a jester in the court. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there might be a couple of winks. I'll eat my
Speaker 1: words later. I won't eat the king species, but I will.
Speaker 1: I'll be happy to eat my words. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is you can imagine. You know, guy grows up with
Speaker 1: his mom calling him tubby, and now nobody is allowed
Speaker 1: to argue with him, and he's philosophically shipping I was
Speaker 1: a tubby kid. We do not deserve power until we
Speaker 1: go through an unpack our trauma. You can't you can't
Speaker 1: hand uh. You know, you can take the fat off
Speaker 1: the kid. You can't take the fat kid out of
Speaker 1: the fat kid, just because there's the I'm an only
Speaker 1: child who was tubby. Trust trust trust. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: grew up as a fat kid. And you know it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where when you see a fat
Speaker 1: kid who loses weight, like that's someone who didn't deal
Speaker 1: with their trauma, who's just like trying to control themselves
Speaker 1: and their body through Like there's something dark in there,
Speaker 1: is all I'm saying. Oh yeah, yeah, it's not. You
Speaker 1: have to shine the light in your own darkness. And
Speaker 1: you know, whatever happened to you in the bathroom, in
Speaker 1: the locker room, or on the playground, eventually you have
Speaker 1: to shine a little light on it, or you become
Speaker 1: a dictator if you happen to be a prince. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well what he just became like a bad assistant manager,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's what most people do. But
Speaker 1: it depends on your access. That's where you start from.
Speaker 1: Usually you go for a tiny amount of power, but
Speaker 1: he he kind of got on the mad was my
Speaker 1: moderate amount of power. So we're talking old fashioned kings here.
Speaker 1: Nor Dam's grandfather was famous for having a gigantic harem
Speaker 1: made up of beautiful local ladies for the late thirties.
Speaker 1: He was too old and sickly to make use of them. Um.
Speaker 1: So these ladies weren't allowed to go out and live
Speaker 1: their own lives. They got frustrated and things got weird. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the ladies courted by the old king was
Speaker 1: a girl named Rung. She was the older sister to
Speaker 1: Saloth Sar, the guy who became pol Pot. He was
Speaker 1: about fifteen at this point in time, and his sister's
Speaker 1: position meant he got to spend some time hanging around
Speaker 1: the royal palace. Since he was just fifteen, he was
Speaker 1: even allowed to hang out with the king's cortisans and
Speaker 1: they would fondle him. Um, so that's pol Pot's fifteen
Speaker 1: year old childhood is like hang out in the royal
Speaker 1: Palace and getting like like literally masturbated by the king's
Speaker 1: ford horny cortis. Yeah, exactly, exactly, So just describing like
Speaker 1: a very high class Charles Manson existence. Yeah, Charles Manson's mom,
Speaker 1: you know, a bit of a she is a girl
Speaker 1: about town. I think that's actually how he described her.
Speaker 1: And and you know he got traded for beer. But yeah,
Speaker 1: who the man who became Pulpot just got jerked off
Speaker 1: by a bunch of royal cartissy. It's the same, different,
Speaker 1: it is the same but different. Apparently that's my job
Speaker 1: here today. Here's something that's like what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but not well no, but it's it's good to point
Speaker 1: out that this this story that starts with yes, in
Speaker 1: a different country, at a different class level, and it
Speaker 1: is it's also a bad ending. Yes, this is not
Speaker 1: a good jump. It's not a good thing to do
Speaker 1: to a fifteen year old. Fifteen year old maybe like
Speaker 1: if you happen to get rubbed off when you were fifteen, congratulations,
Speaker 1: and I bet you're fine. I hope for most of you.
Speaker 1: It is a positive memory. If you're a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old being jerked off by a royal harem, that is
Speaker 1: going to change your path. It's going to change your path.
Speaker 1: That's different than like you're you're you're dating somebody in
Speaker 1: high school. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, either going to be
Speaker 1: an interesting sex educator or apparently a dangerous dictator. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and probably the second. So yeah, this is the sort
Speaker 1: of environment cultural environment norad dom Sahanna comes to power
Speaker 1: in um, you know, he's he's the king, and so
Speaker 1: he's he's dealing with both Like you've got these people
Speaker 1: in the cities who they're supposed to treat him like
Speaker 1: a god, but they don't because he's just this they
Speaker 1: know he's just like this guy, and they're trying to
Speaker 1: be like, well, let's be a normal country that doesn't
Speaker 1: worship the king. But then he's got these people in
Speaker 1: the in the sticks who to whom he's literally a deity.
Speaker 1: So you can you can see how this would cause
Speaker 1: some conflicts within the king and within the country. I
Speaker 1: feel like for any crafty con man, crisis is opportunity.
Speaker 1: This is a great you know, you wink a not
Speaker 1: on one side and you and you get to grease
Speaker 1: the other wheels. Well, speaking of crisis, by the time
Speaker 1: the king comes to power in the late forties, when
Speaker 1: he comes to power in forty one, but the time
Speaker 1: he's really getting used to things, the Cold War starts
Speaker 1: kicking off, and his neighbors are all dealing with you know, communism.
Speaker 1: You've got Vietnam with this, this communist revolt against the
Speaker 1: French going on right now. And at first it seemed
Speaker 1: like Cambodia was immune to communism. Um. So, in traditional
Speaker 1: Marxist theory, the revolution begins within the laboring class, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the factory workers who gets fed up with
Speaker 1: serving the needs of capital. In the forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: Cambodia had like a couple of thousand actual laborers in
Speaker 1: the whole country. Most country subsistence farmers. Um. They didn't
Speaker 1: really give a funk about capitalism or socialism. This is
Speaker 1: because neither had anything to do with their lives. They
Speaker 1: worked at most about six months a year to cover
Speaker 1: their basic needs. Uh. And they were all Theravata Buddhists,
Speaker 1: and Theravata Buddhism places no value on acquiring wealth, and
Speaker 1: therefore number one there was no cultural need to acquire wealth,
Speaker 1: and there just wasn't a lot to buy. Um. King
Speaker 1: Sano like to tell a story about an American AID
Speaker 1: expert who visited Cambodia in the fifties and convinced some
Speaker 1: villagers to start using modern fertile liser. They doubled their
Speaker 1: harvest yields in a year, and the aid worker came
Speaker 1: back the next year and was surprised to see that
Speaker 1: each farmer had only grown half as many crops this
Speaker 1: the next year. Um. He didn't understand why they wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to produce twice as much, but clearly the Cambodians
Speaker 1: were like, no, we can farm half as much and
Speaker 1: make the same amount of food and work even less. Um.
Speaker 1: So basically they're the smartest people in this Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really got it right. They're really nailing it in like
Speaker 1: the late forties. Can I ask get dumb historical question
Speaker 1: from a little bit further back? I feel like I
Speaker 1: should know in terms of like the silk Road and
Speaker 1: the spice trade. Cambodia has always been in a significant
Speaker 1: position for colonizers. But what is there a product that
Speaker 1: everybody was hungry for from the outside, Like why did
Speaker 1: my people, the Scots get on a boat to go there.
Speaker 1: I come from thieves and plunders, so I always went
Speaker 1: to Cambodi. I mean in a uh, I'll take a
Speaker 1: step in the broader sense of why people leave the
Speaker 1: tiny rock that they were on to go get something
Speaker 1: better from outside pepper or a spice or a mineral.
Speaker 1: Why were people coming from places in the west to Cambodia.
Speaker 1: What were they plundering? What were they taking? I mean,
Speaker 1: so it's one of those things, Cambodia, Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: Cambodia's history is heavily based on sort of conflicts between Vietnam,
Speaker 1: Like Vietnam is their traditional enemy because Vietnam is like
Speaker 1: the big regional power, and so there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of like more or less constant sort of power struggles
Speaker 1: between China and Vietnam and Cambodia kind of winds up
Speaker 1: in the middle, and of course during World War Two
Speaker 1: they wound up in the middle between everybody in the Japanese.
Speaker 1: But like there never nobody more about position on the
Speaker 1: map than resources with exactly because they it's they're they're
Speaker 1: not like they're not like a major industrial power. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's not like giant gold mines or anything like. It's
Speaker 1: it's a country of like small farmers who just want
Speaker 1: to make enough food to keep their families alive. I
Speaker 1: just know that by the forties a bunch of economies
Speaker 1: were kind of closing up to do that. Most of
Speaker 1: their people would have been subsistence farmers, So it made
Speaker 1: sense for the economy to stay more closed than to
Speaker 1: invite in trade since there would always be such an
Speaker 1: imbalance that uh, And it's there's an interesting period of
Speaker 1: history when countries were more isolated, and fascinating things happen
Speaker 1: in their history within that bubble because Cambodians weren't out
Speaker 1: buying risk crackers. They were you know, everything that happened
Speaker 1: is internally. Their history is inside the bubble, along with
Speaker 1: their economy. So it's just kind of interesting to pick
Speaker 1: out and figure out what people were busy doing. And
Speaker 1: it's things like growing less crops because you didn't need
Speaker 1: to grow any needed, which is fucking great. But one
Speaker 1: of the things they also have going on is ankor
Speaker 1: watt Is in Cambodia, which is this crazy gigantic, beautiful
Speaker 1: like complex of of of massive buildings that was built
Speaker 1: during the Khmer empire which had fallen hundreds of years
Speaker 1: before this point. But so that's King CX looking at
Speaker 1: that and saying, like, our people used to be great
Speaker 1: and build great, gigantic things, and I have to figure
Speaker 1: out some way to make us into a significant The
Speaker 1: answer is always slaves. Slaves are always the answer to
Speaker 1: why people made big cool stuff. Always slaves. These are
Speaker 1: always the ter of an answer. You just spoiled a
Speaker 1: lot of the story. Be a spoiler. Evil King wants
Speaker 1: to build something pick there's no gap hit there that
Speaker 1: is a straight line. So we're going to get back
Speaker 1: to what exactly this not yet evil but definitely evil
Speaker 1: King is going to do later. So we're going to
Speaker 1: continue talking about this evil or not yet evil King
Speaker 1: in a minute. But right now, we have to advertise
Speaker 1: some products. Because the capitalist gods, yeah yeah, none of
Speaker 1: us are Cambodian people. We we will all work much
Speaker 1: harder in order to purchase things which we can fill
Speaker 1: our homes with. So grab grab a box of money
Speaker 1: and a bag of money in a suitcase of money,
Speaker 1: and some dumb dums, buy some dumb dumbs. This show's
Speaker 1: official sponsor is not dumb dumbs, but we're advertising them anyway,
Speaker 1: and now some other things. So yeah, we're back and
Speaker 1: we're talking about Cambodia and its culture at the time
Speaker 1: when King Nordam sahannock Is uh is sort of coming
Speaker 1: into power of the late forties the early fifties, um,
Speaker 1: and he's frustrated because he wants to modernize his country. Uh.
Speaker 1: He wants to make it, you know great again. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the people just kind of want a farm and
Speaker 1: not get involved in any of the conflicts raging around them.
Speaker 1: So there's there's sort of this little like it's not
Speaker 1: really a huge conflict yet, but you can you can
Speaker 1: see some groundwork late where the king, you know, wants
Speaker 1: to open things up more to the world, and the
Speaker 1: people are just sort of like, but you know, we've
Speaker 1: got rice, Like I feel fine. Uh. So Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a communist movement a foot in Cambodia in the
Speaker 1: late forties and early fifties, but it was dominated by
Speaker 1: the Vietnam and by the Vietnamin who um you might
Speaker 1: guess from the name, we're Vietnamese and not Cambodian. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this made them not super popular among the Cambodians because
Speaker 1: again there's this his tree of Vietnam being sort of
Speaker 1: this domineering power over Cambodia. So so far it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like the Communists are gonna gain a big foothold
Speaker 1: in in Cambodia. UM. The problem is that the country
Speaker 1: occupies really sweet position from the point of view of
Speaker 1: someone trying to smuggle weapons into Vietnam in order to
Speaker 1: fight the French. So it's important to Vietnam to have
Speaker 1: backing in Cambodia. UM. They weren't really successful in spreading communism,
Speaker 1: but they had some success working with an anti colonial
Speaker 1: rebel movement called the Khmer iss Iraq. And the iss
Speaker 1: Iraq aren't really communists. They they're more democrats. They want
Speaker 1: uh Cambodia to like vote for leaders, and they don't
Speaker 1: want the French to be in their fucking country anymore.
Speaker 1: And they're not super communist, but they're willing to take
Speaker 1: guns from the communists in order to try to kick
Speaker 1: out the French. So from a fighting standpoint, the Isserac
Speaker 1: look a lot like our conception of the Viet Cong.
Speaker 1: Their jungle warriors who carry out hit and run attacks
Speaker 1: against the military and wageing endless guerrilla war. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try to bog you down in details of
Speaker 1: Cambodian politics at this time. Although they are fascinating, what's
Speaker 1: important for the story is that the Khmer Isserak or
Speaker 1: the I was trying to uproot the French, and thus
Speaker 1: King Sihanook, you know, they call him a traitor and
Speaker 1: a collaborationist for sort of working with the French. Um era.
Speaker 1: How far have we moved in history. We're in the
Speaker 1: early fifties two, and this is the point at time
Speaker 1: at which the conflict between the Iseracs and the French
Speaker 1: starts to really get bloody. There's a quote in the
Speaker 1: book pole Pot that I mentioned earlier from a Shang
Speaker 1: Song who was a Cambodian senator today, who remembered how
Speaker 1: in his village in the Takao Province, the Isseracs would
Speaker 1: decapitate victims and stuff their stomachs with grass. When we,
Speaker 1: as children were fishing in the ponds, he remembered, we
Speaker 1: would find severed heads in the water. It didn't bother us.
Speaker 1: We were used to it. We'd yanked them out by
Speaker 1: the hair and throw them aside. That was around nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, Arby's deal with it. Yeah, so things are
Speaker 1: getting Cambodia in the late forties to early fifties is
Speaker 1: transitioning from like this mostly peaceful place to being sort
Speaker 1: of increasingly racked with civil conflict. The Isserraq are pretty
Speaker 1: brutal guys. Many of their leaders wore what we're known
Speaker 1: as kunk or smoke children, which are amulets made from
Speaker 1: mummified fetuses that were said to stop bullets. The colonial
Speaker 1: soldiers were no better. One former government soldier, these are
Speaker 1: like local Cambodian soldiers recruited from the cities, but fighting
Speaker 1: under French command. When former government soldier described his units
Speaker 1: work as quote, we would move into villages, kill the
Speaker 1: men and women who had not already fled, and then
Speaker 1: engage in individual tests of strength, which consisted of grasping
Speaker 1: infants by the legs and then pulling them apart. So
Speaker 1: things are getting bad in Cambodia in the early fifties,
Speaker 1: and the king sees the writing on the wall, which
Speaker 1: is that this rebel movement. Like he's a smart guy.
Speaker 1: He's already guessed from the start of the fighting between
Speaker 1: the French and the Vietnamese that the Vietnamese are going
Speaker 1: to kick the French out. And he knows that the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese are also going to continue funding the rebels in
Speaker 1: Cambodia to kick the French out, which means that he's
Speaker 1: going to get overthrown and probably ripped apart by a
Speaker 1: mob if he doesn't figure out some cunning way to
Speaker 1: get his country free of France without letting the rebels win. Um.
Speaker 1: So that is a deli of a pickle. That is
Speaker 1: a deli of a pickle, That is a how would
Speaker 1: you solve that problem? Well, slaves, I'm just kidding, um,
Speaker 1: just always dropping back to slaves. Well at nationalism is
Speaker 1: a is a pretty easy trick at that stage or
Speaker 1: something like it, where uh, you know, you've got you
Speaker 1: have the former loyalty of those who are worshiping you,
Speaker 1: and you've got the up and coming, gleaming cities that
Speaker 1: are looking to build and grow. Um, you know, close
Speaker 1: the ranks and make it about being Cambodian, not French
Speaker 1: or Vietnamese. You know what, you would have made pretty
Speaker 1: good dictator. You would have made a great king of
Speaker 1: Cambodia in the nineteen fifties. You would have nailed being
Speaker 1: king of Cambodia in the nineteen fifties. I don't know
Speaker 1: that is a pretty delicate dance. That's some tough marketing.
Speaker 1: You neat the right people. This is a delicate dance.
Speaker 1: And so spoiler King Norada sahannak As I think people
Speaker 1: spoiler alert history. It's just like, hey, you didn't read
Speaker 1: this spoiler alert for a thing that millions of people know. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's definitely a bastard, like he belongs on this show,
Speaker 1: but he's kind of it's one of those like he
Speaker 1: is a dancer. This whole story is him dancing around,
Speaker 1: and there's there's an era of like up until like
Speaker 1: well right now, up until the fifties. He's like from
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundred to nineteen fifty, they're a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of royal courts just like whipping and dodging, like just dad, like,
Speaker 1: oh god, we don't know what. Boy. It's like a
Speaker 1: stupid gift of kids on a like you know, in
Speaker 1: a playground, a little whirly gig thing where everybody's spinning
Speaker 1: too hard and everybody's trying to hold one. They all
Speaker 1: fly off. Fat kid goes last, but you know he's
Speaker 1: gonna go. You know he's gonna go. But this fat
Speaker 1: Kid's gonna hang on. They hang on tight, and some
Speaker 1: are still clinging. But uh, it's it's just a period.
Speaker 1: No time in monarchical history is boring. They're weird. Monarchies
Speaker 1: are very weird. But there's that period in history seems
Speaker 1: to be so volatile where they just couldn't keep up
Speaker 1: with the pace of social change everywhere, either backwards or forwards.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure he's dancing along with the rest. He's dancing.
Speaker 1: So you remember, when he comes to power, one of
Speaker 1: the first things he does is he lets the men
Speaker 1: a vote and he establishes a parliament that has, you know,
Speaker 1: some power. So he's basically's sharing power with the parliament,
Speaker 1: and he has a lot of power. Like he's not
Speaker 1: like the King of England is now where there's no
Speaker 1: or I guess they have at you know, he's not
Speaker 1: he's not just a figurehead. But there's a parliament. They
Speaker 1: have power, and they're right now dominated by the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party Um, which was kind of like the Democratic Party here,
Speaker 1: kind of a general liberali ish party who included just
Speaker 1: sort of a melange of left wing and centrist people
Speaker 1: and they're big things. They want to be an actual democracy,
Speaker 1: so they're they're kind of ideologically more or less in
Speaker 1: line with the iss Iraq, but they don't want to
Speaker 1: do it violently. They want to they want to peacefully
Speaker 1: sort of proceed to being to colonize and whatnot. So
Speaker 1: the acts meanwhile, they're a little bit further to a left.
Speaker 1: Some of them are out right communists. Their most popular
Speaker 1: leader is a guy named son nock Than whose goal
Speaker 1: was to get Democrats to back him and pushing the
Speaker 1: French authorities out of Cambodia. So he's trying to get
Speaker 1: his rebel movement to ally with the people in power
Speaker 1: and sort of force a coup against the government. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's one of the guys attacking the king for
Speaker 1: being a puppet of the French. So this all comes
Speaker 1: to a head in June of nineteen fifty two when
Speaker 1: the king, aged thirty, decides it's time for him to
Speaker 1: jump into politics for the first time. Um, because he'd
Speaker 1: sort of tried to be above factional politics. You know,
Speaker 1: if you've got the Cambodian right wing and you've got
Speaker 1: the Democrats, and he doesn't really weigh in. So he
Speaker 1: finally decides to weigh in, and he gave a speech
Speaker 1: attacking the Democrats and whining that people had dared to
Speaker 1: say that collaborating with the French wasn't cool. This prompts
Speaker 1: an uprising of right wing Cambodians in the city who
Speaker 1: take to the streets and advocate for the destruction of
Speaker 1: the current Democrat dominated party in power. Calls up French
Speaker 1: troops Moroccans. Actually, in the middle of the night on
Speaker 1: June ninth, he dissolves the government, assumes emergency powers, and
Speaker 1: declares himself Prime Minister. So there you go, I forgot
Speaker 1: him out. Emergency powers. Don't manipulate your public. You get
Speaker 1: inside every now and then you create an emergency that
Speaker 1: you didn't have to, you then have to assume emergency powers.
Speaker 1: And it was just a coincidence. Yeah, yeah. So he
Speaker 1: announces that he's launching a royal crusade to gain Cambodian
Speaker 1: independence within three years. He bans all political meetings in Nompen,
Speaker 1: and he has French soldiers and armored vehicles filled the
Speaker 1: streets to make sure nobody talks about politics other than
Speaker 1: the politics that he wants to. Honestly, that sounds refreshing,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, No more just armed men stopping you from
Speaker 1: talking about the government. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the French, in spite of the fact that he says
Speaker 1: Cambodia needs to be independent from France, the French are
Speaker 1: more or less on his side because their basic idea
Speaker 1: is that democracy and Cambodia was a mistake. Cambodians aren't
Speaker 1: ready to be voting because they're going to vote to
Speaker 1: kick the French out, and only a king can keep
Speaker 1: things peaceful. The Republicans in the capital, and by that
Speaker 1: I mean people who want a republic, not the Conservatives,
Speaker 1: because the Conservatives are all about this. The Republicans in
Speaker 1: the capital aren't happy. SCENX crackdown inspires protests UH in nineteen.
Speaker 1: In November of nineteen fifty two, there's a big strike
Speaker 1: by students in Nonpen in several towns. King tells them
Speaker 1: all to get back to class, but instead a bunch
Speaker 1: of them hold up in the National Assembly, which is
Speaker 1: the parliament building. Monks came out to protest and argue
Speaker 1: that the king was in fact a dick. Uh. In
Speaker 1: January of fifty three, there are some grenade attacks on
Speaker 1: schools and Nonpen. Philip Short, author of Anatomy of a Nightmare,
Speaker 1: says that these attacks were either from the rebels to
Speaker 1: provoke the king into brutal reprisals, or just ordered by
Speaker 1: the king so that he could justify a crackdown, And
Speaker 1: it seems like it's probably the second one. So he
Speaker 1: has some people start throwing grenades into political gatherings so
Speaker 1: that he can basically crack down on everybody. So he
Speaker 1: gives a speech and says, from now on, any individual
Speaker 1: or political party that opposes my policies will be declared
Speaker 1: a traitor to the nation and punished accordingly. The king
Speaker 1: is supported in this by his mom, who had once
Speaker 1: called him tubby. She hated democracy. He thought the idea
Speaker 1: of people voting was a deliberate insult to her personally.
Speaker 1: That is hilarious. Oh my god, what that is some serious,
Speaker 1: malignant narciss is um. Yeah, that is mental illness combined
Speaker 1: with power. That is so funny. The personal insult that
Speaker 1: people would want to vote, Yeah that like, that's like
Speaker 1: that they might want to decide the path of their
Speaker 1: country in life is like them shifting on you. There's
Speaker 1: also just so many crooked democracies, like yeah, sure of
Speaker 1: the populace voted for this one person like, just assume
Speaker 1: that you could set that. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's great. Uh My Tubby Son is letting people vote,
Speaker 1: get there, letting know you don't get to do cute.
Speaker 1: So the French are still on board at this point.
Speaker 1: They want a strong man in cambody who can keep
Speaker 1: a lid on the Communists, so they support King Shinok
Speaker 1: whill he arrests nine members of the Democratic Party and
Speaker 1: imprisons them without trial for plotting it for colonial power,
Speaker 1: the more brutal your dictator, the better. You don't really,
Speaker 1: that's always what happens on the ground. If there's only
Speaker 1: one thing happening. Yeah, I can't think of a single
Speaker 1: time where a colonial power backed a dictator and didn't
Speaker 1: have things work out great. Well, it works for the
Speaker 1: colonial power. I'm not saying it works in the sets.
Speaker 1: That's like, yeah, a knife works for a murderer. Murder
Speaker 1: is not cool, and that's not what I'm saying. It
Speaker 1: worked for us. You are France, it makes sense to
Speaker 1: prop up a brutal dictator because that prevents anything from changing. Period.
Speaker 1: You don't care a brutal it is. You just don't
Speaker 1: want to change, and that right there is why all
Speaker 1: of the colonial powers are still in charge of their colonies. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't say it works in the long term. There
Speaker 1: is no long term success. There's no long con why
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. No, Yeah, so you're right the French,
Speaker 1: you're doing exactly what you'd expect the French to do.
Speaker 1: A Nook disbands student organizations that had any kind of
Speaker 1: political bent. He also intacts the heads of the two
Speaker 1: Buddhist monastic orders who had protested against him for sympathizing
Speaker 1: with the rebels. He says, quote, for the first time
Speaker 1: in my life, I have to grab the monks by
Speaker 1: the throat, me the most religious man in the kingdom,
Speaker 1: because I've had enough, more than enough. My subjects, in
Speaker 1: the elite among my subjects, must obey so etly. Thereafter,
Speaker 1: right after this, with his kingdom in a state of
Speaker 1: unrest and outright civil war in some sections, flies to
Speaker 1: France to drop some pounds. So when you read about
Speaker 1: this guy in any of the history books, it will
Speaker 1: regularly talk about him leaving for France to his house
Speaker 1: and the Riviera to take what's called a rest cure
Speaker 1: or a dietary cure, which I thought it was because
Speaker 1: you hear like terms like that a lot old with
Speaker 1: old timey leaders were they're taking a rescue would is
Speaker 1: just like taking a vacation, but they don't want to
Speaker 1: say they're taking a vacation, so it's like a cure.
Speaker 1: For him. It was a weight loss clinic. So he
Speaker 1: would go to France regularly throughout his reign when he
Speaker 1: got too fat, to go to a French weight loss
Speaker 1: clinic and drop pounds. So that's basically what he's doing.
Speaker 1: Like he he cracks down on all political descent, he
Speaker 1: arrests a bunch of people, uh, and then he goes
Speaker 1: to fact. Yeah, so he's a great He's a great,
Speaker 1: great guy. This would be a pattern, yeah, for the
Speaker 1: king for his entire life. So after fat Camp, the
Speaker 1: King flies over to Paris and he meets with the
Speaker 1: French President and gives him a list of demands. He
Speaker 1: wants full control of the Combodian millet terry, he wants
Speaker 1: French people in Cambodia to be subject to Cambodian law,
Speaker 1: and he wants to guarantee of eventual independence for his country,
Speaker 1: all which those are reasonable things for the head of
Speaker 1: state of a country to ask of another country. Who
Speaker 1: just took them over two get cheap rice. I guess, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: well again it's for a strategic cult, like a position. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they wanted to. Yeah, they had so much more than rice.
Speaker 1: They're really good at Yeah. But you know, part of
Speaker 1: the reason that they're satisfied is because what they have
Speaker 1: is really good. Yeah. Yeah, the people they are satisfied.
Speaker 1: The French are not satisfied because, um, colonialism isn't working
Speaker 1: out for them because one of those things you'd think,
Speaker 1: like after they stopped being in constant conflict with with
Speaker 1: Britain and like Germany got sort of cut down to
Speaker 1: size by the Second World War, and they'd stop, like
Speaker 1: what do we have all these colonies? Like what's what
Speaker 1: is what about this? Like everyone else has stopped playing
Speaker 1: the game. The game's that going on. It's a different
Speaker 1: world now. That process all started after World War One,
Speaker 1: when at the end of World War One they rewrote
Speaker 1: the lines to figure out how to share stuff because
Speaker 1: it's spent centuries taking it over. And what they learned
Speaker 1: is you don't get to let it go. You can't
Speaker 1: like it's all over your hands. It's not. You're grabbing
Speaker 1: a gel, not a solid. You don't need to pull
Speaker 1: it away. So they were stuck with it, and they
Speaker 1: propped up all these dictators that we're talking about now
Speaker 1: and sham governments, and it's just a plan that there
Speaker 1: was no option other than for it to fail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no way to end the history that started evil, not evil.
Speaker 1: So you're watching the gasps of colonialism, you know, fade away.
Speaker 1: But why were they doing this? They already answered that question.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't, you know, they were trying to not do it.
Speaker 1: There's just no way to undo it. Once you start
Speaker 1: sucking the whole world, once you conquered the whole world
Speaker 1: for a hundred and fifty years. Yeah, yeah, well yeah, France, France,
Speaker 1: I think, had been in control of this part of
Speaker 1: the world since the eighteen sixties. Um. So yeah, they've
Speaker 1: they've been here a little while, um, which is why
Speaker 1: all of their government documents at this time are in
Speaker 1: like French and stuff. But to his credit, King Ciano
Speaker 1: at no point thinks that colonialism is anything but fucked. Um.
Speaker 1: Like when the French you're fighting against the Vietnamese, he's like,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna get your butts kicked. And when
Speaker 1: the Americans get involved, he's like this is not gonna
Speaker 1: work for anybody, Like he knows that from the get go,
Speaker 1: so credit where it's due. He is smarter than all
Speaker 1: of the Europeans in this story, which maybe isn't the
Speaker 1: highest bar in the world. They're not sending their best
Speaker 1: people to uh to run their countries anymore. Um So, Yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes to the French president and he's like, uh,
Speaker 1: I want, you know, my country's independence and full control
Speaker 1: of the military. YadA, YadA, YadA. The French presidents like
Speaker 1: L O L no so seen it flies to the
Speaker 1: US to see if we would back him in his
Speaker 1: quest for independence. Uh. He meets with the Secretary of
Speaker 1: State Alan Dulles, who was like, if the French army leaves,
Speaker 1: you're gonna all be taken over by communists and we
Speaker 1: can't have that, so just be cool with the French
Speaker 1: being there. The President refused to meet with him, but
Speaker 1: White House officials coordinating his trip did offer to take
Speaker 1: the king to the circus, which he took as an insult,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't you mean honestly, the President can't hang with you,
Speaker 1: and we're not inviting you to dinner, which we always
Speaker 1: do with heads of state. But there's a circus. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen elephants? I guess you have these elephants
Speaker 1: from Yeah, look at these elephants we took from you
Speaker 1: and some Carnis elephants just telegraphing, take me home. It
Speaker 1: would be great if he stole carneys and brought carneys
Speaker 1: back to Cambodia. Just that's the the cultural exchange he
Speaker 1: wants to make. We steal the elephants, they steal Carnis.
Speaker 1: That is not an even trade. That's a solid screenplay. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh so yeah, um this made seeing look angry. The
Speaker 1: French and the Americans both ignoring him. He gives an
Speaker 1: explosive interview to The New York Times where he threatens
Speaker 1: America that Cambodia will go communist if it's not given
Speaker 1: its independence. Done done. He repeated the basic idea a
Speaker 1: few months later in a memorandum he's sent to both
Speaker 1: the Americans in the British. I'm asking the USA in
Speaker 1: Great Britain if just for once, they will kindly consider
Speaker 1: the problem with Cambodia from the viewpoint pint of the
Speaker 1: Commers instead of that of the French. My people will
Speaker 1: tell you, we don't know what communist slavery means, but
Speaker 1: the slavery imposed by the French we know well for
Speaker 1: we are now living under it. So one of the
Speaker 1: weird things about this guy's when you read the things
Speaker 1: that he says to his people, he comes across as
Speaker 1: a total dick. And when you read everything he's saying
Speaker 1: to the colonial powers in the US, he's like totally reasonable, Like,
Speaker 1: you guys are ignoring what everybody here wants and just
Speaker 1: trying to do your own thing and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a fucking disaster. He's like, yeah, right, But then when
Speaker 1: you talk to his own people, it's like descent will
Speaker 1: be crushed. Um So, in June of nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: Sienna Sianna makes his play for Cambodian independence and absolute power.
Speaker 1: He secretly goes to Bangkok and he announces that he
Speaker 1: won't return to the capital or talk to French officials
Speaker 1: again until they agree to set his country free. If
Speaker 1: we cannot obtain what we want peacefully. The entire camera
Speaker 1: people are resolved to obtain their freedom by other means
Speaker 1: and are ready to sacrifice their lives. So a few
Speaker 1: days later, uh this prompts the two largest Buddhist orders
Speaker 1: in Cambodia to call for a holy war against the French.
Speaker 1: The next day, Siana calls for Camare units in the
Speaker 1: French army to dessert. At the end of the month,
Speaker 1: he called for all citizens between twenty and thirty five
Speaker 1: years of age to join the fight for independence. So
Speaker 1: the French military and Cambodia basically dissolves overnight because the
Speaker 1: king told them to leave, and he's like the fucking
Speaker 1: semi divine figure. So the French realized that, like they
Speaker 1: just they can't hold the country without this guy who
Speaker 1: they've basically been treating as a big toddler the entire time.
Speaker 1: So by October they've had enough and they agree to
Speaker 1: relinquish all military control of Cambodia to the king. It
Speaker 1: will take another year for France to totally pull out
Speaker 1: of their former colony, but King Sienok had done it.
Speaker 1: In November of nineteen fifty three, the French handed over
Speaker 1: total control and a dumb and self aggrandizing ceremony where
Speaker 1: they like basically they phrase they frame it as like
Speaker 1: a graduation ceremony, like you people are finally ready to
Speaker 1: control your country that you ran for thousands of years
Speaker 1: before we came in here. Uh but yeah, all's well,
Speaker 1: Cambodia is independent, the yoke of colonialism has been cast off,
Speaker 1: and the communists are not in charge. So it seems
Speaker 1: like things are going great for sanok now, and probably
Speaker 1: nothing terrible will happen in this story. But that's the
Speaker 1: end of the podcast. This was really fun. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why it was such a bastard that crushing descent
Speaker 1: was kind of rude anyway, thanks? Yeah, all right, but no, actually,
Speaker 1: that's that is a lie. Oh it didn't go good.
Speaker 1: It didn't go good after that. Well, we'll get into
Speaker 1: that after we sell some products and doors. Do you
Speaker 1: like products? Indoor services? Both products and services? And you
Speaker 1: know what else I love exchanging money for them? Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know what I love is producing value for shareholders,
Speaker 1: which is then handed to me in a fraction that
Speaker 1: I can I can spend on my own products and
Speaker 1: services which create value for other shareholders. What do you know?
Speaker 1: So let's all do that right now and we're back.
Speaker 1: We are talking about King Nora, Dame Sianna, who has
Speaker 1: just succeeded in wangling freedom for his country from the
Speaker 1: French colonial oppressor pig dogs. Uh so, it seems like
Speaker 1: all great, except for everything isn't great. Uh. Scenx triumph
Speaker 1: led to an immediate and bloody escalation of the fighting
Speaker 1: in Cambodia. The rebels, under that fan guy we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, argued that the Prince was basically slave of
Speaker 1: the French. They claimed that his friendly relations with them
Speaker 1: were proofd that he was just a figurehead and he
Speaker 1: was going to send Cambodians over to die in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, the fighting continued, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that sn wasn't actually all that good at war. By
Speaker 1: the middle of nineteen fifty four, he'd lost about his
Speaker 1: territory to the rebels. The fighting was bloody enough that
Speaker 1: nobody wanted to really keep killing, and in May, rebel
Speaker 1: representatives and the king traveled to Switzerland to talk it
Speaker 1: out with a bunch of other countries, including Vietnam, the US,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, Canada. There's other countries there to
Speaker 1: Canada was just the one that we wise, what is
Speaker 1: Canada really good at apology? Yeah, so this is right
Speaker 1: around the time you know, you had you had North Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and North Korea had already been established at that point,
Speaker 1: and so the Khmer rebels in the north are like,
Speaker 1: we want our own separate country. We don't want to
Speaker 1: be ruled by the king. We want our own like
Speaker 1: legit democracy and stuff where we can, you know, choose
Speaker 1: our own path without this king doing whatever the hell
Speaker 1: he wants. And yeah, so that's their hope going into this.
Speaker 1: Going into the session, the rebels begged the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and China to stick up for them um, but the
Speaker 1: US did not want what they assumed would just become
Speaker 1: a separate communist Cambodia above regular Cambodia, and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union in China weren't willing to fight for the Cambodian
Speaker 1: So everybody works out in agreement where the rebels will
Speaker 1: lay down their arms and elections will be held in nineteen.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Sanok wins this one, but everybody knew
Speaker 1: that once the elections were held, the Democrats, which were
Speaker 1: heavily backed by the rebels, would win, and their most
Speaker 1: popular candidate would be than the guy who had been
Speaker 1: leading the rebels. So this would have left Sinook is
Speaker 1: the constitutional monarch of a government that hated him and
Speaker 1: was definitely going to do whatever it could to turn
Speaker 1: him into just a figurehead. So the US is happy
Speaker 1: with this because it means that, unlike everywhere else in
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, a country was about to happily vote for
Speaker 1: a democratic government they actually liked than he was pro US.
Speaker 1: So they're like, this is a great thing for us.
Speaker 1: You know, we've we've established a democracy in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Let's wash our hands and walk away. But Sanok is
Speaker 1: not happy letting people choose who they wanted to lead
Speaker 1: them basically ran against all of his deeply held convictions,
Speaker 1: most of which were that he should be the guy
Speaker 1: in charge of Cambodia. So in February of nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: after this agreement has made and the rebels laid down
Speaker 1: their arms, the king calls a referendum on his royal crusade,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that freed Cambodia from the French,
Speaker 1: And he's basically asking the whole kingdom to vote, do
Speaker 1: you like me? Yes or no. Voters were told, quote,
Speaker 1: if you love the king, choose a white ballot. If
Speaker 1: you don't love the king, a black ballot. Of those
Speaker 1: voting percent shows white ballots saying they loved the king.
Speaker 1: But the turnout was really low, not a lot of
Speaker 1: people of he and his mom. Yeah, of him, and
Speaker 1: his mom calls him. Yeah. Uh So a few days later, um,
Speaker 1: you know, he's kind of fuming over the low turnout,
Speaker 1: and he's fuming over the fact that all the polls
Speaker 1: are saying the Democrat and this guy he doesn't like
Speaker 1: then are going to win the election. And he winds
Speaker 1: up renting a house next to a big gathering for
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and like listening into one of their
Speaker 1: speeches and it ends and there's this huge eruption of applause,
Speaker 1: and according to people who are there with him at
Speaker 1: the time, he starts weeping with rage when he hears
Speaker 1: how popular the Democrats are. So he's desperate and his fragile,
Speaker 1: fragile ego that's some more schoolyard ship. Yeah, hearing people
Speaker 1: cheering for like someone else on it's like it's not
Speaker 1: enough to be a beloved king. Like the fact that
Speaker 1: anybody else's liked is just burning him alive. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's desperate and his fragile ego can't take being sidelined
Speaker 1: by some popularly elected politicians. So in March, the king
Speaker 1: makes a surprise broadcast. Surprise. Yeah, oh, not like a
Speaker 1: fun one, though it's not like a birthday party. You
Speaker 1: tell me, I'm gonna read the broadcast. My enemies work
Speaker 1: against me ceaselessly, and I should note that anytime there's
Speaker 1: a me in here, it's spelled with the M capitalized. Oh, Royals.
Speaker 1: Nothing like that will ever happen again, and certainly not
Speaker 1: in our own country. I will say this could almost
Speaker 1: be a tweet from our current president. Close your eyes
Speaker 1: and listen, and just pretend. Certain of our students who
Speaker 1: love injustice are determined to serve the democrats and son
Speaker 1: knock than the educated, the highly placed, and the rich
Speaker 1: spend their time throwing up obstacles to my work for
Speaker 1: the sake of their own interest and ambitions. All of
Speaker 1: this has completely discouraged me and prevents me continuing to reign.
Speaker 1: If I remain on the throne, I will be unable
Speaker 1: to work in your interests, my poor and humble subjects.
Speaker 1: Freed from my golden cage in the Royal Palace, I
Speaker 1: offer my life and my strength to my people, for
Speaker 1: though I leave the throne, I shall not shirk my
Speaker 1: duty to serve. So the King abdicated, he throws down
Speaker 1: his office, fire me. I quit. Yeah, well the king abdicates,
Speaker 1: he has his dad become the new king after him,
Speaker 1: because you know, yes, I guess usually how they do that.
Speaker 1: So now he's a prince and a private citizen and
Speaker 1: he's free to run for election against the Democrats. So
Speaker 1: he creates his own political party. He calls it the
Speaker 1: People's Community, so it would sound like a socialist party,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't. All the conservative Cambodians instantly dropped
Speaker 1: their parties and they flocked to the Prince's banner, along
Speaker 1: with more than a few of the Democrats, because hey,
Speaker 1: the prince is popular. The Prince's party Senko makes a
Speaker 1: formidable rival to the Democrats. But the King had misjudged
Speaker 1: a little. His party had no policies and no plans.
Speaker 1: It's only stated goal was blind support of Prince Shannack.
Speaker 1: So uh, I love that you go, like as a
Speaker 1: leader of the party, you go from like being actually
Speaker 1: king and then when you're running for office to be
Speaker 1: essentially a king or like, you know, a an executive leader.
Speaker 1: You get to the you get you get up to
Speaker 1: make a speech and you're like, I don't know my plan.
Speaker 1: Don't you just call me king or print doesn't it
Speaker 1: just become prep I still just go to fat camp,
Speaker 1: right I want to be president. Plan is to go
Speaker 1: back to fat camp, just like it was. It's eerie,
Speaker 1: how well you've predicted this. So cab only stress eating
Speaker 1: a lot right now, I'm just saying, oh god, he
Speaker 1: must be just baguettes all day long, man pouring crying.
Speaker 1: How could you not if you? If I was literally,
Speaker 1: if I was like a Cambodian king, I would be
Speaker 1: like a feudal lord, just walking from like street food
Speaker 1: cart to street food cart, like I have come for
Speaker 1: my offering chicken and rice and tea. Immediately I will
Speaker 1: have the duck as well. So this is a mark
Speaker 1: of the kind of man he is, because he could
Speaker 1: have legitimately lived that life where he just is rich
Speaker 1: and beloved and gets fed forever, and he could just
Speaker 1: walk around letting people give him things that could be
Speaker 1: his whole life. But instead he wants to be in charge,
Speaker 1: which only crazy people want. Only crazy people actually want. Yes,
Speaker 1: So the King's party has no policies and no plans. Uh.
Speaker 1: And even with the King's popularity, the Democrats are still
Speaker 1: slated to win a lot of the seats, and so
Speaker 1: he's not going to be an absolute power, you know,
Speaker 1: he's going to have to do a coalition government and
Speaker 1: be a democracy. The King wants no part in that,
Speaker 1: so five weeks before the vote, he uses his control
Speaker 1: of the police and military to launch a massive intimidation
Speaker 1: campaign against the Cambodian left wing. He has the authors
Speaker 1: of communist and lefty journals and newspapers imprisoned. Several far
Speaker 1: left candidates are outright and murdered. King Sianoch uses the
Speaker 1: unrest from his repective tactics to justify a heavy police
Speaker 1: presence at the voting stations, so he starts arresting people.
Speaker 1: That leads to protests, which he then uses his evidence
Speaker 1: that he needs to fill the polling locations with police
Speaker 1: and soldiers. Uh left wing voters who were brave enough
Speaker 1: to go vote were handed colored voting slips, each color
Speaker 1: representing a party and they didn't have to put the
Speaker 1: slip into an urn while officials, police and soldiers watched them.
Speaker 1: So voter turnout was not great among the Cambodian left wing,
Speaker 1: but the King still did not do very well, so
Speaker 1: he had his minions just lie about the vote count
Speaker 1: in constituencies where his party's candidate finished second. They just
Speaker 1: outright destroy all the voting slips and murder the winner. Um.
Speaker 1: Very simple, very simple. So there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: when he King spoiler alert died in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: I think, and when you read the obituaries about him, uh,
Speaker 1: they're mostly positive in like Western newspapers, and they'll all
Speaker 1: talk about like none of them are even consistent about
Speaker 1: how much he won by. They'll all say between eighty
Speaker 1: four and of the vote, which just like but nobody.
Speaker 1: It's frustrating because like the Telegraph or someone will be
Speaker 1: like reporting on this and say, like, and he won
Speaker 1: election with vote, No, he didn't murdered people. The newspapers
Speaker 1: and like the well, the journalism in Colognia, like Colonizer's nations,
Speaker 1: have a really hard time actually reporting on why, Like
Speaker 1: the who, what, when, and where is not that hard,
Speaker 1: but why these things are happening kind of eludes, like
Speaker 1: you know, even still, but I imagine especially the reporting
Speaker 1: at the time is a little clueless about the why.
Speaker 1: The weird thing is the reporting at the time. When
Speaker 1: he wins this election, the foreign journalists who are in
Speaker 1: Cambodia cry fowl at the obvious cheating, Like they're like,
Speaker 1: this is clearly fucked up. Here's all of the different
Speaker 1: net like things that went wrong that we're wrong, but
Speaker 1: the international community sticks their fingers in their ears. So
Speaker 1: the Americans and the French, you're just happy Cambodia didn't
Speaker 1: go communist, and they're kind of like, don't like, who
Speaker 1: gives a funk? Who gives a funk of this country
Speaker 1: that's not America has a prince dictator now. So the
Speaker 1: whole mess lead one Cambodian voter to conclude taking part
Speaker 1: in elections is just for propaganda. An election is a
Speaker 1: power struggle. The one who has power in his hands
Speaker 1: is the one who controls the outcome. When I guess
Speaker 1: who said that, Oh, come one, Yes, that's little it's
Speaker 1: got He's got a pot and poll as cute as
Speaker 1: I could make that. Yeah, so this is kind of
Speaker 1: his little worship. Shouldn't get a fun name. If you're
Speaker 1: a dictator, you shouldn't get you shouldn't get something fun
Speaker 1: to say. It should be clunky. It's hard. I am
Speaker 1: already ashamed. I keep calling the Prince the prince because
Speaker 1: I am intimidated about getting names wrong. And I apologize
Speaker 1: written down. I've written it down phonetically all over my
Speaker 1: note card. Uh, but I'm still gonna call him the Prince.
Speaker 1: And Paul Pott is just so it's shouldn't be fun
Speaker 1: to say, No, it shouldn't. And he has the cutest
Speaker 1: name of anyone. Yeah, in terms, I mean, the list
Speaker 1: is pretty short. Yeah, but chairman mal pretty cute because
Speaker 1: it makes me think of cats. Sure, yeah, but the
Speaker 1: chairman part real heavy. Yeah, the Chairman is not a
Speaker 1: cute name. Paul Pot branding is real sharp. Yeah, yeah, clean,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's that. You've got to give credit
Speaker 1: to the Communist Their branding was on point at this
Speaker 1: period of time, in this period of time, but that slipped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they paid less attention to the astatics time went on.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's very true. Uh so Yeah, Paul
Speaker 1: Pot at the time of this election is working for
Speaker 1: the camp for the Democratic Party. Um so he's he's
Speaker 1: working for the Democratic Party, but he's also an officer
Speaker 1: in a secret underground Cambodian Communist Party. Uh. Paul Pot
Speaker 1: and his fellow Imanists did want to change Cambodia's system
Speaker 1: of government, but prior to the election, they hadn't wanted
Speaker 1: a violent war and overthrow or anything. So Mausi Dung,
Speaker 1: who was basically like the most respected sort of communist
Speaker 1: philosopher in Asia, had laid out a theory of how
Speaker 1: to flip countries like Cambodia who were feudal or colonized
Speaker 1: nations that didn't have a big laboring class um. And
Speaker 1: it was like, how to flip them the communism without bloodshed? Um.
Speaker 1: So first you needed a democratic revolution where peasants and
Speaker 1: workers in the bourgeoisie all worked together to supplant the king,
Speaker 1: kick out the colonizers, and gain a democracy. And then
Speaker 1: Mao said, you'd have a normal democracy for decades, probably
Speaker 1: for a very long time, and it would be capitalist
Speaker 1: and that would be that would be fine, And basically
Speaker 1: the left would gain power gradually over time as people
Speaker 1: saw the flaws and capitalism, until everyone just agreed that
Speaker 1: communism was a swell idea and you had a peaceful
Speaker 1: transition to communism. Well that's what these guys were wanting
Speaker 1: to do. So Pol Pot, as a young man right
Speaker 1: up until this election happens, believes in the democratic process,
Speaker 1: thinks it's a necessary step on the way towards making
Speaker 1: a country the way he wants to be and doesn't
Speaker 1: want there to be any fighting in his country. Um,
Speaker 1: you know they would have been happy with the Democrats
Speaker 1: winning power and you know then just voting for a while.
Speaker 1: But when ak yeah, just before and I hear about
Speaker 1: the rest of this, I'm going to say that if
Speaker 1: you're a guy who kills a million and a half people,
Speaker 1: be you a prince or fighting against a princeton, a
Speaker 1: Democratic party, that's in you before you get that power,
Speaker 1: you don't care how you get it. You're a site.
Speaker 1: You're a sociopath, so you don't have any moral connection
Speaker 1: to what you're actually spewing. You just collect and want power,
Speaker 1: influence whatever it is. If you this guy would have
Speaker 1: you know again, if he was just a bad assistant manager,
Speaker 1: he would have killed everyone in his Army's like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like these seeds were already planted. I feel
Speaker 1: like and and the Prince are the same evil born
Speaker 1: in different soil. I feel like the seeds are there,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel like they're necessarily getting watered like
Speaker 1: you've got I think pol pot for one thing, he's
Speaker 1: a little different than like he's not like a guy
Speaker 1: like Hitler, So you get a guy like like, You've
Speaker 1: got kind of these two different theories of how to
Speaker 1: look at history. There's trends and forces and then there's
Speaker 1: like the great man theory, and like it's probably a
Speaker 1: mix of the two. But you look at like in
Speaker 1: Germany after World War One, there was going to be
Speaker 1: another fight between France and Germany because of just how
Speaker 1: the whole thing fucking in. Somebody who was some strong
Speaker 1: man asshole was going to take charge of Germany. But
Speaker 1: because it's Hitler, you have the Holocaust and the invasion
Speaker 1: of like Russia and whatnot. And I think pol Pot
Speaker 1: is more like interesting, well were he kind of he
Speaker 1: like certain things like there was because of the ship
Speaker 1: the Prince is doing because he's clamping down an oppression,
Speaker 1: because he's he's giving the left no legitimate way to
Speaker 1: win power. There was going to be a left wing
Speaker 1: revolution in Cambodia, and it was worse than it would
Speaker 1: have been because pol Pot is the man he is.
Speaker 1: But I think the Prince made it inevitable that this
Speaker 1: was going to happen. I think him crushing all descent
Speaker 1: and me because like I got like maybe pulpod always
Speaker 1: would have been an asshole, but there's like like it
Speaker 1: it's it's I don't know. It's hard to say because
Speaker 1: like before this time, he's like driving around in a
Speaker 1: in a nice car and he's like dating like rich
Speaker 1: ladies and like wants to be like it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to want to murder three million people at this point
Speaker 1: in his life. And I guess, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: debatable as to what would happen. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're the person who can do
Speaker 1: that that is in you and no moral compass, no
Speaker 1: philosophy you spouses greater than whatever synaps fires that lets
Speaker 1: you kill a million people. But I I feel like
Speaker 1: that synapse is there. You're absolutely right, But I don't
Speaker 1: know that it necessarily leads to you, because there's got
Speaker 1: to be We've probably all worked with someone who, if
Speaker 1: they gained power, could kill a million and a half
Speaker 1: people or whatever. Yes, but instead they're a stand up
Speaker 1: comedian because that's is the way life goes. I just
Speaker 1: think of it. Jim Jones, who was like, you know
Speaker 1: his politics. If all you did was list out Jim
Speaker 1: Jones politics, you'd be like well, this sounds like a
Speaker 1: person I probably agree with on most things. And then
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, called leader, who killed who just killed?
Speaker 1: Who killed everyone? Because it's the you're you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting when the ship you agree with the shell of
Speaker 1: someone and then on the inside is this horrible evil thing.
Speaker 1: So I feel like even if Paul Pot was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a good guy, don't believe in colonial per I
Speaker 1: want justice, it's you know, you're somewhere in you someone
Speaker 1: who's gonna kill. Yeah, that guy was always in here,
Speaker 1: But I do I take your point that because you know,
Speaker 1: the Prince said in motion something that you know you
Speaker 1: couldn't stop, and Paul Pot is who he is, So
Speaker 1: it was that well, and you're looking at Cambodia prior
Speaker 1: to this, it's not a country where most people are
Speaker 1: biting at the whip to like revolt against the system
Speaker 1: that exists. But that starts to change after the Prince,
Speaker 1: you know, brutally suppresses the left wing and essentially makes
Speaker 1: himself President Prince Um, which is, you know, President Prince
Speaker 1: is like an alternate universe. I would love to live
Speaker 1: exactly both pictured exactly what chapless purple pants and like
Speaker 1: the white Mouse is like all technicolor because it's like white,
Speaker 1: but you put the colors the laser show and ships.
Speaker 1: You know what, no one would have died in the
Speaker 1: war for Afghanistan and it would be so much more
Speaker 1: like could dance so well man, Sorry, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for taking me there. Okay, yeah, yeah yeah. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine the things he would have done to the
Speaker 1: White House Bowling Alley? Oh my goodness. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: have been a disco tech and it would have been
Speaker 1: fucking incredible. God that cabinet. Yeah okay, uh, well, now
Speaker 1: that we're all happy, good okay, Yeah, let's get back
Speaker 1: to talking about Cambodia. In the mid fifties, pol Pot
Speaker 1: decides that democracies bullshit and shortly thereafter takes to the
Speaker 1: jungle with all of his friends and comrades to do
Speaker 1: a jungle communist ship. Um so yeah. Sanic is largely
Speaker 1: backed by conservatives, but he himself is not a conservative
Speaker 1: or a fist. He is a himist. His only guiding
Speaker 1: moral principle is that he should be in charge of Cambodia,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't really give a shit about politics. He
Speaker 1: just wants to be the guy. Uh. He's a smart guy.
Speaker 1: He knows that Cambodia is going to eventually go full communist.
Speaker 1: He knows the number one power in the region, China,
Speaker 1: is already communist, and he knows the United States is
Speaker 1: going to eventually get fed up with sticking their dick
Speaker 1: in the whole area and leave Vietnam. So he figures
Speaker 1: that his main worry is the Vietnamese. Uh they have
Speaker 1: a history of bullying Cambodia and they're the main backers
Speaker 1: of the Cambodian communist movement. So see, Hannah comes up
Speaker 1: with a pretty clever plan. Who will let the Vietnamese
Speaker 1: use his country as a highway for their guns and
Speaker 1: money first to fight against the French and in the US.
Speaker 1: He'll even let tens of thousands of them hide in
Speaker 1: Cambodia when the fighting isn't going their way. But they
Speaker 1: have to stop giving guns to and training the local
Speaker 1: Cambodian communists. Obviously, this pisses off the United States. So
Speaker 1: SNX promised to them is that he'll brutally repress the
Speaker 1: communists in Cambodia. We go one hand, how you do it,
Speaker 1: that's how you brutally dictate exactly. So in foreign policy, terms,
Speaker 1: he's in low step with the USSR in China, but
Speaker 1: domestically he's doing like a triple McCarthy and like everything,
Speaker 1: like killing all the communists in his own country. So
Speaker 1: Nora Dam Sahannak is the only guy who was simultaneously
Speaker 1: on both sides of the Cold War for the entirety
Speaker 1: of the Cold War, dancing and dancing and dancing and
Speaker 1: dancing down. Yeah, yeah, so we are. Yeah. So, the
Speaker 1: Prince's father served as king when the prince first abdicated.
Speaker 1: When he died in nineteen sixty, the Snox mom, Queen Cosamac,
Speaker 1: wanted to be crowned, but you know, his mom had
Speaker 1: spent his whole life calling him fat. So the king
Speaker 1: flips the script on his mom uh and makes her
Speaker 1: guarding of the throne, which is a position with no power,
Speaker 1: and instead pushes through a constitutional amendment to make himself
Speaker 1: head of state for life. So now by nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: he is the president and the head of state for life.
Speaker 1: And that is where we are going to end the
Speaker 1: podcast for today, and we will be back on Thursday
Speaker 1: to talk about the rest of sanus wacky career, which
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's it's gonna get dark. I bet
Speaker 1: we're gonna here about some infrastructure improvement. I bet we're
Speaker 1: gonna hear a lot about like Robert's rules and how
Speaker 1: it was implemented. Are you calling water filtration plants? Because
Speaker 1: I got nine pages of water filtration plants. I'm so
Speaker 1: looking forward to that beer rock, gros see beer rock.
Speaker 1: That's what's coming, right, A good chance, that's a good chance.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not like death destruction. And I mean, see
Speaker 1: you next time, not yet, see you next time. Because
Speaker 1: we have we you should plug some things before we
Speaker 1: we roll out for the day and a half between
Speaker 1: the next podcast. I am Caitlin Gill and I have
Speaker 1: a website. It is called Caitlin Gill Comedy dot com
Speaker 1: and you can go there and then you can see
Speaker 1: my schedule. It's the tab you click it and then
Speaker 1: there'll be a little calendar. You get tickets to any
Speaker 1: of my life shows. Also, July eleventh, some Monsters comes
Speaker 1: out on True TV. Watch it. I'm Robert Evans. I
Speaker 1: don't have any live shows, but I have a book.
Speaker 1: You can buy it on Amazon. It's called A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Vice. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I write Okay, two letters and uh. This show Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is also on the internet www dot Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards dot com. You can also find us on
Speaker 1: social media at Bastard's Pod, so check us out. We'll
Speaker 1: be putting sources and images up so that you can
Speaker 1: sort of follow along and get the visual picture of
Speaker 1: the story. And we will be back on Thursday with
Speaker 1: part two of this particular Bastard's tale. H m m