Part One: The Film Directing Playboy King Who Handed His Country to Pol Pot

Pol Pot is an evil bastard who had half his country killed, but he isn’t an interesting bastard, that title belongs to the man who enabled him, King Norodom Sihanouk. In Episode 10, Robert is joined by comedian, Caitlin Gill and they discuss the monarch who destroyed half of Cambodia and made some of the worst films ever. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, Hello friends, and welcome again to Behind the Bastards.
I'm Robert Evans, your host on yet another journey into
the life and mind of one of the worst people
in all of history. My guest today is Caitlin gil. Hey,
that's me. Caitlyn gil is a comedian. Yeah, presumably some

(00:24):
some would argue that. And you're involved in a television production. Yes,
that's happening now, it happened, and it's about to come
out July. Levans. Tune into True TVs, Misfits and Monsters.
Bobcat Goldwhite made a fun TV show and I bet
you're gonna like it, so watch it when it's on.
So on this episode of the show, I will be
talking to a vastly more accomplished comedian and reading a

(00:45):
story about a bad person in history. I live in
a backyard, don't worry about it. We all live in yards.
That's not bragging that yours is a backyard. It's true.
I have moved back from the front yard. That feels good,
you know. Yeah, I'm living on a porch for a while,
and it is not ideal. Um. Speaking of porches, Uh,
what do you know about the Cambodian mass killings in

(01:09):
the nineteen seventies. I know that it is one of
the most nineties brutally depressing aspects of history you can
look at. Wasn't it like fifties forward? It was long
and really dad, there was a lot of ship going
on from the fifties forward. It's like a million plus yeah. Yeah.
The mass killing started in nineteen seventy five, went through
to like seventy seventy nine, but three and a half

(01:30):
years the Camar Rouge was in power. What do you
know about the camar Rouge and pol pot lit um?
I mean some I have a political science degree and
I paid attention in those classes, but that was fifteen
years ago, so my updated history not so great. But
in the past I was disgustingly fascinated. It seems like
one of the most cruel Oh yeah, regimes that has

(01:51):
ever gotten to spend some time in power. Real bad,
real real bad, real bad people, And it was one
of those things. So when we started this podcast, you know,
I had some some people that I clearly had plans for.
I wanted to talk about Hitler's favorite young adult novels
and Saddam Hussein's erotic memoirs and all that sort of stuff,
and then there were people where was like, yeah, we're
probably gonna do a Pulpot episode at some point, but
I didn't really know anything more than like what I

(02:13):
had learned in high school about him, which is like, yeah,
he killed like a million and a half people. They
had people with glasses murdered for some reason, like and
that's that's the end of the And you figure it's
like the same story with a guy like Hitler Stalin,
where it was just some asshole who wound up in
charge and just started murdering the groups of people they hated.
And so I I didn't really know much about pol Pot,

(02:33):
and I started reading into the story recently, and I
read a great book called pol Pot The Anatomy of Terror,
And then that set me down a whole reading hole.
In anyway, I wound up realizing that the most interesting character,
the most terrible person behind all of this is not
pol Pot himself. Uh, And instead it's a different guy,

(02:54):
a different person entirely. Prince nor Dam saynok, have you
ever heard of that? I have not heard of this?
Prince well? Uh, somdetch. Priya Nora Dam Sahannak was born
in Nonpen, Cambodia on October thirty one, nineteen twenty two.
He was a member of both of Cambodia's two leading
royal families, the Sissoots and the Nora Dams, but he
was not born as the heir apparent. So Cambodia has

(03:17):
like a different sort of way of appointing their kings. Nowadays,
there's like a royal council that sort of is a
mix of elected and unelected people who votes on the
new king. Back when he was born, the French were
in charge of Cambodia and so they would appoint new
kings when the king died. Um. Yeah, so Nordon was
an only child, uh, and since this was the twenties,

(03:38):
his parents were terrified he was going to die on them.
They consulted an astrologer, which was a normal thing to
do at the time. Like everybody in Cambodia right after
the Russians thought it was a good idea to talk
to rescue and yeah, this is within five years of
that is almost happening. But mystics are still like maybe
I'm medicine. Yeah, it's like you get a flu in
your families, Like, well, I guess that's it for you,

(03:59):
and single prince and only child. Prince can't have any
appearance of injury or illness anyway, So you get real
creepy about how you know. It's a lot of secrets
really early, especially if you're talking to mystic. Something's wrong
with that kid, Yeah, I don't know. It leads a
lot or like can't breathe good or I don't know.
They were just worried and the ast you have to
assume they're all lumpy babies. Every baby is lumpy. How

(04:22):
are you the only child and not in line for
a throne? Well he was in line for it, but
it wasn't a guarantee. So he was like, you know,
you've got a certain who could could be there. The
flies are big, and so the prince are like, okay,
well there's like nine or ten kids we get to
pick from um, And he was obviously like it wasn't guaranteed,
but he was in the running. So his parents were
very concerned about him and the attack to an astrologery,

(04:44):
and the astrologer warned that if he was raised by
his mom and dad, he would die early. So as
a young boy, Noradam was raised by his grandmother, Madame Chauhunt.
She was like, you're describing a very bleak version of
the movie big Yes, that's this entire story. Uh, there
is a giant. Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Oh
you know, I'm thinking about big Fish, Big Fish, very

(05:06):
different films. Yeah. I just like that, Like I don't
let him grow up with my parents anymore. I want
to be a big kid right now. Only a very
dark evil version. Yeah. Um, those old hand it's like
a it's like a source, you know, an astrologer screaming
your parents. Boy, I really got that movie wrong. He's
talking about the Tom Hanks film. Oh yeah, I'm talking
about the Yeah, the piano. I'm talking about a Cambodian dictator.

(05:27):
You did bring up another one of history's great monsters.
But we haven't done our Tom Hanks. Um, but he
definitely belongs. Oh the tea you could spill. Uh. So
his grandmother's really religious. Uh. She's a Buddhist known for
giving a lot of money to monks, which was, you know,
pretty popular at the time. Uh. She dies when he's

(05:47):
a young boy. Um, and immediately after she dies, he's
ordained as a monk for exactly twenty four hours. Um.
That was like a thing in Cambodian culture where everybody
was and it was really common for like if your
family had any money at all, they'd send you away
to learn how to be a monk for a little while.
So it's not like the universal Church that you sign
up for just to marry your friends. It is it
is for him, so for a normal camp, so for

(06:07):
the for the prince, because he might be the king.
Anytime you might be a leader, they send you off
to be a monk for exactly a day, um, just
so he can say like, no, he's enlightened, he's been
a monk, like he's he's a he's a monk king
sort of thing. I was important. If you were a
normal Cambodian who was like middle class or up, you'd
also be a month but monk, but you'd be there
for months. And the training for non king monks was brutal.

(06:30):
Here's how a normal Cambodian at the time explained, like
what the actual monks went through. If you came to
the wat as a novice, you had to study for
three months before you were allowed to wear the robe.
You were taught the etiquette of a monk, how to
put on the robe, how to speak, how to walk,
how to put your palms together to show respect. And
you were given a thrashing if you didn't do as
they said. If you didn't walk correctly, you were beaten.
You had to walk quietly and slowly, without making any

(06:52):
sound with your feet, and you weren't allowed to swing
your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to
learn by heart in Poli the rules of conduct and
the Buddhist precepts that you could cite them without hesitation.
If you hesitated, you were beaten. Yeah, that's like getting
an honorary degree from like the worst university. Yeah, like
Cobra Kai University. Everybody's everybody's getting beaten except for the prince,

(07:13):
who shows up for one day and he gets to
be a monk straightaway. Um. So, as a young child,
the prince goes to school in Saigon, over in Vietnam,
and then he goes to France. He gets a really
nice Western education. He develops a love for the arts
and for French cooking. His mother nicknames him tool or
Tubby on this but at this point I'm on his side.
I get it. France is pretty irresistible. If you're just

(07:37):
like a portly rich Cambodian prince, honestly just kicking in France. Baby, Like,
if that's what you're into, then be there. There's a
food is great in both places, but so different. Go
be a tubby in France. Yeah. So he spends a
lot of time as a young man being a fat
kid in France, while other young Cambodian kids are getting
beaten to learn how to be monkst So so far,

(07:58):
I'm just jealousy. Everybody's probably jealous. Um So in nineteen
his grandfather, who was the current king, dies and the
French you know, have to pick from the options in
the royal families, and one they decide to bet on
Nora dam Sando because he seemed like the choice who'd
give them the least grief. Uh, this is what he

(08:19):
looked like on the day he was ordained. And we'll
have these pictures up on the behind the pastors. There's
no reason to shame him, ye, I feel like this
is what makes me feel like his mom is probably
giving him a complex because that's not a fat kid.
He does have evil eyes. I want like, when you
look at the picture, it looks like even just printed
out on computer paper. I feel like he is across
a bar and like raising his eyebrow at me. There's

(08:41):
something for a while. Yeah, it's like a painting that
looks at you when you move across the room. This
is the guy that leers at you from across the bar,
only in in photograph form. But he's kind of hot,
Like I'm not Maddie's looking at me, except I know
he's trouble, you know. Yeah, and if you knew that
his mom had called him fat his whole childhood, like, oh,
there's some arness going on, there's issues. I don't want
to I mean, this is a good time for me

(09:03):
to assess that he's kind of handsome and say that
out loud before I hear about all the horrible things
that he did hesber. Handsome people can be really bad,
bad people. Handsome people with it has to be said.
Fabulous beautiful people are evil, never forget. Yeah, you can
tell by his cheekbones that he's dangerous. So one the
French government that appoints him isn't really France, it's visu France.

(09:25):
You know, the Germans had conquered them. So he was
appointed king by the puppet government for the Nazi occupiers.
Their leader, Marshall Pataine, became the leader of Cambodia as well.
The children who grew up in Cambodia's public schools at
the time were educated to pertain as standards which emphasized unity, order,
and labor. The city was seen as the incarnation of
all evil, and peasant life was highlighted as the soul
of the nation. One of the children in these schools

(09:46):
was a guy named Saloth Sar who would grow into
a guy named pol Pot. Um. Just a little bit
of foreboding there. Um, So Cambodia is in an awkward
position nearing World War two. Pol pot came from a
much different social status, not a prince, not a prince,
kind of upper middle class, not rich, but but his
family is doing okay, Yeah, he's still Yeah, he comes
from a pretty bougie little background. Um. But he had

(10:09):
to do the full monk training too. So he's the
guy getting the ship kicked out of him by monks
and learning about how cities are evil in school, while
the actual king is flying to France and developing a
complex because his mom calls him fat. So Cambodia is
in an awkward position during World War Two. France is
technically an access ally at this point like the VC France,
but the Japanese eventually went up conquering Cambodia just a

(10:31):
couple of months after the prince gets coronated, so Siano
now becomes Japan's puppet and proclaims Cambodian independence. Obviously, that
didn't last longer than five As soon as the war
is over, Sianic starts advocating for more independence from France.
He introduced universal male suffrage to his country and press freedom,
and he establishes an elected parliament. So so far, he
seems pretty enlightened for a king in Cambodia in the forties.

(10:55):
If you're a Cambodian dude, if you're a Cambodian dude, well,
you can't just go from zero to letting women vote.
You can't just go from siero to human writes for humans. Sorry,
I know. Also bleating rag feminist over here? What are
you huh? Sorry? I mean it was this was twenty
five years after we decided. When we just love the
phrase universal male suffrage, Like you don't get to universal

(11:19):
and then immediately qualified universal to specifically when it's just
a funny universe people I like suffrage. Yes, that's all
the people I like it to vote. Yes, Yeah, you're
all universally invited to my birthday party, except only ten
if you can come. Yeah. But he's woke by forties standards, Yes, yeah,
he's woke if you lower the bar, yes, so so

(11:40):
our forties woke king is uh. A lot of Cambodians
at the time, the ones who were living in like
cities and towns, who were educated and kind of plugged
into the world, it probably seemed like they were slowly
sort of joining modernity and heading towards the kind of
system England has where you get a king, but the
king's kind of a just a figure to yeah, look pretty.
We care about their weddings and ship but like that's

(12:01):
kind of what people were hoping for, what a lot
of people were hoping for. But it's very different outside
of the city's so in rural Cambodia, probably about a
quarter of Cambodian peasants of the country, like the real
deep peasants had never used money at all in their lives. Um,
the burning Man, I'm just that was terrible. Yeah, it's
kind of like burning Man, but with subsistence. Yeah yeah, yeah,

(12:23):
but if you don't farm enough rice, you starve. Yeah,
didn't spend seven thousand dollars to get there, and you
don't have like a dust mask, and there's no glowsticks. Yeah,
well there's otherwise you have to assume there's glow sticks.
But yeah, I love it if somebody who's never used
currency in their entire life and has just lived from
the land that they're on for generations and you happen

(12:43):
to be passing by and they're just glows sticking, Like
where did you get those silent rave that's been going
on for millennia that we just didn't know about a
thousand year old rave. It's like the thousand year old
had only so much more fun. So the king is
not a figurehead to the peasants. He's he's kind of
he's seen. He's seen a sort of a figurehead in
the cities. To the peasants. He's semi divine. I'm going

(13:06):
to read a description of royal court life from that
book Pullpot The Anatomy of Terry, that I think sort
of sets up kind of how the king is seen
by the country people. Each spring crowds gathered to watch
the royal oxen plow the sacred furrow, and all of
those things are capitalized, from which the king's astrologer would
divine whether or not there would be plenty or famine
in the year ahead. And at tank talk the king's birthday,

(13:28):
the provincial governors came to pay homage. Royal protocol was
draconian in his palace. If no longer in the colonized
state over which he reigned, the king was still an
absolute ruler. The Master of life, venerated by the populace,
is a sacred, quasi divine figure. At royal audiences, the
prince's mandarins and other dignitaries crouch on all fours, with
their knees and elbows on the floor and their hands
raised together before their heads. The King sits above them

(13:50):
and throned on a dais, sitting cross legged like an
Indian idol. When he enters or leaves, all present prostrate
themselves at three times. No one has the right to
speak unless the King addresses him, and no one may
publicly disagree with anything the King says. So you're already
saying sort of a disconnect between you've got the people
in the cities who are like listening to the radio,
they're watching TV, they're getting the newspapers, and then you've

(14:12):
got the people who and then there's people still on
the farm. Yeah. Yeah, the king makes the rain come, um,
which is not like a joke. That's like, that's like
a widespread belief. So there's already a big disconnect here. Um.
So the camera language and the camera like the majority
of people of Cambodia has its own special sub language
for how to talk to the king. So there's like
a separate dictionary of words you just used to refer

(14:34):
to the king and his family. The king was seen
as impossibly high above even as high ministers, who are
known non jokingly as quote, we who carry the king's
excrement on our heads. So that's I mean, it's come on.
That is a little bit tongue in cheek, like, yeah,
you we got your ship on our head, buddy, like you.
This is a little bit and a few more pages

(14:57):
if you think that was joking, or if you think
that it wasn't literally even, but it's got a there's
a wink in there somewhere. There's a jester in the court. Yeah,
there might be a couple of winks. I'll eat my
words later. I won't eat the king species, but I will.
I'll be happy to eat my words. Yeah, so this
is you can imagine. You know, guy grows up with
his mom calling him tubby, and now nobody is allowed

(15:17):
to argue with him, and he's philosophically shipping I was
a tubby kid. We do not deserve power until we
go through an unpack our trauma. You can't you can't
hand uh. You know, you can take the fat off
the kid. You can't take the fat kid out of
the fat kid, just because there's the I'm an only
child who was tubby. Trust trust trust. Oh yeah, I

(15:38):
grew up as a fat kid. And you know it's
one of those things where when you see a fat
kid who loses weight, like that's someone who didn't deal
with their trauma, who's just like trying to control themselves
and their body through Like there's something dark in there,
is all I'm saying. Oh yeah, yeah, it's not. You
have to shine the light in your own darkness. And
you know, whatever happened to you in the bathroom, in

(15:58):
the locker room, or on the playground, eventually you have
to shine a little light on it, or you become
a dictator if you happen to be a prince. Yeah,
well what he just became like a bad assistant manager,
you know. I think that's what most people do. But
it depends on your access. That's where you start from.
Usually you go for a tiny amount of power, but
he he kind of got on the mad was my
moderate amount of power. So we're talking old fashioned kings here.

(16:22):
Nor Dam's grandfather was famous for having a gigantic harem
made up of beautiful local ladies for the late thirties.
He was too old and sickly to make use of them. Um.
So these ladies weren't allowed to go out and live
their own lives. They got frustrated and things got weird. Um.
One of the ladies courted by the old king was
a girl named Rung. She was the older sister to

(16:42):
Saloth Sar, the guy who became pol Pot. He was
about fifteen at this point in time, and his sister's
position meant he got to spend some time hanging around
the royal palace. Since he was just fifteen, he was
even allowed to hang out with the king's cortisans and
they would fondle him. Um, so that's pol Pot's fifteen
year old childhood is like hang out in the royal
Palace and getting like like literally masturbated by the king's

(17:05):
ford horny cortis. Yeah, exactly, exactly, So just describing like
a very high class Charles Manson existence. Yeah, Charles Manson's mom,
you know, a bit of a she is a girl
about town. I think that's actually how he described her.
And and you know he got traded for beer. But yeah,
who the man who became Pulpot just got jerked off

(17:27):
by a bunch of royal cartissy. It's the same, different,
it is the same but different. Apparently that's my job
here today. Here's something that's like what you're talking about,
but not well no, but it's it's good to point
out that this this story that starts with yes, in
a different country, at a different class level, and it
is it's also a bad ending. Yes, this is not
a good jump. It's not a good thing to do
to a fifteen year old. Fifteen year old maybe like

(17:48):
if you happen to get rubbed off when you were fifteen, congratulations,
and I bet you're fine. I hope for most of you.
It is a positive memory. If you're a fifteen year
old being jerked off by a royal harem, that is
going to change your path. It's going to change your path.
That's different than like you're you're you're dating somebody in
high school. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, either going to be

(18:10):
an interesting sex educator or apparently a dangerous dictator. Yeah yeah,
and probably the second. So yeah, this is the sort
of environment cultural environment norad dom Sahanna comes to power
in um, you know, he's he's the king, and so
he's he's dealing with both Like you've got these people
in the cities who they're supposed to treat him like
a god, but they don't because he's just this they

(18:33):
know he's just like this guy, and they're trying to
be like, well, let's be a normal country that doesn't
worship the king. But then he's got these people in
the in the sticks who to whom he's literally a deity.
So you can you can see how this would cause
some conflicts within the king and within the country. I
feel like for any crafty con man, crisis is opportunity.
This is a great you know, you wink a not

(18:54):
on one side and you and you get to grease
the other wheels. Well, speaking of crisis, by the time
the king comes to power in the late forties, when
he comes to power in forty one, but the time
he's really getting used to things, the Cold War starts
kicking off, and his neighbors are all dealing with you know, communism.
You've got Vietnam with this, this communist revolt against the
French going on right now. And at first it seemed

(19:15):
like Cambodia was immune to communism. Um. So, in traditional
Marxist theory, the revolution begins within the laboring class, right,
you know, the factory workers who gets fed up with
serving the needs of capital. In the forties and fifties,
Cambodia had like a couple of thousand actual laborers in
the whole country. Most country subsistence farmers. Um. They didn't
really give a funk about capitalism or socialism. This is

(19:36):
because neither had anything to do with their lives. They
worked at most about six months a year to cover
their basic needs. Uh. And they were all Theravata Buddhists,
and Theravata Buddhism places no value on acquiring wealth, and
therefore number one there was no cultural need to acquire wealth,
and there just wasn't a lot to buy. Um. King
Sano like to tell a story about an American AID
expert who visited Cambodia in the fifties and convinced some

(19:58):
villagers to start using modern fertile liser. They doubled their
harvest yields in a year, and the aid worker came
back the next year and was surprised to see that
each farmer had only grown half as many crops this
the next year. Um. He didn't understand why they wouldn't
want to produce twice as much, but clearly the Cambodians
were like, no, we can farm half as much and
make the same amount of food and work even less. Um.

(20:20):
So basically they're the smartest people in this Yeah, I
really got it right. They're really nailing it in like
the late forties. Can I ask get dumb historical question
from a little bit further back? I feel like I
should know in terms of like the silk Road and
the spice trade. Cambodia has always been in a significant
position for colonizers. But what is there a product that

(20:41):
everybody was hungry for from the outside, Like why did
my people, the Scots get on a boat to go there.
I come from thieves and plunders, so I always went
to Cambodi. I mean in a uh, I'll take a
step in the broader sense of why people leave the
tiny rock that they were on to go get something
better from outside pepper or a spice or a mineral.
Why were people coming from places in the west to Cambodia.

(21:04):
What were they plundering? What were they taking? I mean,
so it's one of those things, Cambodia, Yeah, exactly. So
Cambodia's history is heavily based on sort of conflicts between Vietnam,
Like Vietnam is their traditional enemy because Vietnam is like
the big regional power, and so there's been a lot
of like more or less constant sort of power struggles
between China and Vietnam and Cambodia kind of winds up

(21:27):
in the middle, and of course during World War Two
they wound up in the middle between everybody in the Japanese.
But like there never nobody more about position on the
map than resources with exactly because they it's they're they're
not like they're not like a major industrial power. Obviously,
there's not like giant gold mines or anything like. It's
it's a country of like small farmers who just want
to make enough food to keep their families alive. I

(21:49):
just know that by the forties a bunch of economies
were kind of closing up to do that. Most of
their people would have been subsistence farmers, So it made
sense for the economy to stay more closed than to
invite in trade since there would always be such an
imbalance that uh, And it's there's an interesting period of
history when countries were more isolated, and fascinating things happen

(22:11):
in their history within that bubble because Cambodians weren't out
buying risk crackers. They were you know, everything that happened
is internally. Their history is inside the bubble, along with
their economy. So it's just kind of interesting to pick
out and figure out what people were busy doing. And
it's things like growing less crops because you didn't need
to grow any needed, which is fucking great. But one
of the things they also have going on is ankor

(22:32):
watt Is in Cambodia, which is this crazy gigantic, beautiful
like complex of of of massive buildings that was built
during the Khmer empire which had fallen hundreds of years
before this point. But so that's King CX looking at
that and saying, like, our people used to be great
and build great, gigantic things, and I have to figure
out some way to make us into a significant The

(22:54):
answer is always slaves. Slaves are always the answer to
why people made big cool stuff. Always slaves. These are
always the ter of an answer. You just spoiled a
lot of the story. Be a spoiler. Evil King wants
to build something pick there's no gap hit there that
is a straight line. So we're going to get back
to what exactly this not yet evil but definitely evil

(23:20):
King is going to do later. So we're going to
continue talking about this evil or not yet evil King
in a minute. But right now, we have to advertise
some products. Because the capitalist gods, yeah yeah, none of
us are Cambodian people. We we will all work much
harder in order to purchase things which we can fill
our homes with. So grab grab a box of money

(23:43):
and a bag of money in a suitcase of money,
and some dumb dums, buy some dumb dumbs. This show's
official sponsor is not dumb dumbs, but we're advertising them anyway,
and now some other things. So yeah, we're back and
we're talking about Cambodia and its culture at the time

(24:06):
when King Nordam sahannock Is uh is sort of coming
into power of the late forties the early fifties, um,
and he's frustrated because he wants to modernize his country. Uh.
He wants to make it, you know great again. Uh.
And the people just kind of want a farm and
not get involved in any of the conflicts raging around them.

(24:26):
So there's there's sort of this little like it's not
really a huge conflict yet, but you can you can
see some groundwork late where the king, you know, wants
to open things up more to the world, and the
people are just sort of like, but you know, we've
got rice, Like I feel fine. Uh. So Yeah, there
was a communist movement a foot in Cambodia in the

(24:47):
late forties and early fifties, but it was dominated by
the Vietnam and by the Vietnamin who um you might
guess from the name, we're Vietnamese and not Cambodian. Um. Yeah,
this made them not super popular among the Cambodians because
again there's this his tree of Vietnam being sort of
this domineering power over Cambodia. So so far it doesn't
look like the Communists are gonna gain a big foothold

(25:08):
in in Cambodia. UM. The problem is that the country
occupies really sweet position from the point of view of
someone trying to smuggle weapons into Vietnam in order to
fight the French. So it's important to Vietnam to have
backing in Cambodia. UM. They weren't really successful in spreading communism,
but they had some success working with an anti colonial
rebel movement called the Khmer iss Iraq. And the iss

(25:28):
Iraq aren't really communists. They they're more democrats. They want
uh Cambodia to like vote for leaders, and they don't
want the French to be in their fucking country anymore.
And they're not super communist, but they're willing to take
guns from the communists in order to try to kick
out the French. So from a fighting standpoint, the Isserac
look a lot like our conception of the Viet Cong.
Their jungle warriors who carry out hit and run attacks

(25:50):
against the military and wageing endless guerrilla war. I'm not
going to try to bog you down in details of
Cambodian politics at this time. Although they are fascinating, what's
important for the story is that the Khmer Isserak or
the I was trying to uproot the French, and thus
King Sihanook, you know, they call him a traitor and
a collaborationist for sort of working with the French. Um era.
How far have we moved in history. We're in the
early fifties two, and this is the point at time

(26:12):
at which the conflict between the Iseracs and the French
starts to really get bloody. There's a quote in the
book pole Pot that I mentioned earlier from a Shang
Song who was a Cambodian senator today, who remembered how
in his village in the Takao Province, the Isseracs would
decapitate victims and stuff their stomachs with grass. When we,
as children were fishing in the ponds, he remembered, we

(26:34):
would find severed heads in the water. It didn't bother us.
We were used to it. We'd yanked them out by
the hair and throw them aside. That was around nineteen
forty nine, Arby's deal with it. Yeah, so things are
getting Cambodia in the late forties to early fifties is
transitioning from like this mostly peaceful place to being sort
of increasingly racked with civil conflict. The Isserraq are pretty

(26:56):
brutal guys. Many of their leaders wore what we're known
as kunk or smoke children, which are amulets made from
mummified fetuses that were said to stop bullets. The colonial
soldiers were no better. One former government soldier, these are
like local Cambodian soldiers recruited from the cities, but fighting
under French command. When former government soldier described his units

(27:16):
work as quote, we would move into villages, kill the
men and women who had not already fled, and then
engage in individual tests of strength, which consisted of grasping
infants by the legs and then pulling them apart. So
things are getting bad in Cambodia in the early fifties,
and the king sees the writing on the wall, which
is that this rebel movement. Like he's a smart guy.
He's already guessed from the start of the fighting between

(27:38):
the French and the Vietnamese that the Vietnamese are going
to kick the French out. And he knows that the
Vietnamese are also going to continue funding the rebels in
Cambodia to kick the French out, which means that he's
going to get overthrown and probably ripped apart by a
mob if he doesn't figure out some cunning way to
get his country free of France without letting the rebels win. Um.

(28:00):
So that is a deli of a pickle. That is
a deli of a pickle, That is a how would
you solve that problem? Well, slaves, I'm just kidding, um,
just always dropping back to slaves. Well at nationalism is
a is a pretty easy trick at that stage or
something like it, where uh, you know, you've got you

(28:20):
have the former loyalty of those who are worshiping you,
and you've got the up and coming, gleaming cities that
are looking to build and grow. Um, you know, close
the ranks and make it about being Cambodian, not French
or Vietnamese. You know what, you would have made pretty
good dictator. You would have made a great king of
Cambodia in the nineteen fifties. You would have nailed being

(28:43):
king of Cambodia in the nineteen fifties. I don't know
that is a pretty delicate dance. That's some tough marketing.
You neat the right people. This is a delicate dance.
And so spoiler King Norada sahannak As I think people
spoiler alert history. It's just like, hey, you didn't read
this spoiler alert for a thing that millions of people know. Uh,

(29:03):
he's definitely a bastard, like he belongs on this show,
but he's kind of it's one of those like he
is a dancer. This whole story is him dancing around,
and there's there's an era of like up until like
well right now, up until the fifties. He's like from
the nineteen hundred to nineteen fifty, they're a whole bunch
of royal courts just like whipping and dodging, like just dad, like,

(29:27):
oh god, we don't know what. Boy. It's like a
stupid gift of kids on a like you know, in
a playground, a little whirly gig thing where everybody's spinning
too hard and everybody's trying to hold one. They all
fly off. Fat kid goes last, but you know he's
gonna go. You know he's gonna go. But this fat
Kid's gonna hang on. They hang on tight, and some

(29:47):
are still clinging. But uh, it's it's just a period.
No time in monarchical history is boring. They're weird. Monarchies
are very weird. But there's that period in history seems
to be so volatile where they just couldn't keep up
with the pace of social change everywhere, either backwards or forwards.
And I'm sure he's dancing along with the rest. He's dancing.

(30:09):
So you remember, when he comes to power, one of
the first things he does is he lets the men
a vote and he establishes a parliament that has, you know,
some power. So he's basically's sharing power with the parliament,
and he has a lot of power. Like he's not
like the King of England is now where there's no
or I guess they have at you know, he's not
he's not just a figurehead. But there's a parliament. They
have power, and they're right now dominated by the Democratic
Party Um, which was kind of like the Democratic Party here,

(30:31):
kind of a general liberali ish party who included just
sort of a melange of left wing and centrist people
and they're big things. They want to be an actual democracy,
so they're they're kind of ideologically more or less in
line with the iss Iraq, but they don't want to
do it violently. They want to they want to peacefully
sort of proceed to being to colonize and whatnot. So

(30:52):
the acts meanwhile, they're a little bit further to a left.
Some of them are out right communists. Their most popular
leader is a guy named son nock Than whose goal
was to get Democrats to back him and pushing the
French authorities out of Cambodia. So he's trying to get
his rebel movement to ally with the people in power
and sort of force a coup against the government. Um.
And he's one of the guys attacking the king for
being a puppet of the French. So this all comes

(31:14):
to a head in June of nineteen fifty two when
the king, aged thirty, decides it's time for him to
jump into politics for the first time. Um, because he'd
sort of tried to be above factional politics. You know,
if you've got the Cambodian right wing and you've got
the Democrats, and he doesn't really weigh in. So he
finally decides to weigh in, and he gave a speech
attacking the Democrats and whining that people had dared to
say that collaborating with the French wasn't cool. This prompts

(31:36):
an uprising of right wing Cambodians in the city who
take to the streets and advocate for the destruction of
the current Democrat dominated party in power. Calls up French
troops Moroccans. Actually, in the middle of the night on
June ninth, he dissolves the government, assumes emergency powers, and
declares himself Prime Minister. So there you go, I forgot
him out. Emergency powers. Don't manipulate your public. You get

(31:56):
inside every now and then you create an emergency that
you didn't have to, you then have to assume emergency powers.
And it was just a coincidence. Yeah, yeah. So he
announces that he's launching a royal crusade to gain Cambodian
independence within three years. He bans all political meetings in Nompen,
and he has French soldiers and armored vehicles filled the
streets to make sure nobody talks about politics other than

(32:19):
the politics that he wants to. Honestly, that sounds refreshing,
Yeah yeah, No more just armed men stopping you from
talking about the government. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Yeah. So
the French, in spite of the fact that he says
Cambodia needs to be independent from France, the French are
more or less on his side because their basic idea
is that democracy and Cambodia was a mistake. Cambodians aren't

(32:40):
ready to be voting because they're going to vote to
kick the French out, and only a king can keep
things peaceful. The Republicans in the capital, and by that
I mean people who want a republic, not the Conservatives,
because the Conservatives are all about this. The Republicans in
the capital aren't happy. SCENX crackdown inspires protests UH in nineteen.

(33:00):
In November of nineteen fifty two, there's a big strike
by students in Nonpen in several towns. King tells them
all to get back to class, but instead a bunch
of them hold up in the National Assembly, which is
the parliament building. Monks came out to protest and argue
that the king was in fact a dick. Uh. In
January of fifty three, there are some grenade attacks on
schools and Nonpen. Philip Short, author of Anatomy of a Nightmare,

(33:21):
says that these attacks were either from the rebels to
provoke the king into brutal reprisals, or just ordered by
the king so that he could justify a crackdown, And
it seems like it's probably the second one. So he
has some people start throwing grenades into political gatherings so
that he can basically crack down on everybody. So he
gives a speech and says, from now on, any individual

(33:42):
or political party that opposes my policies will be declared
a traitor to the nation and punished accordingly. The king
is supported in this by his mom, who had once
called him tubby. She hated democracy. He thought the idea
of people voting was a deliberate insult to her personally.
That is hilarious. Oh my god, what that is some serious,
malignant narciss is um. Yeah, that is mental illness combined

(34:02):
with power. That is so funny. The personal insult that
people would want to vote, Yeah that like, that's like
that they might want to decide the path of their
country in life is like them shifting on you. There's
also just so many crooked democracies, like yeah, sure of
the populace voted for this one person like, just assume
that you could set that. I love it. I love it.

(34:22):
It's great. Uh My Tubby Son is letting people vote,
get there, letting know you don't get to do cute.
So the French are still on board at this point.
They want a strong man in cambody who can keep
a lid on the Communists, so they support King Shinok
whill he arrests nine members of the Democratic Party and
imprisons them without trial for plotting it for colonial power,

(34:44):
the more brutal your dictator, the better. You don't really,
that's always what happens on the ground. If there's only
one thing happening. Yeah, I can't think of a single
time where a colonial power backed a dictator and didn't
have things work out great. Well, it works for the
colonial power. I'm not saying it works in the sets.
That's like, yeah, a knife works for a murderer. Murder

(35:05):
is not cool, and that's not what I'm saying. It
worked for us. You are France, it makes sense to
prop up a brutal dictator because that prevents anything from changing. Period.
You don't care a brutal it is. You just don't
want to change, and that right there is why all
of the colonial powers are still in charge of their colonies. Well,
I didn't say it works in the long term. There
is no long term success. There's no long con why

(35:28):
it doesn't work. No, Yeah, so you're right the French,
you're doing exactly what you'd expect the French to do.
A Nook disbands student organizations that had any kind of
political bent. He also intacts the heads of the two
Buddhist monastic orders who had protested against him for sympathizing
with the rebels. He says, quote, for the first time
in my life, I have to grab the monks by

(35:50):
the throat, me the most religious man in the kingdom,
because I've had enough, more than enough. My subjects, in
the elite among my subjects, must obey so etly. Thereafter,
right after this, with his kingdom in a state of
unrest and outright civil war in some sections, flies to
France to drop some pounds. So when you read about
this guy in any of the history books, it will

(36:11):
regularly talk about him leaving for France to his house
and the Riviera to take what's called a rest cure
or a dietary cure, which I thought it was because
you hear like terms like that a lot old with
old timey leaders were they're taking a rescue would is
just like taking a vacation, but they don't want to
say they're taking a vacation, so it's like a cure.
For him. It was a weight loss clinic. So he

(36:32):
would go to France regularly throughout his reign when he
got too fat, to go to a French weight loss
clinic and drop pounds. So that's basically what he's doing.
Like he he cracks down on all political descent, he
arrests a bunch of people, uh, and then he goes
to fact. Yeah, so he's a great He's a great,
great guy. This would be a pattern, yeah, for the
king for his entire life. So after fat Camp, the

(36:54):
King flies over to Paris and he meets with the
French President and gives him a list of demands. He
wants full control of the Combodian millet terry, he wants
French people in Cambodia to be subject to Cambodian law,
and he wants to guarantee of eventual independence for his country,
all which those are reasonable things for the head of
state of a country to ask of another country. Who
just took them over two get cheap rice. I guess, um, yeah,

(37:16):
well again it's for a strategic cult, like a position. Yeah, yeah,
they wanted to. Yeah, they had so much more than rice.
They're really good at Yeah. But you know, part of
the reason that they're satisfied is because what they have
is really good. Yeah. Yeah, the people they are satisfied.
The French are not satisfied because, um, colonialism isn't working
out for them because one of those things you'd think,
like after they stopped being in constant conflict with with

(37:38):
Britain and like Germany got sort of cut down to
size by the Second World War, and they'd stop, like
what do we have all these colonies? Like what's what
is what about this? Like everyone else has stopped playing
the game. The game's that going on. It's a different
world now. That process all started after World War One,
when at the end of World War One they rewrote
the lines to figure out how to share stuff because

(38:00):
it's spent centuries taking it over. And what they learned
is you don't get to let it go. You can't
like it's all over your hands. It's not. You're grabbing
a gel, not a solid. You don't need to pull
it away. So they were stuck with it, and they
propped up all these dictators that we're talking about now
and sham governments, and it's just a plan that there
was no option other than for it to fail. Yeah,

(38:21):
no way to end the history that started evil, not evil.
So you're watching the gasps of colonialism, you know, fade away.
But why were they doing this? They already answered that question.
They shouldn't, you know, they were trying to not do it.
There's just no way to undo it. Once you start
sucking the whole world, once you conquered the whole world
for a hundred and fifty years. Yeah, yeah, well yeah, France, France,

(38:43):
I think, had been in control of this part of
the world since the eighteen sixties. Um. So yeah, they've
they've been here a little while, um, which is why
all of their government documents at this time are in
like French and stuff. But to his credit, King Ciano
at no point thinks that colonialism is anything but fucked. Um.
Like when the French you're fighting against the Vietnamese, he's like,

(39:03):
you guys are gonna get your butts kicked. And when
the Americans get involved, he's like this is not gonna
work for anybody, Like he knows that from the get go,
so credit where it's due. He is smarter than all
of the Europeans in this story, which maybe isn't the
highest bar in the world. They're not sending their best
people to uh to run their countries anymore. Um So, Yeah.
He goes to the French president and he's like, uh,

(39:25):
I want, you know, my country's independence and full control
of the military. YadA, YadA, YadA. The French presidents like
L O L no so seen it flies to the
US to see if we would back him in his
quest for independence. Uh. He meets with the Secretary of
State Alan Dulles, who was like, if the French army leaves,
you're gonna all be taken over by communists and we
can't have that, so just be cool with the French

(39:46):
being there. The President refused to meet with him, but
White House officials coordinating his trip did offer to take
the king to the circus, which he took as an insult,
which wouldn't you mean honestly, the President can't hang with you,
and we're not inviting you to dinner, which we always
do with heads of state. But there's a circus. Have
you ever seen elephants? I guess you have these elephants

(40:07):
from Yeah, look at these elephants we took from you
and some Carnis elephants just telegraphing, take me home. It
would be great if he stole carneys and brought carneys
back to Cambodia. Just that's the the cultural exchange he
wants to make. We steal the elephants, they steal Carnis.
That is not an even trade. That's a solid screenplay. Okay,

(40:34):
uh so yeah, um this made seeing look angry. The
French and the Americans both ignoring him. He gives an
explosive interview to The New York Times where he threatens
America that Cambodia will go communist if it's not given
its independence. Done done. He repeated the basic idea a
few months later in a memorandum he's sent to both
the Americans in the British. I'm asking the USA in

(40:55):
Great Britain if just for once, they will kindly consider
the problem with Cambodia from the viewpoint pint of the
Commers instead of that of the French. My people will
tell you, we don't know what communist slavery means, but
the slavery imposed by the French we know well for
we are now living under it. So one of the
weird things about this guy's when you read the things
that he says to his people, he comes across as
a total dick. And when you read everything he's saying

(41:15):
to the colonial powers in the US, he's like totally reasonable, Like,
you guys are ignoring what everybody here wants and just
trying to do your own thing and it's gonna be
a fucking disaster. He's like, yeah, right, But then when
you talk to his own people, it's like descent will
be crushed. Um So, in June of nineteen fifty three,
Sienna Sianna makes his play for Cambodian independence and absolute power.

(41:36):
He secretly goes to Bangkok and he announces that he
won't return to the capital or talk to French officials
again until they agree to set his country free. If
we cannot obtain what we want peacefully. The entire camera
people are resolved to obtain their freedom by other means
and are ready to sacrifice their lives. So a few
days later, uh this prompts the two largest Buddhist orders
in Cambodia to call for a holy war against the French.

(41:58):
The next day, Siana calls for Camare units in the
French army to dessert. At the end of the month,
he called for all citizens between twenty and thirty five
years of age to join the fight for independence. So
the French military and Cambodia basically dissolves overnight because the
king told them to leave, and he's like the fucking
semi divine figure. So the French realized that, like they

(42:18):
just they can't hold the country without this guy who
they've basically been treating as a big toddler the entire time.
So by October they've had enough and they agree to
relinquish all military control of Cambodia to the king. It
will take another year for France to totally pull out
of their former colony, but King Sienok had done it.
In November of nineteen fifty three, the French handed over
total control and a dumb and self aggrandizing ceremony where

(42:40):
they like basically they phrase they frame it as like
a graduation ceremony, like you people are finally ready to
control your country that you ran for thousands of years
before we came in here. Uh but yeah, all's well,
Cambodia is independent, the yoke of colonialism has been cast off,
and the communists are not in charge. So it seems

(43:01):
like things are going great for sanok now, and probably
nothing terrible will happen in this story. But that's the
end of the podcast. This was really fun. I'm not
sure why it was such a bastard that crushing descent
was kind of rude anyway, thanks? Yeah, all right, but no, actually,
that's that is a lie. Oh it didn't go good.
It didn't go good after that. Well, we'll get into
that after we sell some products and doors. Do you

(43:22):
like products? Indoor services? Both products and services? And you
know what else I love exchanging money for them? Yeah.
You know what I love is producing value for shareholders,
which is then handed to me in a fraction that
I can I can spend on my own products and
services which create value for other shareholders. What do you know?
So let's all do that right now and we're back.

(43:49):
We are talking about King Nora, Dame Sianna, who has
just succeeded in wangling freedom for his country from the
French colonial oppressor pig dogs. Uh so, it seems like
all great, except for everything isn't great. Uh. Scenx triumph
led to an immediate and bloody escalation of the fighting
in Cambodia. The rebels, under that fan guy we talked

(44:09):
about earlier, argued that the Prince was basically slave of
the French. They claimed that his friendly relations with them
were proofd that he was just a figurehead and he
was going to send Cambodians over to die in Vietnam.
Uh So, Yeah, the fighting continued, and it turned out
that sn wasn't actually all that good at war. By
the middle of nineteen fifty four, he'd lost about his
territory to the rebels. The fighting was bloody enough that

(44:31):
nobody wanted to really keep killing, and in May, rebel
representatives and the king traveled to Switzerland to talk it
out with a bunch of other countries, including Vietnam, the US,
and for some reason, Canada. There's other countries there to
Canada was just the one that we wise, what is
Canada really good at apology? Yeah, so this is right
around the time you know, you had you had North Vietnam,
and North Korea had already been established at that point,

(44:52):
and so the Khmer rebels in the north are like,
we want our own separate country. We don't want to
be ruled by the king. We want our own like
legit democracy and stuff where we can, you know, choose
our own path without this king doing whatever the hell
he wants. And yeah, so that's their hope going into this.
Going into the session, the rebels begged the Soviet Union
and China to stick up for them um, but the

(45:13):
US did not want what they assumed would just become
a separate communist Cambodia above regular Cambodia, and the Soviet
Union in China weren't willing to fight for the Cambodian
So everybody works out in agreement where the rebels will
lay down their arms and elections will be held in nineteen.
It sounds like Sanok wins this one, but everybody knew
that once the elections were held, the Democrats, which were

(45:35):
heavily backed by the rebels, would win, and their most
popular candidate would be than the guy who had been
leading the rebels. So this would have left Sinook is
the constitutional monarch of a government that hated him and
was definitely going to do whatever it could to turn
him into just a figurehead. So the US is happy
with this because it means that, unlike everywhere else in
Southeast Asia, a country was about to happily vote for
a democratic government they actually liked than he was pro US.

(45:57):
So they're like, this is a great thing for us.
You know, we've we've established a democracy in Southeast Asia.
Let's wash our hands and walk away. But Sanok is
not happy letting people choose who they wanted to lead
them basically ran against all of his deeply held convictions,
most of which were that he should be the guy
in charge of Cambodia. So in February of nineteen fifty five,
after this agreement has made and the rebels laid down

(46:18):
their arms, the king calls a referendum on his royal crusade,
you know, the thing that freed Cambodia from the French,
And he's basically asking the whole kingdom to vote, do
you like me? Yes or no. Voters were told, quote,
if you love the king, choose a white ballot. If
you don't love the king, a black ballot. Of those
voting percent shows white ballots saying they loved the king.

(46:38):
But the turnout was really low, not a lot of
people of he and his mom. Yeah, of him, and
his mom calls him. Yeah. Uh So a few days later, um,
you know, he's kind of fuming over the low turnout,
and he's fuming over the fact that all the polls
are saying the Democrat and this guy he doesn't like

(47:01):
then are going to win the election. And he winds
up renting a house next to a big gathering for
the Democratic Party and like listening into one of their
speeches and it ends and there's this huge eruption of applause,
and according to people who are there with him at
the time, he starts weeping with rage when he hears
how popular the Democrats are. So he's desperate and his fragile,
fragile ego that's some more schoolyard ship. Yeah, hearing people

(47:22):
cheering for like someone else on it's like it's not
enough to be a beloved king. Like the fact that
anybody else's liked is just burning him alive. Uh So, Yeah,
he's desperate and his fragile ego can't take being sidelined
by some popularly elected politicians. So in March, the king

(47:43):
makes a surprise broadcast. Surprise. Yeah, oh, not like a
fun one, though it's not like a birthday party. You
tell me, I'm gonna read the broadcast. My enemies work
against me ceaselessly, and I should note that anytime there's
a me in here, it's spelled with the M capitalized. Oh, Royals.

(48:03):
Nothing like that will ever happen again, and certainly not
in our own country. I will say this could almost
be a tweet from our current president. Close your eyes
and listen, and just pretend. Certain of our students who
love injustice are determined to serve the democrats and son
knock than the educated, the highly placed, and the rich
spend their time throwing up obstacles to my work for
the sake of their own interest and ambitions. All of

(48:26):
this has completely discouraged me and prevents me continuing to reign.
If I remain on the throne, I will be unable
to work in your interests, my poor and humble subjects.
Freed from my golden cage in the Royal Palace, I
offer my life and my strength to my people, for
though I leave the throne, I shall not shirk my
duty to serve. So the King abdicated, he throws down

(48:48):
his office, fire me. I quit. Yeah, well the king abdicates,
he has his dad become the new king after him,
because you know, yes, I guess usually how they do that.
So now he's a prince and a private citizen and
he's free to run for election against the Democrats. So
he creates his own political party. He calls it the

(49:09):
People's Community, so it would sound like a socialist party,
even though it wasn't. All the conservative Cambodians instantly dropped
their parties and they flocked to the Prince's banner, along
with more than a few of the Democrats, because hey,
the prince is popular. The Prince's party Senko makes a
formidable rival to the Democrats. But the King had misjudged
a little. His party had no policies and no plans.

(49:29):
It's only stated goal was blind support of Prince Shannack.
So uh, I love that you go, like as a
leader of the party, you go from like being actually
king and then when you're running for office to be
essentially a king or like, you know, a an executive leader.
You get to the you get you get up to

(49:50):
make a speech and you're like, I don't know my plan.
Don't you just call me king or print doesn't it
just become prep I still just go to fat camp,
right I want to be president. Plan is to go
back to fat camp, just like it was. It's eerie,
how well you've predicted this. So cab only stress eating
a lot right now, I'm just saying, oh god, he
must be just baguettes all day long, man pouring crying.

(50:14):
How could you not if you? If I was literally,
if I was like a Cambodian king, I would be
like a feudal lord, just walking from like street food
cart to street food cart, like I have come for
my offering chicken and rice and tea. Immediately I will
have the duck as well. So this is a mark
of the kind of man he is, because he could

(50:35):
have legitimately lived that life where he just is rich
and beloved and gets fed forever, and he could just
walk around letting people give him things that could be
his whole life. But instead he wants to be in charge,
which only crazy people want. Only crazy people actually want. Yes,
So the King's party has no policies and no plans. Uh.
And even with the King's popularity, the Democrats are still

(50:56):
slated to win a lot of the seats, and so
he's not going to be an absolute power, you know,
he's going to have to do a coalition government and
be a democracy. The King wants no part in that,
so five weeks before the vote, he uses his control
of the police and military to launch a massive intimidation
campaign against the Cambodian left wing. He has the authors
of communist and lefty journals and newspapers imprisoned. Several far

(51:18):
left candidates are outright and murdered. King Sianoch uses the
unrest from his repective tactics to justify a heavy police
presence at the voting stations, so he starts arresting people.
That leads to protests, which he then uses his evidence
that he needs to fill the polling locations with police
and soldiers. Uh left wing voters who were brave enough
to go vote were handed colored voting slips, each color

(51:38):
representing a party and they didn't have to put the
slip into an urn while officials, police and soldiers watched them.
So voter turnout was not great among the Cambodian left wing,
but the King still did not do very well, so
he had his minions just lie about the vote count
in constituencies where his party's candidate finished second. They just
outright destroy all the voting slips and murder the winner. Um.

(52:00):
Very simple, very simple. So there's a lot of like
when he King spoiler alert died in two thousand twelve,
I think, and when you read the obituaries about him, uh,
they're mostly positive in like Western newspapers, and they'll all
talk about like none of them are even consistent about
how much he won by. They'll all say between eighty

(52:21):
four and of the vote, which just like but nobody.
It's frustrating because like the Telegraph or someone will be
like reporting on this and say, like, and he won
election with vote, No, he didn't murdered people. The newspapers
and like the well, the journalism in Colognia, like Colonizer's nations,
have a really hard time actually reporting on why, Like

(52:44):
the who, what, when, and where is not that hard,
but why these things are happening kind of eludes, like
you know, even still, but I imagine especially the reporting
at the time is a little clueless about the why.
The weird thing is the reporting at the time. When
he wins this election, the foreign journalists who are in
Cambodia cry fowl at the obvious cheating, Like they're like,

(53:06):
this is clearly fucked up. Here's all of the different
net like things that went wrong that we're wrong, but
the international community sticks their fingers in their ears. So
the Americans and the French, you're just happy Cambodia didn't
go communist, and they're kind of like, don't like, who
gives a funk? Who gives a funk of this country
that's not America has a prince dictator now. So the
whole mess lead one Cambodian voter to conclude taking part

(53:27):
in elections is just for propaganda. An election is a
power struggle. The one who has power in his hands
is the one who controls the outcome. When I guess
who said that, Oh, come one, Yes, that's little it's
got He's got a pot and poll as cute as
I could make that. Yeah, so this is kind of

(53:47):
his little worship. Shouldn't get a fun name. If you're
a dictator, you shouldn't get you shouldn't get something fun
to say. It should be clunky. It's hard. I am
already ashamed. I keep calling the Prince the prince because
I am intimidated about getting names wrong. And I apologize
written down. I've written it down phonetically all over my
note card. Uh, but I'm still gonna call him the Prince.

(54:09):
And Paul Pott is just so it's shouldn't be fun
to say, No, it shouldn't. And he has the cutest
name of anyone. Yeah, in terms, I mean, the list
is pretty short. Yeah, but chairman mal pretty cute because
it makes me think of cats. Sure, yeah, but the
chairman part real heavy. Yeah, the Chairman is not a
cute name. Paul Pot branding is real sharp. Yeah, yeah, clean,

(54:32):
you know, and that's that. You've got to give credit
to the Communist Their branding was on point at this
period of time, in this period of time, but that slipped. Yeah,
they paid less attention to the astatics time went on.
Yeah yeah, yeah, that's very true. Uh so Yeah, Paul
Pot at the time of this election is working for
the camp for the Democratic Party. Um so he's he's

(54:52):
working for the Democratic Party, but he's also an officer
in a secret underground Cambodian Communist Party. Uh. Paul Pot
and his fellow Imanists did want to change Cambodia's system
of government, but prior to the election, they hadn't wanted
a violent war and overthrow or anything. So Mausi Dung,
who was basically like the most respected sort of communist
philosopher in Asia, had laid out a theory of how

(55:14):
to flip countries like Cambodia who were feudal or colonized
nations that didn't have a big laboring class um. And
it was like, how to flip them the communism without bloodshed? Um.
So first you needed a democratic revolution where peasants and
workers in the bourgeoisie all worked together to supplant the king,
kick out the colonizers, and gain a democracy. And then
Mao said, you'd have a normal democracy for decades, probably

(55:36):
for a very long time, and it would be capitalist
and that would be that would be fine, And basically
the left would gain power gradually over time as people
saw the flaws and capitalism, until everyone just agreed that
communism was a swell idea and you had a peaceful
transition to communism. Well that's what these guys were wanting
to do. So Pol Pot, as a young man right
up until this election happens, believes in the democratic process,

(55:59):
thinks it's a necessary step on the way towards making
a country the way he wants to be and doesn't
want there to be any fighting in his country. Um,
you know they would have been happy with the Democrats
winning power and you know then just voting for a while.
But when ak yeah, just before and I hear about
the rest of this, I'm going to say that if

(56:20):
you're a guy who kills a million and a half people,
be you a prince or fighting against a princeton, a
Democratic party, that's in you before you get that power,
you don't care how you get it. You're a site.
You're a sociopath, so you don't have any moral connection
to what you're actually spewing. You just collect and want power,

(56:40):
influence whatever it is. If you this guy would have
you know again, if he was just a bad assistant manager,
he would have killed everyone in his Army's like it's yeah,
I feel like these seeds were already planted. I feel
like and and the Prince are the same evil born
in different soil. I feel like the seeds are there,
but I don't feel like they're necessarily getting watered like

(57:03):
you've got I think pol pot for one thing, he's
a little different than like he's not like a guy
like Hitler, So you get a guy like like, You've
got kind of these two different theories of how to
look at history. There's trends and forces and then there's
like the great man theory, and like it's probably a
mix of the two. But you look at like in
Germany after World War One, there was going to be
another fight between France and Germany because of just how

(57:25):
the whole thing fucking in. Somebody who was some strong
man asshole was going to take charge of Germany. But
because it's Hitler, you have the Holocaust and the invasion
of like Russia and whatnot. And I think pol Pot
is more like interesting, well were he kind of he
like certain things like there was because of the ship
the Prince is doing because he's clamping down an oppression,

(57:46):
because he's he's giving the left no legitimate way to
win power. There was going to be a left wing
revolution in Cambodia, and it was worse than it would
have been because pol Pot is the man he is.
But I think the Prince made it inevitable that this
was going to happen. I think him crushing all descent
and me because like I got like maybe pulpod always

(58:06):
would have been an asshole, but there's like like it
it's it's I don't know. It's hard to say because
like before this time, he's like driving around in a
in a nice car and he's like dating like rich
ladies and like wants to be like it doesn't seem
to want to murder three million people at this point
in his life. And I guess, you know, it's it's

(58:27):
debatable as to what would happen. But I don't know.
I don't know if you're the person who can do
that that is in you and no moral compass, no
philosophy you spouses greater than whatever synaps fires that lets
you kill a million people. But I I feel like
that synapse is there. You're absolutely right, But I don't
know that it necessarily leads to you, because there's got

(58:49):
to be We've probably all worked with someone who, if
they gained power, could kill a million and a half
people or whatever. Yes, but instead they're a stand up
comedian because that's is the way life goes. I just
think of it. Jim Jones, who was like, you know
his politics. If all you did was list out Jim
Jones politics, you'd be like well, this sounds like a
person I probably agree with on most things. And then

(59:10):
you're like, oh, called leader, who killed who just killed?
Who killed everyone? Because it's the you're you know, it's
interesting when the ship you agree with the shell of
someone and then on the inside is this horrible evil thing.
So I feel like even if Paul Pot was like, no,
I'm a good guy, don't believe in colonial per I
want justice, it's you know, you're somewhere in you someone
who's gonna kill. Yeah, that guy was always in here,

(59:33):
But I do I take your point that because you know,
the Prince said in motion something that you know you
couldn't stop, and Paul Pot is who he is, So
it was that well, and you're looking at Cambodia prior
to this, it's not a country where most people are
biting at the whip to like revolt against the system

(59:53):
that exists. But that starts to change after the Prince,
you know, brutally suppresses the left wing and essentially makes
himself President Prince Um, which is, you know, President Prince
is like an alternate universe. I would love to live
exactly both pictured exactly what chapless purple pants and like
the white Mouse is like all technicolor because it's like white,
but you put the colors the laser show and ships.

(01:00:15):
You know what, no one would have died in the
war for Afghanistan and it would be so much more
like could dance so well man, Sorry, thank you, thank
you for taking me there. Okay, yeah, yeah yeah. Can
you imagine the things he would have done to the
White House Bowling Alley? Oh my goodness. Yeah, it would
have been a disco tech and it would have been
fucking incredible. God that cabinet. Yeah okay, uh, well, now

(01:00:38):
that we're all happy, good okay, Yeah, let's get back
to talking about Cambodia. In the mid fifties, pol Pot
decides that democracies bullshit and shortly thereafter takes to the
jungle with all of his friends and comrades to do
a jungle communist ship. Um so yeah. Sanic is largely
backed by conservatives, but he himself is not a conservative

(01:00:59):
or a fist. He is a himist. His only guiding
moral principle is that he should be in charge of Cambodia,
so he doesn't really give a shit about politics. He
just wants to be the guy. Uh. He's a smart guy.
He knows that Cambodia is going to eventually go full communist.
He knows the number one power in the region, China,
is already communist, and he knows the United States is
going to eventually get fed up with sticking their dick
in the whole area and leave Vietnam. So he figures

(01:01:22):
that his main worry is the Vietnamese. Uh they have
a history of bullying Cambodia and they're the main backers
of the Cambodian communist movement. So see, Hannah comes up
with a pretty clever plan. Who will let the Vietnamese
use his country as a highway for their guns and
money first to fight against the French and in the US.
He'll even let tens of thousands of them hide in
Cambodia when the fighting isn't going their way. But they
have to stop giving guns to and training the local

(01:01:44):
Cambodian communists. Obviously, this pisses off the United States. So
SNX promised to them is that he'll brutally repress the
communists in Cambodia. We go one hand, how you do it,
that's how you brutally dictate exactly. So in foreign policy, terms,
he's in low step with the USSR in China, but
domestically he's doing like a triple McCarthy and like everything,

(01:02:05):
like killing all the communists in his own country. So
Nora Dam Sahannak is the only guy who was simultaneously
on both sides of the Cold War for the entirety
of the Cold War, dancing and dancing and dancing and
dancing down. Yeah, yeah, so we are. Yeah. So, the
Prince's father served as king when the prince first abdicated.
When he died in nineteen sixty, the Snox mom, Queen Cosamac,

(01:02:29):
wanted to be crowned, but you know, his mom had
spent his whole life calling him fat. So the king
flips the script on his mom uh and makes her
guarding of the throne, which is a position with no power,
and instead pushes through a constitutional amendment to make himself
head of state for life. So now by nineteen sixty
he is the president and the head of state for life.
And that is where we are going to end the

(01:02:49):
podcast for today, and we will be back on Thursday
to talk about the rest of sanus wacky career, which
is I mean, it's it's gonna get dark. I bet
we're gonna here about some infrastructure improvement. I bet we're
gonna hear a lot about like Robert's rules and how
it was implemented. Are you calling water filtration plants? Because
I got nine pages of water filtration plants. I'm so

(01:03:12):
looking forward to that beer rock, gros see beer rock.
That's what's coming, right, A good chance, that's a good chance.
It's definitely not like death destruction. And I mean, see
you next time, not yet, see you next time. Because
we have we you should plug some things before we
we roll out for the day and a half between
the next podcast. I am Caitlin Gill and I have
a website. It is called Caitlin Gill Comedy dot com

(01:03:33):
and you can go there and then you can see
my schedule. It's the tab you click it and then
there'll be a little calendar. You get tickets to any
of my life shows. Also, July eleventh, some Monsters comes
out on True TV. Watch it. I'm Robert Evans. I
don't have any live shows, but I have a book.
You can buy it on Amazon. It's called A Brief
History of Vice. You can find me on Twitter at
I write Okay, two letters and uh. This show Behind

(01:03:54):
the Bastards is also on the internet www dot Behind
the Bastards dot com. You can also find us on
social media at Bastard's Pod, so check us out. We'll
be putting sources and images up so that you can
sort of follow along and get the visual picture of
the story. And we will be back on Thursday with
part two of this particular Bastard's tale. H m m