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Pol Pot & Cambodian Genocide

bodia, a small group of individuals at the core of the Pol Pot group were ultimately responsible for large-scale genocide. The Khmer Rouge consolidated their power in Cambodia after 1976, and soon launched a murderous campaign to rid the country of all those it viewed as a threat to the groupsÆ ideology of a communal, classless, agrarian society. Since CambodiaÆs government had been unstable in the past, those who believed in this radical ideology had come of age in an atmosphere of abrupt change, fear, and intrigue. They embraced a political philosophy which advocated elimination of any undesirable groups whose existence might possibly interfere with the success of their national plan. Thus it was political and social ideology that helped build the path to genocide, not something based on ethnicity or religion. As Kiernan (2002) argues, ôThe atrocities of Cambodia represented a nearly pure political and ideological madness, not an ethnic or religious oneö (102).

Isolated as rebel guerillas in the remote rural areas of Cambodia, the youthful Khmer Rouge reinforced their aggressive responses to those outside the movement. City dwellers, the educated, anyone showing evidence of foreign contamination were targeted. The development of the Khmer Rouge aggressive behavior patterns was the product of a multidimensional set of interacting factors, involving family, peers, cultural institutions, and social affiliations. The Khmer Rouge guerillas, many of them teenagers, became the in-group while the Cambodian majority became the out-group. Aggressive behaviors were modeled by older in-group members, then expanded and implements as younger members matured. Ironically, the Khmer RougeÆs drive to genocide started as the rebellion of an out-group of rural outcasts against the corrupt cities. The tides of war and history transformed them into the dominant in-group, so that any and all aggressive actions they committed were justifie...

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Pol Pot & Cambodian Genocide. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:32, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710898.html