Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part One – The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Released April 29, 2025 by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction: Setting the Stage

The episode kicks off with the hosts—Robert Evans, Andrew Torres, Jim, and Sophie—engaging in their trademark humorous banter. They delve into light-hearted topics such as Ben Affleck's back tattoo and Boston accents, establishing a playful rapport before transitioning into the episode's main focus.

• Andrew Torres [00:01]: "Welcome back to Behind the Bastards..."
• Jim [00:20]: "Oh, my goodness gracious. Jiminy Christmas."

Introducing Pol Pot: The Unexpected Protagonist

The conversation swiftly shifts to the grim subject of Pol Pot, positioning him as Cambodia's most notorious dictator. The hosts compare him to other infamous figures like Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, ultimately crowning Pol Pot as Cambodia's worst.

• Andrew Torres [08:40]: "There's strong competition for being the dude who was worst to Cambodia in the 20th century... But Pol Pot probably still does win the crown."

Early Life and Family Background

Andrew Torres delves into Pol Pot's origins, revealing his real name—Saloth Sar—and his upbringing in an upper-middle-class family in Prek Sihanoukville. Pol Pot's father, a prosperous landowner, and his mother, a humanitarian Buddhist, provided him with a privileged yet insulated childhood.

• Andrew Torres [10:11]: "Pol Pot's not his name. He was born Saloth Sar, which sounds like a Marvel villain."

The hosts discuss the ambiguity surrounding Pol Pot's birth date, highlighting Cambodia's poor record-keeping during the 1920s and the common practice of altering birthdates to gain educational advantages.

• Andrew Torres [12:27]: "We don't know when he was born."

Cambodia Under French Colonialism

The episode provides historical context, explaining Cambodia's status as part of French Indochina. The French colonizers were a revered yet detached minority, fostering deep-seated resentment among the Khmer population toward Vietnamese and Chinese minorities who dominated the local business sectors.

• Andrew Torres [16:34]: "Cambodia has been the property of either China or Vietnam or Thailand for large parts of its history."

Education and Early Influences

Pol Pot's education played a pivotal role in shaping his future ideology. After spending a year in a Buddhist monastery to maintain his Khmer identity, he attended a French-style school where he was exposed to both Buddhist teachings and French Catholicism. The rigid and punitive educational environment fostered a black-and-white worldview, essential for his later brutal leadership.

• Andrew Torres [22:06]: "Salothsar's family was upper middle class... Saloth played in the school basketball team."

Personal anecdotes reveal the harsh disciplinary methods Pol Pot endured, including severe beatings and torture-like punishments for minor infractions. These experiences contributed to his hardened personality.

• Andrew Torres [24:00]: "There's obviously an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into Pol Pot."
• Jim [24:03]: "Don't punish your kids with ants. Can we agree on that?"

Political Awakening and Early Involvement

In the late 1940s, Pol Pot becomes increasingly involved in Cambodia's burgeoning nationalist movements. Despite his lackluster academic performance, he secures a scholarship to study in Paris in 1949 alongside future Khmer Rouge leaders. This exposure to global political ideologies, including communism, solidified his revolutionary beliefs.

• Andrew Torres [56:14]: "In 1947, Salazar gets picked for that study abroad program and becomes one of the first hundred Khmer male and female students to win a scholarship to go study in Paris."

The hosts emphasize the irony of Pol Pot's seemingly unremarkable and pleasant demeanor juxtaposed with his capacity for extreme violence, highlighting how such contradictions are common among dictatorial figures.

• Andrew Torres [38:51]: "Almost every source agrees he was an incredibly nice, like, polite, pleasant guy to be around."
• Jim [38:55]: "That's so weird. I did not know that. That's like so bizarre."

Study Abroad in Paris: Solidifying Revolutionary Ideals

Pol Pot's time in Paris was transformative. Living alongside other politically inclined students, he was exposed to Marxist and communist ideologies, which resonated with his growing disillusionment with Cambodia's socio-political landscape. The influence of radical literature and the witnessing of Japanese military actions against the French heightened his resolve to overthrow the existing regime.

• Andrew Torres [53:27]: "We're going to talk about all the reading that these kids do... the propaganda impact of seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists."

The hosts draw parallels between Pol Pot's experience and modern tech moguls like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, suggesting that radical reimagining of societal structures driven by insular groups can have catastrophic outcomes.

• Andrew Torres [05:54]: "The Khmer Rouge guys both read books... how their comrades orchestrated the deaths of roughly a quarter to a third of their country."

Personal Traits and Contradictions

Despite his brutal legacy, Pol Pot is portrayed as a man with a pleasant and unassuming personality during his early years. His peers remember him as funny, gentle, and even-shy, a stark contrast to the ruthless leader he would become. This duality underscores the complexity of his character and the erasure of his violent inclinations in his personal interactions.

• Andrew Torres [45:41]: "Seri was funny, easy to be around, and he was most particularly gentle."
• Jim [42:06]: "Jesus Christ."

Conclusion: Building Towards Genocide

The episode concludes with a reflection on how Pol Pot's early life—marked by privilege, harsh discipline, and radical political exposure—set the stage for his future atrocities. The hosts tease that the tension between his benign childhood and his genocidal leadership will be further explored in Part Two.

• Andrew Torres [67:00]: "This is like that first Star Wars prequel where it's like, he's kind of an annoying kid... How could things go badly?"
• Jim [67:05]: "What could possibly go wrong?"

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Notable Quotes

1. Andrew Torres [05:54]:

   "The Khmer Rouge guys both read books. And also one thing you can't take away from Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge guys, they were hard as fuck. By the time they got in charge, they'd spent 20 years fighting in the jungle."

2. Jim [24:03]:

   "Don't punish your kids with ants. Can we agree on that?"

3. Andrew Torres [38:51]:

   "Almost every source agrees he was an incredibly nice, like, polite, pleasant guy to be around."

4. Andrew Torres [53:27]:

   "The propaganda impact of seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists."

5. Jim [67:05]:

   "What could possibly go wrong?"

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Final Thoughts

The hosts adeptly intertwine historical analysis with personal anecdotes and humor, creating an engaging narrative that unravels the complexities of Pol Pot's ascent to power. By humanizing a figure responsible for immense suffering, they explore the unsettling realities of how seemingly ordinary individuals can orchestrate extraordinary atrocities. The episode sets the foundation for a deeper examination of Pol Pot's reign, promising further insights in the subsequent part.

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For more episodes of "Behind the Bastards," visit Cool Zone Media or find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and other major podcast platforms.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Call Zone Media.

[Andrew Torres]

Oh, my goodness gracious. Jiminy Christmas. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert Evans is using the phrase Jiminy Christmas. For some goddamn reason, we're allowed to curse on this. I don't get it.

[Robert Evans]

I almost just said your Boston accent to you. When you did that, I don't know.

[Andrew Torres]

Were you gonna do. What does the Sophie, Robert Boston accent sound like?

[Sophie]

Sophie?

[Andrew Torres]

No, it's terrible. No, you gotta.

[Jim]

That's your Boston accent.

[Robert Evans]

That's Boston Rob.

[Andrew Torres]

Boston. See, you gotta put more of like a. Like a spit, like some rhyme on it, Sophie. It's gonna sound like. It's gotta sound like you're screeching it over a bunch of wet rocks.

[Robert Evans]

I just tried.

[Jim]

Just like the Pilgrims did.

[Andrew Torres]

Just like the Pilgrims did. Yes. When they landed in Boston.

[Robert Evans]

I just think that's something that only you can do. I don't know. What about Jiminy Cricket was like, I want to do Robert's Boston, but we were there.

[Andrew Torres]

Neither do I. Neither do I. Neither do I. Andrew T. What up, Andrew?

[Robert Evans]

What do you think of Ben Affleck's back tattoo?

[Jim]

Oh, Ben Affleck's back tattoo. I think it's actually pretty pleasant. Commitment to. It's like, the most authentic thing he has going on.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah.

[Jim]

Like, he is just a Boston guy.

[Andrew Torres]

See, I think he is. I think he's. He's our most. One of our most authentic male celebrities that we've ever had. That doesn't mean, like. I'm not saying he's a good person. He's obviously not. But you can tell in his face that he knows that and hates himself, which is what I love about Ben Affleck.

[Jim]

He is keeping it real. He's keeping it indisputably real.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. Yeah. That picture of him, like, looking at J. Lo's butt and just being. Having the look on his face like he's just watched fucking Dresden go up in flames is like. It's because he's thinking, like, obviously, I'm going to cheat on her. Like, I'm Ben Affleck. I have no choice in the matter. I simply can't be a scumbat, not be a scumbag.

[Robert Evans]

Besides the beloved tattoo, I personally enjoy the video of Ben Affleck putting Jennifer Lopez in the car and then slamming the door and then realizing the paparazzi caught him being like.

[Jim]

Jiminy Christmas.

[Robert Evans]

I have no idea what's what, what mood I'm in, but this is how we're starting the.

[Andrew Torres]

I had a friend of mine made me rewatch Gone Girl recently.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, he's like playing himself.

[Andrew Torres]

I'm just like, oh, yeah. Ben Affleck didn't even know they were filming. He was pleasantly surprised to realize he wasn't in trouble for murder at the end of this movie.

[Robert Evans]

Fun fact about Gone Girl is he had to stop production for multiple days because he was refusing to wear. I think it was like a Yankees hat that they wanted him to wear, but he's like, I'm from Boston. I can't wear.

[Andrew Torres]

Perfect. Perfect bit.

[Robert Evans]

I think he ended up. They ended up like, settling on him wearing a Mets hat. And it's like. It's like, come the fuck on. Come the fuck on.

[Andrew Torres]

Incredible stuff.

[Robert Evans]

I clearly was a Yankee fan. Like, what are we doing here?

[Jim]

I think that also means he possibly didn't really. He didn't read that movie the same way the rest of us read that movie.

[Andrew Torres]

No, no. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

This podcast has literally nothing to do with Boston, the Yankees, Ben Affleck back tattoo.

[Andrew Torres]

Well, you know this. We're talking about a guy who you could call the Ben Affleck of Cambodian revolutionaries, because this week we're finally doing Pol Pot. That's right, everybody.

[Jim]

Oh, man.

[Andrew Torres]

Oh, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Andrew, we brought you on for a.

[Andrew Torres]

Pole position here, baby.

[Jim]

Thank you.

[Andrew Torres]

Well, when we're going for the big guns, Andrew T. You can't do better. And this is also, unfortunately, we did King Nordam Sahannaq, who was the king of Cambodia and also a massive piece of shit, had a lot to do with how the Khmer Rouge got in power and why they killed so many fucking people. And he's also a lot less known. Like, I think generally people who have any kind of reasonable education are aware of Pol Pot, whereas, like King Saharan, not nearly as well known. So I thought it was important to start with him years ago. I think Pol Pot is really relevant now. I think actually right now might be the most relevant he has been since the horrible crimes against humanity he was committing. Because at least from a perspective of a podcast that is primarily speaking to listeners in the United States. And it is because the way in which he and his comrades orchestrated the deaths of roughly between a quarter and a third of their country, something like that, we're talking a death toll of about is somewhere. Somewhere in between like 1 1/2 to 3 million. I think probably 2 million is probably. Is generally kind of like the. The hedging. Your guess estimate out of a pre war population of maybe 6 million Cambodians. Right. And the reason I'm saying that this is extra relevant, right now is that what essentially happened is camp in Cambodia is you had this cadre of guys who started as young men hanging out in reading groups, talking about politics and making plans for how they would like to rebuild their country and reorganize their country starting from this position they called Year Zero, right? Like we're going to totally, totally strip down everything that had existed before and start new based on these ideas we had in our, like, weird little friend groups, right? Well, that's essentially what's happening with guys like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and their cadre of fanatic young Doge kids, right, who are disassembling the administrative state for fun and trying to rebuild it based on a bunch of shit that they discussed on 4chan and 8chan over the years, right?

[Jim]

The difference is the these motherfuckers have never read a book, but otherwise, yeah, pretty close.

[Andrew Torres]

And the Khmer Rouge guys both read books. And also one thing you can't take away from Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge guys, they were hard as fuck. By the time they got in charge, they'd spent 20 years fighting in the jungle. So, right, we have that going for us. But I do think there's a lot relevant here in the story of how a group of people, and particularly the dude at the head, come to believe a set of things about how the world should be remade and then pursue those goals no matter the cost. And that's kind of the story we're going to be telling this week. So I hope you're excited.

[Jim]

I hope you can't fucking wait. Jesus Christ.

[Robert Evans]

Fucking go.

[Sophie]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Andrew Torres]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Andrew Torres]

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[Sophie]

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[Andrew Torres]

So let's fucking go and talk about the man who. Well, one of the men who really fucked up Cambodia. I gotta say, there's strong competition for being the dude who was worst to Cambodia in the 20th century. You got Kissinger, you got Nixon, you got King Sahanna, you got Lon Nol, who we'll talk about later. But Pol Pot probably still does win the crown, which is hard being the worst guy for Cambodia in the 20th century. Crowded ass field. It's a crowded. He's.

[Jim]

I mean, he's also just like, he's got the name recognition and he didn't have a massive white watching campaign waged on his behalf. So.

[Andrew Torres]

No, no, he didn't have that. So the first thing you need to know about Pol Pot is that Pol Pot's not his name. Right? Like this is a nom de revolution. You know, you get this with all of these guys. Joseph Stalin wasn't born Joseph Stalin. He literally just picked the name Joe Steele. Cause it's sounded cool. Right. And a lot of these guys do that because for one thing, it's just smart if you're planning to overthrow your government to work under a fake name. And for another thing, usually your fake name sounds cooler than your real name. And one of the first thing that makes Pol Pot unique is that Pol Pot is not a cool name. And it was never meant to be. It doesn't sound. It's not cooler in Cambodian. It basically means like Joe Khmer. Like the Khmer are the ethnic people that are the majority of Cambodia. Like he's basically Pol Pot is the Khmer equivalent of calling yourself like Joe America almost. Right. I'm the average man. Right, right. That's basically what he was saying.

[Jim]

Or like John Doe sort of.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, like John Doe. His real name sounds like a fucking like Marvel villain. He was born Saloth Sar, which is like such a cool name like that. That is the name of a guy who fist fights Batman, like, I'm sorry. And does.

[Jim]

Well, he wins for two acts.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He breaks Batman's spine at one point. Right. Salazar. It goes by Pol Pot. No, this name goes too hard. Nobody will believe that. Sal Azar was born in a village called Prekshav, a couple of miles west of the capital of his province and about 90 miles north of Phnom Penh, which is the capital of Cambodia. For decades, there was considerable debate as to the precise year of his birth. And we don't have perfect knowledge of when he was born. There are a couple of reasons for this. Just beyond the general fact that record keeping in impoverished rural Cambodia wasn't great in the 20s. People were not like, keep it did. No one was digitizing anything. Right. And Cambodia's educational system hinged a lot on your birth date because the central administrator administration was lacking a culture that. Sorry, the central administration basically, if you had, if you wanted your kid to kind of get into the best kind of school that they could get into, if you came from a prosperous family, and Saloth does, it was common to like alter your kid's birthday to maximize which school they would get into. And that was as easy as literally just changing markings on a piece of paper. Cause there wasn't anything like centrally kept, right. So there was a strong culture of changing your kid's birthday, at least by a few, but sometimes by a couple of years in order to like get them where you wanted them to go. Biographer Philip Short says that Salazar's real birthday was probably March of 1925. Others will say May of 1927. Pol Pot himself told journalist Nate Thayer that he'd been born in January of 1925. But he just recalled that because he saw like basically a post it note. It wasn't a literal post it but like a note that was like posted on top of like a cabinet in their kitchen. And this would be him remembering it as like a five year old. So we don't know when he was born.

[Jim]

But somewhere in that period, my grandparents literally also had this. I wonder if now I'm realizing they did this for the same reason, but they were very, very squirrely about what their actual birth dates were.

[Andrew Torres]

I knew someone and interviewed someone once who had grown up as a hunter gatherer in the highlands of Vietnam. They were a Montignard and they were 16 or 17 the first time they heard music that wasn't being played in Front of them. They didn't know what electric lights were for a while. And then yeah, we're like, yeah, I have no idea when I was born, I'm probably 26, I think was what they told me at the time.

[Jim]

It's like if I really sat down I could maybe make an educated guess, but I do not know. Yeah, my grandparents were like, there was a war, records got lost, we don't know.

[Andrew Torres]

We had a lot of other priorities that bring us up.

[Jim]

Other shit was happening.

[Andrew Torres]

Birthday.

[Jim]

Yeah, birthdays weren't high even for kids.

[Andrew Torres]

Salothsar's family was upper middle class, right. He came from about as much privilege as a non noble member of Cambodia, of Khmer society could in this period of time. His father, Pinsaloth owned a lot of land. Now how much? A lot. Like I think something like 2 to 3 hectares would be like a normal amount for a peasant farmer to own. Biographer David Chandler says that Penn owned about nine hectares. But Philip Short, whose book is more recent and I think works off of better information, says that it was more like 50 hectares, so about 10 times the average. And their house was probably the largest of the 20 or so houses in the village. So they're not rich as like they're not one of the people who run the country, but they're, they're the, they're the wealthiest guy in town, right? That's, that's his dad, you know. Pensalo was prosperous enough to hire his neighbors to help out during harvest time. So like that's the kind of money he had where like I am paying my neighbors to do my harvest for me, right? As opposed to like they just can't do that, right. He also owned multiple oxen, which was like, that's like having like a sports car or something, right? If you got your own oxen and more than one, you're like, that's a sign of wealth. His wife, Salazar's mother came from a prominent family and was well known as a humanitarian and a pious Buddhist. The two had nine children. I, I think five of them survived until like the 90s. So like pretty good record for you know, as a mom and dad from the time. Yeah, Saloth was number eight, so he comes near the end and he and his two siblings, like around his age were very close. Short writes, they played and swam in the river together and in the evenings by the light of a rush lamp, listened to the old people of the village recounting stories and legends from the days before the French established the protectorate in the 1860s. And if you'll remember back to our Napoleon III episodes, like, right? While France was getting ready to, like, lose a bunch of territory and a major war to what became Germany, the navy was largely kind of carrying out, to some extent on its own recognizance, the conquest of a sizable chunk of Indochina. Right. Of what came to be known as French Indochina. Right. And this is why France is running Vietnam, and it's also why France is running Cambodia. Right. So they have this dominion in Cambodia. And for about a century, Cambodia is governed by the French in the capital, which is the primary place you would see the white French colonizers. They were a tiny minority whose control was so great that they were. They were people who were young Cambodians in this period. Like, young Khmer described French, like white French residents of the capital as almost deities. Right. Because they were untouchable. You had. You did not have social contact with them, and they had access to, like, resources that were almost unimaginable to regular people. Right. And again, despite this being the capital of Cambodia, it has the lowest Khmer population of any part of the country. The entire, like, business class, the people who are handle running companies and who are doing trading and thus have the most money outside of the white French class are primarily Vietnamese and Chinese Khmer. Right. And these are, in a lot of cases, still people who were born in Cambodia, but they are ethnically Chinese and ethnically Vietnamese.

[Jim]

And this is.

[Andrew Torres]

This is because Cambodia, for most of its history has been. For large chunks of its history has been the property of either, like, China or Vietnam or Thailand. Like, bits and pieces of it, right? There's been constant. It's in the middle of everything, right? It's. It's like Poland. It's like the Southeast Asian Poland and that. Like, yeah, you guys are usually like, under somebody's thumb, right? Well.

[Jim]

And yeah, that's also just like. Like as much as, like, the French colonialism, you know, bad, obviously. It's like Asia just be doing that, and China is probably the biggest culprit.

[Andrew Torres]

Well, and that's that. One of the initial surprises that the Communists have that kind of slows down them getting off the board is they initially expect, well, everyone must hate the French. And the regular Khmer people don't hate the French as much as they hate the Vietnamese. And in fact, that's going to be true even with the Khmer Rouge gets in power, like, no matter. Even with all the horrible shit the US does for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, Vietnam is always the enemy, right?

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

And it's because they've got A thousand years of shit.

[Jim]

It's always the last war. Yeah, it's just like, that's the one that sticks.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. It's like, no matter how racist Americans get about a foreign country, Texans will always hate Oklahomans more and vice versa. So the fact that the people with money in the capital and running these businesses, the kind of saying capitalist class isn't super useful in this sense, but that's kind of our closest thing. The fact that they're Vietnamese and Chinese contributes to a longstanding cultural grievance among the majority Khmer population who see themselves they have an inferiority complex. And this is something that is written about exceptional, extensively by Khmer people. Right. That there is within the culture and within, like, even a lot of, like, the Buddhist kind of writings at the time, there's this discussion of, like, the Khmer. We're fundamentally good people, we're humble, but we're also kind of, like, naive and easy to be taken advantage of by these kind of savvier foreign peoples around us. Right. This is the way they talk about themselves to a sizable extent. Right, sure.

[Jim]

Although how much? There is a question. I guess I'm asking more than, like, poking at this, but it's like, that is also exactly the type of thing that, like, a broad multinational religion could start to spread in terms of supporting imperialism.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. And there's. There's some. I mean, this is not. I'm not. I'm certainly not qualified to give you detail, but I think it's. There's. There's plenty of evidence that a lot of the way they discuss themselves is in sort of this context of we are. We really need to get our shit together and stop being ruled by these people. Like, that's kind of the attitude.

[Jim]

Right.

[Andrew Torres]

And it depends. With the Chinese, Khmer, there's this mix of, like, respect with kind of some jealousy and some anger. Vietnam is seen almost. Vietnamese people are seen almost entirely as imperialists. Right. As, like, this arrogant force that has continually dominated us over our history. And again, Khmer people often have friends who are Vietnamese Cambodians and Chinese Cambodians. But this is this idea of, like, this is what this race is done to our race. Right. Like, that's really common. A very, like, popular story that would be told to children at the time when Salazar was a kid, described three Cambodian prisoners being buried up to their necks around a fire so their heads could be used as a tripod to hold their Vietnamese master's teapot. Right? And it's like a joke that, like, this is what they think we're good for. Is like, you know, like, that's the bit right now when it came to, like, the looking back at periods of time in which things were different. The real one period of like, glory that educated Cambodians in particular would think back to was the time of the Angkorian empire, which had ruled northwest Cambodia from the 900-00 a.d. to about 1400 a.d. and included parts of modern day Lao, Thailand and Vietnam as well. Right. This is the Angkorean empire. And Salazar and his peers would have seen themselves as being raised in the ruins of a once great culture. The attitude these people have is almost we're growing up in a post apocalyptic empire, right. And this was not far from the truth. By the 1200s, which is right around, if you've heard of Angkor Wat, it's still to this day the largest surviving religious complex on the world. And it's this massive, incredibly complex, beautiful, like, temple complex that was part of the heartland of this empire. And while it was at its height around the 1200s, the Angkorian Empire contained a higher population than lived in all of Cambodia in the 30s. So if you're looking at like the degree to which things got worse, there are the. In the 30s, this area is capable of supporting fewer people than it supported in the 1200s.

[Jim]

Right, right, right.

[Andrew Torres]

So they are really living in a post apocalypse in a lot of ways. Now, some of the first stories Tsar would have heard would have been tales of his grandfather Fem, who came up during one of the many periods of domination by Vietnamese and Thai invaders. Cambodia came close to being destroyed as an independent culture. And Saar would have been raised on tales of Vietnamese soldiers gouging the eyes out of captives and salting their wounds before burying them alive. And this is a thing that happened. We are talking about really hideous wars that happened between these people in these periods. And I mean, in every period of time, right. These are, these are ugly conflicts. And he grows up with stories about like, this is what war is like. It's not just fighting and killing to gain territory. It is like torturing and destroying your enemy. And like that is, that is the norm. Right. The French, by comparison, would have seemed benign to him as a child, in large part because the French were the backers of the royal family. That was like. Because they're still a king in Cambodia and he's a useful figurehead for the French. And Salazar's family is really close to the royal family. And so they, they kind of owe their privileges and their good position to, in part to the French occupiers. Right. Just like the King does. Saloth's early childhood then, was mild. His father was noted for being less strict and for beating out. He didn't beat his kids as much as most fathers did. Right. This is a culture where strict parenting is the norm and where children. It's believed that you need to be. You need to use violence very strictly to maintain the behavior of your children. Right. And this was not just common with parents, it was extremely common with teachers. These are like the strain of Buddhism that is dominant in Cambodia is called Theravada Buddhism. And this is a faith that has an incredibly sharp delineation between good and evil. There's not really shades of gray. Right. And so if you're doing the wrong thing, you need to be punished very severely. Right. This is like a very black and white faith in a lot of ways. At least that's the way it's interpreted at this period of time. One common punishment from schoolmasters was to make a disobedient child lie down on an ant's nest. That's like, if you fuck up in school, they make you lie down on a red ant nest.

[Jim]

That's straight up torture.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah.

[Jim]

I just want to point out Robert, of course, is not saying that if you don't beat your kids enough, they will become Pol Pot, but he's not saying that.

[Andrew Torres]

Look, there's obviously an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into Pol Pot. Right. But there's an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into, I.

[Jim]

Don'T know, not Pol Pot.

[Andrew Torres]

Not Pol Pot, too.

[Jim]

So, you know, it's a fine line.

[Andrew Torres]

I don't know, maybe don't punish your kids with ants. Can we say. Can we agree on that? Philip Short quotes one of Pol Pot's peers, King Von Sack, as saying this about discipline in schools. At the time, I didn't like arithmetic and I hadn't learned my multiplication table. So every time we were going to have a lesson, I said that I had a stomachache and wanted to go home. The third time I did that, the teacher said, all right, you may go, but first recite the seven times table. Of course, I didn't know it, how he beat me. Kicks and punches. He was brutal. Then he took me outside and put me under a grapefruit tree full of red ants. After that, I knew my times tables.

[Jim]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew Torres]

Well, I guess if it works. No, I don't. I don't guess that at all.

[Jim]

You know, that general philosophy, I think, held on for quite some time. If my parents Are any indication it did.

[Andrew Torres]

And like, yeah, there's unique Cambodian. The whole ant thing. Pretty unique to Cambodia. But the whole. You beat the shit out of a kid if they're not learning right. That's more normal than not. In the twenties you go to. Oh, I got beat as a kid in Oklahoma by my principal. So like not trying to like. But yeah. What's really interesting to me though is that Van Sack recalls this teacher who like beat him and then tied him to an entry as a saintly man who was adorable. Like, this was my nicest teacher.

[Jim]

Oh, kicking a kid is really fucking.

[Andrew Torres]

Nuts, I gotta say. That's wild.

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah.

[Jim]

Like truly. Yeah. It just requires so much intention and preparation.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. And it says a lot that like, and that's your good teacher. Like, that's the guy that you're like. And you know what? He really straightened me out.

[Jim]

Yeah. I owe a lot to you. They say you never forget your teachers or how many aunts they tortured you with.

[Andrew Torres]

And it's. I can see why you wouldn't forget that teacher. If anybody kicked the shit out of me and tied me to an ant tree, I would remember that motherfucker. Speaking of beating. Nope. Speaking of not abusing children.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus.

[Andrew Torres]

Products. Do you say data or data?

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[Andrew Torres]

And we're back. So as I've established, we're not talking about a society. This is a Khmer society is in a lot of ways, and I know there's other aspects of it, but there's a lot of brutality here. Right. And this is not unique among the Khmer, but this is a black and white society and it's going to be meaningful in terms of how the Khmer Rouge act in power, that punishments like this are very normal when they're kids. Right. There is already a high level. It's just like the ultra violence of the Nazis is not detached from the fact that the initial group of Nazis all spent four years in the trenches. You know, like, you can't separate those things and you can't separate what the Khmer Rouge does from the fact that this kind of stuff is normal when they're kids. Right?

[Jim]

Right.

[Andrew Torres]

And the legends that we're told often in Khmer society because this is a group of people who have been constantly conquered and beaten and massacred by their neighbors and of course, done a little bit, done some of that themselves to be. It does not. The stories, the fairy tales and whatnot they grow up on don't depict a just world. Right. They are Instead of like, you know, happy endings and the good guy winning, there's a lot more stories of murderers going free and honorable men being hideously executed by the king. Right. That's a lot. A very common kind of thing. This is the lore of a culture formed through centuries of domination, defeat, and murder. Right. That's the result. Right. There's a lot of trauma in the collective history of the Khmer, and it comes through in their legends. Salazar's cousin Miek joined the Royal Ballet corps in the 1920s. Now, that sounds nice, right? Ah, ballet. Good way to express yourself. Great. We love the arts. This is not that kind of ballet troupe. The ballet troupe is primarily a feeder organization for the king's harem. Right. That is the reason why you collect all these ballet artists. Right. This makes it easier for the king to pick out who he wants to make a courtesan. Right?

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

David Chandler, in the book Brother Number One, which is a biography of Pol Pot, writes, each dance involved thousands of movements, each keyed to moments in a particular story and to the mythological character being portrayed. None of the gestures was improvised. Although some dancers might be more beautiful or more graceful than others, their movements depended on memory, tradition, and practice. In other words, on what they had been taught rather than on what the individual wanted to express. The dancers were vehicles for tradition rather than its interpreters. So while this is an art form, it is not one in which self expression is prized. It is how can you absolutely exactly recreate this? Right, yeah.

[Jim]

Do the thing as it was done before.

[Andrew Torres]

And again, this whole ballet corps, its primary audience is the royal family. And the royal family within Khmer society is. It's so high above everything else. Right. The Khmer word that, like people who are high level advisors and counselors for the king would use for themselves literally, translated to something like we who keep the king's shit in our heads, like our brains are his shit. Right, right, right, right, yeah. And as I said, the ballet corps existed in large part to provide raw material for the royal harem. But it was traditional for kings and princes to have eyes bigger than their heads in this regard. And especially once kings got old, they would pick a lot of concubines that they wouldn't really get around to having sex with because they're, like, old and sick. And these women are unt to any other men, but often also untouched themselves. And they're kept prisoner in a network of huts in the palace and are forbidden from contact with non royal boys over a certain age. Right. So most of their time was spent arguing and gossiping among each other, raising the few kids that they have, there's a lot of gambling. And when the few social, the few outsiders who are allowed to visit, obviously they socialize with as much as possible because they live in such a closed little space society. And soon enough, Salazar would be one of those visitors. His older brother Thay was the first to be sent to the capital to attend one of the few Western style schools in the country. And these are schools the French have started. And they're often, sometimes they're run by Khmer, educated Khmer, but they're like patterned off of French schools, right? And Saloth followed into the capital in 1934 at age 9. And the plan was he's going to start attending one of these proper Western schools. But as is not uncommon for a lot of Khmer, his parents don't want him to go fully Western, right. They still do want him to be Khmer. So he spends a year in a Buddhist monastery just south of the palace before he goes to school, right. This is a really common experience. And in fact the princes all do this too, right? Like the guy who's going to become the king, Norodam Sahanuk, spends like a year or an amount of time as a in this monastery because it's a thing that you do in part to like show I'm authentically of this culture. And this is also going to be the only education that Pol Pot ever gets in his native language. This is the only. The rest of his schooling he'll be taught in French. So this is the only time he's being taught like in Khmer, right?

[Jim]

Sure.

[Andrew Torres]

Now about 100 kids a year had this experience. And the accounts that we get make it sound pretty miserable to me. Like the worst summer camp you can imagine. There is no room in this for personal creativity or expression. Every single person has a strictly delineated role. And stepping out of it was met with traditionally brutal punishments. One of Saar's contemporaries later explained, 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 sound with your feet. And you weren't allowed to swing your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to learn by heart the rules of conduct in the Buddhist precepts so that you could recite them without hesitation. If you hesitated, you were beaten. And I think I encountered a whole lot, especially as like an angry young atheist. This idea, you hear this, I think more common among liberals that like, you know, These Christians and Muslims and, like, all the violence that comes out of these Western, like, Judeo Christian religions. Why can't we all be like the Buddhist? They never have terrorist groups. Tons of Buddhist terrorist groups.

[Jim]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

Plenty of Buddhist genocides. Every religion has it, and also non religions have it. People love committing genocide. It's not. No culture has a fucking lock on that.

[Jim]

Religion is a handy tool, but it's not the only handy tool.

[Andrew Torres]

It's not the only tool. Get that out of. Again, blame genocide fundamentally on the fact that people can be pieces of shit. That's what's to blame.

[Jim]

The real genocide juice is in here. In your heart.

[Andrew Torres]

It's in here. If you want to understand how a person can be moved to genocide. Drive in traffic for 22 minutes. That's the most I'm ever like, yeah, we just gotta start killing people.

[Jim]

If no one was here, I'd be home.

[Andrew Torres]

No, no, no. I'm three more still three minutes away from the fucking burger rest. God damn it. So the religious texts that they were made to memorize were rooted in a rigid respect for hierarchy. In Theravada Buddhism, children were treated almost as robots. Right? They are the product of cause and effect that accumulate rather than people in their own right. And so what matters is modifying what goes into them. Right. In order to produce the desired outcome. There's almost, again, this very mechanical understanding of, like, this is how you make a good person. Right? Now, their holy book was the Spa cpap. It's cpap. It's, like, spelled like a CPAP machine. Right. And it's basically a collection of morality plays and anecdotes which reinforce the sense of Khmer inferiority next to their neighbors. One relevant portion reads, learn arithmetic with all your energy, lest the Chinese and Vietnamese cheat you. The Khmers are lacking in judgment. They eat without giving thought for what is proper and right. Each season they borrow from the Chinese, and the Chinese gain control of the inheritance their parents have bequeathed. So, again, this is a hell of a morality play. It's a hell of a. There's a lot of racism in this upbringing, and it's racism against these ethnic minorities in the country who have also periodically controlled the country. Right.

[Jim]

So, well, it's sort of like reasonable resentment I get.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, of course. Yeah. You would be pissed.

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

But as a spoiler in Part two, this is going to lead to a bunch of genocides.

[Jim]

Yeah, that's how it goes. The resentment turns into the worst thing quickly.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. Now, by the time Saar finished his year at the monastery, His I've heard nine months, I've heard a year. I don't know that they were keeping that good a track. He will often lie about having spent longer time there because he's kind of proud of this period in his life. By the time Salazar finished his time in the monastery, his cousin had become the highest ranking woman at the palace. She was like in charge of the harem, basically. And this was in part because she had born the prince regent. And that's the prince who's going to become the king when the king dies. A son right before he was made the new king. So obviously that elevates her in his eyes. His older brother Loth Song had started working as a clerk in the palace in the late 1920s. And it was decided that he would take in his younger brother Saar and raise him with his wife so that Salazar could live in the capital and attend a modern French style school. David Chandler writes that lot. Song considered his younger brother, quote, an even tempered, polite, unremarkable child. As a primary student, Sammy told the Australian journalist James Durand, Saar had no difficulties with the other students. No fights or quarrels. In examining his early years, I found no traumatic events and heard no anecdotes that foreshadow his years in power. People who met him as an adult found his self effacing personality perhaps a carryover from the image he projected as a child. In Loth Swan's words, the contemptible Pol Pot was a lovely child. And this is the weirdest thing about him. Almost every source agrees he was an incredibly nice, like, polite, pleasant guy to be around, which you don't. Most dictators you really do get like, oh yeah, there's hints of the megalomania. Maybe they could be nice to some people, but there's other people who are like, oh yeah, I got a sign of the crazy Pol Pot. Everyone's just like, yeah, he was pretty cool. He seemed nice.

[Jim]

That's so weird. I did not know that. That's like so bizarre.

[Andrew Torres]

Even after, like when Nate Thayer, who's like the last journalist to talk to him when he's like in hiding 18 or so years after leaving power, is like, yeah, he was like a really very polite man. You know, it's very odd on that score.

[Jim]

You know, the, the, like the modern day version of that is prior to now, most US Presidents like, yeah, Trump, at least you're like clear, like, okay, this guy's a fucking like exactly who he seems.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah.

[Jim]

But like, yeah, truly people, well, you know, there's no amount of genocide George Bush could commit that people would, you know, be like, I'd drink with him.

[Andrew Torres]

No. And he's absolutely a monster. Absolutely should be in the Hague. I was in a room with him once and like, I get, I get why people were loyal to him. He's very charming in person or, you know, even if you know what he's done.

[Jim]

You're Obama. Like.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, a fucking Obama. Right, exactly. People who have done horrible things are often deeply likable, which is how they get in position to do horrible things. And Sar appears to be that kind of guy. Right. So, yeah. That said, he's also described as a pretty boring dude. Right. He is not political at all. And he's not political. Until very late in this story, his schooling at the monastery would mark the only time he was educated in his native language. Once he starts at the French style Ecole Miche Saar was taught in French by Catholic fathers who were either French or Vietnamese. So these are Catholic priests who are French and Vietnamese. He remains a Buddhist, but he's being taught every day in Catholicism. Right. And if this produced any sense of whiplash in the young boy, we don't have any evidence of it, but it must have been weird. I have to imagine when he wasn't in class, Saar had the rare freedom to visit his sister in the ballet harem section of the palace. And again, not a lot of people are allowed here. This gave him semi number one. He would run into the Queen Mother pretty regularly and like, you have to bow when you see her and stuff. And interestingly enough, even afterwards, as a hardcore communist revolutionary, he remembered her with like a sense of awe and reverence. Now this also put him in a very vulnerable position. The fact that he's one of the few young men boys allowed in this hero. As I stated earlier, this group of women who were like officially the King's consorts and potential consorts, were bored all the time and they were forbidden to be touched by anyone else. Right. And as a result, when a kid like Saar comes in, this is the closest they can get to going after a man. Right. And this leads to some profoundly abusive experiences for young Saul Azar. As Philip short writes, At 15, Saar was still regarded as a child young enough to be allowed into the women's quarters. Decades later, two of the palace women living out their old age on a French government stipends in Paris, remembered little Saar who used to come to visit them wearing his school uniform, a loose white shirt with baggy trousers and wooden Shoes. The young women would gather round, teasing him. They remembered. Then they would loosen his waistband and fondle his genitals, masturbating him to a climax. He was never allowed to have intercourse with them, but in the frustrated hothouse world of the royal pleasure house, it apparently afforded the women a vicarious satisfaction.

[Jim]

Jesus Christ.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. And.

[Jim]

Fuck.

[Andrew Torres]

This does not come out until fairly late. Like the first the Chandler biography and the earliest biographies you're gonna read about Pol Pot. Don't talk about this. Nate Thayer. I don't know if I think it may have been known when Thayer talked to him, but Thayer is in, like, a Khmer Rouge stronghold, so maybe you're just not gonna bring up, like, hey, so let's talk about you getting molested. Like, I'm not gonna blame Nate for that. Right. He was in a very dangerous position, you know, and exercised a lot of courage within that position, but we just don't. He never talked about this, so we can only kind of speculate, like, oh, wow. I mean, this has to have had some impact. Right?

[Jim]

Right, Right, right.

[Andrew Torres]

This didn't help. But, you know, anything beyond that is going to be pure speculation. Right. Because they just didn't. This is the only. These are the only people who talked about.

[Jim]

Right, right, right. And it's not like. It's not like this is coming up in, you know, therapy notes that we can find.

[Andrew Torres]

Right, right, right. And. And while it is certainly not wrong to, like, be like, well, this is pretty poisonous, I bet it had an impact on the kind of guy he was as an adult. I want people to also keep in mind this passage from Chandler's book. Quote, cambodians attached to the palace in the 1930s and 40s, like Salazar and his relations were insulated from the Chinese and Sino commercial sector of Phnom Penh, from the worldwide economic depression, and from the need to grow their own food. Salazar inhabited this elaborate, safe, safe, entirely Cambodian world for many years. So whatever. Whatever impact this has, he is also one of the only Khmer people in the society who grows up feeling safe and secure. He's never worried about food. And these are the starving times. These are. And this is a horrible depression for the country. Most people are short on food. That's not a thing. If for him, he lives in abundance as a kid.

[Jim]

Right?

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, for her. Yeah. So.

[Jim]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's also like. Like having that. I mean, you know, 15 is old enough to kind of realize, like, this.

[Andrew Torres]

Probably shouldn't be happening.

[Jim]

Yeah. This abundance is conditional upon some of the other maybe horrible things that are happening.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. Maybe the fact that these, these old ladies keep on. Yeah, yeah. For her part, his sister recalled his visits fondly and she primarily remembered her brother as a funny kid. Whenever he had something serious to say, he would make a joke of it. This was another common recollection shared by his classmates in primary school. Saloth Tsar was funny, he was easy to be around and he was most particularly gentle. A child who one friend described as not being willing to hurt a chicken, which I guess is like not. You wouldn't hurt a fly in Cambodia. I don't know.

[Jim]

You know, we're coming off a time where just anything that's considered violence, you could societally ramp it up from what us soft Americans are used to.

[Andrew Torres]

And to be fair, as an adult, maybe he wouldn't hurt a chicken, but he was willing to hurt a lot of people, you know?

[Jim]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andrew Torres]

He was not a good student. Again, throughout his educational career, he showed a capability to learn and study, but no inclination to do it. He did not graduate primary school until age 18. Two years after that would have been customary. Now, I should note that this is the general stance taken by Chandler and other biographers, including Short, that like, he's not great in school, he's kind of lazy. Pol Pot rebutted these claims in the last interview he ever gave, saying that Chandler was not entirely accurate. Quote, I was not a bad student. I was average. I studied just enough to keep my scholarship. The rest of the time I just read books. And you know what? Same bestie for most of. I shouldn't call Pol Pot bestie.

[Jim]

No.

[Andrew Torres]

Jesus.

[Jim]

Surprised, Robert, you're heading in that direction for most. Listen again, it's just refreshing to hear about a murderous dictator who reads books.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, yeah, you would have loved the Hunger Games. Pol Pot for most of the big dub dub dose. And again, we're talking about like his education. His, like his, like the school years that he's going to remember the most are during World War II. Right. Like he is kind of entering adolescence in like the 40s. And for most of that, war life for Cambodians like Saar in the rarefied air of the capital went by relatively unchanged. The Vichy government takes over in France. Right. So for Cambodians it's still French people running Canada, but it's a slightly different group of French people. Right. Who are basically fascist collaborators. But you're not going to notice much difference as a Cambodian. Right. You know, like, it's not like they're wildly different to you.

[Jim]

Yeah, the non fascist collaborators still not such Great dudes.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. The main difference would be that Tsar would start learning in school songs about the glory of Marshal Patein and the like. But I don't know that much of this stuck. Thailand invades and conquers several border provinces during this time, which is a deep shame to the king, who is dying in a deep shame to Cambodia. But Saar is not a political kid, and we have no evidence that this particularly impacted him. Short does theorize. Philip Short does theorize that some of the fascist propaganda brought into the schools during this period did impact Saar, particularly the fact that the. The propaganda of the Vichy era romanticizes peasants, like poor farmers, as the true embodiment of the nation. And that's really going to be a big sticking point for him as an adult. And so maybe there's a line there. Right, right. The propaganda of the Patanist era also depicts the city as an inherently decadent and unnatural thing, like a break from the righteous path of subsistence farming under a dictator. And that probably leaves a mark right now. In the summer of 1942, the capital saw its first major protests against French control. A group of Cambodian monks began preaching anti French sermons. This was an escalation of what was, at this point, a slowly developing sense of Cambodian nationalism that had been supercharged by the fact that France had collapsed under the Nazi boot heel. Two of these monks are arrested by Vichy French police, who do so in a way that defaces a religious shrine. And this sparks more extensive protests. Right. And these protests terminate in a march on the French administrator's office. Now, the main leader of the nationalist movement in the country at this time is a guy named Sun Nak Thanh, who. He had some kind of lefty inclinations. He was not anti socialist, but he's not a communist. He's not really a socialist. He is a big popular front, big tent, let's free Cambodia. And then we could figure out like. Like politically what we want to do. Right. That's his kind of deal. Right. And so he's broadly popular with kind of everyone who wants an independent Cambodia. He's a very heroic figure during these time, this time. And he starts organizing demonstrations against the French. They do what regimes do and they crack down. They imprison all his friends and he's forced to go on the run, where he eventually asks the Emperor of Japan for asylum and gets it. Now, Saar would have been aware of all of this. He probably would have admired than. But there's not much evidence that this takes up a lot of bandwidth in his brain. Like most of his classmates who go on to become Communists, he was focused at the time on his own educational career. As a student, Saar loved French poetry and sports. He loved all kinds of sports. He was an avid soccer player who was known for kicking the ball behind his head with stunning accuracy. He also played. This shocked me. He's on the school basketball team. And Sophie, I looked it up, and since Pol pot died in 1998, sadly, there is no way he ever saw LeBron play. Which is a real tragedy, because LeBron does. LeBron goes straight into the NBA. 2003, I think. So one of the greatest tragedies.

[Jim]

I was hoping you had some stats on Pol Pot's numbers, but he must.

[Andrew Torres]

Have known about Michael Jordan, so at least there's that to come from.

[Robert Evans]

What position did he play?

[Andrew Torres]

I don't know. I looked, Sophie. I looked. I don't know. These are the great mysteries of history. If only.

[Robert Evans]

I'm just really proud that you take the time to look up stuff about LeBron.

[Andrew Torres]

Ramon James, I did it for you. I did it for you. Yeah. What if Pol Pot had gotten to play a pickup game with Kareem Abdul Jabbar? I'm working on a novel right now. Not that tall. Look, I'm gonna be honest. Khmer basketball could not have been the most impressive. Like, these are not tall people. There's not a lot of prote.

[Robert Evans]

I was gonna say. Cause, like, LeBron's 6, 9, 2, 5.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. No, these. LeBron alone probably could have taken on the whole team.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I bet on him every time.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. Like, oh, God. So while several of his friends went off to a prestigious secondary school, Saloth Sar barely eked by. He does horrible on his exams. And so he's not able to go to, like, the humanities school, which is really progressive. So he goes to, like, a much worse boarding school, which is still vastly better than 99% of the pop. Again, we're talking a chunk of 1% who gets any kind of education like this, right? So the fact that he's, like, at the bottom of the educated class still means that he is almost unfathomably privileged by the standards of average Khmer. So he starts this school in 1943. In 1945, Japan seized territory, seized Cambodia from Vichy France. For a variety of complex reasons that all boil down to they were losing the war and they were trying every Hail Mary they could, right? They were like, look, these French guys, they don't have a good hold on things. What if we just arrest them all and make Cambodia Japan for a little while. Will that help us beat the Americans? No. Turns out, turns out Cambodia not really that useful in fighting the United States in this period. It will be later.

[Jim]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

The Vietnamese are going to make some real hay out of having a Cambodia in their back pocket.

[Jim]

But, but right piece, wrong time. You know, it's like any Risk game.

[Andrew Torres]

It's like any Risk game, Right? Yeah. So they arrest all of the French people basically in France, and Japan is in trouble, in touch for a while. Japan is pretty brutal in a lot of areas they govern. They really aren't in Cambodia to the Khmer. Cause like, why would they be? Right, Right. And they don't have the time. You know, it's 1945. But the main impact this has on people like Salazar and his peers is that they see all of these French administrators, all of these French teachers and priests get arrested and locked up. And these people had been untouchable previously. They were very similar to the King in that, like, you just can't even comprehend the idea of laying a hand on them. And they are. They see these people forced from power and locked up by people who aren't white. And that has a huge impact. Right. And the thing it teaches them is that, like, the power of the French is not inevitable or immovable. It can be pushed aside. And if the Japanese could do it, maybe we could. Right. One of Saar's friends later recalled. We saw that a yellow, and this is his words, we saw that a yellow race, the Japanese had gotten the better of the white colonial, the French. That awakened something in us. It made us start thinking. And as far as propaganda goes, we're going to talk about all the reading that these kids do and you know, reading Mao, reading Stalin, that all has an impact. I don't know if anything has a bigger propaganda impact than seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists.

[Jim]

And that is the power of representation.

[Andrew Torres]

There we go. Right? Yeah. Obviously the empire of Japan is no less imperialist than the French empire. Right. But that's immaterial in discussing how it influenced people like Salazar and the future Khmer's rouge. Now, for the immediate moment, though, the biggest change brought on by Japan's brief conquest is that everybody kind of got a case of senioritis. Cause all their teachers get arrested. Right? Sure. When you read about them talking about this period, it reminds me most of that, like, week after you take your AP exam while there's still school, but like, no one's doing anything in class. That's kind of what these kids all go through like their French teachers get replaced by some Vietnamese teachers, but the substitutes don't really know how to handle shit as well. So like they're kind of fucking off for a little while. Sun Nak Tan returns to agitate for independence and even manages to briefly run Cambodia as an independent country after Japan, you know, collapses. Right. And so he's running Cambodia is independent under this broadly popular nationalist for about two months, which is just enough that everyone really likes this guy and feels really good about it, but not so long that like, maybe some of the problems that he might have managed. Right. Yeah, there's nothing. Not that I'm not saying he actually seems like he was pretty competent, but like it's going to stick in people's minds as a golden period because of how shocked.

[Jim]

And you don't, you don't have to. The consequences of your tough decisions. You don't spend enough time in office for them to come back.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, exactly. So this lasts about two months and then the French show back up with their tanks and are like, actually, we still feel like Cambodia is natural French territory.

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Andrew Torres]

So they arrest. They arrest. Than they call him a traitor and to what? Again, you guys weren't even there anymore. But by this point, he was universally beloved, particularly by young educated Khmer like Siloth Sar and his friends. Now, Saar again has no real political beliefs at this point beyond a growing endorsement of populist nationalism. He continues to be a mid student. He fails to get into an educational program that would have gotten him a prestigious degree and instead settles to go to a technical school. And he picks the easiest degree plan at the technical school, carpentry, because the Khmer professor was known for giving everyone good grades no matter how well they did. So he's like a carpenter for a little while in school. And he's doing this because there's like a study abroad program that gets given to the best students and there's a number of slots. And like he figured basically the easiest thing for me to be the best at is carpentry. Cause it's like the blow off class and that'll be my best shot at getting into this program, you know.

[Jim]

Oh yeah, grab a wild card slot any way you can.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, yeah, whatever. That's a very modern attitude towards it. Honestly. I have a lot of friends in school who made similar calls. Yeah. 1947 is the first year we have evidence for SAAR getting directly involved in politics. That year, the newly found Democratic Party, which advocated for replacing French and absolute monarchial rule with a democracy or at least like a hybrid democracy where there's a king but he's limited constitutionally and we have like this parliament type deal. They win 54 seats in the national elections. King Van Sack, an older student who was something of a mentor to Saar and his friends, claims that Saar, along with several of his friends, including Yang Sari, who's going to also help run the Khmer Rouge, volunteer for the Democratic Party during the elections. Right. And when I say Democratic Party here, it's literally like the party that thinks we should have a democracy.

[Jim]

Yeah, right, right.

[Andrew Torres]

And there's some. This is a. And this is kind of. This is a melting pot. A lot of future communists and socialists are in the Democratic Party as well as a lot of guys who are like going to wind up more in the like, well, I want to be aligned with the Americans. Right. This is just kind of where a lot of them are at this stage. In 1949, Salazar gets picked for that study abroad program and he becomes one of the first hundred Khmer male and female students to win a scholarship to go study in Paris. They leave on a steamship. They actually go through Saigon. And they arrive in Paris on the same day Mao Zedong announces the founding of the People's Republic of China. So a lot is happening and this is going to increasingly make discussions of communism a lot more relevant to these kids who it really hadn't been all that much up to this point. Now, nearly all of the students that he goes to Paris with wind up being prominent political figures. A lot of them are leaders within the Khmer Rouge. A lot of them get killed by the Khmer Rouge because they're leaders of the Khmer Rouge. And the Khmer Rouge loves murdering the Khmer Rouge. Right? This is primarily because almost no one else in the country had access to educational opportunities or the free time necessary to learn about radicals radical politics. So obviously the people who are dominant in the radical political sect are the only ones with the time to read. Right. It's not that shocking. Speaking of things that aren't shocking, these.

[Jim]

Products, I'm gonna be surprised.

[Andrew Torres]

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[Andrew Torres]

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[Sophie]

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[Andrew Torres]

We'Re back and actually, it turns out several of our sponsors might electrocute you. But you know, some people call it getting electrocuted. I call it getting free electricity. You know, and that shit's expensive these days. If you looked at your power bill, can you afford to turn down getting electrocuted? You know, maybe. Probably.

[Jim]

Robert Capacitor Evans speaking.

[Andrew Torres]

I know I shouldn't use electrocuted because that only means you've been killed. Shocked I guess I had an electrician friend explain that to me once. Anyway, whatever. Fucking power, Jack. Power. Copy. So where are we here? Yeah. So Sar gets into this program to study abroad despite his unimpressive grades. Not just because there's not a lot of kids in this program, but because even among the ones who do better than him, most of them don't want to like leave Cambodia for years, right? Because they got like families and shit, you know. His fellow students are guys like Yang Seri, who later becomes the co founder of the Khmer Rouge. Chandler summarizes his early life this way. Seri was born and raised among the Cambodian minority of Cochin China. His father, Kim Ream, was a prosperous landowner. When Ream died, Seri, still a young boy, was sent to live with relatives in the Cambodian province of Pre Vang. He was given the name Yang Seri, which sounded more Khmer than his real name, Kim Trang. And that's not an uncommon story is like, especially among these guys, Pol Pot's gonna do the same thing where it's like, eh, my original name not quite as good as I want it to be. Let me, let me kmer this fucker up a little bit, right?

[Jim]

It's all very wwf. I like it just like, let's get a populist name going.

[Andrew Torres]

Look, I think one thing we've all learned from the last decade of American politics is that the Rosetta stone for understanding all of human behavior, culture and history is professional wrestling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you get pro wrestling, you understand the whole swath of human achievement.

[Jim]

You thought it was gladiatorial combat, but that wasn't nearly camp enough.

[Andrew Torres]

No, no, no, not nearly camp enough. So as you can see, the reason I bring up Seri's background is it's not all that different from Sauloth Saar, right? And most of these Paris kids who are going to become like the core of this like educated revolutionary class have similar stories, right? They are intellectuals. They're going to target and annihilate the intellectual class in Cambodia once they get in power. But they're intellectuals, right? That's the class they come from, from. It's not that different from how Stephen Miller's background goes actually. Right, so Saloth Star and most of Salazar starts off his time in Paris living in a dormitory complex. He would later claim that in the first year he was a fairly good student. And this is true enough. But his studies quickly slipped. Part of this is because his middling grades meant that he had to go to a technical school rather than get A degree in, like, the humanities, which was a lot sexier for these people who. Who are going to wind up being future revolutionaries. And the degree plan he's working on for his years in Paris is as a radio technician. Chandler suggests that this is because he kind of befriends the king's nephew, Prince Sommangpan, who lives in Paris at the time. And Prince Somangpan is also studying to be a radio technician. We know the prince helps him find an apartment with a couple of friends, which is, you know, the place he moves out of, that dormitory to live in. Pol Pot will deny this for the rest of his life, lie a lot about his connections to the royal family, which are deep, as we've established. He gets a lot out of his family's connections to the royal family. But in the future, he's gonna be like, no, when I was in Paris, I lived with a cousin. You know, it's like, no, you didn't. You were friends with the prince.

[Jim]

Come on, let's not let it go unsaid that he was obviously studying to be the 20th century version of a podcast producer.

[Andrew Torres]

That's right. That's right.

[Robert Evans]

Pol Pot wanted my coming for my job.

[Andrew Torres]

That's right. Oh, Sophie, I gotta say, I'd give him a shot. Look, nothing against you. I just want to see how Pol Pot produces a podcast.

[Robert Evans]

How fucking dare you?

[Jim]

You know what?

[Andrew Torres]

Don't tell me you don't want to see it.

[Robert Evans]

I would die for you. You're gonna give me up for Pol Pot?

[Andrew Torres]

Sophie, if Pol Pot gets in the operation, we're all dying.

[Jim]

The important thing is, Sophie could organize a genocide. Pol Pot could never produce a potential.

[Andrew Torres]

That's right. That's right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's gonna sting for a little while.

[Jim]

And it's about range.

[Andrew Torres]

I didn't say I'd like it. I said it would be a butter.

[Robert Evans]

Me up with a LeBron stat. And then you kicked me to the curb for fucking pole pot.

[Andrew Torres]

Look, he could have been a pot. He could have been a podcaster, you know, could have been a podcaster. He was known as having a nice voice. You know, he could have had my job, maybe behind the Me and guess who. The Pol Pot podcast.

[Robert Evans]

Guess what?

[Jim]

Me and my boys.

[Andrew Torres]

The pole podcast.

[Robert Evans]

I would choose you.

[Andrew Torres]

I might prefer to listen to the poll podcast. Honestly, like, that sounds fascinating. So Saar joins the Khmer Student Union, which at that time was in the process of morphing into a semi covert communist youth league. He attended his first protest the next year for a Radical member of the Democratic Party who was assassinated by right wingers using a hand grenade. Oh, shit. Still, at this point in his political involvement, it seems to have been a byproduct of his social life. Right. He's at this protest because, like, his friends are doing stuff like this. And this is where you, like, go to hang out with people, Right? And he is. He is kind of a hedonist at this phase of his life. Philip Short writes, sar's friends regarded him as a bon vivant whose purpose in life was to have a good time. So that's, I think, where we're gonna end for part one. We're at about an hour. We've got a lot more Pol Pot here, so we'll see how long it takes to get through all of this. I really did try to cut this fucker down because I wanted to deliver this all in one week. But there's this guy's life. Fascinating. Yeah, but there we are. Part one. How are you feeling about Pol Pot so far, Andrew T. I mean, so.

[Jim]

Far sounds fucking dope. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly be changed? What could possibly go wrong?

[Andrew Torres]

This is like that first Star wars prequel where it's like, he's kind of an annoying kid, but, you know, whatever. How could things go badly? Yeah, he likes to party, but he's a kid.

[Jim]

Come on.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a weird crush on a lady who's visibly like, 15 years older than him. That's a little off, but whatever.

[Jim]

Like, you know, he doesn't realize it's abuse and that's the important thing.

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is weird that they then paired Hayden Christensen with Natalie Portman, two people who are clearly the same age after establishing that, like, she was a mature adult ruling a country when he was a small boy. It's just.

[Jim]

Why would you write that in? Look, it's the power of shooting your shot. I guess that's what the Force is, is just shooting your shot.

[Andrew Torres]

Shooting your shot. The Star wars version of behind the Bastards probably does talk a lot about. And then Darth Vader has this weird relationship with this woman who's, like 20 years older than him. So who knows how this abuse affected the things that he did when he was in power. Right. He never wrote about this. What we have is this interview with Watto, and that guy's not really super reliable.

[Jim]

Watt. Watto had his own agenda.

[Andrew Torres]

Watto had his own agenda. No, I'm pretty sure he murdered Watto. If I'm Remembering my expanded Universe. Shit.

[Jim]

Yeah, No, I think Primary Universe.

[Andrew Torres]

Primary Universe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Or is that Legends? I don't know. Fucking Disney. God damn it.

[Jim]

You know what?

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah, I like it. Anyway, everybody, please join me for my behind the Bastards Star wars focused podcast, which is actually entirely about Kathleen Kennedy. I don't have any issue with Kathleen Kennedy. It's all about George Lucas.

[Jim]

Yeah, well, it's all about a bunch of anonymous money guys. Okay?

[Andrew Torres]

Yeah. All right, well, like George Lucas, I hope you all have a good day eating in a food court and being photographed like a yeti. Andrew T, you got any pluggables to plug?

[Jim]

I mean, my podcast is Yozus Racist. I don't know. That's Keeping it real.

[Andrew Torres]

Keep it real. All right, everybody. You too. Keep it real until next day or whatever. Go to hell. I love you.

[Robert Evans]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards.

[Sophie]

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[Unknown]

Honestly. No one wants to think about HIV. But there are things that everyone can do to help prevent it. Things like prep. Prep stands for pre exposure prophylaxis, and it means routinely taking prescription medicine before you're exposed to HIV to help reduce your chances of getting it. Prep can be about 99% effective when taken as prescribed. It doesn't protect against other STIs, though, so be sure to use condoms and other healthy sex practices. Ask a healthcare provider about all your prevention Options, and visit findoutaboutprep.com to learn more.

[Andrew Torres]

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[Jim]

Painful Thoughts do they ever actually clean.

[Sophie]

The ball pit at these kids play gyms?

[Jim]

Or is my kid just swimming in a vat of bacteria, catching whatever cootie.

[Andrew Torres]

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[Jim]

A cootie that'll probably take down our whole family family. Luckily, with Amazon One Medical 247 virtual.

[Sophie]

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[Jim]

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