Source: Quillette
by Jay Sophalkalyan
“When the Khmer Rouge embarked on their genocidal campaign against the Cambodian people in 1975, they aspired to mold Cambodia into a self-sufficient, socialist, agrarian society, emancipated from all foreign influence. Their mission was to usher in a ‘Year Zero,’ which would return the country to an imagined golden age of peasant agriculture and upend society, giving the least privileged power over the most and punishing educated city dwellers, whom they believed had succumbed to the corrupting forces of Western capitalist culture. If the Khmer Rouge were around today, some of the West’s left-wing commentariat might well applaud their actions as ‘decolonization.'” (11/19/23)
https://quillette.com/2023/11/19/the-deadly-logic-of-decolonization/