http://www-mcnair.berkeley.edu/uga/osl/mcnair/Sophal_Ear_canon.html

   Several of the advisors on this thesis are lefties, Ben Kiernan (who has
written for New Left Review book publisher Verso on the Khmer Rouge and for
the longstanding academic left journal, Journal of Contemporary Asia) and
David Chandler has published in the Bulletin of Concerned Asia Scholars,
another lefty journal, founded by New Leftists in the late 60's. Douglas
Pike, is a right-winger, wrote a book in the mid 60's published by MIT Press
on the NLF/VC that the Noamster rubbished in one of the essays in, "American
Power and the New Mandarins, " from 1967.
  This senior thesis, is one of the most detailed criticisms of Chomsky that
cannot, unlike say something in TNR or The New Criterion, be viewed as a
right-wing hit.
Michael Pugliese

UNDERGRADUATE POLITICAL SCIENCE HONORS THESIS:


THE KHMER ROUGE CANON 1975-1979:

The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia


Sophal Ear


Department of Political Science

University of California, Berkeley


Ronald E. McNair Scholar

Academic Achievement Division

TEL: (510) 642-7935, FAX: (510) 642-7129

E-mail: [log in to unmask]

URL: http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~sophal





May 1995


CONTENTS








ACKNOWLEDGMENTS                                                 3
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION                                         4
CHAPTER 2: ROMANTICIZING THE KHMER REVOLUTION                  13
CHAPTER 3: THE CHOMSKY-LACOUTURE CONTROVERSY                   43
CHAPTER 4: BEYOND THE STAV                                     70
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION                                          96
BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                  102


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS



There can be no doubt but that this thesis would not have been possible
without the contributions of the following people. I am delighted to
acknowledge their contributions to this thesis.


For help in the early research phase of this thesis, I would like to thank
Professor Ben Kiernan of Yale University, Professor Laura Summers of the
University of Hull, and University of California Indochina Archive Director
Douglas Pike.


For research suggestions, materials, and references, I am eternally grateful
to Professor David P. Chandler of Monash University and my dear friend Bruce
Sharp. They were both always ready to help, and only an e-mail away.


I am especially grateful to archivist Steve Denney of the Indochina Archive
for showing me the Cambodian vault and referring me to the Chomsky-Lacouture
Controversy over a year ago. Steve's great advice was ubiquitous throughout
this project.


For constructive criticism on an earlier draft of this thesis, I am indebted
to Dr. Marc Pizzaro and Andy Lei.


Last, but not least, this political science honors thesis would not have
been possible without the great inspiration of my advisor, political science
Professor Anthony James Gregor.


Although each of these contributors helped the final product, they are in no
way responsible for the views expressed or the mistakes made by the author.
The author alone is solely responsible for those.




Sophal Ear

Oakland, California









TO CAMBODIANISTS OF ALL PARTIES

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION


How many of those who say they are unreservedly in support of the Khmer
revolution would consent to endure one hundredth part of the present
sufferings of the Cambodian people?


--François Ponchaud, 1977[1]

So concludes François Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero, the first book to
detail the "assassination of a people" being perpetrated in the name of
socialist revolution in Cambodia. Hundreds of other books and articles on
Cambodia have been published since 1977. Many have focused on the period
during which the Red Cambodians or "Khmer Rouge" controlled the country
which they renamed "Democratic Kampuchea" between 1975 and 1978. Under the
Khmer Rouge, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died from execution, forced
labor, disease and starvation. Since it will never be possible to ascertain
the exact number of deaths, estimates fall on a range. Michael Vickery
estimates 750,000 deaths,[2] while Ben Kiernan adds to that another 800,000.
Karl Jackson puts the figure near 1.3 million,[3] while the Campaign to
Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge (CORKR) claims at least 1.5 million
deaths. The Khmer revolution was perhaps the most pernicious in history;
reversing class order, destroying all markets, banning private property and
money. It is one worth studying for the ages, not for what it accomplished,
but for what it destroyed.

The idea for this thesis grew from research into Cambodia's economic
development and history for a simultaneous economics honors thesis.[4] In
particular, a 1979 book entitled Kampuchea: Rationale for a Rural Policy by
Malcolm Caldwell, was my first glimpse into a community of academics, I had
no idea existed. To be sure, this community was not some extreme "fringe"
faction of Cambodian scholars, but virtually all of them.[5] In other words,
their view of the Khmer revolution ergo the Khmer Rouge, became the Standard
Total Academic View on Cambodia or the STAV.[6] These scholars, many of whom
worked for the Berkeley-based antiwar Indochina Resource Center, became the
Khmer Rouge's most effective apologists in the West.[7] While they expressed
unreserved support for the Khmer revolution, fully twenty percent of the
Cambodian population may have perished due to execution, forced labor,
illness, and malnutrition during the period 1975-1979.[8] From periodicals
such as the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars and Current History to
books like Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution and Kampuchea: Rationale for
a Rural Policy, an unequivocal record of complicity existed between a
generation of academics who studied Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.

Reading Karl Jackson's Cambodia: 1975-1978 (1989), a footnote revealed that
debate among scholars of contemporary Cambodia in the West, during the late
1970s, included "sympathetic treatment" of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime,
namely the Khmer Rouge. The unassuming footnote, reprinted here, came from
Timothy Carney's essay entitled, "Unexpected Victory."

Some representative points of view on the Pol Pot regime would include, on
the critical side, Shawcross 1976a and 1978a and Lacouture 1977a, 1977b, and
1978. Sympathetic treatment is in Porter and Hildebrand 1976 and Summers
1975 and 1976. Also of interest is Chomsky and Herman 1977. Works by authors
with greater background or better judgment in Cambodian affairs include
Ponchaud 1976 and 1978 and Chandler 1977. Since 1979, in any case, few have
remained sympathetic to the Democratic Kampuchea regime, as incontrovertible
evidence has detailed its brutality, dwarfing even Stalin's excesses.
[Emphasis added.][9]


The list took on a life of its own, as the pieces to the puzzle of "Who, in
academia, supported the Khmer Rouge?" came together. Here was, in effect,
the origin of the "Khmer Rouge Canon". When Jean Lacouture published a book
review of Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero in 1977, he touched off an intense
debate with American academic cum activist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, who is a
distinguished linguist, found erratas in both Lacouture's review and
Ponchaud's book. In a series of polemical exchanges that were sometimes
public, other times private, Chomsky referred to these mistakes as examples
of deception and fraud that fueled anti-revolutionary propaganda against the
Khmer Rouge by the media. Together with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky published
an article in mid-1977 in the Nation, entitled "Distortions at Fourth Hand"
that became the centerpiece of his argument against the media's frenzy over
Pol Pot.[10] Two years later, after the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime was toppled
by Vietnam, the Nation article was followed by a book that continued to
express doubt about the truthfulness of "alleged" Khmer Rouge crimes.

Between 1975 and 1979, "the movement of solidarity with the peoples of
Kampuchea and Indochina as a whole"[11] as described by of one of its
members, Gavin McCormick, vociferously defended the Kampuchean revolution
and its perpetrators. To be sure, there have been very few articles or books
on this topic, since it is so unpleasant for those Ponchaud bluntly
characterized as "unreservedly in support of the Khmer revolution," to be
reminded of their responsibility in what Jean Lacouture has called "the
murder of a people." The study of this movement is considered by some,
especially those who continue to support Chomsky, to be wholly outside
Cambodian studies. They suggest that it is more in line with American
studies since Chomsky attacked the Western media's propaganda machine as it
gravitated around the "evils of communism."

This thesis seeks to dispel this mitigating advance in favor of a wider
Canon for pro-Khmer Rouge literature published between 1975 and 1979. "The
Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979," unlike other canons, is not an official list
of works in this case, since no one has ever agreed to one (Carney's list is
a small exception). For a work to be listed and reviewed in the "Khmer Rouge
Canon" requires that it have been written in the period 1975 to 1979 and, of
course, have supported, whether explicitly or implicitly, the policies of
the Khmer Rouge (hence the inclusion of Chomsky's and Herman's work). A
second criterion involves the nature of the publication, namely print; the
work must have been published in a reasonably well-known English-language
periodical (Current History, the Nation, etc.), a monograph (Malcolm
Cadwell's South-East Asia by Cook University), or a book (Cambodia:
Starvation and Revolution and After the Cataclysm). Beyond this requirement
is the obvious need for the author of this thesis to have read that
particular work in order to be able to review it. Of course, there are
countless dissertations, newsletter articles (such as those in News from
Kampuchea and News from Democratic Kampuchea), and other journal articles
(from the Journal of Contemporary Asia) that will not be covered because
they were unavailable or would have required extensive treatment or for lack
of time. The Khmer Rouge Canon is by no means exhaustive, far too many other
Indochina scholars deserve to be canonized, yet because of circumstances
will have to wait.

This partial Canon offers a glimpse into the assumptions and logic, evidence
and arguments that a generation of Western scholars used to defend the Khmer
Rouge or rationalize their policies during the mid-to-late 1970s. Together,
they created the standard total academic view. This glimpse, whether
representative or not, is in and of itself a testament to Khmer Rouge's
charm over academia.

This thesis seeks to answer the following questions on the STAV: First, in
what military-political context did it develop? Second, what are examples of
STAV scholarship, who made them, what arguments did they make, and why?
Third, how does the Chomsky-Herman thesis fit in, differ from or was similar
to the standard total academic view? Fourth, beyond the STAV, what were the
counter-arguments, and for the members of the STAV scholars, Summers,
Caldwell, Hildebrand, Porter, Chomsky, and Herman, what was the continuity
and change in their political thinking (using Vickery's STV typology)?

In sum, this thesis deconstructs the standard total academic view on
Cambodia and constructs the foundation for the Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979.

This foundation to the Canon is composed of, among numerous other works,
Laura Summers' "Consolidating the Revolution" (December 1975) and "Defining
the Revolutionary State in Cambodia" (December 1976) in Current History,
George C. Hildebrand's and Gareth Porter's sine qua non of the STAV:
Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (1976), Torben Retbøll's "Kampuchea and
the Reader's Digest" in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
(July-September 1979) and Malcolm Caldwell's towering essay "Cambodia:
Rationale for A Rural Policy" in Malcolm Cadwell's South-East Asia (1979).
To this list chapter 3 will add Noam Chomsky's and Edward Herman's masterful
"Distortions at Fourth Hand" in the Nation (June 25, 1977) and After the
Cataclysm (1979), though Chomsky and Herman are mindful to state that they
are by no means defending the Khmer Rouge nor "pretend to know where the
truth lies," though most of what they do is to rehash the Hildebrand and
Porter line in a more palatable design. Together, they are a significant
body of scholarship from the STAV.

Three works come to mind with respect to how different facets of the STAV
has been explored previously, William Shawcross' essay "Cambodia: Some
Perceptions of a Disaster," in Revolution and its Aftermath in Kampuchea
(1983),[12] Stephen J. Morris' essay "Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and Cornell" in
the National Interest (Summer 1989), and Geoffrey C. Gunn and Jefferson
Lee's Cambodia Watching Down Under (1991). Shawcross and Morris, two
individuals one would expect to find on separate divides, essentially agree
that the Left failed--for one reason or another--to become a moral force
with respect to Cambodia until 1979. This while some on the Left,
particularly those in STAV, zealously defended the Khmer revolution.
Shawcross focuses on the Chomsky-Herman thesis, while Morris tackles
Cornell's ties to the Khmer Rouge. Gunn and Lee offer a exhaustive though
curiously insensitive view of the Australian connection to Democratic
Kampuchea.

The context within which Khmer Rouge support incubated was the Vietnam War.
To understand how students and scholars, presumed to be detached from
peasant concerns, could have found solidarity with the peoples of Kampuchea
and Indochina as a whole, one must first bear in mind the political
atmosphere and conditioning from which grew the yoke of radical
revolutionary support. It would be facile to strip the words of these
academics from the context of history, a practice not unlike that being
undertaken by current revisionists. But at the same time, these same
activists cum academics must accept responsibility for how they reached
their conclusions--namely the validity and credibility of the evidence they
unceremoniously attacked when at the same time they (quite hypocritically)
accepted Khmer Rouge leaders Ieng Sary's or Khieu Samphan's utterances as
words to live by. Notwithstanding the pro-revolutionary ideological
framework from which they were taught to think, including the strife-ridden
1960s and 1970s, one must still wonder how those who studied Cambodia and
ostensibly loved her most in the West, became supporters of her worst enemy?

By the 1970 Kent State killings of four students, these more extreme
elements of the STAV saw U.S. intervention not only as a mistake that had to
be stopped and stopped now, but increasingly inched toward the maquis. After
the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, many of these activists,
scholars, and academics were forced to choose between supporting their old
friends, namely the Vietnamese communists or Democratic Kampuchea, which
would have implicitly meant supporting the Khmer Rouge to varying degrees.
That was what Gunn and Lee have called the "two-sided switch."[13] Yet even
before that split, there was already division in the antiwar movement. Gunn
and Lee describe it:

The first was the split within the left-liberal camp in the US. This was
symbolized by the action of singer and civil rights activist Joan Baez in
supporting a full page advertisement in the New York Times condemning
Vietnam's re-education camps and human rights abuses. Her sources of
information included recently resettled refugees in America who had
undergone incarceration despite their anti-American activism and NLF
sympathies in the pre-1975 period. The result was splintering of the
Indochina Lobby with pro-Hanoi hardliners increasingly condoning Vietnam's
slide into the Moscow camp.[14]


Douglas Pike, Indochina Archive director at UC Berkeley, fondly recalls a
conference of antiwar activists not long after the New York Times
advertisement appeared which turned into a shouting match between doves who
now could not agree with one another on whether to support or condemn Hanoi.
He may have been facetious, but Pike, who became famous for being an
outspoken State Department hawk, saw more fury between them than he had ever
seen between hawks and doves. There was no lost love between either side, to
be sure, but one would perhaps have expected more civility from "pacifists."
As lines were drawn and crossed in the Third Indochina Conflict (the
invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam), similar lines were drawn in the West as
well, where a distinctly pro-Hanoi faction critical of the Khmer Rouge
formed, leaving behind only the truest believers in Pol Pot (i.e., the last
of STAV scholars).[15] Like F.A. Hayek's dedication of his classic 1944
treatise The Road to Serfdom to "Socialists of all parties," this thesis is
about some of these same socialists.

Those who romanticized the Kampuchean revolution and upheld the standard
total academic view in the years following "liberation" as they always
referred it (covered in chapter 2), were young, idealistic scholars, like
Laura Summers and Gareth Porter both from Cornell's South-East Asia Program
(Albert Gore and Bill Clinton are from their generation), all of whom were
baby boomers who had grown-up in the postwar era to a quagmire in Vietnam.
This generation of Indochina academics, specialists on Cambodia, were very
peculiar from those of the preceding generation, because they were far more
mesmerized by the idea of a peasant revolution.

Chapter 2 of this thesis, entitled "Romanticizing the Khmer Revolution" is
about the STAV scholars on Cambodia. It includes a brief review of Khmer
Rouge leader Khieu Samphan's conclusions in his economics doctoral
dissertation: "Cambodia's Economy and Problems of Industrialization,"[16] as
a backdrop to why they may have gotten attracted to the Khmer Rouge. For
instance, Laura Summers, who partially translated the thesis in 1976 for the
Berkeley-based antiwar group Indochina Resource Center (later renamed
Southeast Asia Resource Center, then eventually disbanded) had already
expressed unflinching support for the revolution in late 1975 and 1976. Her
articles in Current History, titled "Consolidating the Revolution" and
"Defining the Revolutionary State" are reviewed. An overview of the
arguments in Gareth Porter and George C. Hildebrand's Cambodia: Starvation
and Revolution, published in 1976 by the Marxist Monthly Review Press,
follows Summers' articles.

Also discussed in chapter 2 is Malcolm Caldwell, a scholar Gunn and Lee
bestow the dubious distinction of being "Democratic Kampuchea's leading
academic supporter."[17] His life cut short by a Khmer Rouge's bullet (in a
strange twist of fate), Caldwell was the founder of the Journal of
Contemporary Asia, a periodical explicitly committed to supporting
revolutionary movements in Asia and the author of Cambodia in the Southeast
Asian War (1973) and several long essays on Cambodia's post-revolutionary
development, such as "Cambodia: Rationale for a Rural Policy,"[18] published
posthumously in 1979. The reader will see that the mistake made by each of
these authors is academic. They question the validity of sources Khmer Rouge
critics are using, but hypocritically take prima facie the claims by Khmer
Rouge leaders like Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan. They romanticize the
revolution in the theoretically palatable thesis of Khieu Samphan, or Hou
Youn, but do so at arms-length. Blinded by their own ideological biases,
they believe themselves to be objective despite employing some very poor
sources and methods.

In chapter 3, the Chomsky-Lacouture Controversy is reconstructed. It is more
a Ponchaud- Barron-Paul-Lacouture-Chomsky-Herman Controversy, to be sure,
but that would sound tediously long. In early 1977, François Ponchaud wrote
the first book detailing the struggle, under socialism, of the Cambodian
people. That year, Barron and Paul published their own book, Murder of a
Gentle Land (1977) an equally if not more damning broadside against the
Khmer revolution and the Khmer Rouge. Ponchaud and Barron-Paul were among
the first to see to sound the alarm on Cambodia. In 1976, Ponchaud had
written in Mondes Asiatiques about the nature of the Khmer revolution.[19]
After publishing his book, it was reviewed favorably by Jean Lacouture, but
that review got a broadside from the leading, most intellectually formidable
member of the antiwar movement, Noam Chomsky. At the May Hearings in 1977 on
Human Rights in Cambodia, Gareth Porter trashed Ponchaud his uncritical use
of refugees in Cambodia: Year Zero. A polemical exchange ensued among
Chomsky, Lacouture, Ponchaud, and Bob Silvers, then editor of the New York
Review of Books which had translated the Lacouture review titled "The
Bloodiest Revolution."

The Porter-Chomsky-Herman objections were numerous, but still Chomsky and
Herman admitted that Ponchaud's book was "serious and worth reading" though
full of discrepancies and unreliable refugee reports which were contradicted
by other refugees (who, for instance, had said that they had walked across
the country and seen no dead bodies). This was vindication of the Khmer
Rouge--reports of having seen no evil nor heard any evil. The
Porter-Chomsky-Herman logic in a nutshell: Refugees are run away because
they are displeased, thus will exaggerate, especially over time, if not lie
about "alleged atrocities" altogether. Chomsky and Herman call for "care and
caution," nothing short of patronizing to today's refugees from Guatemala,
or El Salvador, or yesterday's from Auschwitz. Chomsky and Herman latched
onto a number of media mistakes which include three fake photographs, a fake
interview with Khieu Samphan, and a handful of misquotations. A little more
fairly treated was Ponchaud's book, but the erratas first discovered by Ben
Kiernan were blown out of proportion in Chomsky and Herman's review of the
Ponchaud book for the Nation and repeated verbatim two years later in After
the Cataclysm (1979).

Chapter 4 of this thesis, titled "Beyond the STAV," analyzes the aftermath
of what amounted to a parenthetical note in the history of Western academia.
Counterevidence is presented in three successive rounds: (1) Accuracy in
Media's analysis of human rights in the news for 1976, (2) positive and
negative coverage of Cambodia from a variety of news sources for 1977, (3)
William Shawcross' test of the Chomsky-Herman thesis for 1975-1979.
Following, the continuity and change in political thinking for each
canonized STAV scholar is reviewed. To give a sense of possible outcomes,
Michael Vickery's Standard Total View typology is used, namely that they (1)
accepted, or (2) partially accepted, or (3) mostly rejected the idea that
the STV that Ponchaud-Barron-Paul-Lacouture had forwarded.

It is within this context that the conclusion, in chapter 5, attempts to
weave common threads in the arguments of Summers, Caldwell, Hildebrand,
Porter, Chomsky, and Herman. Only after having fully absorbed their impact
can the reader pass judgment on the significance of their contributions to
the "Khmer Rouge Canon." What will emerge from this is the picture of a
community of academics too consumed by the need to prove their theories
supporting peasant revolutions to realize the consequences of their actions.

CHAPTER 2: ROMANTICIZING THE KHMER REVOLUTION


Universities are based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For
here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.


--Thomas Jefferson


Our story begins, fittingly so, in the ivory towers of some of the world's
finest universities. At the Sorbonne (University of Paris), for instance,
where would-be Khmer Rouge leaders like Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim, and Hou Youn
acquired their ideological training courtesy of the French communist party,
and at Cornell University, where a generation of Cambodianists were
increasingly attuned to revolutionary causes and movements. Stephen J.
Morris reveals the legacy of the South-East Asia Program's (SEAP) at Cornell
in his National Interest essay entitled "Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and
Cornell."[20] A cursory look at Morris' article shows the enormity of his
thrust. He unravels a sordid tale of revolutionary fanaticism at Cornell's
SEAP from the 1960s though the 1970s. Morris's censure starts at the very
top with politics Professor George McTurnin Kahin and ends with Kahin's
students. Some of his milder critics argue that his article lacks historical
context. In order to avoid this pitfall, the following section discusses
this context.

The Political Context

In the late 1960s to the early 1970s, while the United States was still in
Vietnam, American B-52s began massive "secret" bombings to eliminate North
Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. In The Rise and Demise of Democratic
Kampuchea, Craig Etcheson writes,

The fact is that the United States dropped three times the quantity of
explosives on Cambodia between 1970 and 1973 that it had dropped on Japan
for the duration of World War II. Between 1969 and 1973, 539,129 tons of
high explosives rained down on Cambodia; that is more than one billion
pounds. This is equivalent to some 15,400 pounds of explosives for every
square mile of Cambodian territory. Considering that probably less than 25
percent of the total area of Cambodia was bombed at one time or another, the
actual explosive force per area would be at least four times this level.[21]


This gave rise to a slew of American and Australian critics early on such as
Noam Chomsky and Wilfred Burchett.[22] Later, British journalist William
Shawcross made quite a name for himself for his Far Eastern Economic Review
article entitled "Cambodia: The verdict is guilty on Nixon and
Kissinger"[23] and his acclaimed Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger, and the
Destruction of Cambodia (1978). In both, Shawcross advances a "cause and
effect" hypothesis that in essence condemns "Nixinger" foreign policy for
creating the Khmer Rouge. Gunn and Lee (1991) offer insights into this bent,
they write, "But if the mainstream press and academic interest had turned
away from Cambodia in the wake of US retreat, leftist interest had been
passionately ignited by the violence of the US saturation bombing of
Cambodia."[24] Those who became "passionately ignited," grew ever more eager
to see the maquis triumph in Cambodia.

Before constructing the Khmer Rouge Canon, we must first deconstruct the
ideological framework "thought" to have guided the Khmer Rouge once they
took power. Surely, had the world known of what would become of postwar
Cambodia, few scholars or academics would have sympathized with the Khmer
Rouge cause. What drew the young, idealistic students of Cambodia to it? It
was the duality of peasants driven by academic cum revolutionary concerns.
Additionally, any struggle against neo-colonialism would have made friends
of STAV scholars who shared these values. At least part of the awe expressed
for the Khmer Rouge leadership by the STAV scholars lay in its equally
educated background. Khmer Rouge would-be leaders like Khieu Samphan, Hu
Nim, and Hou Youn (who, like Trotsky, would be eliminated in purges) all
received doctorates in economics or law from the University of Paris. These
were, of course, the intellectual figureheads, not the anti-intellectual
masterminds like Saloth Sar (known by his nom de guerre as Pol Pot), Son
Sen, Nuon Chea, Ke Pauk, Mok, and Ieng Thirith.[25] Professor Chandler
points out the "old canard" one too easily falls into every now and then,
when one assumes that because of intellectuals like Khieu Samphan and Hou
Youn, the Khmer Rouge were somehow an intellectually driven bunch. He
writes,

The idea that a Ph.D. thesis forms the basis for a revolution is an example
of academic folie de grandeur, from which I suffer occasionally myself. What
built the Cambodian Communist party in my view was the phenomenon of
continuing warfare in Indochina between 1945 and 1970. The party enjoyed
Vietnamese patronage throughout this period. Those trained in France inhaled
fumes from the French Communist Party. Mao helped. But the Khmer Rouge were
never intellectually based. Khieu Samphan was and is, to his metaphors, the
dog running in front of Pol Pot and other anti-intellectuals who wield power
in the CPK [Communist Party of Kampuchea].[26]


Also, it seemed that their developmental strategy for Cambodia matched those
of French-trained Marxist theorists like Amin Samir, one of the eminence to
the World-Systems theory that called for autarkic development in the Third
World. In this heretofore exploitation-exploited schema, where
underdevelopment grows from the yoke of capitalism and international
integration, a less-developed country can expect to develop only if it
severs itself from the World-System (that is, the world itself). For Khieu
Samphan, autarkic development was renamed "conscious, autonomous
development" to make it appear more palatable. Later, conscious, autonomous
development was re-christened "self-reliance."

In September 1976, over a year after the Khmer Rouge took power, the
Berkeley-based Indochina Resource Center (IRC) published a partial
translation of Khieu Samphan's 1959 economics dissertation.[27] At the time,
it was meant as a vision into the new Kampuchea. Virtually no one recognizes
that vision as the master plan for Cambodia, but the standard total academic
view held that it was. In this sense, what the Khmer Rouge actually did or
thought does not matter--at least not for our purpose here--since this is a
study of the STAV on Cambodia, thus a study of Cambodian studies. Summers'
abridged translation intended to offer the world a peek into the mysterious
Khmer Rouge and their plans for Cambodia. Khieu Samphan's dissertation is
unrevolutionary in most instances, though it exudes the same young, graduate
student's "humanitarian socialist ideals" that inspired other graduate
students studying the Cambodia years later. For our purpose, what IRC
circles believed was a plan for the postwar years, is sufficient to
represent the standard total academic view. Of course, the dissertation
being tame relative to the Kampuchea's reality shows how far they off the
mark. Yet, from that dissertation, of which the conclusion follows, the
reader can see how the STAV perceived the Khmer revolution. Khieu Samphan's
conclusion states that:

The task of industrializing Cambodia would appear above all else a prior,
fundamental decision: development within the framework of international
integration, that is, within the framework of free external trade, or
autonomous development.

International integration has apparently erected rigid restrictions on the
economic development of the country. Under the circumstances, electing to
continue development within the framework of international integration means
submitting to the mechanism whereby handicrafts withered away, precapitalist
structure was strengthened and economic life was geared in one-sided fashion
to export production and hyperactive intermediary trade. Put another way,
agreeing to international integration means accepting the mechanism of
structural adjustment of the now underdeveloped country to requirements of
the now dominant, developed economies. Accepting international integration
amounts to accepting the mechanism by which structural disequilibria
deepens, creating instability that could lead to violent upheaval if it
should become intolerable for an increasingly large portion of the
population. Indeed, there is already consciousness of the contradictions
embodied in world market integration of the economy.

Self-conscious, autonomous development is therefore objectively necessary. .
. .[28]

In the first instance, Samphan offers two possible paths: "international
integration" or "autonomous development". Because of conditions imposed on
the country by the "international integration" method of development,
Samphan argues, atavistic modes of production are amplified. How does he
reach that particular finding? By going back to the late 19th century, when
the industrialized French penetrated the pre-industrial Cambodian economy,
Samphan asserts that this disruption stopped the course of development for
Cambodia. In other words, French colonization derailed the Cambodian
economy. Using balance of trade and composition of trade analysis, to make
his case, Samphan concludes that exploitation takes place when Cambodia and
France trade, and that peasants too are exploited by urban elite who buy
imported luxury goods which deplete foreign exchange reserves. Hence, the
contention that "structural disequilibria" from "international integration"
would lead to "social upheaval ... for an increasingly large portion of the
population." In other words, revolution. It seemed to make sense to the
person who translated the thesis, Laura Summers, and still others who
admired it, Malcolm Caldwell and Ben Kiernan, just to name two others.

Thus, the conclusion "objectively" reached, meant that "self-conscious,
autonomous development", i.e., autarky or "self-reliance" was the answer. It
would be facile to ridicule this notion in this day and age, but in the
context of economic history, autarkic development cast a spell on young,
idealistic students who had grown increasingly critical of the "neo-colonial
world", in their words. As they looked elsewhere for space to forge ahead,
their eyes stopped on Cambodia, where a fresh revolution had taken place,
and its charming leaders had closed the country to the rest of the world.
They were in love. As professor Chandler says, it is an "old canard" to
place too much emphasis on Khieu Samphan's thesis as the master plan, since,
of course, the Khmer Rouge followed their own anti-intellectual national
development policy of slavery; but for our purpose, what matters here is not
what the Khmer Rouge thought or actually did vis-à-vis the economy, but what
the STAV scholars believed was happening. Equally inspiring to these
scholars was Hou Youn's dissertation, "Kampuchea's Peasants and the Rural
Economy." Like Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn stressed the exploitative dimensions
of trade, not just between countries, but urban and rural regions. Siding
with the peasant's plight, Hou Youn decried the "thievery" that took place
when "The tree grows in the rural areas, but the fruit goes to the
towns."[29] With this in mind, we turn momentarily to the military context
of how the Khmer Rouge came to power.

The Rise of Democratic Kampuchea

Cambodia is the transliterated name of Cambodja, the remnants of a once
mighty Khmer empire that stretched out over much of Southeast Asia.
Cambodia's contemporary history began with its colonization by France in
1883. Independence came after World War II, in 1953, and until 1970,
Cambodia was a constitutional monarchy. The coup d'etat which deposed Prince
Norodom Sihanouk on March 18, 1970, brought to power the pro-American prime
minister Lon Nol. Sihanouk, who has never been known to give up easily,
immediately began a crusade to regain his country. Believing, like General
Motors, that "What's good for GM, is good for America," Sihanouk believed
that "What was good for Sihanouk, would be good for Cambodia." He created
the resistance/maquis known as the National United Front for Kampuchea
(FUNK) soon after his overthrow. FUNK was a coalition of communists and
royalists. For the next five years, Cambodia was mired in wars on several
fronts, both internally and externally.

[The] FUNK joined Vietnamese and Laotian communists on the "single
battlefield" to struggle against "U.S. imperialism" under the banner of the
United Front of the Three Indochinese People (UFTIP). Militarily, this
entailed combined military operations--that is, guerrilla, conventional or
proxy military action as was expedient and/or possible--conducted from
"liberated" areas of the country.[30]


These "liberated" areas grew as it became clear that America would pursue a
"retreat with honor" policy with respect to South Vietnam. By 1973, when the
bombings on Cambodia had reached their zenith, PFLANK, the military wing of
FUNK, "launched its first full-scale `solo' offensive." Though was by no
means a success, the "real significance of this offensive was
political."[31] This was significant politically in the sense that Pol Pot's
no-compromise policy, according to Etcheson, took center-stage for the
communists who were becoming the real brains behind FUNK.

The Rise of the Standard Total Academic View on Kampuchea

The rise of Democratic Kampuchea paralleled that of a new consensus among
scholars who studied Cambodia. Many had grown hysterical against the war and
destruction of 1970-1975, and looked forward to the FUNK's victory. As
increasing specie-speculation and corruption combined with large infusions
of U.S. aid brought the economy into hyperinflation, the national product:
rice, became increasingly scarce because of the war-destruction of
agricultural capacity.[32] Shells reigned down on Phnom Penh for two months
before April 1975, the beginning of a new lunar year for Cambodians, and the
start of Year Zero for the Khmer Rouge. "Two thousand years of Cambodian
history have virtually ended," declared Phnom Penh Radio in January
1976.[33] Cambodia's rebirth into Democratic Kampuchea would make heavy use
of self-reliance. To almost all the scholars who had studied Cambodia, this
made sense. Not just for its economics, which had been "objectively" proven
by Khieu Samphan, but for its international politics too. David Chandler who
briefly toyed with the standard total academic view, wrote in April 1977,
"In the Cambodian case, in 1976, autarky makes sense, both in terms of
recent experience--American intervention, and what is seen as
Western-induced corruption of previous regimes--and in terms of Cambodia's
long history of conflict with Vietnam."[34] That foreign policy dimension to
self-reliance, became the justification for closing Cambodia's doors to all
foreigners. Toward that end, Laura Summers, a lecturer in the politics
department at the University Lancaster, England, began her apologia for
Khmer Rouge activities.

A graduate of the South-East Asia Program at Cornell, Summers authored two
articles in Current History about Cambodia. These articles, entitled
"Cambodia: Consolidating the Revolution" and "Defining the Revolutionary
State in Cambodia," were published in December 1975 and December, 1976,
respectively.[35] She was in England during these years, a point which will
undermine her work and that of many other STAV scholars canonized in this
thesis. She did not fieldwork, interviewed no Cambodians for either
articles. Summers' first article "Cambodia: Consolidating the Revolution,"
ranks among the first attempts by scholars of her generation to justify the
Khmer revolution that was achieved with the April 17th, 1975 fall of Phnom
Penh to the FUNK.

The Khmers could not be certain about whether the [alleged American
intelligence] document [regarding sabotage operations] contained authentic
plans or speculative, contingency proposals. What was certain was the
tenacious and frequently violent insistence of American governments upon
controlling the course of Khmer politics.[36]


First, she makes no distinction between "Khmers," FUNK, Khmer
Rouge--presumably they are one and the same. She takes at face value Khmer
Rouge vice-premier Ieng Sary's explanation that documents of American
sabotage were authentic. Becoming a virtual mouthpiece for the Khmer Rouge,
she writes,

For Khmers who survived [the legacy of U.S. policies -- 600,000 killed,
prolonged suffering and incidental charity], the awesome task was to
transform accumulated bitterness and suffering into impetus for
socio-economic reconstruction of the country all while normalising the
country's foreign relations to prevent further harmful intervention.[37]


Praising the Khmer Rouge for their rice farming techniques, as Porter and
Hildebrand would do in Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution in 1976, and
justifying the need for the evacuation of Phnom Penh based on the fact that
3 million people would now have to be fed by the new regime, Summers
contends that "[the] heavy [U.S.] bombing deterred many from voting with
their feet until the day of liberation."[38] There is, she writes
authoritatively, "little evidence of famine" although "food allowances in
the solidarity groups are small."[39] On the positive side, "rice
substitutes" are being grown, and the "end of war also means greater
security for fishing and livestock industries."[40]

Her analysis of Cambodia's agricultural and industrial prospects leave much
to be desired too. She does not cite any sources, official or otherwise,
which would certainly cast doubt on how she procured her information.
Despite this, she concludes that in Democratic Kampuchea, "Life is without
doubt confusing and arduous in many regions of the country, but current
hardships are probably less than those endured during the war. It is
mistaken to interpret postwar social disorganization or confusion as nascent
opposition to the revolution."[41] Laura Summers, who had been to Cambodia
once before 1975, on a brief visit, knew very little of the hardships before
"liberation" much less afterwards. She explains that,.

Thus far, few Khmers have left the country and many of these are former
officers from Lon Nol's army or former civil servants who fear prosecution
for wartime activities. No war crimes trials have, in fact, come to light
probably because of an RGNU [Royal Government of National Union, i.e., the
Khmer Rouge] decision to avoid deepening internal socio-political conflicts
and bitterness in a time of reconstruction.[42]


Her naïveté is mind-boggling here, Summers assumes that those who wished to
leave were actually allowed to do so, not to speak of the total and
unnecessary use of tribunals for which the Khmer Rouge could very easily
have simply been judge and executioner at once.

In discussing Cambodia's foreign policy, the French Embassy and the Mayagez
Affairs, Summers, of course, sides with the FUNK whom she knew were the
Khmer Rouge. For our purpose here, a brief discussion of the French embassy
incident will suffice. Before the Khmer Rouge "liberated" Phnom Penh, the
French government had already discussed normalizing relations with them.
Thus, the French did not intend to leave their embassy. "Hundreds of
Frenchmen who had earlier refused to leave the country, journalists of
several nationalities, Cambodian officials of the defeated military regime
and diplomats from other foreign missions including the Soviet embassy,
sought and received shelter from the French."[43] This infuriated the Khmer
Rouge, with whom she concurred. Diplomatic protocol would have forced the
French to close down the embassy and re-open after the re-establishment of
relations. Why had the government of France attempted such fraud? She
explains, "Unhappy over the prospect of losing its remaining neo-colonial
privileges, France hoped to maintain its large cultural mission in Cambodia
and sought compensation for nationalized rubber plantations."[44] Again, one
must wonder how she arrive at such creative and perceptive conclusions.

Throughout the article permeates a sense of disproportion. For instance,
Summers speaks of massive resettlement as though it were a normal affair.
Her nonchalant treatment of evacuations stands in stark contrast to the
seething sarcasm she expresses towards French and American actions with
respect to the Royal Government of National Union (RGNU), the regime name
for FUNK (which took power). "Cambodia: Consolidating the Revolution" ended
on another of many positive notes. The overall foreign policy of Democratic
Kampuchea is praised, and its impact on the region assessed. "Among Asians,
if not among other [sic], Khmer desires for peace and respect have been
recognized and reciprocated."[45] Laura Summers' defense of the new
Kampuchea is multifaceted. From domestic to foreign policy, the Khmer Rouge
could do no wrong. She does a fantastic job of rationalizing away the more
awkward Khmer Rouge policies such as expelling all foreigners. They were
expelled, she argues, for historical reasons. After years of abuse by her
neo-colonial master, who could blame Cambodia for wanting to kick the
foreigners out? Her apologetics obfuscate the fragmentary reports coming of
refugees who were, in fact, fleeing the country. Later, she suggests that
they have reasons to lie: collaborators with the ancien regime perhaps? or
worse, the discredited Americans! What emerges from this first
English-language essay on the new Kampuchea is the picture of a still
idyllic revolutionary State, divorced from reality.[46]

Defining the Revolutionary State

In her second Current History article regarding the new Kampuchea, published
in December 1976, Summers is more reserved in her alacrity to praise Khmer
Rouge accomplishments. One might call it cautious but very optimistic. In
contradistinction, David Chandler, who felt the obligation to give the new
leaders of Cambodia the benefit of the doubt, put it this way:

Can the regime recapture the grandeur of Angkor [in which the great temples
were built in the 12th century] without duplicating the slavery (and by
implication, the elite ) that made Angkor what it was? Is the price for
liberation, in human terms, too high? Surely, as a friend of mine has
written, we Americans with our squalid record in Cambodia should be
"cautiously optimistic" about the new regime, "or else shut up." At the same
time, I might feel less cautions and more optimistic if I were able to hear
the voices of people I knew in the Cambodian countryside fourteen years ago,
telling me about the revolution in their words.[47]


The reverse is perhaps true for Laura Summers, who upon reading the comments
of "emissaries" to Kampuchea, decides that all must be fine. Having acquired
new material to propagate, she quotes, without so much as a single
qualification (with respect to the controlled nature of the visit), the
Swedish ambassador to China's observations while visiting Democratic
Kampuchea as an invited guest of the new regime. Believing perhaps that the
ambassador was free to visit all places yet saw "no signs of starvation,"
Summers generalizes this finding to contradict refugee claims of atrocities
and starvation. But she goes too far, however, when she admonishes the
ambassador for not recognizing what she insists is an obvious bomb crater in
Siem Riep, caused by American bombs dropped some time during his visit of
1976. Of course, she was not an eyewitness nor an expert on bomb craters,
not to speak of American-made ones.

On the status of Prince Sihanouk, who founded FUNK, but was subdued by the
Khmer Rouge, she writes, "Since his retirement, Sihanouk continues to live
in Cambodia, where, according to another visiting emissary, he enjoys the
respect and affection befitting his status as an eminent nationalist."[48]
The title of his memoirs Prisonier des Khmer Rouges (1986) is self-evident
in contradicting that emissary's observations. Here, the mistake she makes
is to believe too easily in emissaries. Far from being randomly selected,
the emissaries who visited Cambodia were not chosen for their critical bent.
It took the regime three-and-half years to invite Western journalists, a
total of three to be exact. One of them was Malcolm Caldwell, a lecturer in
Southeast Asian economic history at the University of London, and author of
occasional essays, one book on Cambodia in the Southeast Asian war,[49] and
newspaper articles in support of the Khmer revolution. He writes, in 1977
for the London Times, "Profound changes were needed, changes which could be
brought about only by revolution..."[50] Caldwell, who, like Summers, is
canonized in this thesis, was understandably biased towards the Khmer Rouge.
One would think, given all this, that scholars like Laura Summers and
Malcolm Caldwell, both of whom held the standard total academic view on
Cambodia (see no evil, hear no evil), would turn to fresh sources of
information or at least do some fieldwork where they could interview
refugees and the like, but that apparently ranked low on their list of
priorities.

Regarding the refugee accounts of atrocities, Summers for example, dismisses
them for having received more attention than they literally "deserved." In a
series of apologetics, she rationalizes their overuse by the Press as having
"served to harden Phnom Penh's attitude towards Western journalism even as
the government welcomed a few Asian journalists into the country."[51] Not
only were the Americans at fault for causing starvation and thus the
evacuation of Phnom Penh, as her colleagues would argue, but the negative
press was making them uncomfortable. Their no comment, closed doors policy
was thus understandable! Laura Summers attributes everything the Khmer Rouge
do to knee-jerk reaction to French and American malfeasance and
imperialism.[52]

Summers then outlines, quite favorably, the constitution of Democratic
Kampuchea with its radical collectivist ideas. After describing the
elaborate process of writing the Democratic Kampuchea Constitution, which
she concludes is a mixture of Leninist and peasant customs, she sings the
preamble in obvious admiration, "happiness, equality, justice and true
democracy reign without rich or poor people, without exploiting or exploited
classes and where people live in harmony and the greatest national
unity."[53] This preamble was republished onto the fifth page of Long Live
the 17th Anniversary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, a propaganda
booklet published by "Group of Kampuchean Residents in America" or G.K. Ran.
The booklet contains a translation of Premier Pol Pot's speech commemorating
that 17th anniversary. In France and England, similar groups published press
releases from the Royal Government of National Union of Democratic
Kampuchea. These were the "Comite des Patriotes du Kampuchea Democratique en
France" and the "British Kampuchea Support Campaign," which, until 1991
lingered on.[54] Summers, who no doubt belonged to one, was by herself, a
virtual think-tank. She did not have to take orders from anyone in order to
formulate her justifications, but she did need considerable official
information from official organs, to be so keen.

The evacuation of Phnom Penh, which was roundly criticized by the rest of
the world as "barbaric" was really justified according to the standard total
academic view which she supported. As her justification, she writes "By all
accounts, however, universal conscription for work prevented a postwar
famine,"[55] but admits that "It also appears that some work groups, in lieu
of other forms of reeducation, are obliged to work harder and longer than
others."[56] One must wonder how she knows this, given that she has not been
inside the country. Does she have a reference? No source is listed. With
respect to statements from refugees and Khmer Rouge defectors sponsored by
resistance groups abroad, Summers dismisses them entirely. She writes:

These public pleas for support and the public concern raised by sensational,
but false, documents finally provoked the Paris Mission of Democratic
Kampuchea to protest that some journalists were degrading their profession
and that the French held a major share of the responsibility for allowing
these activities to continue.[57]


Some of the documents to be discredited were, for instance, several faked
photographs and interviews which between 1976 and 1977 were published in
newspapers from Australia to America.[58] The issue of the photographs, in
particular, will be summoned when the Chomsky-Herman book, After the
Cataclysm, is discussed in the following chapter.

In "Defining the Revolutionary State in Cambodia," Summers does admit,
albeit sparingly, that life was difficult. As in her first Current History
article, Summers compares the Khmer revolution with other historical
revolutions, proposing that "Like the puritan revolution in England the
Khmer revolution is the expression of deep cultural and social malaise
unleashed by a sudden and violent foreign assault on the nation's social
structure."[59] Her concern for the "difficulty" of life in the new
Kampuchea is so disingenuous as to discount its value altogether. The urban
"elite" were having problems because they were simply not used to farming
the land! A remarkable discovery that took a year to reach. Summers throws
that glimpse of sympathy away, however, when she adds, "What the urban
dwellers consider `hard' labor may not be punishment or community service
beyond human endurance ... Such associations [with memories it invokes of
Russian history] take what is happening in Cambodia out of its historical
and cultural context."[60] One must wonder what specific context she means,
when she says that hard labor may not be punishment. In any case, Summers'
article proposes an embryonic theory of the Free Press that Chomsky and
Herman would elaborate in 1979, and again as recently as 1988. To be sure,
that theory was more sophisticated than the conceptual framework alluded to
by Summers, but still it contained all the elements of this tragedy. She
asserts that:

The United States press, not to be outdone, produced dramatic news reports
and editorials based on refugee and unnamed intelligence sources. In
retrospect, these reports were partly inaccurate and are still largely
unverified. The flap illustrates the powerful and potentially dangerous
force that is generated when the political machinations of a few capture the
attention of a concerned and uninformed public.[61]


Like Chomsky and Herman, Summers dismisses the refugee accounts as bearing
little evidentiary validity. Perhaps it is hubris that prevents her from
paying more attention to these refugees, but that does not excuse her from
taking them seriously. Therefore, as in other instances, she works these
into a lather of ever-less reasonable justifications for why they would have
unpleasant things to say about the new regime. Consistent with the STAV, she
writes:

Clearly, they [the reported incidents] reflect the fears and expectations
arising from the exile's position in the old society. Most Cambodians
leaving the country in 1975 managed to do so without much difficulty as if
the regime were acknowledging that they were among the few whose values
could not be accommodated in a people's state.[62]


Summers concludes, in the same fashion as her first article, "Cambodia:
Consolidating the Revolution," by returning to the realm of foreign policy
and Kampuchea's position vis-à-vis its historical enemies. She notes that
the new regime's posture towards Vietnam is cool, but that with its "Indian"
brothers to the west and north, Thailand and Laos, respectively, relations
have improved.

The Khmer revolutionaries have actively contributed to the post-war regional
integration of Southeast Asia while consolidating Cambodia's position as a
nonaligned [meaning socialist] state. Despite these signs of the growing
acceptance of Cambodia's revolution, Phnom Penh has not yet relaxed its
guard against hostile foreign powers who might still attempt to disrupt the
people's state.[63]


This cautious but optimistic ending suggests that she grew more wary from
December 1975 to December 1976 of what was in store for Democratic
Kampuchea. In her first Current History article, Summers was cautious but
very optimistic about every facet of the new regime's policies. By 1976,
however, she had to defend the regime's increasingly battered record on
human rights.

Laura Summers, it must be said, did not know for certain what was really
going on in Cambodia. From her vantage point in Lancaster, England, she saw
very little. However, she chose to write on Cambodia's revolution
nonetheless. For other scholars whose canonical contributions are covered in
this chapter, the standard total academic view reigned supreme. Like so many
other students and scholars of her generation, Laura Summers was a romantic
of revolutions. Self-reliance and non-alignment were code-words that
suggested breaking away from the World-System, i.e., imperialism, the same
imperialism which she blamed for destroying Cambodia during the first half
of the 1970s. Combined with this STAV on Cambodia was her incredibly low
suspicion of official RGNU explanations for why certain policies were
undertaken. Instead, she hypocritically exercises a "healthy" skepticism
towards the media. What emerges from these two contributions to the "Khmer
Rouge Canon" is the picture of an academic far too obsessed with
rationalizing every objectionable Khmer Rouge action, to realize that the
more severe and numerous the objections, the more likely some grain of truth
was in them.

Starvation and Revolution

At Cornell, George McTurnan Kahin, director of the Southeast Asia program
from 1961 to 1970, and professor of international relations at the
University since 1951, became an expert on the Vietnam conflict. One of his
students was Gareth Porter, soon to become a leading "scholar" on both
Cambodia and Vietnam. Kahin's foreword to Gareth Porter's and George C.
Hildebrand's book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (1976), praises it
for "what is undoubtedly the best informed and clearest picture yet to
emerge of the desperate economic problems brought about in Cambodia largely
as a consequence of American intervention, and of the ways in which that
country's new leadership has undertaken to meet them."[64] Porter, who was
probably a classmate of Laura Summers, co-authored the most famous book of
all Khmer Rouge defenses published.

The Khmer Rouge Canon's Sine Qua Non

Nowhere was the war so brutal, so devoid of concern for human life, or so
shattering in its impact on a society as in Cambodia. But while the U.S.
government and news media commentary have contrived to avoid the subject of
the death and devastation caused by the U.S. intervention in Cambodia, they
have gone to great lengths to paint a picture of a country ruled by
irrational revolutionaries, without human feelings, determined to reduce
their country to barbarism. In shifting the issue from U.S. crimes in
Cambodia to the alleged crimes of the Cambodian revolutionary government,
the United States has offered its own version of the end of the Cambodian
war and the beginning of the new government.

--Porter and Hildebrand, 1976[65]

In 1976, SEAP graduate Gareth Porter, and his colleague George C. Hildebrand
published a small, unread, but important book entitled Cambodia: Starvation
and Revolution. It is important for two reasons: first, it was the first
English-language book of the events unfolding in Cambodia (becoming the sine
qua non for proponents of the standard total academic view).[66] Second, it
rationalized everything the Khmer Rouge did and were doing (from the
evacuation of Phnom Penh residents and hospital patients to the forcing of
monks into hard labor). It became a veritable bible for defending the Khmer
Rouge. Kiernan, Chomsky, Herman, and Caldwell all referred to the book
favorably. In Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, Porter and Hildebrand
offer what appears to be insurmountable evidence contrary to the reports of
atrocities taking place in revolutionary Cambodia, renamed Democratic
Kampuchea.

Porter and Hildebrand's Sources

Using "suppressed" documents and "official" bulletins courtesy of the
Government of Democratic Kampuchea, they argue that the April 17th, 1975
evacuation of Phnom Penh, was due to the U.S. war on the people of Cambodia,
which resulted in the overpopulation of Phnom Penh (from 600,000 to 2-3
million between 1970 and 1975) and therefore its necessary evacuation.
Furthermore, they argue that the explosion of corruption under the Lon Nol
regime was the direct result of U.S. foreign aid, and that in turn, it
exacerbated death, malnutrition, and disease in Phnom Penh, making it
uninhabitable. Curiously, Porter and Hildebrand in their 100 plus pages book
refer to the Khmer Rouge only by their more palatable coalition name of NUFK
(National Front for a United Kampuchea, also known as "FUNK" in French
acronyms).[67] They pepper their book with propaganda photos directly from
the new regime.

In chapter 2, titled "The Politics of Starvation in Phnom Penh" Porter and
Hildebrand attack the media reports of atrocities, as did Summers in Current
History, because they were based on a single account written by Sydney
Shandberg for the New York Times three weeks after the evacuation while
cooped up in the French embassy. Porter and Hildebrand write, "The article
was a weak foundation for the massive historical judgment rendered by the
news media. It contained no eyewitness reports on how the evacuation was
carried out in terms of food, medical treatment, transportation, or the
general treatment of evacuees."[68] While it is true that Shandberg could
not venture outside the embassy, from his vantage point he see more than
Porter and Hildebrand could have, while in the United States. The point of
not having eyewitnesses to corroborate or contradict reports of atrocities
will becomes important when the Chomsky-Herman book is discussed at length
in the following chapter. Continuing their critique of the mass media,
Porter and Hildebrand write, "Nor was there any extensive analysis of the
reasons Shandberg attributed to the revolutionary leadership for the
action."[69] Here, Porter and Hildebrand refer to the circumstances of
postwar Cambodia, circumstances which they insist were deplorable because of
U.S. actions that prompted the evacuation. Like Chomsky-Herman, they assert
the evacuation saved lives.

Porter and Hildebrand discount stories similar to New York Times journalist
Sydney Shandberg's as sensational (by of their titles alone) and write
"commentators and editorialists expected revolutionaries to be `unbending'
and to have no regard for human life, and because they were totally
unprepared to examine the possibility that radical change might be required
in that particular situation."[70] Nowhere is the romance with revolutions
more obvious than it is here. Porter and Hildebrand expect revolutionaries
to bend and to be humanitarian because their indoctrination had taught that
revolutions were good. Phnom Penh was in the jaws of starvation when the
Khmer Rouge "liberated" it, so they argued, and that there was no other
alternative than to evacuate everyone. By defending the Khmer Rouge, via
justification of their policies, Porter and Hildebrand resort to official
explanations and sources of information. Revolutions notwithstanding, there
is no mention of any crime committed by the Khmer Rouge during the
evacuation. On the other hand, numerous counterexamples of reasonable, if
not caring Khmer Rouge behavior and demeanor, are forwarded.

More rigorous analyses supported by actual evidence suggests a rather more
cynical desire to shut the economy down, reverse class order, and enslave
the urban population. The controversy over the evacuation continues despite
compelling evidence that suggests it was unnecessary and provoked numerous
deaths. The Khmer Rouge's contempt for city dwellers is self-evident in one
of their post-liberation broadcasts:

Upon entering Phnom Penh and other cities, the brother and sister combatants
of the revolutionary army . . . sons and daughters of our workers and
peasants . . . were taken aback by the overwhelming unspeakable sight of
long-haired men and youngsters wearing bizarre clothes making themselves
undistinguishable [sic] from the fair sex. . . . Our traditional mentality,
mores, traditions, literature, and arts and culture and tradition were
totally destroyed by U.S. imperialism and its stooges. Social entertaining,
the tempo and rhythm of music and so forth were all based on U.S.
imperialistic patterns. Our people's traditionally clean, sound
characteristics and essence were completely absent and abandoned, replaced
by imperialistic, pornographic, shameless, perverted, and fanatic traits.
(FBIS IV, May 15, 1975:H4)[71]


The anti-American theme was nothing new. After all, the FUNK fought U.S.
imperialism. Perhaps, because of this, the followers of the standard total
academic view were especially drawn to it. Ben Kiernan, who followed the
STAV, interpreted this as forgivable nationalism. Porter and Hildebrand
maintain that the evacuation was a reasonable course of action given low
food reserves without American aid in sight. In retrospect, however, food
supplies in Phnom Penh were not sufficiently low as to justify an evacuation
to the countryside. If anything, it was the two month long shelling of the
capital by the FUNK that resulted in the stranglehold on Phnom Penh.
Furthermore, evidence that the evacuation was planned well before April
suggests that strategic advantage, not the well-being of the citizens
mattered to the Khmer Rouge. Hou Youn's dissertation had sufficiently
maligned cities as to make them appear useless to the country. Not only was
class order reversed, but city dwellers would be made to farm the land, in a
complete occupational reversal. Charles Twinning explains:

An extraordinary [Cambodian communist] party congress held in February 1975,
reportedly presided over by Khieu Samphan, is generally thought to have made
the decision to evacuate cities and abolish all currency after the takeover.
The fact that the cities were all emptied within several days of the fall,
with the people knowingly directed to spots in the countryside where they
camped at least temporarily, does not give the impression of a sudden, knee
jerk action. This had all been organized before hand.[72]


Another Porter and Hildebrand justification for Phnom Penh's evacuation is
that since 5/6 of the population of Phnom Penh were refugees from the
countryside, they were simply being returned to the countryside. This
explanation sounds, oddly enough, reasonable. But why then, would over
800,000 peasants turn up dead?

Moreover, Porter and Hildebrand were concerned about the image of the Khmer
Rouge as somehow inhumane. A romance with revolution dictates that it be
humanitarian and just. Porter and Hildebrand describe the difficult choices
the Khmer Rouge faced, and how their actions were rational.

Above all else, the NUFK [FUNK] leadership had to be concerned with food and
health. The concentration of a large part of the population in the cities,
where they were unproductive and totally dependent on foreign aid, posed
grave dangers. On the one hand, attempt to maintain an adequate supply of
rice for the urban population would have disrupted the existing highly
organized system of agricultural production; on the other hand, extremely
overcrowded conditions, combined with the breakdown of all normal public
services, made the outbreak of a major epidemic highly probable.[73]


With this in mind, the evacuation made sense to Porter and Hildebrand. The
reasoning followed that: first, the conversion of unproductive labor to
productive labor (from city to countryside) would prevent starvation and
second, epidemics necessitate evacuations. Porter and Hildebrand assert that
the 600,000 city dwellers of Phnom Penh (i.e., those who were supposed to be
there to begin with) were justifiably taken into the countryside because
their labor was needed for the task of cultivating rice. The claim becomes
nothing short of utopian fantasy when they write, "The 500,000 to 600,000
urban dwellers would by growing their own food, by freeing others from the
task of getting food to them, substantially increase the total produced. By
remaining unproductive during the crucial months, on the other hand, they
would reduce the amount of food available to everyone."[74] Their logic is
devoid of realistic consideration for the human toll, just as Summers'
nonchalance reigned over the idea of evacuating millions away from home.
When they take at face value Khmer Rouge vice-chairman Ieng Sary's claim
that, "By going to the countryside, our peasants have potatoes, bananas, and
all kinds of foods,"[75] they lose all sense of reality or objectivity.
Stephen Morris said it best, "Serious students of communist regimes know
that public utterances by communist officials and their media may or may not
be true. But they are always made to serve a political purpose."[76] Porter
and Hildebrand accept all the positions and policies of the new regime,
re-printing without reservation propaganda pictures of postwar Cambodian
workers in the fields and factories working "happily".

Countering charges that the print media's characterization of the evacuation
as a "death march," is another falsehood Porter and Hildebrand dispel. They
argue that such untruths were "fostered by U.S. government statements,
including `intelligence documents,'"[77] They cite accounts contradicting
claims of untoward behavior by the Khmer Rouge onto the population of Phnom
Penh shortly after April 17. Most were from Phnom Penh Libere: Cambodge de
l'autre sourire (1976), the very first book that favorably treated the Khmer
Rouge evacuation of Phnom Penh. Gunn and Lee call it a "studied" account as
opposed to the "banalized" version seen in the motion picture "The Killing
Fields". Porter and Hildebrand conclude from this that the "death march"
characterization was "unfounded."

Finally, leaving nothing to chance, Porter and Hildebrand hold that "the
temporary clearing of most hospitals, far from being inhumane, was an act of
mercy for the patients."[78] They argue that the hospitals of Phnom Penh had
become overcrowded and unhealthy. It was thus necessary, for the well-being
of the patients, to evacuate them. And what could they expect onto the
elsewhere? Porter and Hildebrand offer as an alternative a propaganda photo
of a Khmer Rouge surgical team operating in 1974 as proof that better care
was just a countryside away. Jean Lacouture retells an encounter he had with
a Khmer Rouge supporter in which the former argued that "under the Lon Nol
regime, medical practice was in the hands of the Americans, corrupt and
decadent. These poor souls had to be ripped out, at all cost, from this
alienating medical facility. [To which I replied:] A new `conspiracy of
white coats.'"[79] Porter's and Hildebrand's falls near the Norwegian
journalist's.

The shameless propagandizing continued without refrain. Having rationalized
the more gruesome Khmer Rouge actions, Porter and Hildebrand legitimize the
leadership and sing its praises. They conclude the second chapter of
Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, rather self-assuredly, by claiming
that:

A careful examination of the facts regarding the evacuation of Cambodia's
cities thus shows that the description and interpretation of the move
conveyed to the American public was an inexcusable distortion of reality.
What was portrayed as a destructive, backward-looking policy motivated by
doctrinaire hatred was actually a rationally conceived strategy for dealing
with the urgent problems that faced postwar Cambodia.[80]


In chapter 3, Porter and Hildebrand explain the reasons behind Cambodia's
agricultural revolution by legitimizing the Khmer Rouge leadership. In a
juxtaposition of academic and peasants, they assert that because some of the
Khmer Rouge leaders are doctors of philosophy, namely Khieu Samphan, Hou
Youn and Hu Nim, which makes their policies well-thought out and legitimate.
This romanticization seen not just here but elsewhere in Malcolm Caldwell's,
Laura Summers' and Ben Kiernan's contributions to the STAV on Cambodia.[81]
In a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal opposing the U.S. State
Department's half-million dollar grant to Yale University for the creation
of database on Khmer Rouge crimes to be headed by Ben Kiernan, Stephen
Morris writes, "Mr. Kiernan wrote that `Khieu Samphan's
personality--particularly his assuming manner, ready smile and simple
habits--endeared him to Khmer peasants. Himself a peasant by birth, he is
said to have been somewhat ascetic in his behavior, but never fanatical and
always calm.'"[82]

Expectations of famine by Western intelligence sources for 1977 were
dismissed by Porter and Hildebrand in light of FUNK broadcasts that claimed
superb rice harvests due to superior two-cycle rice-farming under Khmer
Rouge leadership. They write:

Tiev Chin Leng, former director of the port of Sihanoukville and a member of
the NUFK [FUNK] residing in Paris, the 1975 crop amounted to 3.25 million
tons of paddy, or about 2.2 million tons of rice. For the Cambodian people
this bumper harvest represents 250 grams of rice per meal per adult, and 350
grams per meal doe worker on the production force.... In addition meat
eating has increased, In the past, under the influence of Buddhist
tradition, the peasants took little part in the slaughtering of animals, and
ate very little meat.[83]


Both points (including the statistics) reappear in Malcolm Caldwell's
posthumously published essay turned book Kampuchea: Rationale for a Rural
Policy (1979) reviewed in the following section. The unending gullibility of
Porter and Hildebrand is itself incredible. However, that was not the end of
it. For instance, Porter and Hildebrand believed that forcing monks to work
was not an act that could "fairly be represented as religious
persecution,"[84] because everyone else, they argued, old and young was
forced to work, too.

Although Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution is about Cambodia, a good
portion of it is devoted to blaming America for the starvation which, as it
turns out, was tampered by the Khmer Rouge's liberation of Phnom Penh.
Porter and Hildebrand leave no stone unturned in their critique of U.S.
intervention and its destruction of Cambodia. Porter and Hildebrand describe
a scissors-like extraction mechanism curiously like the Soviet law of
primitive socialist accumulation, when they explain that modern industry
would be fueled by "capital raised by the expansion of agricultural
production."[85] Their conclusion makes Cambodia the victim not of the Khmer
Rouge, but of the Americans and the half decade of underdevelopment and
destruction by U.S. bombs. In addition, the U.S. media, according to Porter
and Hildebrand, was a co-conspirator in this cover-up, by not doing justice
to Cambodia. Porter and Hildebrand fastidiously conclude that:

Cambodia is only the latest victim of the enforcement of an ideology that
demands that social revolutions be portrayed as negatively as possible,
rather than as responses to real human needs which the existing social and
economic structure was incapable of meeting. In Cambodia--as in Vietnam and
Laos--the systematic process of mythmaking must be seen as an attempt to
justify the massive death machine which was turned against a defenseless
population in a vain effort to crush their revolution.[86]


As Porter and Hildebrand romanticize the "social revolutions," they reveal
their motive: defending the Khmer revolution. Far from being scholarly or
objective, they make evident their biases by citing, without so much as a
pathetic reservation or qualification, the propaganda which forms their
defense of the Khmer revolution ergo the Khmer Rouge. What they achieved,
unquestionably, was the temporary confounding of the events in the new
Kampuchea, perched from half the globe away, they played a role in
legitimizing it for another three years. Next, we canonize the significant
contributions of Malcolm Caldwell. Caldwell was an author, STAV scholar,
tireless Khmer Rouge defender, and finally a victim of the Khmer Rouge
themselves.

Malcolm Caldwell's Kampuchea

Another academic who romanticized the Khmer revolution and its
revolutionaries was Malcolm Caldwell, a lecturer at the School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He was an economic
historian "committed to the struggle of the colonized, oppressed, and
impoverished against imperialism and neo-colonialism."[87] In short,
Caldwell became the leading academic supporter of the Khmer Rouge. His
colleagues write upon his assassination that he "would not have liked to
have gone down in history as an academic in the usual sense of the term. He
would have wanted to be remembered as an activist on the British Left and an
anti-imperialist fighter."[88] Caldwell published a number of articles[89]
before submitting the draft of a paper titled "Cambodia: Rationale for a
Rural Policy" was published after his death in 1979 under the auspices of
James Cook University of North Queensland.[90]

The introductory note by Hering and Utrecht in Malcolm Caldwell's South-East
Asia echo similar points gathered from Porter and Hildebrand (1976) as well
as Summers (1975 and 1976),

The Western Press, apparently feeling insulted and being outraged, excelled
in negative reporting on developments in Kampuchea under the Pol Pot-Ieng
Sary regime. Not only did strongly exaggerated reports on the mass killings
in the regime appear in the Western mass media, but also reports of crop
failures and hunger in Kampuchea. Contrary to this unfavorable reporting in
the Western newspaper, Malcolm was able to find more reliable data and
compose a much more favorable account of economic development in Kampuchea
in the last two years before the Vietnamese invasion of January 1979.
[Emphasis added.][91]


As the STAV scholars mobilized against the media's "negative reporting on
developments in Kampuchea" they joined by one of their elder statesmen,
Malcolm Caldwell. Although negative coverage did appear from various
newspapers and magazines, it was never as concerted or organized as the
editors assert, at least not until 1979. If anything, these reports were
"fragmentary" according to analysis done for 1976 by Accuracy in the
Media.[92] Hering and Utrecht furthermore add,

Malcolm showed much concern about the incessant stream of disturbing reports
on the high number of Kampucheans killed by their own leaders. There were,
for Malcolm, two questions to be answered properly. The first was the
likelihood or unlikelihood of the very high figures indicating 2 or 3
million people being killed. He made some investigations into the
reliability of reports such as the ones distributed by the French priest
Ponchaud. It was Noam Chomsky who drew Malcolm's attention to the fact that
Ponchaud had heavily corrupted the newsreel broadcast by Radio Phnom Penh.
Also some studies by Ben Kiernan convinced Malcolm of the serious fraud
committed by Ponchaud, Barron and Anthony [Paul] in their reporting on
Kampuchea after April 1975.[93]


Caldwell's dramatized concern for these "disturbing reports" resulted in his
own attack on the media and his further determination to prove them wrong.
On the very night he was killed, December 23, 1978, Caldwell was in Phnom
Penh at the invitation of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime. Having visited the
country on a guided "tour" and interviewed Pol Pot, he became even more
convinced that the allegations against the Khmer Rouge by refugees were
false. Furthermore, the connection to Chomsky and Ponchaud's ballyhooed
erratas is elaborated upon in chapter 3 regarding the Chomsky-Lacouture
Controversy.[94] Caldwell, like his STAV colleagues, Summers, Porter, and
Hildebrand have in some fashion or another quoted one another (circulating
references). Leaving original inquiry much to be desired, they seek the
truth from the ivory towers of their Universities. The preface to the Janata
Prachuranalu published book Kampuchea: Rationale for a Rural Policy,
likewise admonishes the Western press:

Caldwell's paper nails the lie to another aspect of the propaganda, viz.
that the Kampuchean revolutionaries were following a mad path of building a
socialist society. He has not only shown this path is correct but that it is
the best-suited, not only for Kampuchea, but also for most of the
underdeveloped Third World countries in the age of imperialism.[95]


To the contrary, the New York Times, Washington Post, and all three
television networks in 1976 were reticent about human rights in Cambodia. As
we will se in chapter 4, Accuracy in Media found that very few stories
relative to those on South Korea and Chile appeared in this mass medium.

Yet the editors, in considering the prospects for Cambodia since the January
1979 invasion by Vietnam, contend that "Already within six months after its
outbreak [the invasion] it has turned Kampuchea from a rich exporting
country into a deadly place of hunger. It has rapidly annihilated the
hard-won results of a unique development-model."[96] What is remarkable here
is the blame placed on everyone except the Khmer Rouge. For instance, we saw
that America had caused starvation to beset Phnom Penh, thus causing the
need for an evacuation. Hering and Utrecht forthrightly inform the readers
of Malcolm Caldwell's Southeast Asia that Malcolm told Ernst Utrecht: "If it
is true that Pol Pot has also killed Khmer Peasants, I have to make a
different evaluation of Kampuchea's development-model. Killing an innocent
peasant is a token of fascism."[97] More transference--from calling the Pol
Pot-Ieng Sary regime communist and "good" to fascist and "bad". Where will
it end? No one knows.

In the first of three articles in Malcolm Caldwell's South-East Asia,
written for the China Policy Study Group in London Caldwell chastises the
media and the Barron-Paul book Murder of a Gentle Land (1977) for
perpetuating lies about the Khmer Rouge and their intentions. Caldwell
writes:

Faced with determined attempts on the part of both the Western and the
Soviet media to portray it as a crazed pariah, Kampuchea has--without
abandoning its policy of "first things first" (i.e., irrigation and
rice)--succeeded in convincing many of its Asian neighbours and other Third
World countries that the calumny is unwarranted. Two things are of note
here: first, much of the Moscow/Hanoi propaganda is drawn from the notorious
Reader's Digest book by Barron and Paul, Murder of a Gentle Land, Which has
long since been refuted and discredited in the West (it was serialized in
Hanoi radio); second the wilder allegations against Kampuchea current in the
West never gained much popular credence or currency in neighbouring
countries (in Thailand because it is common how refugee stories are selected
and magnified). [Emphasis is Caldwell's.][98]


Caldwell's ad hominem attack on Barron's and Paul's book is of particular
note, again, because Chomsky and Herman deploy their resources against it
too. In addition, Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero, was also assaulted by
Caldwell and his STAV colleagues (Porter, Kiernan,[99] Chomsky, and Herman)
as a cesspool of hearsay and falsehoods. Because the Barron-Paul gained
early popularity in the U.S., and was the more vulnerable of the two,
Caldwell and friends worked tirelessly to undermine that one, particularly.
Caldwell dismisses them based on their conclusion that "the revolutionary
regime is atavistic, anachronistic, barbaric, rustic ascetic, anarchic,
cruel, irrational, and intent upon commanding a forced march back to the
Dark Ages."[100]

In that essay, "Cambodia: Rationale for a Rural Policy" or Kampuchea:
Rationale for a Rural Policy, Caldwell begins reasonably enough:

To most of the outside world, events in Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea)
since its liberation in 1975 appear totally outlandish and incomprehensible.
Most commentators conclude that the charitable explanation for them list in
bungled and inept improvisation by ignorant and ill-organised cadres
floundering in disastrous circumstances and sustained only by opportune
callousness and monopoly of firearms. This study argues that, on the
contrary, the leaders of the Cambodian Revolution had evolved both
short-term tactics and long-term socio-economic strategy, based upon a sound
analysis of the realities of the country's society and economy, in the years
before liberation; that in the face of great difficulties they have
attempted with some successes to implement these in the last three years;
and the chosen course is a sound one whether one judges it in terms of its
domestic appositness or in terms of its reading of the future international
economy.[101]


This thesis forces him to reach back into the economic dissertations of
Khieu Samphan and leads him as well to the unreserved use of Government of
Democratic Kampuchea bulletins and official explanations--just as the sine
qua non of the Khmer Rouge Canon, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution by
Porter and Hildebrand resorted to in 1976. For example, Caldwell quotes
favorably from the translation of Pol Pot's "17th Anniversary of the
Communist Party of Kampuchea" speech as well as Ieng Sary's assertion in
front of the U.N. general assembly that "Our objective is to make our
country a modern agricultural and industrial country."[102] In addition, by
quoting extensively from Khieu Samphan's thesis "Cambodia's Economy and
Problems of Industrialization," Caldwell asserts that it is the backbone to
the development-model being used by Democratic Kampuchea. Hence, further
indication that the STAV was that the dissertation was a master plan. Like
Laura Summers, Porter, and Hildebrand, Caldwell is quick to report the
observations of the ambassador Kaj Bjork and other invited emissaries
without reservation. In addition, he cites Porter's and Hildebrand's
Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution over 15 times[103] and has this to say
of their book,

[It] compensates to some extent for the dereliction of the vast majority of
Western scholars, "experts" and journalists reputed to have, or who
themselves profess to have an interest in Cambodia (an interest, that is,
aside from being paid to read about it and to comment on it). In what
follows in this section I draw heavily upon Porter and Hildebrand. But I
would like to stress that their book is indispensable and should be read by
everyone.[104]


"Birds of a feather," it is said, "flock together." Caldwell could not have
found a more authoritative book to reference his own work. From his perch in
England, he looked not Cambodians, but his colleagues for what made the
Khmer Rouge tick.

The similarities do not end there, however. Caldwell did not excel at hiding
his admiration for the Khmer Rouge leadership. Hence, like his STAV
colleagues, he romanticized about the revolutionaries who were both
peasants, but academics too. These were theoretician who were not afraid of
a little hard work. He writes:

It should be emphasized that radicals like Khieu Samphan and the others were
not "theoretical leftists". On the contrary, they always not only stressed
the importance of cadres throwing themselves into manual labour alongside
peasants, but set a personal example. They scorned material rewards and
comforts, fully sharing the lives of the poor. Phnom Penh had no attractions
for them, and since liberation they have continued to retain their working
offices deep in the rural areas and to take turn at field work. They thus
understood and understand peasant problems infinitely better than those
western scholars who now appoint themselves to pass judgment on them from
afar.[105]


Caldwell's description of Khieu Samphan sound strikingly similar to Ben
Kiernan's "ascetic" characterization as quoted by Stephen Morris.[106]Moreov
er he makes an excellent point about the "western scholars" who "pass
judgment from afar." The lesson remain unlearned.

Summers, Porter, Hildebrand were fond of the superior farming abilities of
the new Cambodia. The double or triple rice-cropping methods of the Khmer
Rouge were indeed incredible. It became, however, a source of objections
when the fact that double rice-cropping, as pointed by David Chandler, was
"an achievement unequaled since the days of [12th c.] Angkor."[107] In awe
of such a feat, Caldwell rationalizes the "close" supervision of city
dwellers who were sure not to share these goals. He writes:

Urban dwellers re-settled from Phnom Penh in 1975 could not possibly have at
once shared that outlook and it need occasion us no surprise that to begin
with they required close supervision when put to work shifting earth and
collecting boulders; we should bear this in mind when evaluating refugee
stories, particularly those referring to the immediate post-liberation
period.[108]


Caldwell, like Summers, considers the hardships that city-dwellers faced,
yet like her, his facade wears thin. From justification, Caldwell turns to
apologia for Khmer Rouge. He is shameless in singing the praises of what
Prince Sihanouk has compared to propaganda that outstripped Joseph Goebbels.
Caldwell's romanticization of the Khmer revolution is apparent when he
describes that,

The forethought, ingenuity, dedication and eventual triumph of the
liberation forces in the face of extreme adversity and almost universal
foreign scepticism, detachment, hostility and even outright sabotage ought
to have been cause for worldwide relief and congratulation rather than the
disbelief and execration with which it was in fact greeted. . . But if
manipulators have a very good reason to distort and obscure the truth we do
not. Indeed we have a clear obligation to establish and propagate it with
every resource at out command.[109]


With "forethought," "ingenuity," and "dedication" too, Caldwell triumphs
over his colleagues as the "leading academic supporter of the Khmer
Rouge."[110] He is mistaken when he asserts that there was universal foreign
skepticism of the winning side, since most of the negative reporting was
fragmentary even in 1977. The real media campaign began, according to
Shawcross after the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam in 1979, at the time
ex-STAV scholars like Ben Kiernan switched to the Vietnamese side.
Caldwell's assertion that "manipulators" are behind the propaganda campaign
against the Khmer revolution is not original. Summers explored that idea
approvingly, while Chomsky and Herman will develop it to absurdity in their
theory of the Free Press covered in the next chapter.

In the second-half of his paper-turned-book, Caldwell places the Khmer
revolution in the context of international and historical perspective. Being
somewhat more enthusiastic than his colleagues or perhaps more openly so,
Caldwell proposes a counterfactual cloaked in a reprimand,

Those who orchestrate the chorus of vilification and scurrility against
Democratic Kampuchea do not accept that have responsibility to let us know
what they think the country might have looked like today [1978] had the
Revolution been crushed; what they would do even today were they to be by
some miracle vested with absolute power in Phnom Penh; and what the
prospects of the country would be were either of these conditions fulfilled
in contrast to the prospects that clearly open out to it now under its
present revolutionary government.[111]


His tour de force reaches its nadir with this baseless comparison. The
opposite is what one often wonders, when looking back at the years 1975-1979
for Cambodia. Upon reflection, in what must appear to be an entirely
unfounded argument, Caldwell asserts that Cambodia is better off with the
Khmer revolution. Sheer fantasy? Not to the STAV. Porter and Hildebrand went
so far as to justify the evacuation because it had, in their opinion, saved
lives. Chomsky and Herman allude to that and more when they compare postwar
Cambodia to the horrid American devastation of the country during the war,
as the reader will discover in the next chapter.

The conclusions, which Caldwell draws are so distanced from reality as to
make them unrecognizable. He predicts that the revolution in Kampuchea marks
the beginning of "the greatest and necessary change beginning to convulse
the world in the later 20th century and to shift it from a disaster-bound
course to one holding out promise of a better future for all."[112] With
this in mind, however, he does feels that the alternative to the Kampuchean
solution, inverting the World-System, "would not be a good option, in either
sense (moral or rational): even the richest countries of the world today are
still disfigured by poverty and gross inequalities."[113] For that assertion
to be made, the "poverty and gross inequalities" in the First World would
have to be equal to greater than those in the new Kampuchea. To it, one
might wonder whom Ponchaud had mind when he pointedly asked, "How many of
those unreservedly in support of the Khmer revolution would consent to
endure one-hundredth part of the current suffering of the Cambodian people?"
Whether they would consent is dubious, but we know form this chapter who
four of them are: Malcolm Caldwell, Laura Summers, Gareth Porter, and George
C. Hildebrand. Speaking for the peasants of the world, Lecturer Malcolm
Caldwell of the University of London writes that there can be no doubt,
"that the lesson [of the Khmer revolution] will not long be lost upon the as
yet unliberated peasants."[114]

Conclusion

We know that the Cambodianists who wrote in support of the Khmer Rouge used
similar arguments. That much was self-evident of Laura Summers, Gareth
Porter, and George C. Hildebrand. Malcolm Caldwell, whose impact was equally
impressive while in England with Summers, but nowhere near Cambodia, upheld
the STAV on Cambodia. As exemplary STAV scholars, they have earned their
place in the "Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979." These defenders of the Khmer
revolution were influenced to some degree or another by the charisma or
intellect of some of the Khmer Rouge leadership, namely, Khieu Samphan and
Hou Youn, as evidenced in Caldwell's note that Khieu Samphan was truly a man
who practiced what he preached. They romanticized the Khmer revolution and
its revolutionaries by rationalizing the policies of the Khmer Rouge and
believing that all contrary evidence was the work of manipulators and
counter-revolutionary agitators. Furthermore, they convinced themselves of
the Khmer Rouge mission to liberate peasants from the domineering urban
parasites. But at what costs, one wonders, to the peasants themselves? Fully
half if not more of the casualties of revolution were rural Khmer. They were
fascinated by the idea that according to the Constitution, "exploiter and
exploited" would no longer exist, and that "justice and harmony" for all
would prevail in happy Kampuchea.

After the Vietnam War, these scholars were inclined to disbelieve refugees
who had a vested interest in vilifying Democratic Kampuchea and its rulers,
the Khmer Rouge, since they were running away from something or another to
begin with. As this logic was picked-up by Chomsky and Herman, it became the
central argument against the mounting refugee reports of atrocities as will
be seen in the next chapter.

Another major point reiterated in the works of all four authors is that
America must be held accountable for most of the postwar problems, since,
they argue, it had created the deplorable pre-liberation conditions. But
this was a two pronged argument, not only was America to blame for the
annihilation of a country, but it was the Khmer Rouge who were the
protagonists, heroic in their effort to stave off starvation by evacuating
the cities. It is expounded upon repeatedly by Noam Chomsky and Edward
Herman in the Chomsky-Lacouture Controversy, a controversy tackled in
chapter 3. Summers, Caldwell, Porter and Hildebrand saw themselves through
the prism of a struggle against neo-colonialism.

Their complete trust in the righteousness of Khmer Rouge actions was shown
at its extreme when Porter and Hildebrand argued that the evacuation of even
hospitals was an act of mercy. The consistent threads encountered in the
works reviewed is the result of complete and utter naiveté in quoting the
claims the Khmer Rouge. Sihanouk knew as much even while a prisoner of the
Khmer Rouge. No hesitation nor reservation to quote Ieng Sary or Khieu
Samphan's explanations was expressed by any of the four STAV scholars
reviewed. It seems clear, therefore, that the mistakes which led each author
to reach his/her respective conclusion was in fact academic. To be sure,
there were judgments colored by ideology, but even a Marxist who possessed
some objective fibers could see that speaking to common people might help.
Peer review is a cornerstone of academia, but when the standard total
academic view is to sing the praises of the Khmer revolution, what next? The
STAV's methods led them to generate conclusions that were simply implausible
when stacked on top of one another. Had they thought more critically,
perhaps, they would not be canonized.
<snip>