can you hide my glasses man hide them quickly they'll see you oh [Music] when you think of crazy or dumb dictators the most common candidates for this title is either Mr Hilt Saddam Hussein or Stalin however all of these dictators still got a lot of things done and arguably lifted the economy up for most and I mean most people in their countries despite this these leaders got a lot of their own people killed however po pot is on a whole different level the man managed to kill nearly 25% of cambodia's entire population in less than 4 years in an attempt to establish a communist Utopia which even resulted in another fellow socialist Nation to invade this country because he was taking things too far on May 19th 1925 Paul pot or Sal of SAR as he was known at the time was born his early life was marked by traditional K culture but as Cambodia was drawn into the French Colonial sphere in the late 19th century the influences of Western political thought began to per at in the 20th century Sal of sire or Paul po actually had a quite nice childhood despite being under Western rule his father L was a prosperous farmer who owned nine hectares of rice land and several draft cattle meanwhile Pop's mother was a devout Buddhist and well-respected woman pulpot family also had connections with the Cambodian royal family his cousin Meek was a concert of King caaf monong who allowed paulp to visit regularly in 1949 after World War II a ACC to further education abroad made SAR part of the tiny Elite in Cambodia he and 21 other selected students sailed from Saigon aboard a ship stopping at Singapore Columbo and jouti and route to Marseilles from 1949 to 1953 in France Paul pot was exposed to Marxist and communist ideologies why does all the weird start in France during his time in France the political situation in Cambodia had also changed King monong had died with norodom sinuk placing him mainly through French influence in 1953 Paul po returned to a country that had been experiencing an independence war from France for several years known as the first indo-china war as the believer of Marxism Paul po believed that the K Viet Min was the most promising resistance group for him to join although the war with France was over by November the Communist forces still fought against the Cambodian King until 1954 after signing a truce with the King cambodia's communist decided to pursue power through peaceful means rather than Violence by participating in the 1955 elections they did horribly and Paul pop became a history French and geography teacher for a while his students actually describe him as a good teacher which is rather surprising for what was about to come in a few years in 1959 at a conference the Communist movement's leadership established the kampuchan labor party based on Marxist leninist model of democratic centralism the Cambodian King obviously not happy with a bunch of Communists calling for his overthrow began cracking down hard on anyone suspected of supporting the movement however this Crackdown only emboldened the Communists and they began to gain more supporters but they still had to remain in hiding and Paul po stayed in the jungle where he would wait for more support in 1965 Paul pot flew from Vietnam to China where his official host was Deno ping during his visit Chinese officials trained pot on topics like dictatorship of the proletariat class struggles and political purges Paul pot also witnessed the Chinese Cultural Revolution firsthand which would greatly influence his political view after 8 years of gathering international support material and followers the Revolutionary Army known as the camra Rouge would finally be completed 1967 in January 1968 the C Rouge launched her Insurgency with an attack on an army base Where They seized lots of weapons the government responded with scorched surf tactics and heavy bombings which fueled support for the insurgents soon over 100,000 villagers joined them though Popa would abandon the revolution for a while in 1970 when he flew to China after his wife began showing signs of schizophrenia imagine plotting your country's biggest coup in 20 years only to abandon it for your wife what a family man he was however an even bigger plot twist was about to come in 1970 King cuk was overthrown in a coup led by General law null who established a pro-american government the Cambodian King also flew to China to meet with paulp where the Chinese government forced them to be friends against the pro Americans the coup was not necessarily a bad thing though it provided Paul pot and the Rouge with an opportunity to increase their influence positioning themselves as the primary opposition to the long n regime the kar Rouge military strategies proved effective by 1975 they entered pom pen the capital of Cambodia and missed the chaos of the Civil War it had taken Paul po 22 years to finally take control of Cambodia and he viewed the population of the capital with direct mistrust particularly as the city's numbers had swelled by peasant refugees who had fled the karou advance and were considered to be traitors after taking the cap the Rouge ordered an evacuation falsely claiming it was to avoid a US bombing over 2.5 million people were forced out including 15 to 20,000 patients from hospitals with little preparation the evacuation aimed to dismantle capitalism cuk support base and suspected CIA networks allowing the K Rouge to consolidate power and push urban populations into agriculture on April the 20th 1975 popot entered the capital secretly taking up residence in the railway station with other Rouge leaders before moving to the finance ministry after his victory paulp visited North Korea and China where Ma advised him to avoid Extreme Measures cautioning him against blindly imitating China's socialist model paulp also met with kimil song in North Korea before returning to Cambodia and July you know things are about to go pretty bad when even Mao and Kims are warning you to not do anything extreme the K Rouge established a nominal parliamentary system with the former King as head of state hoping to leverage his status internationally however the k control the real power the Rouge would ban the use of money to prevent corruption effectively making Cambodia a slave state all citizens were expected to work without pay with severe punishment for Disobedience what a madlad need to pay $500 Cambodian dollars for a ticket out of the country too bad monetary transactions do not exist anymore the K Rouge also began executing people they labeled as bad elements often using their remains as fertilizer poot would take the repressions that he learned from China even further everyday language was modified to promote socialist collectivism cambodians were encouraged to use we instead of I while working people were often segregated by sex Sports were banned and the only permitted reading material was government issued like P devat which was the revolution newspaper in 1976 the king resigned allowing Paul pot to shift fully to socialist policies he portrayed the country as a revolutionary model becoming prime minister under the pseudonym Paul pot of course privileges were reserved for K Rouge members while religious and ethnic groups faced persecution despite their Marxist pretenses dmer Rouge sought to eradicate the working class seeing it as a relic of the past in their new Utopia the working class did not exist anymore as famine and violence spread internal purges grew severe with Paul pot eliminating perceived traitors but don't worry PA pot had a solution for the famines communal kitchens were established show all members of a commune a together with foraging and haunting band as individualistic children over seven were also forced to live community with C Rouge instructors instead of their parents Buddhist monks were labeled social parasites and forced into manual [Music] labor fan [Music] even those who were stereotypically f as having intellectual qualities such as wearing glasses or speaking multiple languages were executed out of fear that they would rebel against the roou the attempt to purify Cambodian Society along racial social and political lines also led to the purges of cambodia's previous military along with Business Leaders journalists students doctors and lawyers thear Rouge pretty much began killing anyone who was considered smart in an attempt to create a new pure Utopia according to many academic sources the most widely accepted estimates of ex's deaths under the K Rouge say that 33% of Cambodian men died under the K Rouge compared to 16% of Cambodian women po pot's strong belev that Cambodia needed to be transformed into an agian Utopia sent from his experience in cambodia's rural Northeast Paul pot said that the killings were meant for the purification of the populace during this time poot saw the K Rouge as an examp Le that should be copied by other revolutionary movements across the world and courted Marxist leaders from Burma Indonesia Malaysia and Thailand allowing Thai Marxist to establish bases along the Cambodian border with Thailand in reality whilst in a state of utopic frenzy the K Rouge aimed outwards with the goal of recreating the new anoran Empire the biggest foreign in Paul Po's project however was Vietnam who had been opposing him ever since his group took power and had declared independent from the Vietnamese communist movement after several border clashes between 1975 and 1978 Vietnam had enough on the 21st of December 1978 the Vietnamese Army launched its fulls scale invasion in only 2 weeks the Vietnamese Army had entered the Cambodian capital and established a pro Vietnamese Cambodian state known as the People's Republic of campuchia in February after 2 months the Chinese attacked Northern Vietnam hoping to draw Vietnamese troops away from the invasion of Cambodia this did little to stop the advancing Vietnamese forces and Paul po escaped to Thailand during the 1979 monsoon season the K Rouge forces began returning to Cambodia and by mid 1980 they claimed 40,000 troops aided by Chinese supplies however in four years the kar Rouge was pushed back to Thailand again in 1984 and popot was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease another form of cancer which led him to retire from military command in 1985 having previously executed most of the best doctors in Cambodia popot had to take a long journey to China for treatment which would worsen his condition beaten ill and out of Hope Paul pot returned to Cambodia in 1988 wary of early peace talks with the end of the Cold War the US stopped recognizing the kar Rouge as cambodia's legitimate government and in 1991 Cambodian factions agreed to un supervised ceasefire Paving the way for Democratic elections after suffering badly in the 1993 elections po pot continued the arm struggle in the jungle however facing military losses and mass desertions Paul pot moved his headquarters multiple times retting f as support dwindled his health deteriorated due to arotic stenosis and a stroke left him partially paralyzed as the K Rouge forces dwindled he spent more time with his family expressing to his AIDs that the movement's end was near in 1997 popt was finally arrested by one of his commanders who believed that PO was planning to kill him Paul po was sentenced to life in prison however he remained in house arrest for the time during his house arrest he was visited by American journalist Nate faer in an interview Paul pot stated that his conscience was clear but acknowledged that mistakes were made he also told T I want you to know that everything I did was for my country on the 15th of April 1998 Paul poot died in his sleep of a heart attack however Tor suggested that he took his own life upon learning of plans to hand him over to the United States his body was preserved for verification before his wife cremated it mmer Rouge continued to lose territory and by March 1999 the same K Rouge commander who had arrested and handed popot over was also captured marking the group's effective collapse it has now been over 25 years since the kar Rouge was disbanded which is not that long if you ask me I mean there are even videos of Paul pot's body on YouTube which you could search up if you're into those kind of things Paul pot imagined the Cambodian Marxist Utopia based on his experience from the self-sufficient villages in the jungle but the same King that pot outed in the' 70s norodom cuk returned to power in 1993 and reestablished the monarchy showing how truly dumb and incompetent Paul Po and is moving was at establishing a Utopia for the working class all while killing nearly 25% of the entire population in less than 4 [Music] years looke fore [Music] n