'Ultra-nationalists and xenophobic racists'

Nate Thayer writes:

Pol Pot’s Cambodia bears a stark resemblance to the Kim family dynastic rule that runs North Korea today. There is a reason they were each others closest ideological allies.

Which raises the issue of why? The dirty little secret is that Khmer Rouge weren’t communists. They were Cambodian. In the heart of far to many Cambodian’s, there lurks a Khmer Rouge in varying degrees of dormancy. ...

[T]he Khmer Rouge were more accurately characterized as ultra-nationalists and xenophobic racists (with many similarities to fascism) intent on creating their own version of organized power deeply rooted in current Khmer political culture.

Fundamentally — and sadly — little has changed in Cambodia. Even the leading opposition figure is an unabashed xenophobe.

While it is about North Korean propaganda, B.R. Myers' "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters" sheds some light on the politics of race, isolation and population-destroying paranoia.

Follow Nate Thayer on Twitter. I'd tell you to buy his book — he deserves to be paid — but it's out of print.