Where else could Khmer Rouge-esque regimes arise?

TastySpam

Tehshudge said:
A KR-like China would have been impossible for one major reason, Mao had at least a few things grounding him to reality; Pol Pot was just absolutely fucking bat guano. He invaded a country with several times the population (Vietnam) with the rationale that Vietnam's comparative modernisation and urbanisation would make it's people less tough.

Let's put this into perspective: Vietnam had just gotten past decades of protracted conflict against multiple foreign powers (Japan, France, the US, etc) based on the sheer motivation of its armed people. Pol Pot sincerely thought that his people were so much more tough and dedicated than that, that it would make up for a fivefold difference in population as well as greater levels of military and industrial development.

A lot of time Pol Pot's atrocities are simplified as 'he killed a ton of people', and while this is absolutely true, it leaves out the sheer degree to which his decisions were absolutely inane. I think that factor - an absurdly irrational totalitarian actor - is the hardest to replicate to get a KR situation out of any other country.
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Agreed entirely. To make this clear, Pol Pot killed 25-33% of Cambodia in 4 years (1975-1979). Mao ruled China for 26 years. Whatever the death toll of Maoist policies were and to what degree you attribute them to Mao, no one says it comes even close to Pol Pot, even if Mao's massive time advantage. The same logic applies to Stalin and yes, even the Kims in North Korea.

In that sense, "Maoists win" ala Peru or Nepal is not a convincing KR scenario to me unless there's evidence that they were as totally crazy as Pol Pot was.
 
MrGreyOwl

MrGreyOwl

A more extremist "back to our Bedouin roots" Gaddafi has the potential of turning Libya into into a Khmer Rouge-esque hellhole, with that specific combination of mass purge and anti-modernity.

Fidel Castro dies early, and Che Guevara completely takes over Cuba. The man ruined the country's economy in his short tenure with his completely inane interpretation of collectivization, and was also a raging, paranoid psychopath. Lots of potential if he stays longer in power. Bonus point: he goes Posadist shortly after...

Not exactly KR, but there's also a lot of batshit insane dictators OTL who could have reached KR level of mass murder with the right nudge: Amin Dada in Uganda, Duvalier in Haiti, Bokassa in the CAR, and Niyazov in Turkmenistan, they all had the delusion of a connection with the supernatural and could have come up with gems like "God told me all people who wear glasses are secret foreign spies" or "modern medicine is an invention of the Devil".
 
Gentleman Biaggi

Gentleman Biaggi

Banned
MrGreyOwl said:
A more extremist "back to our Bedouin roots" Gaddafi has the potential of turning Libya into into a Khmer Rouge-esque hellhole, with that specific combination of mass purge and anti-modernity.

Fidel Castro dies early, and Che Guevara completely takes over Cuba. The man ruined the country's economy in his short tenure with his completely inane interpretation of collectivization, and was also a raging, paranoid psychopath. Lots of potential if he stays longer in power. Bonus point: he goes Posadist shortly after...

Not exactly KR, but there's also a lot of batshit insane dictators OTL who could have reached KR level of mass murder with the right nudge: Amin Dada in Uganda, Duvalier in Haiti, Bokassa in the CAR, and Niyazov in Turkmenistan, they all had the delusion of a connection with the supernatural and could have come up with gems like "God told me all people who wear glasses are secret foreign spies" or "modern medicine is an invention of the Devil".
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Duvalier is probably best-suited for such a role considering that he literally had all black dogs in Haiti killed because he believed a political opponent transformed into one and that he killed 21% of Haiti’s population.
 

Kaze

Banned
The United States - considering how they treat minorities of all faiths, creeds, and identities - and the current rise of the far right fringe.
 

vuun

The United States is pretty much ASB, but (I know this means an earlier POD) I think an independent Confederacy would actually be fertile ground for a Khmer Rouge-like ideology. The Southern United States has always had an anti-urban streak culturally, and while an independent CSA wouldn't be very urbanized, a Khmer Rouge-esque chain of events could arise in reaction to attempts to urbanize/industrialize the country.
 
ChadMachine999

ChadMachine999

Perhapses the USSR wins the Cold War and for whatever reason this results in the US balkanizing, a very anti-urban, ehtno-natioanlist regime that has no problems killing lot’s of people could arise in either the South, Great Plains, or Rocky Mountains. Though I doubt said regime would associate it’s self with Maoists.
 

MalcontentRex

Banned
ChadMachine999 said:
While the Nazis were genocidal, they didn’t kill urbanites. Killing urbanites is what distinguishes the Khmer Rouge from other Genocidal Regimes.
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I just mean in terms of slaughtering an absurd percentage of citizens, and we have no idea just how far off the deep end Hitler would have gone had he won the war.
 
HelloThere

HelloThere

Have Hitler die during the coup attempt 1923 and have somehow the Artamans (under the leadership of Himmler) take over both the völkisch movement and Germany. Their ideology based on a "renewal from the primal forces of the people, from blood, soil, sun and truth" seems fit to resettle or genocide Urbanites.
 

King Henry

overoceans said:
I've always assumed that to be true. The Khmer Rouge was China-backed, and, like China, they considered the peasants to be the revolutionary class. Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.
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My understanding is that Pol Pot didn't so much idolize the peasantry as the hunter-gatherers he ended up living among while a fugitive.
 
Gentleman Biaggi

Gentleman Biaggi

Banned
Kaze said:
The United States - considering how they treat minorities of all faiths, creeds, and identities - and the current rise of the far right fringe.
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I can realistically see at worst an extreme McCarthyite-State's Rights dictatorship rising to power and imprisoning some intellectuals (these movements were generally anti-"Eastern" intellectual- see George Wallace) but even they'd understand that we need a moderately educated nation to continue to be oppressive. And yes, McCarthyists and State's Righters were generally rural populists, they also would come nowhere near what Pol Pot did when it came to evacuating cities, especially since many supporters could live in those cities. Finally, while the MC/SR movements were very racist, there's generally been a significant lack of calls for genocide. At worst in this situation, American blacks would be sent "back" to Liberia, which was something several congressional white supremacists supported in the pre-New Deal era. While that's obviously racist and terrible and should never be done, it would not compare to the genocidal affects of Pol Pot's regime. As for other majorities in this situation, a similar occurrence would happen. If a LtP-style situation happens with Israel, Jews could certainly be persecuted, but there is absolutely no way that with a large WWII vet public genocide would occur. As for Asians and Hispanics, it really depends on your situation because if your a dissenter from say, China, you'd probably be used by such a regime to talk about how horrific life under Communism is. Basically, the realistic worst case scenario is just your general Rumsfeldia/LtP dystopia with a lot more racism and a slight bit more anti-intellectualism. If you want a Pol Pot-level dictator to rise in America (I don't know why), you probably need a POD that's pre-1900, and even that's murky
 
ChadMachine999

ChadMachine999

Gentleman Biaggi said:
If you want a Pol Pot-level dictator to rise in America (I don't know why), you probably need a POD that's pre-1900, and even that's murky
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America loses it’s Independence war from the British. As the colony develops the Cities become very rich off of trans-Alantic trade, while the rural areas are sapped for natural resources, resulting in lot’s of pollution, environmental collapse, and large scale poverty. The British giving America Independence during the 60’s decolonization movement (assuming it isn’t butterflied away). Educated British Bureaucrats leave the country, causing the American Government to experience major Brian Drain. A group (let’s cal them the American People's Democratic Liberation Army) takes over the country and starts a genocide against the Urbanites who they consider to be loyal to Britain, and thus not real Americans.
 
SealTheRealDeal

SealTheRealDeal

ChadMachine999 said:
As the colony develops the Cities become very rich off of trans-Alantic trade, while the rural areas are sapped for natural resources, resulting in lot’s of pollution, environmental collapse, and large scale poverty.
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Right off the bat, even this nerfed USA would probably be at least 50% urban.

The British giving America Independence during the 60’s decolonization movement (assuming it isn’t butterflied away).
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How do you butterfly the transition towards self governing colonies and dominions, yet not the 60s decolonization wave.
 
ChadMachine999

ChadMachine999

SealTheRealDeal said:
Right off the bat, even this nerfed USA would probably be at least 50% urban.


How do you butterfly the transition towards self governing colonies and dominions, yet not the 60s decolonization wave.
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In this timeline the British are super greedy and only care about resource extraction, America doesn’t experience any major industrialization, and thus cities only pop up on Ports along the coasts whit their sole purpose being to take American resources and ship them to Britain. While their is no major industry in America, Cottage Industry is quite common, especially for small arms. This not only makes rural Americans the super majority, but gives them the ability to establish truly awful regimes and back them up by force. Britain finds it’s self at war with a major European Power that it can only barley beat after exhausting all of it’s army. Thus decolonization follows because the British don’t have the resources to keep the Empire together. The Khmer Rouge was caused by a very destructive colonization attempt by the French that disproportionally harmed rural areas, at least in the eyes of the Khmer. To replicate a Khmer Rouge style regime in America, you have to replicate the conditions that caused the Khmer Rouge.
 
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