of elephants and men, and scumbags

[jamesd at echeque.com]

> NOW it's a total fucking waste of time to even respond to garbage 
> like this but I feel the need to point out the Khmer Rouge were 
> empowered by the US government and Pentagram, and certainly weren't 
> "left" of anything. But they ARE the goto diversionary narrative 
> whenever schmucks like this mention the alleged genocide in Vietnam that 
> never occurred in the wake of the US rout-departure

The left passionately denied the bloodbath in Cambodia as they 
passionately denied the bloodbath in Vietnam:

They only admitted to the bloodbath when Vietnam successfully invaded 
Cambodia - and only then did they blame it somehow on the Americans.

Back then when Chomsky and Herman wrote, the left, myself among them, 
all knew that something terrible was happening in Vietnam, though most 
now claim to remember otherwise. Today even Chomsky himself now 
remembers that no one in the press even suggested such a thing [12], 
though back then two months before he and Herman so indignantly 
complained of the failure to report the bloodbath as “missing”. the 
National Review told us [13]:

"THE BLOODBATH is motivated not so much by hatred or revenge as by the 
necessity for the Communist system to purge itself of undesirable 
elements From a Marxist viewpoint political purge is a necessity in 
order to achieve political purity, a precondition to the building of 
socialism. Political purity ensures single mindedness, which in turn 
achieves high efficiency. The Vietnamese Communists, as they showed in 
their conduct of the war, are doctrinaire single minded, efficient. But 
not until all Vietnamese men, women, and children think the Communist 
way will political purity be achieved for the new nation as a whole. 
This is why indoctrination (“re-education” as they call it) is of prime 
importance. For those who are too old or too stubborn to change 
elimination is the only alternative."

The crimes committed by the North Vietnamese regime against the 
Vietnamese people were smaller than the crimes committed by the Khmer 
Rouge against the Cambodians, but for us on the left they were 
emotionally far more significant.

When these Vietnamese crimes became known, the reaction of the left was 
ignore the facts, the details and evidence of the accusations, and 
attack the messenger, a reaction that was strikingly inconsistent with 
our self image as the conscience of the world, our image of ourselves as 
people who cared deeply about the welfare of faraway strangers. Today, 
most of the radical left comfortably remember these accusations that 
they so venomously and savagely condemned as never having been made.