Hello, historians of Reddit!
While researching about the Khmer Rouge, I read in the introduction to Ben Kiernan's *The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79* that the Khmer Rouge had exterminated dozens of Khmer nationalists fleeing Southern Vietnam for having "Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds", despite that the fact that the Khmer Rouge itself was staunchly nationalistic and chauvinistic. It was an ethnically-based justification for the destruction of potential political opposition (even though the "opposition" was zealously nationalistic and would have supported the Khmer Rouge and its attempts to create an ethnically homogenous state).
I was also taught in school that Mao Zedong, during the Cultural Revolution, encouraged people to label anyone who had been politically opposed to him as "counter-revolutionary". This was an ideologically-based justification for the destruction of political opposition.
There seems to be a pattern for authoritarian governments to label political dissent as being associated with persecuted minorities. Dissenters of Maoist rhetoric were labeled as having"counter-revolutionary" thought and in collaboration with the landlords and the bourgeoisie. Potential opponents to the Khmer Rouge were eradicated under the basis that they had "Vietnamese minds", and were threats to the ethnic hegemony of Kampuchea.
I was wondering if there have been any other examples of governments labeling political dissent as being associated with the thoughts of persecuted minorities (political minorities, ethnic minorities, etc.).
For instance, did the Nazis label political dissenting ideas as being Jewish in nature? Did Pinochet label anyone opposed to his regime as having the minds of communists? Etc.
Thanks!
Interesting question, one that I don't have an answer for, however I would like to bring up a few things in regards to Kiernan's Pol Pot Regime.
I, like many younger students of Cambodian history, read Kiernan's book toward the beginning of that intellectual journey. It is a highly visible text that will often be at the top of any google search or list of sources. There are reasons for this, Kiernan did valuable research and at a critical time so soon after the regime fell. However, there are issues with some of his conclusions, sources and motivations. Steve Heder, another Cambodian historian, sums this up nicely in his (excellent) review of the book:
Categories like Pol Pot Group, East Zone, Pol Pot loyalist, South west Zone, obscure more than they elucidate, and their use reflects not a detached analysis of the political process but Kiernan's own engagement in it. This is an engagement that aligns him with certain surviving East Zone cadres who became founding members of the People's Republic of Kampuchea, which was established in 1979 under Vietnamese tutelage and later renamed the State of Cambodia. It entangles him in their struggles against other Cambodians for political and historical legitimacy, including battles over the writing of Cambodian history.
Essentially, the argument can be made that Kiernan goes out of his way to make the case that the 'Pol Pot Regime', was more racist than it was Marxist. And he had reasons for doing so that relate to his, at the time, on going relationship with some government officials (and anecdotally perhaps his own political views about socialism). The short version could be explained along the lines of denying socialist credentials of the Khmer Rouge and comparing them more to Nazi Germany than to a Marxist-Leninist cause, as well as emphasising the role of certain parts of the party apparatus over others.
Heder's review dismantles many of Kiernan's ideas, even to an extent this idea about the 'Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds':
Kiernan highlights the fact that many of the East Zone victims were stigmatized with the epithet, kbal yuon khluon khmcer, which he translates as 'Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds' and which he suggests racialized those killed. This phrase, which might also be translated 'Khmer bodies with Vietnamese heads', had also been used historically to conjure up images of Khmer political structures under Vietnamese leadership. Kiernan's argument that the phrase was used to suppress 'the Khmer majority ... on the racial grounds that they were not really Khmer' is at best incomplete. Instead, the phrase suggests political leadership and political orientation were considered more important than any biologically-determined physical characteristics. Being physically 'racially' Khmer was no protection: treason to the class and national cause was political, and could not be committed by anyone, regardless of skin colour, eye shape, or hair texture, who was suspected of refusal to accept and be loyal to the correct political line of the 'proletarian vanguard' leadership.
As with many historical questions, I tend to think some kind of middle ground between the two arguments might be a safe answer, and my own thesis was written accordingly, but I more wanted to respond to your question here just to provide some counter-balance to the predominantly Kiernan led narrative... As I said, he has done some important work, but he can also be a bit problematic in some instances. In an interview I conducted with David Chandler, both mine and Kiernan's former thesis adviser, Chandler brought up the interesting question of why Kiernan had not been able to 'find the time' to testify at the Khmer Rouge tribunal... considering every other historian of note had offered their 'expert testimony' and submitted to cross examination.
Goodluck with your studies, are you writing particularly about Cambodia or a wider comparative question?