Echoes

When believers in leftist ideology encounter an “outrage” (using definitions so broad that "outrages" are nearly infinite in number), one of their many go-to epithets for the alleged offender is “nazi”.

The Nazis were pure evil, responsible for killing millions. But sadly, they are not alone in their atrocities. In fact, there’s another group that also killed millions in the 1970s, but oddly the Left never uses their name as an epithet to label those who commit “outrages.”

I’m in Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of Cambodia’s Holocaust Museum. It presents the horrifying story of the killing fields. Most Americans are vaguely aware of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, but what they often don’t know is that the Khmer Rouge were socialist extremists—virulently anti-capitalist, demonizers of the rich, guarantors of a state controlled utopia in which medical care, education, food and other creature comforts would be available to all, and lastly, redistributionists who stole property from those who had it and gave it to favored people (always members of the communist party).

Human Remains from the Killing Fields

At the Khmer Rouge Museum, survivors’ testimony abounds. Like Yad Vashem in Israel or the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the testimony is tragic in its description of barbaric acts of violence all perpetrated in the name of a repugnant ideology. Here’s the testimony of Leng Yun, a wife and mother whose family was murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

“[The Khmer Rouge] executed high ranking officers [military who opposed their communist ideology], rich people, proletariates, capitalists, and people who used to eat delicious food. [Because we owned a small shop] we were accused of being capitalists. “

To help the communist state, all of these people became slave labor, were starved, and when too weak to work as slaves, killed.

The modern-day Left appears to be very worried about language, expressing outrage whenever someone says anything that they find offensive. Yet in the United States we’re hearing echos of the anti-capitalist, eat-the-rich language that is the staple of all socialists, including the Khmer Rouge.

“The rich don’t pay their fair share."

“Billionaires are immoral."

“Capitalism is an evil."

"Those who oppose us are deniers."

Echos of these same sentiments were used by a group that ultimately killed millions.

To be clear, modern-day Democratic Socialists who use such language are NOT the Khmer Rouge. But the echo remains, and although it’s faint, it could grow in volume and lead to very bad things.

Maybe that’s why social justice warriors and their media shills never replace the epithet “Nazi” with “Khmer Rouge.” The reason may be that the echo is loud enough to make them uncomfortable.