This day in history: Pol Pot was born on this day in 1925. Pol Pot was a Cambodian dictator and mass murderer responsible for killing 1 to 3 million Cambodians in the late 1970s, nearly a third of the Cambodian population. Anyone thought to be intellectual was murdered, including the killing of people simply for knowing a foreign language or even merely wearing glasses. Pol Pot held power through a combination of enormous charm and complete ruthlessness.
The Oscar-winning 1985 film The Killing Fields brought a wider knowledge of his atrocities.
"…we should never forget that the killing fields of Cambodia will stand forever as a grotesque monument to egalitarianism, and take heed that those who preach the egalitarian gospel of envy are, whether they know it or not, apostles of Pol Pot." Vincent Cook
