Pol Pot’s policies came from modular revolutionary models, not Khmer tradition or leader psychology

Evidence

The policies of the Pol Pot regime can only in a very limited sense be attributed to traditional Khmer culture or to its leaders’ cruelty, paranoia, and megalomania. The Khmer have had their share of megalomaniac despots; some of these, however, were responsible for Angkor. Far more important are the models of what revolutions have, can, should, and should not do, drawn from France, the USSR, China, and Vietnam – and all the books written about them in French. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 624

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common-sense attribution of atrocities to ‘culture’ or mad leaders — parallel to the field’s refusal of culturalist explanations for Islamophobia and Islamist violence.