By Oliver Kamm
Times Online (UK)
I linked this week to Andrew Anthony's salutary article from The Observer on Malcolm Caldwell, a Scottish Marxist academic and enthusiast for the regime of Pol Pot. My thanks go to a couple of commenters for pointing out published articles I wasn't aware of.
Shortly before his murder in Cambodia, Caldwell reviewed a book by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter called Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, published in 1976. It's a repugnant book that systematically denied the accumulated evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities. Caldwell predictably wrote in the far-left magazine Race and Class (not online, as far as I know):
(Note that it was Levin - wrong on many things, but utterly right and heroic in his judgements on totalitarianism - who exposed this charlatan. John Pilger was nowhere to be seen, for reasons I hinted at here.)
What, indeed, lay behind this orchestration of hate and fear (and, amazingly, Caldwell was not referring with that phrase to Pol Pot's regime itself)? To answer that question I recommend a paper by Sophal Ear, a political scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School and a refugee from Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Professor Ear writes of the Porter-Hildebrand (P-H) thesis: "Having rationalized the more gruesome Khmer Rouge actions, P-H legitimized the leadership and sang its praises."
When I pointed out in an earlier post, about this newspaper's exposure of the nuclear deceptions of Iran, Porter's apologetic for the worst regime of the 20th century - for which he was compared to a notorious Holocaust denier by Congressman Stephen Solarz in Congressional hearings in 1977 - he posted an extraordinary comment to this blog. Porter referred me to his Wikipedia entry, apparently believing that I would regard this as an unimpeachable reference source. The point he presumably wanted to highlight was that from 1978 (two years after publication of his book) Porter had belatedly accepted the fact of "mass killings" under the Khmer Rouge.
I don't know if Porter was aware of this, but my reader David Irving accepts that there were mass killings of Jews in Poland under the Nazis. Under cross-examination in his libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 2000, Irvng "accepted that the killing by shooting had been on a massive scale of between 500,000 and 1,500,000 and that the programme of executions had been carried out in a systematic way and in accordance with orders from Berlin" (The Irving Judgment, 2000, p. 116). But that belated acceptance of the very partial truth didn't prevent Irving from being exposed in court as a Holocaust denier.
So why did Porter refer to the great scholarly resource Wikipedia? If you have a look at his entry, and in particular the version that inaugurated it, the pattern of Wikipedia edits made by the person who wrote it, and the warnings he's received as a result, I think it's a reasonable inference that the original author was someone with a consuming interest and extensive personal knowledge of Gareth Porter.
Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist at The Times. He joined the paper in 2008, having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund. His main areas of interest include economic policy, foreign affairs and European literature. He also writes a weekly column about language.
Shortly before his murder in Cambodia, Caldwell reviewed a book by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter called Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, published in 1976. It's a repugnant book that systematically denied the accumulated evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities. Caldwell predictably wrote in the far-left magazine Race and Class (not online, as far as I know):
"This brief but powerfully argued and moving book deserves the warmest of welcomes. No revolution in history has had so much calumny heaped upon it as Kampuchea (Cambodia) since its liberation in April 1975. It excited Bernard Levin (The Times, 2 February 1977) to some of his most malicious sneers and barbs.... What lies behind this orchestration of hate and fear?"
(Note that it was Levin - wrong on many things, but utterly right and heroic in his judgements on totalitarianism - who exposed this charlatan. John Pilger was nowhere to be seen, for reasons I hinted at here.)
What, indeed, lay behind this orchestration of hate and fear (and, amazingly, Caldwell was not referring with that phrase to Pol Pot's regime itself)? To answer that question I recommend a paper by Sophal Ear, a political scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School and a refugee from Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Professor Ear writes of the Porter-Hildebrand (P-H) thesis: "Having rationalized the more gruesome Khmer Rouge actions, P-H legitimized the leadership and sang its praises."
When I pointed out in an earlier post, about this newspaper's exposure of the nuclear deceptions of Iran, Porter's apologetic for the worst regime of the 20th century - for which he was compared to a notorious Holocaust denier by Congressman Stephen Solarz in Congressional hearings in 1977 - he posted an extraordinary comment to this blog. Porter referred me to his Wikipedia entry, apparently believing that I would regard this as an unimpeachable reference source. The point he presumably wanted to highlight was that from 1978 (two years after publication of his book) Porter had belatedly accepted the fact of "mass killings" under the Khmer Rouge.
I don't know if Porter was aware of this, but my reader David Irving accepts that there were mass killings of Jews in Poland under the Nazis. Under cross-examination in his libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 2000, Irvng "accepted that the killing by shooting had been on a massive scale of between 500,000 and 1,500,000 and that the programme of executions had been carried out in a systematic way and in accordance with orders from Berlin" (The Irving Judgment, 2000, p. 116). But that belated acceptance of the very partial truth didn't prevent Irving from being exposed in court as a Holocaust denier.
So why did Porter refer to the great scholarly resource Wikipedia? If you have a look at his entry, and in particular the version that inaugurated it, the pattern of Wikipedia edits made by the person who wrote it, and the warnings he's received as a result, I think it's a reasonable inference that the original author was someone with a consuming interest and extensive personal knowledge of Gareth Porter.
Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist at The Times. He joined the paper in 2008, having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund. His main areas of interest include economic policy, foreign affairs and European literature. He also writes a weekly column about language.
2 comments:
Malcolm Caldwell supported Pol Pot and he was killed during Yuon invaded Cambodia in 1978 that was his love and choice, but what I don't understand about John Pilger who inspired humanitarian fundraising, but why did he hide of Yuon invaded Cambodia and installed the peasants Hun Xen, Chea Xim and Heng Xamrin in power?
There's something tragically pathetic about an ivory tower academic whose faith in Pol Pot's Democrazy Kampuchea could be disproved so thoroughly over such a short period of time.. in khmer this guy is "Achar ta t'ess - A chess teh t'a"!!
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