Hey everyone, and welcome back to another Tip from Nick.
As Professor Luger said at the beginning of this week, we have hit the ‘home stretch’. Lots of essay’s, midterms, and studying… you name it, its been piled up at our doorstep. The sun will soon be shining and it will be beautiful outside; allow yourself some breaks from writing to explore the beautiful Vancouver springtime, it will help tremendously with your mental state.
This week we have been covering a paper written by Alie Bedhad, titled “Critical Historicism”. In his writing, Alie mentions a term he calls ‘historical amnesia’, something that is prevalent in the United States but that also happens in many Western countries. Bedhad finds that historical amnesia is “a cultural form of repudiation that works through projection and denial.” (Bedhad 290). Alie is writing predominantly in the context of immigration and middle eastern treatment within the United States, however, I was inspired to find other cases in the history which mimic the idea of historical amnesia.
The first thing that came to mind was genocide. Specifically, the Cambodian genocide. I write about the Cambodian Genocide not because it is not known now, or similarly because it is isn’t seen as genocide by people today. What made me think primarily about the Cambodian genocide was how western academics and political officials responded to the stories and events surrounding the atrocities. But first, a little background into the genocide itself.
The Cambodian genocide occured during the mid 1970’s, when a communist faction that called themselves the ‘Khmer Rouge’ took power and ordered the immediate evacuation of all major cities. A strict and viciously violent government had taken control, and immediately began to kill anyone who was either:
a) already educated. this included anyone in the health and social realm (doctors, lawyers) as well as students, and, most shockingly, anyone who wore glasses.
b) against the Khmer Rouge in any way. There was virtual no room for any kind of protest against the orders of this government. It was follow the rules or be killed.
c) Someone from within a city. Although these people were not explicitly killed, many were moved to settlements which were essentially prison camps with gruelling amounts of hard labour which eventually lead to death.
The Khmer Rouge kept extremely strict control over media; both incoming and outgoing, and as a result only refugees escaping Cambodia and the official(but obviously biased) Khmer Rouge news source were the only indication of the ongoings of the country. The refugees, to no shock, did all they could to spread information and stories of the horrors they saw. It is the response of Western academia which shocked me the most.
Despite many first hand accounts by refugees as well as journalists who had seen the first days of Khmer Rouge rule before their expulsion, Most Western scholars disregarded, did not believe ,or were highly skeptical of a genocide occurring within Cambodia. In fact, many instead found that the Khmer Rouge would bring good to the country; that the Khmer Rouge was the answer to the poverty and instability tarnishing Cambodia after the Vietnam War. Those that were against American involvement in the containment of Communism worried it would negate their arguments, and as such vehemently denied that a genocide was taking place.
Even after a book released by John Barron and Anthony Paul, which gathered first hand reports from refugees, estimated that a whopping 1.5-3 million people had been killed by the hands of the Khmer Rouge, there was still much pushback to the idea of a genocide. In fact, this even went to a hearing at the United States National congress, in which a scholar who specialized in Cambodia was quoted to have said, “I cannot accept the premise … that 1 million people have been murdered systematically or that the Government of Cambodia is systematically slaughtering its people.”.
Today, photographic evidence, as well as recovered burial grounds and testimonies by both witnesses and Khmer Rouge members, have aided in the truth behind the Cambodian genocide to finally come out. However, there is still a disparity as to the true death toll; more-so, a belief that the original counts of at least 1.5 million killed were highly exaggerated.
This denial of the Cambodian genocide by scholars in both the United States and Europe is a prime example to the repudiation element of Behdads’ definition of historical amnesia. Be it through sheer disbelief of the tragic events, or from strategic denial to fit in with an agenda, the fact that the Cambodian genocide came incredibly close to being written out of history is frankly terrifying. Do we aim to write history as we want to remember it? Do we chose what and what didn’t happen, based on what works with our current ideologies? The answer should be no, but with the power of the nation to systematically erase an event from history, be it intentionally or not, I fear for the history books of the future.