Kaing Guek Eav a.k.a Comrade Duch is dead. What Americans need to learn from this revolutionary leader

“We will burn the old grass and the new will grow.” - Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975 - 1979)

Victims of the Khmer Rouge

 Contributing writer at The Atlantic and professor at Colombia Univeristy John McWhorter has written an important article titled "Academics Are Really, Really Worried About Their Freedom" where he describes the situation on college campuses as the "New Maoism." 

These disturbing trends have broken out into the real world with mobs demanding obedience by innocent bystanders trying to eat their dinner in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC.  Where can Maoism lead in its most extreme form? It leads to the killing fields.

Where Maoists struggle sessions can end.

In the space of less than four years (1975 - 1979) in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot carried out a communist revolution, declared year zero, and within that time killed two million of their countrymen.

One of the executioners, who was finally brought to justice by an international court, has died. Before the revolution he had been a school teacher. Kaing Guek Eav, came to be known as Comrade Duch, who oversaw the killing of over 20,000 people at S-21, a former school officially turned into a prison camp, but that in reality was a death camp.

There is an important documentary of the same name that should be required viewing by Westerners that highlights how teenagers were used to carry out the slaughter following the former school teacher's orders.

Comrade Duch has died at age 77. He was serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity.  He finally answered for his crimes before an international tribunal in 2010.

If it can happen there then it can happen anywhere, especially if we fail to heed the lessons of history.

Kaing Guek Eav a.k.a. "Duch" tortured and murdered thousands