Malcolm showed much concern about the incessant stream of disturbing reports on the high number of Kampucheans killed by their own leaders. There were, for Malcolm, two questions to be answered properly. The first was the likelihood or unlikelihood of the very high figures indicating 2 or 3 million people being killed. He made some investigations into the reliability of reports such as the ones distributed by the French priest Ponchaud. It was Noam Chomsky who drew Malcolm's attention to the fact that Ponchaud had heavily corrupted the newsreel broadcast by Radio Phnom Penh. Also some studies by Ben Kiernan convinced Malcolm of the serious fraud committed by Ponchaud, Barron and Anthony [Paul] in their reporting on Kampuchea after April 1975.[93]
Caldwell's dramatized concern for these "disturbing reports" resulted in his own attack on the media and his further determination to prove them wrong. On the very night he was killed, December 23, 1978, Caldwell was in Phnom Penh at the invitation of the Pol Pot- Ieng Sary regime. Having visited the country on a guided "tour" and interviewed Pol Pot, he became even more convinced that the allegations against the Khmer Rouge by refugees were false. Furthermore, the connection to Chomsky and Ponchaud's ballyhooed erratas is elaborated upon in chapter 3 regarding the Chomsky-Lacouture Controversy.[94] Caldwell, like his STAV colleagues, Summers, Porter, and Hildebrand have in some fashion or another quoted one another (circulating references). Leaving original inquiry much to be desired, they seek the truth from the ivory towers of their Universities. The preface to the Janata Prachuranalu published book Kampuchea: Rationale for a Rural Policy, likewise admonishes the Western press:
Caldwell's paper nails the lie to another aspect of the propaganda, viz. that the Kampuchean revolutionaries were following a mad path of building a socialist society. He has not only shown this path is correct but that it is the best-suited, not only for Kampuchea, but also for most of the underdeveloped Third World countries in the age of imperialism.[95]
To the contrary, the New York Times, Washington Post, and all three television networks in 1976 were reticent about human rights in Cambodia. As we will se in chapter 4, Accuracy in Media found that very few stories relative to those on South Korea and Chile appeared in this mass medium.
Yet the editors, in considering the prospects for Cambodia since the January 1979 invasion by Vietnam, contend that "Already within six months after its outbreak [the invasion] it has turned Kampuchea from a rich exporting country into a deadly place of hunger. It has rapidly annihilated the hard-won results of a unique development- model."[96] What is remarkable here is the blame placed on everyone except the Khmer Rouge. For instance, we saw that America had caused starvation to beset Phnom Penh, thus causing the need for an evacuation. Hering and Utrecht forthrightly inform the readers of Malcolm Caldwell's Southeast Asia that Malcolm told Ernst Utrecht: "If it is true that Pol Pot has also killed Khmer Peasants, I have to make a different evaluation of Kampuchea's development-model. Killing an innocent peasant is a token of fascism."[97] More transference--from calling the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime communist and "good" to fascist and "bad". Where will it end? No one knows.
In the first of three articles in Malcolm Caldwell's South-East Asia, written for the China Policy Study Group in London Caldwell chastises the media and the Barron-Paul book Murder of a Gentle Land (1977) for perpetuating lies about the Khmer Rouge and their intentions. Caldwell writes:
Faced with determined attempts on the part of both the Western and the Soviet media to portray it as a crazed pariah, Kampuchea has--without abandoning its policy of "first things first" (i.e., irrigation and rice)--succeeded in convincing many of its Asian neighbours and other Third World countries that the calumny is unwarranted. Two things are of note here: first, much of the Moscow/Hanoi propaganda is drawn from the notorious Reader's Digest book by Barron and Paul, Murder of a Gentle Land, Which has long since been refuted and discredited in the West (it was serialized in Hanoi radio); second the wilder allegations against Kampuchea current in the West never gained much popular credence or currency in neighbouring countries (in Thailand because it is common how refugee stories are selected and magnified). [Emphasis is Caldwell's.][98]
Caldwell's ad hominem attack on Barron's and Paul's book is of particular note, again, because Chomsky and Herman deploy their resources against it too. In addition, Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero, was also assaulted by Caldwell and his STAV colleagues (Porter, Kiernan,[99] Chomsky, and Herman) as a cesspool of hearsay and falsehoods. Because the Barron-Paul gained early popularity in the U.S., and was the more vulnerable of the two, Caldwell and friends worked tirelessly to undermine that one, particularly. Caldwell dismisses them based on their conclusion that "the revolutionary regime is atavistic, anachronistic, barbaric, rustic ascetic, anarchic, cruel, irrational, and intent upon commanding a forced march back to the Dark Ages."[100]
In that essay, "Cambodia: Rationale for a Rural Policy" or Kampuchea: Rationale for a Rural Policy, Caldwell begins reasonably enough:
To most of the outside world, events in Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea) since its liberation in 1975 appear totally outlandish and incomprehensible. Most commentators conclude that the charitable explanation for them list in bungled and inept improvisation by ignorant and ill-organised cadres floundering in disastrous circumstances and sustained only by opportune callousness and monopoly of firearms. This study argues that, on the contrary, the leaders of the Cambodian Revolution had evolved both short-term tactics and long-term socio-economic strategy, based upon a sound analysis of the realities of the country's society and economy, in the years before liberation; that in the face of great difficulties they have attempted with some successes to implement these in the last three years; and the chosen course is a sound one whether one judges it in terms of its domestic appositness or in terms of its reading of the future international economy.[101]
This thesis forces him to reach back into the economic dissertations of Khieu Samphan and leads him as well to the unreserved use of Government of Democratic Kampuchea bulletins and official explanations--just as the sine qua non of the Khmer Rouge Canon, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution by Porter and Hildebrand resorted to in 1976. For example, Caldwell quotes favorably from the translation of Pol Pot's "17th Anniversary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea" speech as well as Ieng Sary's assertion in front of the U.N. general assembly that "Our objective is to make our country a modern agricultural and industrial country."[102] In addition, by quoting extensively from Khieu Samphan's thesis "Cambodia's Economy and Problems of Industrialization," Caldwell asserts that it is the backbone to the development-model being used by Democratic Kampuchea. Hence, further indication that the STAV was that the dissertation was a master plan. Like Laura Summers, Porter, and Hildebrand, Caldwell is quick to report the observations of the ambassador Kaj Bjork and other invited emissaries without reservation. In addition, he cites Porter's and Hildebrand's Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution over 15 times[103] and has this to say of their book,
[It] compensates to some extent for the dereliction of the vast majority of Western scholars, "experts" and journalists reputed to have, or who themselves profess to have an interest in Cambodia (an interest, that is, aside from being paid to read about it and to comment on it). In what follows in this section I draw heavily upon Porter and Hildebrand. But I would like to stress that their book is indispensable and should be read by everyone.[104]
"Birds of a feather," it is said, "flock together." Caldwell could not have found a more authoritative book to reference his own work. From his perch in England, he looked not Cambodians, but his colleagues for what made the Khmer Rouge tick.
The similarities do not end there, however. Caldwell did not excel at hiding his admiration for the Khmer Rouge leadership. Hence, like his STAV colleagues, he romanticized about the revolutionaries who were both peasants, but academics too. These were theoretician who were not afraid of a little hard work. He writes:
It should be emphasized that radicals like Khieu Samphan and the others were not "theoretical leftists". On the contrary, they always not only stressed the importance of cadres throwing themselves into manual labour alongside peasants, but set a personal example. They scorned material rewards and comforts, fully sharing the lives of the poor. Phnom Penh had no attractions for them, and since liberation they have continued to retain their working offices deep in the rural areas and to take turn at field work. They thus understood and understand peasant problems infinitely better than those western scholars who now appoint themselves to pass judgment on them from afar.[105]
Caldwell's description of Khieu Samphan sound strikingly similar to Ben Kiernan's "ascetic" characterization as quoted by Stephen Morris.[106]Moreover he makes an excellent point about the "western scholars" who "pass judgment from afar." The lesson remain unlearned.
Summers, Porter, Hildebrand were fond of the superior farming abilities of the new Cambodia. The double or triple rice-cropping methods of the Khmer Rouge were indeed incredible. It became, however, a source of objections when the fact that double rice- cropping, as pointed by David Chandler, was "an achievement unequaled since the days of [12th c.] Angkor."[107] In awe of such a feat, Caldwell rationalizes the "close" supervision of city dwellers who were sure not to share these goals. He writes:
Urban dwellers re-settled from Phnom Penh in 1975 could not possibly have at once shared that outlook and it need occasion us no surprise that to begin with they required close supervision when put to work shifting earth and collecting boulders; we should bear this in mind when evaluating refugee stories, particularly those referring to the immediate post-liberation period.[108]
Caldwell, like Summers, considers the hardships that city-dwellers faced, yet like her, his facade wears thin. From justification, Caldwell turns to apologia for Khmer Rouge. He is shameless in singing the praises of what Prince Sihanouk has compared to propaganda that outstripped Joseph Goebbels. Caldwell's romanticization of the Khmer revolution is apparent when he describes that,
The forethought, ingenuity, dedication and eventual triumph of the liberation forces in the face of extreme adversity and almost universal foreign scepticism, detachment, hostility and even outright sabotage ought to have been cause for worldwide relief and congratulation rather than the disbelief and execration with which it was in fact greeted. . . But if manipulators have a very good reason to distort and obscure the truth we do not. Indeed we have a clear obligation to establish and propagate it with every resource at out command.[109]
With "forethought," "ingenuity," and "dedication" too, Caldwell triumphs over his colleagues as the "leading academic supporter of the Khmer Rouge."[110] He is mistaken when he asserts that there was universal foreign skepticism of the winning side, since most of the negative reporting was fragmentary even in 1977. The real media campaign began, according to Shawcross after the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam in 1979, at the time ex-STAV scholars like Ben Kiernan switched to the Vietnamese side. Caldwell's assertion that "manipulators" are behind the propaganda campaign against the Khmer revolution is not original. Summers explored that idea approvingly, while Chomsky and Herman will develop it to absurdity in their theory of the Free Press covered in the next chapter.
In the second-half of his paper-turned-book, Caldwell places the Khmer revolution in the context of international and historical perspective. Being somewhat more enthusiastic than his colleagues or perhaps more openly so, Caldwell proposes a counterfactual cloaked in a reprimand,
Those who orchestrate the chorus of vilification and scurrility against Democratic Kampuchea do not accept that have responsibility to let us know what they think the country might have looked like today [1978] had the Revolution been crushed; what they would do even today were they to be by some miracle vested with absolute power in Phnom Penh; and what the prospects of the country would be were either of these conditions fulfilled in contrast to the prospects that clearly open out to it now under its present revolutionary government. [111]
His tour de force reaches its nadir with this baseless comparison. The opposite is what one often wonders, when looking back at the years 1975-1979 for Cambodia. Upon reflection, in what must appear to be an entirely unfounded argument, Caldwell asserts that Cambodia is better off with the Khmer revolution. Sheer fantasy? Not to the STAV. Porter and Hildebrand went so far as to justify the evacuation because it had, in their opinion, saved lives. Chomsky and Herman allude to that and more when they compare postwar Cambodia to the horrid American devastation of the country during the war, as the reader will discover in the next chapter.
The conclusions, which Caldwell draws are so distanced from reality as to make them unrecognizable. He predicts that the revolution in Kampuchea marks the beginning of "the greatest and necessary change beginning to convulse the world in the later 20th century and to shift it from a disaster-bound course to one holding out promise of a better future for all."[112] With this in mind, however, he does feels that the alternative to the Kampuchean solution, inverting the World-System, "would not be a good option, in either sense (moral or rational): even the richest countries of the world today are still disfigured by poverty and gross inequalities."[113] For that assertion to be made, the "poverty and gross inequalities" in the First World would have to be equal to greater than those in the new Kampuchea. To it, one might wonder whom Ponchaud had mind when he pointedly asked, "How many of those unreservedly in support of the Khmer revolution would consent to endure one-hundredth part of the current suffering of the Cambodian people?" Whether they would consent is dubious, but we know form this chapter who four of them are: Malcolm Caldwell, Laura Summers, Gareth Porter, and George C. Hildebrand. Speaking for the peasants of the world, Lecturer Malcolm Caldwell of the University of London writes that there can be no doubt, "that the lesson [of the Khmer revolution] will not long be lost upon the as yet unliberated peasants."[114]
Conclusion
We know that the Cambodianists who wrote in support of the Khmer Rouge used similar arguments. That much was self-evident of Laura Summers, Gareth Porter, and George C. Hildebrand. Malcolm Caldwell, whose impact was equally impressive while in England with Summers, but nowhere near Cambodia, upheld the STAV on Cambodia. As exemplary STAV scholars, they have earned their place in the "Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979." These defenders of the Khmer revolution were influenced to some degree or another by the charisma or intellect of some of the Khmer Rouge leadership, namely, Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn, as evidenced in Caldwell's note that Khieu Samphan was truly a man who practiced what he preached. They romanticized the Khmer revolution and its revolutionaries by rationalizing the policies of the Khmer Rouge and believing that all contrary evidence was the work of manipulators and counter-revolutionary agitators. Furthermore, they convinced themselves of the Khmer Rouge mission to liberate peasants from the domineering urban parasites. But at what costs, one wonders, to the peasants themselves? Fully half if not more of the casualties of revolution were rural Khmer. They were fascinated by the idea that according to the Constitution, "exploiter and exploited" would no longer exist, and that "justice and harmony" for all would prevail in happy Kampuchea.
After the Vietnam War, these scholars were inclined to disbelieve refugees who had a vested interest in vilifying Democratic Kampuchea and its rulers, the Khmer Rouge, since they were running away from something or another to begin with. As this logic was picked-up by Chomsky and Herman, it became the central argument against the mounting refugee reports of atrocities as will be seen in the next chapter.
Another major point reiterated in the works of all four authors is that America must be held accountable for most of the postwar problems, since, they argue, it had created the deplorable pre-liberation conditions. But this was a two pronged argument, not only was America to blame for the annihilation of a country, but it was the Khmer Rouge who were the protagonists, heroic in their effort to stave off starvation by evacuating the cities. It is expounded upon repeatedly by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in the Chomsky- Lacouture Controversy, a controversy tackled in chapter 3. Summers, Caldwell, Porter and Hildebrand saw themselves through the prism of a struggle against neo- colonialism.
Their complete trust in the righteousness of Khmer Rouge actions was shown at its extreme when Porter and Hildebrand argued that the evacuation of even hospitals was an act of mercy. The consistent threads encountered in the works reviewed is the result of complete and utter naiveté in quoting the claims the Khmer Rouge. Sihanouk knew as much even while a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge. No hesitation nor reservation to quote Ieng Sary or Khieu Samphan's explanations was expressed by any of the four STAV scholars reviewed. It seems clear, therefore, that the mistakes which led each author to reach his/her respective conclusion was in fact academic. To be sure, there were judgments colored by ideology, but even a Marxist who possessed some objective fibers could see that speaking to common people might help. Peer review is a cornerstone of academia, but when the standard total academic view is to sing the praises of the Khmer revolution, what next? The STAV's methods led them to generate conclusions that were simply implausible when stacked on top of one another. Had they thought more critically, perhaps, they would not be canonized.