Pol Pot and 1984

One thing I've sometimes wondered about: do you think Pol Pot
could have been inspired by Orwell's most famous book? The
idea may be less crazy than it sounds. Consider the following:

1) Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia was most likely the closest
thing resembling the government of Oceania that ever existed,
much more so than even Stalinist Russia.

2) In 1984's Oceania there are posters everywhere with the
face of "Big Brother", the leader of the Party. Under the
Khmer Rouge posters were affixed with Pol Pot's face,
referring to him as "Brother Number One".

3) Pol Pot had been studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in the
early 1950's (from 1950 till 1953, IIRC), when Orwell's book
had just been published and become a bestseller.

What do you think? I suppose it's a bit too late to ask Mr Pot
himself.

Marco

Marco wrote:

 > One thing I've sometimes wondered about: do you think Pol Pot
 > could have been inspired by Orwell's most famous book? The
 > idea may be less crazy than it sounds. Consider the following:
 >
 > 1) Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia was most likely the closest
 > thing resembling the government of Oceania that ever existed,
 > much more so than even Stalinist Russia.
 >
 > 2) In 1984's Oceania there are posters everywhere with the
 > face of "Big Brother", the leader of the Party. Under the
 > Khmer Rouge posters were affixed with Pol Pot's face,
 > referring to him as "Brother Number One".
 >
 > 3) Pol Pot had been studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in the
 > early 1950's (from 1950 till 1953, IIRC), when Orwell's book
 > had just been published and become a bestseller.
 >
 > What do you think? I suppose it's a bit too late to ask Mr Pot
 > himself.
 >
 > Marco

Dunno. The Cambodian regime drove everyone into forced-labor farming
work in the countryside, where Orwell's book is intensely urban and the
characters look to the countryside as a place for relief from the
pressures of being closely watched. Also, the Khmer Rouge terror had
many unique features that never troubled even Orwell's imagination. I
think it's in the DSM-IV that there were women who suffered medically
unexplainable blindness because of the atrocities they were forced to
witness.

We've actually discussed many times how surprisingly little *1984*
reflected the continental wartime horrors of forced labor and genocide.
In Orwell's dystopia physical hardship isn't the major problem: unfree
thought is.

Christopher Hitchens has suggested that the North Korean and former
Iraqi regimes may both have treated *1984* as a model, but I think he's
being ironic, not literally suggesting it.

/M<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->