• CannotSleep420
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    10 months ago

    I’m surprised Gonzalo doesn’t get brought up by anticommunists more. He’s a Peruvian Pol Pot. Baby boiling is such an obvious addition to the regular 100 stallilion dead vuvuzela no iphone shit.

    • Greenleaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Because ultimately the Khmer Rouge doesn’t have a successful legacy that needs debunking. We all know how successful the USSR was and how China continues to be. The capitalists need to be able to see “ok sure the commies maybe had incredible growth and improvement of living standards… but they killed a gajillion people to do it.”

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Anti communists never talk about this though. As far as their education goes, Pol Pot killed billions, and then they suddenly fell off from the face of the planet.

          • LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            Vietnam had the history that made me reevaluate everything. Obviously nobody is perfect, but Ho Chi Minh must have had a fucking crystal ball. Even Mao has notable fuck ups like the 3 pest campaign. But Minh never missed

      • LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        There’s also the fact that America put Pol Pot in power and pressured China to back him as well. Right after Vietnam ended, the Vietnamese went to liberate Cambodia. Vietnam decided to fight China and the US at the same time over this.

        Pol Pot makes America look horrible. Think about it from the chud perspective, America sided with China over a genocidal dictator. Plus, a soft expansion of the Vietnam war after there was already a treaty signed

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      They attack the ones that succeeded in achieving revolution. They’re perfectly fine with leftists following the theory that fails.

    • RNAi [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      10 months ago

      Pol Pot should be THE thing that anticommunist bring first, but their brainpan render them unable to learn more than two (2) ebil gommunists names

    • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      did that actually happen, do you know?

      I don’t really know much about shining path, and I tend to automatically disbelieve anything a settler colonial state like Peru or the US etc says, especially when its blood libel level outrageous.

      • drinkinglakewater [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        It’s something that got broken telephoned into a meme. IIRC a village lynched a local party leader and in retaliation the local cadre violently attacked the village. In the attack they threw boiling water at people, including pregnant women, and later Gonzalo made a somewhat unapologetic statement on the attack.

        • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          ok, thanks. I did just look for what happened (although internet research is ofc limited) and it looks like that claim comes from a testimony (that I can’t find but is quoted, idk the origin of it) given to the commission set up by the Liberal, US educated president, and that it claims that a group of 29 people (including men, women, children) were gathered into a house and attacked with machetes, hatchets, and guns, and during and after this (i.e while alive and while dead) were sprayed with boiling water.

          I get killing people with weapons, but I’m a bit confused at the purpose of the boiling water? idk if there’s some utility of boiling water that I’m missing?

            • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              yes, I would agree, and that was my first thought, supposing it were a true testimony - sometimes people use acid or boiling water to scar people in order to terrorise them. The part I don’t get about the alleged action, is why they allegedly did it to bodies too?

                • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  10 months ago

                  Me either! Its odd.

                  Incidentally, the other source I could find for claims of the use of boiling water (as an execution method - reminiscent of the claims that the Uzbek leader boils his enemies), as well as other similar claims of atrocities, is from InSight Crime a non-profit think tank with offices in Washington DC, and Colombia, founded by US journalists and funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

                  • drinkinglakewater [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    10 months ago

                    I’ve seen allegations of involvement by the CIA, but I haven’t really looked into them much. It would be around when Operation Condor was in full swing though illuminati

        • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          I was under the impression the lynching happened after the PCP had been occupying the village for months and had themselves executed several villagers.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        They admitted to killing babies, and they were proven to have boiled peasants alive.

        People have put two and two together, but there’s no concrete proof of boiling babies IIRC. However, the other two are damning enough without combining them

        • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Do you have the source for those admissions and that proof by any chance? The ones I could find weren’t very good.

          Of course, many revolutions involve the death of children, and peasants. Obviously not a good thing, but the successful ones get upheld regardless - damned sometimes in part but not in whole.

          • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            Are the death of those children and peasants purposeful and done in cold-blooded executions? Are they added to the death count and bragged about unapologetically by the leader of the movement, saying they were “annihilated” there to “teach the enemies a lesson”?

            Yes peasants and children die in wars and revolutions. But if the Red Army committed such a crime as executing a village full of peasants as collective punishment Lenin would have had them shot not bragged about it

            • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Its difficult to find a good source, isn’t it?

              I don’t really believe the claims made by Israel about Oct 7th either. Of course, clearly at least some ‘innocents’ did die in crossfire on that day. I also find it difficult to believe, on the basis of testimony alone, the claims from both sides that during the Nakba and also during the recent uprising, that children were cooked in ovens. Obviously (some few) people are capable of doing such things, but its also a very good lie to tell because it causes instinctive outrage and disgust that prevent people from investigating further - blood libel is a very old and common tactic, because it works.

              I think the leader of the movement doesn’t/didn’t accept the tale we’ve been told by the Liberal settler colonial government, and by US agencies, about what happened. I don’t think he was stupid, whatever else he was, and it would be a stupid thing to brag about if it happened as alleged.

      • CannotSleep420
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        10 months ago

        It’s almost certaintly made up, but it’s not like that’s ever stopped anticommunists.

      • TraumaDumpling@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        yeah, to it seems like one of those things where if america or its allies commits war crimes its all ok and ‘just the nature of warfare’ and ‘a few bad apples’ but we still gotta support Da Twoops, but if foreigners do it, its a repudiation of their entire leadership, ideology, and humanity.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          The leader of the movement admitting to massacring peasants and saying it was good and he would do it again does in fact repudiate his entire ideological strain that he invented

          • TraumaDumpling@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            source? cuz others in this thread say thats a misinterpretation of the facts, like the dude gave a non-apology apparently more than it was condoned but idk

            • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm

              Here is an interview where Gonzalo just outright states he murdered ~70 indigenous men, women and children in Lucanamarca village and called it “revolutionary excess”.

              Of those killed by the Shining Path, eighteen were children, the youngest of whom was only six months old. Also killed were eleven women.

              Why does he openly defend killing 29 indigenous women and child peasants as a good tactic? Like what the fuck?

              In the face of reactionary military actions and the use of mesnadas, we responded with a devastating action: Lucanamarca. Neither they nor we have forgotten it, to be sure, because they got an answer that they didn’t imagine possible. More than 80 were annihilated, that is the truth. And we say openly that there were excesses, as was analyzed in 1983. But everything in life has two aspects. Our task was to deal a devastating blow in order to put them in check, to make them understand that it was not going to be so easy. On some occasions, like that one, it was the Central Leadership itself that planned the action and gave instructions. That’s how it was. In that case, the principal thing is that we dealt them a devastating blow, and we checked them and they understood that they were dealing with a different kind of people’s fighters, that we weren’t the same as those they had fought before. This is what they understood. The excesses are the negative aspect.

              He’s talking about slaughtering peasant children to deal a “devastating blow”

              • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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                10 months ago

                Of those killed by the Shining Path, eighteen were children, the youngest of whom was only six months old.

                You got a source for this part?

                The interview doesn’t seem quite as damning as you’re making it out to be. He seems to be saying they dealt a devastating blow to the mesnadas.(which are supposedly government-run paramilitaries?)

                He claims the army came in and

                formed armed groups, called mesnadas

                right before he says

                In the face of reactionary military actions and the use of mesnadas, we responded with a devastating action

                So he doesn’t appear to be saying they murdered a bunch of unarmed peasants, he’s saying they attacked an armed paramilitary group.

                we weren’t the same as those they had fought before

                This also doesn’t suggest unarmed peasants.

                I’m not saying he’s telling the truth, or that they didn’t kill any innocent people. It’s just far from him openly admitting they killed babies.

                • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  10 months ago

                  He seems to be saying they dealt a devastating blow to the mesnadas.

                  He did this by killing 29 women and children in an unrelated village? This is open revenge killing of the poorest and most oppressed in society. shameful to defend this shit. The reports actually have 69 deaths whereas Gonzalo claims 80. Basically half of the deaths were kids and random civilians? This is not how the Bolsheviks fought their revolution, nor the Chinese Communists. They didn’t kill peasant children purposefully and include them in their “kill count” they “annihilated”. This is bloodthirsty mania, out of control, aimed downward not at the rich.

              • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                10 months ago

                I’m not sure it matters too much (if the events there are as presented by the commission) that there were women killed does it? A lot of the membership of the communist side were women, which possibly meant they didn’t uphold ‘chivalric’ values (for want of a better term) in wartime.

                As for indigenous, Mao of course killed a lot of indigenous Chinese in the course of his war. I’m not sure using these categories of people for moral outrage is useful for analysis, unless there’s some kind of sustained genocidal campaign, which there clearly wasn’t.

                Children of course are usually somewhat different, but as we know the Romanov children died during that revolution, and I would be surprised if thats the only example.

                I’m not defending these actions - its bad optics to do so and so you must always caveat with this - but war is always like this. I suppose all you can do is weigh the result against what it took to get there - like the Terror in France, or the purge of landlords in China.

                • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  10 months ago

                  where i come free we don’t slaughter unarmed women with machetes and boiling water comrade. some say it’s not their revolution if they can’t dance, for me that line is slaughtering defenseless women and children especially those of the people you’re supposed to be fighting on behalf of. If you fuck up and bomb an area or accidentally shoot up an orphanage or something, you don’t proudly display it as a good tactic that you are unapologetic about. That’s something to feel shame about that is a great crime. If your soldiers commit such crimes, they should be shot - as Lenin often did to any criminals among the reds who mistreated the people

                  Mao and Ho Chi Minh were part of the people. Gonzalo obviously was not if he had to resort to this sort of terror

                  • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                    10 months ago

                    Well no revolution is fighting on behalf of all the people is it?

                    You’re admirably vehement in defending the official version of events, have you wondered if you might be wrong? Like, if your opinion and view of what happened aligns with the US state department (among other imperialists and colonisers, and anti-communists), what if this is another case of lies like the supposed Uyghur genocide, or the ‘holodomer’, or basically any of the things the US tends to say about its enemies? What about this particular case, Peru, convinces you that the US and the colonial government are correct and not lying?

                • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  10 months ago

                  As for indigenous, Mao of course killed a lot of indigenous Chinese in the course of his war. I’m not sure using these categories of people for moral outrage is useful for analysis, unless there’s some kind of sustained genocidal campaign, which there clearly wasn’t.

                  It’s a much worse look since Gonzalo wasn’t Indigenous but some white settler. It just reminds me of CHAZ where they made so much about CHAZ being free of the US but a couple of Black teens got murdered by white settler guards, meaning that CHAZ managed to reproduced the settler-colonial plantation of the US.

                  Honestly, the main takeaway from Gonzalo is that decolonization has to be the primary focus within settler colonies (Peru is a settler colony as well) and if your so-called revolutionary movement isn’t decolonial, it will reproduce settler-colonialism. That’s what the whole killing Indigenous peasants represented in the end. It’s just a reproduction of settler-colonialism, which is inherently genocidal towards the Indigenous and Indigeneity. Towards the end, Indigenous communities began to take up arms against the PCP. You could say that those armed militia are reactionary, but to me, it’s just them wanting to chase out settler crackers and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

                  • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                    10 months ago

                    its important though to seperate the ‘look’ from the actual circumstances. Was he anti-indigenous, did he kill indigenous Peruvians deliberately because of their ethnicity, or because some were fighting on the side of landed interests?

                    Lots of bolsheviks were Jewish, of course that doesn’t mean that in killing Russian opponents they were carrying out an anti-Russian campaign - although that is a common rightist accusation, presumably because of how it ‘looks’.

                    As far as I understand Peru, a lot of the rural areas have indigenous populations, partly because many fled there during the European conquest. I don’t think it is possible that the resistance movement could have done what it did without the support of a large amount of indigenous people. Of course, some will have opposed the communists - the armed militia, referred to as ‘peasant patrols’ seem to me to be paramilitaries assisted by the state and fighting for landowners, particularly cattle ranchers.