On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
So if I can't say that Pol Pot was a genocidal maniac responsible for the murder of over 2 million of his own people and have to instead dryly state that "During his rule up to two million Cambodians were killed",
Is that a specific example? I don't think that there would be much controversy in attributing those deaths to Pol Pot's decisions and policies, would there? Even Noam Chomsky would likely admit that much.
Actually, I did encounter a writer who claimed that there was no factual & objective basis for the Khmer Rouge's systematic murder of their own people. (It was in the Portland, Oregon _Willamette Week_, stated as part of a summary of the movie "Swimming to Cambodia".) I remember it quite well because I wrote a scathing letter to the editor about that claim -- which was published, to my surprise. The writer was given some room to respond, & claimed that he had based his statement on an article that suggested that the PTB in Washington were attempting to blacken Pol Pot's name & avoid responsibility for events in Cambodia in _The Nation_ . . . written by Noam Chomsky.
I guess Revisionist History also includes Cambodia, despite uncountable eyewitness accounts there too. :-(
Geoff