‘The Hall of Evil’: PragerU Examines Pol Pot’s Murderous Communist Regime

PragerU last Monday released the sixth and final installment in its video series “The Hall of Evil,” which features commentary on six 20^th-century dictators. 

Narrated by Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College and editor of The American Spectator, the newest video delves into the horrors of Pol Pot’s rule, exposing the ideology and brutal policies that led to the deaths of two million Cambodians—nearly a quarter of the country’s population. 

The video details Pol Pot’s rise to power, from his collegiate studies in France—where he was radicalized by communist ideology—to his return to Cambodia with a quest to lead the political revolution. 

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On April 17, 1975, Pol Pot led the Communist Khmer Rouge party in taking control of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. All the city’s inhabitants, regardless of age or health, were ordered to evacuate and could only take what they could carry.  

“The Khmer Rouge had a slogan for troublesome people,” Kengor says in the video. “‘To keep you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.’”  

Pol Pot abolished money, markets, religion, property, music, and the very concept of family in an attempt to create an agrarian utopia. His policies cast Cambodia into a nightmarish age of poverty, starvation, and forced labor. 

“Doctors, religious leaders, business owners, teachers, government workers, academics, and intellectuals were marched into the countryside to become peasant farmers,” Kengor explained. “Within months, much of Cambodia was starving.” 

As the video highlights, the atrocities in Cambodia went largely unnoticed by the world due to the country’s residents being cut off from outside communication. However, “horror stories began to seep out,” according to Kengor. 

“After four of the worst years any country has ever endured, it finally came to an end,” Kengor stated. Vietnam and Pol Pot got into a border dispute, and in 1978 the Vietnamese army invaded. Pol Pot and the remaining Khmer Rouge were exiled.  

Cambodia reestablished itself as an independent country after another 14 years of sporadic fighting. 

Pol Pot, the mastermind behind one of history’s worst mass murders, died in his bed at age 72 having never faced justice for his crimes. 

Watch the video above or on PragerU.