What's the truth behind Pol Pot's regime in Democratic Kampuchea between 1975-1979?

• So there's the OG story
• Then there are many people claiming Pol Pot was backed by CIA
• Then I've seen some maoist dude on yt saying Pol Pot wasn't as bad as people think and the number of deaths and all the stories were all inflated
• And then I've seen folk saying he didn't do anything bad at all and how everything is a lie

Someone with more knowledge explain please, with facts and logic

He was as bad as everyone says he is
He was backed by both the US and China because he was against Vietnam, which was backed by the Soviet Union, which both countries hated at that time

But do you think he actually killed almost 1/3 of his country's population?
I'm asking this because you'll see things like - Great Leap Forward, where 20-30 million people died of starvation, but some people will come up with 50 million when they speak and that's just not true.

Idk if he killed 1/3 of his situation but given that the winners of history often write it, and the winners in this case actually backed him, yet now denounce him as one of the most genocidal people of the 20th century, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch. Either way, his policies factually killed large amounts of people in brutal ways and he didn’t even achieve any of the good things in other socialist countries like improved education, healthcare, or working conditions. He just disastrously collectivized land and abolished money forcing people to work as slaves for food that sometimes didn’t come

Man ask any f***ing Cambodian person and they will tell you history is telling the truth. My best friends grandmother watched all of her family members get massacred. S*** is horrible. She told me they literally wanted tofucking reset Cambodia to year 0. They wanted to kill every intellectual.. so they checked your hands. If you had calluses you were fine. If you didn’t, you got killed. Insane.

Communists and religious fundeamentalists main goal and first order of business is to eliminate those who think differently from them.

Go read The Pol Pot Regime by Ben Kiernan.

It's dry and impersonal but it's the authoritative text on facts. Ben is a leftist who was actually a Cambodian genocide denier in the 70s that stopped being delusional for some reason after '78. The book + Kiernan in general are now praised by Cambodian officials for his work post-70s about the regime.

When the War Was Over by Elizabeth Becker is supposed to be just as factual but more moving and written more personal. Haven't read it yet tho.

This isn't true, Pol Pot just a psychopath.

"When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that." - Pol Pot

He said that in 1997, after he was already kicked from power, when he was actually in charge his words and actions said something else. He was a member of the French communist party and led his own communist party in Cambodia that collectivized land and abolished money, I don’t think the Khmer Rouge was exactly western influenced or capitalist. Also Mao seemed to have pretty good things to say about it as well