ABSTRACT
This is not to say that “a tradition of violence” determined that the Khmer Rouge (KR) would come to power. In fact, until relatively late in the process, it was a marginal presence. However, neither was the Khmer Rouge an outright aberration. Certainly, the KR’s emphasis on concentrating power and wielding it in tyrannical fashion was entirely in keeping with Cambodian tradition. “Absolutism . . . is a core element of authority and legitimacy in Cambodia,” writes David Roberts.3 As for the supposedly pacific nature of Buddhism, the religion that overwhelmingly predominated in Cambodia, Vickery denounces it as “arrant nonsense.” “That Buddhists may torture and massacre is no more astonishing than that the Inquisition burned people or that practicing Catholics and Protestants joined the Nazi SS.”4
