VLVL Rex Snuvvle (2)
jbor
jbor at bigpond.com
Sun Jan 11 08:45:16 CST 2004
"the Bolshevik Leninist Group of Vietnam, a section of the Fourth
International that up till 1953 had trained in France and sent to Vietnam
some 500 Trotskyist cadres" (207)
They weren't all sent at once, of course: "up till 1953 ... some 500" men
and women had been sent there (i.e., over a number of years).
It's clear that the story of the fictitious BLGVN is Pynchon's take on what
was happening in the Fourth International while Pablo and Germain (i.e.
Mandel) were at the helm in the late '40s and early '50s. It's certainly not
an error. After the Viet Minh (Stalinists) under Ho Chi Minh took control in
1945 they ruthlessly murdered many of the Vietnamese Trotskyist leaders and
sympathisers.
http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue23/goldne23.htm
Pynchon draws attention to the policy of conciliation towards Stalinist
regimes which the Fourth International was actively pursuing under the
guidance of Pablo, Frank, Germain (Mandel) and others, from 1951-3 in
particular, and to the fate which befell many of the cadres who were sent
out to places like Vietnam. (I.e. They were "sold out by all parties,
including the Fourth International".)
best
Oh, and by the way, Pol Pot, or Saloth Sar as he was known then, was
Cambodian. In 1946, while serving with the anti-French resistance under Ho
Chi Minh, he joined the outlawed Indochinese Communist Party. While in Paris
in 1948-53 he joined the French Communist Party and formed a "Paris student
group".
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pot.htm
http://www.dithpran.org/PolPotegacy.htm
I agree that there might not be a direct reference to Pol Pot, but it's
always useful to approach Pynchon's text from as many angles as possible.
Rex's ill-conceived and pseudo-religious romanticism about what might have
been had the Fourth International's Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist
"abstraction ... found residence in the mortal world", and his optimism that
"one might again" (208), certainly brings Pol Pot's regime to mind for me.
And it was worth following up the lead if only to note Chomsky's apologetics
for the genocidal campaigns of the Khmer Rouge, his "notorious work of
denial literature":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0896081001/inktomi-bkasin-20/ref%3Dno
sim/104-9221284-0811957
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