eXiled Radio: Host John Dolan Talks Genocide & Monsters With Pol Pot Biographer Philip Short

eXiled Radio / April 10, 2009

By John Dolan

“If you’re going to talk truthfully about the world, you might as well start with the bottom line: killing people in your way.” Listen to the first episode of our new eXiled Radio hosted by John Dolan. In this premiere, Dolan strolls around the 20th century’s great killing fields with Philip Short, author of Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare.

Produced and mixed by Matt Payne.

(Download mp3 file of the program here.)

Further reading: John Dolan’s Book Review: Mao Meets the Addams Family.

Got something to say to us? Then send us a letter.

Want us to stick around? Donate to The eXiled.

Twitter twerps can follow us at twitter.com/exiledonline

21 Comments

Add your own

1. Ben | April 10th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Interesting show! Very good for a first attempt, especially given how crap most podcasts are. Dr. Dolan, you ARE God!
2. booltox | April 11th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Good interview. John Dolan threw a lot of knowledge at Philip Short, who then responded with great insight.
3. Anne Nonymous | April 11th, 2009 at 3:11 am
I’m getting 404 not found on the mp3 download link and so haven’t listened to the interview yet. But I’m looking forward to it.
4. aleke | April 11th, 2009 at 3:36 am
WOooOOOoooOOOT
5. Cassandra | April 11th, 2009 at 3:40 am
link to mp3 download doesn’t work.
6. matthew | April 11th, 2009 at 3:42 am
At your quotation from Clough I felt sure you were going to let fly on the question of the ’empire’s non-striving’ efforts when presented with a certain potato blight. Oh well, I’m sure there will be other opportunities. Great interview.
7. svealander | April 11th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Very interesting program, genuinely intelligent radio. Great to hear Stott developing his ideas like that.
8. geo8rge | April 11th, 2009 at 7:29 am
The political turning point for Mr Voong, other than the war in Viet Nam(*), was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965(Sen. Ted Kennedy), not Reagan. I think you are too fixated on Reagan. That is the law that let him into the US. And the law that let millions more who competed with him and forced down his wages, while increasing his costs such as health insurance.
It is also worth noting that he took his vengence on the most humiliating place in America the public school class room.
As to personal details, Mr Voong may have been involved in various schemes the news generically call fraud. That may indicate something about his personality.
(*) I am not sure the war in Viet Nam was an issue as he might have used the 1965 act to immigrate anyway.
9. Stephen K | April 11th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Why is he speaking intelligently? Why am I commenting with a bone spur in my brain?
10. thefixisin | April 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
PSA: I think they fixed the link. Just pressed it 10 seconds ago.
11. wengler | April 11th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Excellent interview. More please.
12. Waco | April 11th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Great interview! Please keep doing more of this “Exile Radio” feature. Turn them into one hour podcasts. Please!! You did a great job keeping your mouth shut, letting the guest speak. Many intellectual war..er..I mean web nerds would of turned it into a chance to prove their own knowledge on the subject. By the way your not the first to let a limey free from the whole brutal colonialism thing. How else would they have escaped the blame for all these years.
13. Kozmund | April 11th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
I’d agree that the interview is great.
I’m sure that Dr. Dolan now, after putting things together, realizes that he doesn’t need to grunt or mumble acknowledgement periodically during an interview to indicate that he’s still paying attention, like he does when he’s talking to a friend on the phone. I have no problems with the interrupt-to-make-a-point thing, but the “right, mmm, sure, yeah” thing is a bit distracting. At the same time, I know that’s exacerbated by the levels of those back of the phone or in-ear mic used to record the interview.
Technical nit-picking aside, I’m certainly hoping for more of these. Also, the mea culpa was entirely wonderful.
14. andrew | April 12th, 2009 at 10:35 am
i’m convinced! i’ll give you guys some money.
15. Narcoleptic | April 15th, 2009 at 6:55 am
I really enjoyed this. I actually wish Short talked a little more about hanging with Idi Amin. One thing that did bother me, though, is Short blaming the mass killings in Cambodia on the Theravada Buddhism. I hate this shit; it’s like when people blame Rousseau for the Reign of Terror, Nietzsche for the Holocaust or AC/DC for Richard Ramirez. I’m sure there’s 49 1/2 doctoral theses about how these influences were warped and twisted to meet the needs of the particular homicidal regime, but I’m pretty sure that those motherfuckers were Theravada Buddhists for 500 years before Pol Pot decided to turn a fourth of the country into fertilizer just like I’m pretty sure Highway to Hell isn’t an instruction manual on how to be a serial killer. Considering the Khmer Rouge killed every monk they could find, this is pretty much like blaming the German Jews for getting too fucking uppity. Anyway, you need to pin that motherfucker down next time, John. But a good first show.
16. greg partch | April 16th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Excellent. Can’t wait for the next show.
And, of course, the best line goes to Dr Dolan: “Nothing’s really dead except for an organism–everything else can come back.”
17. five to one | April 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
premium john dolan interview
including the apology at the end
nothing as heartwarming in a kind of sad way as a john dolan apology at the end of a great interview.
a shame thou, i read your passionate articles about the omission of the british empire in investigations in world crimes. you should get him back on air to ask that question or send him a mail and post his response. don’t think he would take offence
18. BTraven | April 20th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Great job John Dolan. Philip Short was an amazing subject.
Ask him the right question and he just opened up huge new vistas – Idi Amin as an ‘eat more’ lunch host, though eat more what exactly, given the stories about his cannibalism; Mao as less disastrous for China than barbed-wire torturing, women-dismembering Kuomintang war lords.
What are the odds that a hugely smart Oxbridge Brit journalist was asked to ‘help out’ with a spot of ‘extra’ reporting, effectively becoming HMG’s sole ear in Kampala, while filing reports as the last remaining Brit journo in Uganda? Or is that just a low curmudgeonly suggestion? It is. But is it true? There was a pronounced pause as you brought up Short’s Uganda past – waiting for the other shoe to drop?
On the British Empire and its crimes
1. The SAS was providing military training to Pol Pot’s forces, as a continuation of the Vietnam war by other means (?). So the UK is in the frame, as well as the US, for involvement with the regime behind the Killing Fields. Did Short’s book mention a whisper of that?
2. It was a woman Harvard historian who reported the 300,000 deaths of Kikuyus at the hands of the British during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. What most outraged one reviewer was that the British Oxbridge historians knew all about it for fifty years. But not one breathed a single mention of it. Imperial Reckoning – Caroline Elkins –
http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Reckoning-Untold-Story-Britains/dp/0805076530
You may get the chance to ask the right interviewee about it.
Philip Short might even be willing to provide chapter and verse for an entire program ‘Crimes of the British Empire’. Asking him to do so might tell us whether he could maintain a dry academic detachment or had a hidden ‘Queen and Country’ spirit, possibly indicating a more colourful background. The Johnny English of Cambridge?
3. Funny HaHa – John Oliver – Daily Show – on Tea Parties and how a real Empire works – “We slaughtered 30 million Indians. Mostly one a time by bayonetting them. That’s how a real Empire does it.” (paraphrased) –
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=224276&title=tea-party-tyranny
19. Antonio Garcia | October 1st, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Please Tell Pol Pot Antonio Garcia says hello
20. Will | July 31st, 2010 at 7:22 am
mp3 link still not working.
21. mookid | November 26th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
plz tell me this podcast will be continued…
also mr dolan sounds like amon göth in schindler’s list