Mao's Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot's Year 0 Pros and Cons

Pros and Cons Essay Wonder what is like living during Mao’s Cultural Revolution or even Pol Pot’s Year 0 vision? Millions of people had lived through either one of them and it was a horrible time. During the Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot’s Year 0, both of these dictatorships has the power to lead and easily to get young children to follow and can think for themselves whereas people cannot say anything against Mao and Pol Pot. Mao was trying to get rid of all imperial China, emperors, and arts. Mao has an idea and he went on focusing on young children. The young children became Red Guards and they followed Mao’s idea. The Red Guard would come to your house and if they find any old books, they will take it away and make you wear a hat that says “I’m against revolution” which makes people embarrassed in front many people. “The more extreme we were, the more loyal we felt to Mao,” said one of the Red Guard. Anyways, this shows that Mao can be able to think for everyone and then does it and people cannot go against him or they will be punished or even worst death. Cold War politics created chaos in Cambodia, allowing Pol Pot’s rise to power. Pol Pot had a vision that there should be peasant society. The beginning of his plan was to “start over” to go back to a simple, agrarian peasant society. He believed there should be no family unit, religion, money, education, indoctrination, and city. Everyone should be sharing land and food equally. He also wants to end foreign intrusions in Cambodia and the wealth’s oppression of the poor. He focused on young children just like Mao did and the children was trained to make sure the farmers worked hard. The adults had to go to reeducation camps and they could not speak against Pol Pot either. Farming destroyed shared, communal living and collective farming. Pol Pot’s nationalism and communist ideals reduced Cambodia to starvation and genocide. With Mao’s and Pol Pot’s plan, they both have the same disadvantages.