The idea that society must revert to the primitive without modern machinery or education. Expressed in Cambodia by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, in Peru by Sendero Luminoso (=Shining Path to Communism). Also found in Zaire in the 1970s by the Simba movement (which exercised power for a short time in Kisangani), and to some extent the anti-government rebels RENAMO in Mozambique, supported by the former regime in South Africa.

Sendero is imitating its image of the Incas. (What the Incas were really like is arguable.) The result in Cambodia was a nation in a concentration camp. It is the attempt to create the ideal communist state suddenly instead of by evolution, as Soviet Communists believed they were doing. But it also expressed extreme hostility to non-Cambodians and so was racist, like the Nazis. It has much in common with religious fanatics such as the Anabaptists of Munster (Germany) in the 16th century - 1534 (as described by Norman Cohn - Pursuit of the Millennium). These too tried to create an ideal Communist state and abolish all former distinctions. Like Pol Pot they tried to abolish the Family. The "Rev" Jim Jones and his People's Church settlement at Jonestown (a cult) in Guyana were another example. Thus it is another manifestation of the Cult condition.

See Cambodia for books.