Dead Kennedys are one of my favorite bands of all time and their flagship song is probably "Holiday in Cambodia". The song is a masterpiece on its own musically, but it always stood out to me for the lyrics, which come off as surprisingly reactionary. This is a surprise, given that Jello Biafra is firmly a hard leftist. For background, this song came out in 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime has been firmly in power in Cambodia. It was a Marxist regime that focused intensely on achieving national self-reliance through agricultural collectivism. Towards that end, it enacted a ruthless purge of anyone or anything which did not directly advance this goal. The estimate of the number of people killed by the regime range from 1 to 3 million. Or, anywhere from 15% to 34% of the