To speak of Cambodians as bearing widespread responsibility for the genocide is not to point to them as culturally unique in their ability to commit murder or allow it to happen. As the writer W. G. Sebald points out regarding Germans, “it’s the ones who have a conscience who die early, it grinds you down. The fascist supporters live forever. Or the passive resisters. That’s what they all are now in their own minds … there is no difference between passive resistance and passive collaboration—it’s the same thing.”
