The communist leader Pol Pot grew up relatively well-off and was introduced to Marxism and socialism while studying in France. But in a 1977 interview, he claimed he was born into a poor peasant family. You see this kind of thing a lot with affluent socialists today—cosplaying poverty to manipulate actual poor people into supporting their ideology. Think of someone like Zohran Mamdani, who downplays his wealthy background, wears hoodies, eats rice with his hands, and tries to project this down-to-earth, common-man persona. You saw the same thing with Mao, who wore a peasant tunic, and Fidel Castro, who dressed in fatigues—anything to signal that they were men of the people, not bourgeois, counter-revolutionary elites.

Thoughts on communist takeovers: