>>17920982
It's a bit more complicated and weird and murky. For one, they alienated their own peasant base. Secondly, a lot of rural Cambodians didn't even know who the leadership of the Khmer Rouge were. It was a highly secretive group that initially called itself "The Organization" that didn't disclose that it was a communist party until two years in, and Pol Pot was only one of the leaders. He purged his rivals in purges and ramped up anti-Vietnamese chauvinism after they took power, but he wasn't #1 at first.

There were also different Khmer Rouge commanders who led their own armies in different parts of the country, and they came to power by converging on the capital at the same time, and some of them were from peasant or small-town rebel backgrounds. They also divided the country up into different "zones" which were highly compartmentalized.

Pol Pot's own support and muscle came from the southwest for whatever reason. He had some alliance with the commanders there were who former "Issaraks." The French-educated intellectuals were apparently more anti-Vietnamese than old-style communists in the organization who operated in the east and got purged.