True, but wouldn’t a Maoist by extension be a Marxist-Leninist? MLM certainly had its connotations because of groups like the shining path, but I meant that more in the way that he used legends from Marxist-Leninism, and Maoism to draw support.
I would say you are probably correct. A lot of it is semantics - I think prior to the eighties you're just more likely to run into phrases like "adherent to Mao Zedong Thought" rather than "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist".
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's words on the matter
“Our two Parties, two governments and two peoples have maintained a fundamentally identical, correct, Marxist-Leninist stand.”
Speaking first, Hua Kuo-feng welcomed the Kampuchean comrades, calling their visit a “major event” in the relations between the two parties and countries. He said, “The Communist Party of Kampuchea, headed by comrade Pol Pot, is a staunch Marxist-Leninist Party.” He called the CPK “the force at the core leading the Kampuchean people in seizing victory in their revolution.”
In warmly praising Mao Tsetung Thought, Pol Pot said, “Following Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Chairman Mao and his thought have triumphantly stood the test of successive revolutionary storms.” He said that Mao Tsetung Thought today illuminates the path of revolution for people all over the world.
“More precisely,” Pol Pot said of Mao Tsetung Thought, “It is the most effective and sharp ideological and political weapon which infallibly guides our struggle to victory.”
emphasis mine
Undeniably, I would say, they were Maoist, but at the time 'Maoism' and 'Marxism-Leninism' were considered pretty much one and the same by "anti-revisionists" or those communists who split with the USSR after Khruschev's coup d'etat. I'd say calling Pol Pot a 'Maoist' is a fair enough examination, it's just that to him "Maoism" and "Marxism-Leninism" were synonymous. I'd maybe go so far as to call him a proto-MLM.
Because colonization would be more difficult if the colonizers felt guilty about their atrocities. Thus, they have to blame everybody but themselves (irrespective of how lazy that is), which they have always done:
[W]e shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us.
And that we have said this to you and made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses of this Requisition.