The movement's ideology was shaped by a power struggle during 1976 in which the so-called Party Centre led by Pol Pot defeated other regional elements of its leadership. The Party Centre's ideology combined elements of Marxism with a strongly xenophobic form of Khmer nationalism. Partly because of its secrecy and changes in how it presented itself, academic interpretations of its political position vary widely, ranging from interpreting it as the "purest" Marxist–Leninist movement to characterising it as an anti-Marxist "peasant revolution".