The future refusing to be born: Thai fascism, genocide and the “Primister”

Nov 19, 2011
By Andrew Spooner
Asian Correspondant

With talk ratcheting up of a pardon for the former Thai PM, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was illegally ousted in a coup in 2006, the Thai right wing and supporters of the neo-fascist PAD seem to have descended into a hysterical meltdown. Is this a sign of their increasing desperation as they realise that the wheels of history are turning against them? Famous British Labour Party MP and minister, Aneurin Bevan, who founded the UK’s National Health Service in 1946, once summed up fascism in one pithy comment and it seems as relevant today to Thailand’s PAD as it was to 1930s European fascism -

Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.

First, there’s the issue of the present prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra’s use of the English language (Siam Voices contributor Kaewmala has her take on the entire matter here which I’m roundly in agreement with).What Kaewmala has missed though, are some of the terrible and highly amusing English language manglings made by Yingluck’s critics, the best of which is below.

Thai neo-fascists attack Yingluck's English while mangling their own

But there is a far more sinister side to Yingluck and Thaksin’s critics. Over the last couple of days, photographs of piles of dead corpses have appeared on extreme right wing and PAD-supporting public Facebook pages. Comments include that Thaksin, his family and the Red Shirts should all be slaughtered. What is very worrying is that these comments and photos received dozens of “likes” from supporters (a report by Thai E-News on these calls for genocide can be found here though be warned that the photo in question is graphic. I also have screen grabs of all the comments and photographs).

So are Bangkok’s international media reporting on these calls for genocide? Or do they dismiss such things as irrelevant? Hard to say but many of them are still misrepresenting the PAD and many of the anti-Thaksin protesters as some kind of benign force for democracy and decency when all the evidence points away from that (remember that being “anti-Thaksin” is neutral and objective, while even mentioning evidence such as Thaksin is popular with Thais or was democratically elected makes you “biased”).

Or maybe, as usual, the international media are taking their cue from the Bangkok Post who turn a tiny protest into front page news and airbrush out the PAD’s fascism and calls for extreme violence and genocide? Sinister, creepy and definitely NOT “neutral”.