No democracy here

A reader sends a post for PPT:

There was someone on Suthep’s anti-democracy stage who quipped: “we have our own democracy, we do not want your ‘western’ democracy”! The lack of understanding on democracy in Thailand by the yellow/black shirts, the corresponding repression of personal freedom and rights by the state-within-state instrumentalities (civil and military) who control elected government and the emergence of ultra-nationalist authoritarianism, resonates with the early twentieth century Spanish falange (falangistas). This is an authoritarian national leadership based on the aspirations of an organic, hierarchical state. This modality of fascism is fuelled by right-wing media-led hatred (aimed at the Shinawatra family because of their mass popularity that takes the gloss away from the summit) and run by a clique of ruling elites/royalist aristocracy and their misguided bourgeois lackeys who have together attempted over the years to tear down the thin fabric of electoral democracy. Hence the call to reject “‘western’ democracy” where it does not suit their interests and emplace instead an elite hand-picked bureaucratic administration to run the country.

Thais do not have a word for “fascism” and instead rely on the foreign loan word latthi-fasit. Historian and expert on European fascism Stanley Payne (2006, A history of fascism, 1914-1945) sees this ideology as “a form revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth…” structured on “extreme elitism” and mass mobilization in a “vitalist” philosophy that “positively values violence as end as well as means…” Does this not sound familiar?

The political climate today in Thailand is marked by extreme ethnic chauvinism, embellished monarchical patriotism and ultra-nationalism articulated (and poorly at that) by endorsed and well supported street thugs many with criminal records (displaying similar behaviour to the falangist Blue Shirt brigades). The characteristics of falangism with close affinity to the current Thai experience are a less ideological (softer, but no less insidious) modality of 1930s fascism, including an endogenous organic corporatism; ethnic (Thai)-based ultra-nationalism; conservative anti-democratic trade unionism (like the EGAT Labour Union, State Railway Union of Thailand, State Enterprises Workers’ Relations Confederation, etc.); conservative right-wing modalities of state Buddhism (through administrative elements in the royalist Thammayut-nikai, which frowns on suggestions of democratic civic or state sangha governance); a dislike for separatism of any kind; anti-communism (note the 1970s anti-communist songs sung by Suthep’s street thugs), anti-anarchism and anti-(new) capitalism, which is seen as working outside royalist-amaat networks; anti-democratic sentiments; paternalistic pastoral values (communal ethnic-Thai’ism and the hypocrisy inscribed in elite visions of the poor through “self-sufficiency”); dislike of welfare-based neo-liberal economic (efficient) management (as in the case of Thaksin’s Populist government); and as a union of non-competitive, traditional conservative units seeking to maintain their business monopolies and ensuing privilege through nationalist syndicated consensus. Watch for the next move. The last thing these neo-fascists want are new and free elections. They are already controlling the streets and the police. How much can the pro-democracy red shirts take before coming out?

Australian Pro-Democracy Academic