The assault on elections and on the U.S. Embassy

This video has been doing the rounds. It shows hardcore People’s Alliance for Democracy propagandist นิติธร ล้ำเหลือ / Nittithorn Lamlua speaking on 14 December on the anti-democratic movement stage. The video is longish, but at about 8:10 minutes, he states: “We have to have reform. We can’t have elections because elections are a reversal for democracy.” He then links this to a threat to occupy the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok for daring to declare that Thailand should sort out political differences through elections.

Of course, on things U.S., there is support for the anti-democratic movement from various scholars connected to royalists and Thailand’s right since the days of the CIA and the U.S. supporting and promoting anti-communist and authoritarian regimes fronted by the military. So it is that the royalists have wheeled out the relatively little-known American Stephen B. Young to support the anti-Thaksin and anti-democratic movement.

We have previously mentioned Young as a royalist commentator, and he heads up his own organization, the Caux Round Table – some wags call it the Faux Round Table. We’d say it is Young’s Round Table, for as the Wikipedia post shows, it is about shameless self-promotion, and pretty much unsuccessful at that. While the royalists like to say Young is a “scholar,” this is a misrepresentation. His major publication appears to have close connections to CIA-funded operations and drew CIA praise. His other publications are his own rants published in pretty meaningless places with limited credibility.

Young is pretty much a talking head for the nonsense party, invoking racism, old-fashioned and discredited semi-academic notions about power in Thailand and a plethora of other dopey claims about money politics, vote-buying, and about “farang” and their lack of understanding of Thailand and its politics.

We note that Young is also a farang, and is “interviewed” by the toady Suthichai Yoon, who accepts the racism and the false claims with considerable enthusiasm.

One remarkable exchange is on elections. Suthichai asks if elections – the will of the majority – proves anything about democracy. Young replies: “It proves nothing.” His next claim indicates that he is both a poor “academic” and a poor propagandist. He says Stalin had elections. He says Hitler had elections. But he makes no point about this. He does not talk of context and political systems. He is a propagandist with little knowledge of the politics of Hitler’s rise or of the nature of Communist regimes.

He then makes comparisons with populists in Latin America and their use of elections to get the support of the poor by attacking the rich. The result under Peron in Argentina, he says, was the pauperization of the country. But, this has no relevance for Thailand. Thaksin did not attack the rich when he came to power; he supported them. Generally economic growth, poverty reduction and reductions in GINIs have been associated with the so-called populism of Thaksin and pro-Thaksin governments.

In other words, Young is making stuff up and crafting a story that he knows is the royalist elite’s narrative. Even joke “academics” have a role in trying to turn Thailand back to the “good old days” of authoritarianism.

We have to be honest and say we couldn’t be bothered watching it all as it was so bad. Both propaganda videos indicate the significance attached to rolling back notions of electoral democracy in order to re-establish authoritarianism.