Are we the only ones who have detected a change in the way that critics of the monarchy are writing about it?
While we recently posted on the ninth reign as a bloody era where thousands of citizens were disappeared, jailed, tortured and killed by the state, usually operating in the name of the monarchy and, for the most part, supported by the king, other commentaries seem to be eulogizing that reign.
An example, and it is one of several, is a New York Time op-ed by Matthew Phillips, a historian in Wales.
Phillips repeats several of the lines from Bhumibol hagiographies and palace propaganda:
Thailand’s previous king … is credited with transforming Thailand into a modern nation-state and unifying the country during times of political turmoil.
The author might acknowledge that this is pure propaganda that ignores real history.
Then in 1946, Bhumibol ascended to the throne, and after a discreet first decade….
The author doesn’t seem to think it important to mention the death of King Ananda Mahidol or the royalist efforts to pin that on innocents and to send political opponents into exile. We would have thought that period was pivotal for the rise of a royalist military.
A military coup in 1958, pro-American and high on Thai pride, placed the (U.S.-born) king at its center, and the Thai public reacted enthusiastically.
We can’t help wondering about how public enthusiasm is measured? By the bodies that piled up under General Sarit Thanarat’s despotism?
King Bhumibol is often credited with foiling a Communist movement during the Cold War, liberalizing the Thai economy and keeping the country together despite its often-fractious politics.
Again, he is “credited” with these superhuman feats, but it is usually palace propagandists making these points.
The rest of Phillip’s article is quite good, so we are not sure why he repeats these lines of hagiography. In other stories, it seems the authors are pining for the past 70 years, comparing that era with what they think is going to be an awful reign under the erratic and narcissistic Vajiralongkorn.
The good bits seem to us to build on several insights from Paul Handley’s The King Never Smiles. The previous king and his advisers came up with the propaganda device that made its wealth a sign of merit and allowed others to share in it.
On the funeral, he notes that “… there is little discussion over the expense of King Bhumibol’s cremation.” He adds that, “for the monarchy, has been to make royal wealth seem sacred, and any contribution to it appear virtuous.”
He notes the growth of royal wealth under the dead king.
The royal family, thanks in part to a raft of projects with business, academia, the arts and charities, has implanted itself at the center of Thailand’s cultural and social life — apparently far from the messy, brutal realities of capitalism and political gamesmanship. Giving money or labor to a royally endorsed project has come to be seen as a good deed, and so an opportunity to improve one’s chances of an auspicious rebirth in the Buddhist reincarnation cycle.
… Bhumibol’s material legacy also is great. The Crown Property Bureau, the agency that manages the royal finances, has vastly expanded its business portfolio. Neither the bureau’s assets nor its operations are entirely known, but the Thai monarchy is now thought to be the world’s richest, with an estimated fortune of at least $30 billion. Under … Bhumibol, the royal family of Thailand has become fabulously rich….
No debate there, although the figure is probably closer to $50 billion now. And the new king has control of it. The “fun” is about to begin.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 
[…] DPA/Bangkok report begins with a now common mantra idolizing the dead king and forgetting that his bloody reign was associated almost entirely with […]
[…] DPA/Bangkok report begins with a now common mantra idolizing the dead king and forgetting that his bloody reign was associated almost entirely with […]