Updated: Royalist rancor

The Nation, Bangkok Post, and Thai PBS all report royalist harassment of Progressive Movement and former Future Forward Party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit in Nakhon Si Thammarat. He was in the South, meeting candidates from the Movement campaigning for local elections.

The reporting is pathetically limp, reflecting the fact that the mainstream media knows that the yellow-shirted royalists are being organized by regime, military and palace.

Evidence for this is seen in the way that police were deployed but tended to allow the royalists to threaten and demand:

Police were deployed to maintain order at the site and keep the crowd from entering the compound of a hotel where Mr Thanathorn had booked to stay.

However, the crowd demanded all the vehicles leaving the hotel premises lower their windows. A brief commotion broke out when a white car with heavily tinted windows refused to do so. Police intervened and managed to let the car pass.

Clipped from Nikkei Asian Review

That attack saw royalists “surrounding a car and shouting for Thanathorn to ‘get out of Thailand’. They also accuse Thanathorn of wanting to overthrow the monarchy and ‘sell the country to foreigners’. One protester thrashe[d] the car with a flag.”

Their “demands” reflect debunked claims initially peddled by foreign-funded fake news sites and spread by mad monarchists to their networks.

One report referred to this incident in biased terms, saying that Thanathorn “encountered resistance from pro-Monarchy demonstrators…”. That unethically downplays a rising rightist potential for violence.

Thanathorn said the “protesters who mobbed a car … were acting in the mistaken belief that he was inside. Posting on Facebook, Thanathorn expressed concern for the victims, who he said were ordinary people unrelated to him.”

He added that “the yellow-shirt protesters were living under an illusion that he was the problem, when in fact it was corrupt local politicians who had taken over their lives. They had been lied to and made to believe that those seeking changes for a better of society were planning to overthrow the monarchy…”.

Thanathorn had offered to meet “representatives” of the rabid royalists, “but they declined, insisting that they all wanted to see him, to question him about his position vis-à-vis the [m]onarchy.”

After the incident, he cancelled his other appointments.

A similar incident happened on Tuesday, in Samut Prakan, suggesting that royalists are stalking him.

Update: Here’s some video of the royalists at work: