Royalist ratbag politics

A few days ago, Thai Enquirer reported on royalists responding to the wave of graduates rejecting royal graduation ceremonies.

The expected royalist response has begun, with “a campaign to stop the hiring of university students who did not receive their diplomas from the royal family as per tradition.”

Of course, the news outlet’s use of “tradition, which follows a post at Prachatai, ” is a bit of a royalist stretch. As far as we know, having members of the royal family present diplomas was introduced in 1930 and was discontinued until after WW2, and then became one of those mid-20th century royal “innovations” during the era of Sarit Thanarat, and meant to tie graduates to the monarchy. Like other innovations, it “restored” a practice briefly used under the absolute monarchy. More a royalist propaganda device than a “tradition.”

Since the monarchy reform and anti-lese majeste campaigns got underway quite a number of graduating students “have chosen to not attend the ceremonies in solidarity and because they say the cost of attending the royal ceremony is too high.” Some of them oppose feudalism.

Royalists are aghast and some “business owners are striking back at the protesting students by saying they won’t hire any that didn’t attend their graduation ceremony.” They plan to demand graduation photos as evidence for having prostrated before the wealthy, feudal, family.

In the way of feudalists-fascists, “Paisal Puechmongkol, a former senator and former assistant of Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwon, wrote of students as non-human. He claimed employers “need to initially consider whether the person who is being hired is ‘a human being that can work within a human society and a job that provide services to customers or not’.” He considered those who avoided the royals as “stupid people who do not know what is right and wrong…”.

Such attitudes tell us much about these nasty fascists engages in ratbag royalist politics.