What to do?

I’ve been running into idle musicians out on the streets these days. Going stir-crazy sitting around the house, gotta get out. A lot of them lost their jobs because the hotels had no guests, and they don’t know if or when things will go back to normal. Of course, at this point almost nobody’s working, because of the curfew. That just extended for another week, too. At least now it’s off the streets by 11, not 9, as the first few days. But the government has apparently gotten word that the peaceful demonstrators had some more firebombs planned for this week, so I can’t blame them. Yet still, what is any big city, especially Bangkok, without night life? It’s no fun to always have to be home by 11. I personally don’t need the music work to survive, but most of those guys and gals do. Some of the Filipinos have just gone back home. Some of the farang (Western) musicians are falling back on the old standby for expats here, teaching English. The Thais are suffering the worst, maybe, although they usually do have family here, at least. Many of us are thinking a lot about what went wrong. And a few are wondering if there’s anything they can do to help.

To me the big story of the last few days is how the Bangkok community came together and cleaned up the mess in that square mile the redshirts occupied for six weeks. People gave up their Sunday off and came out in swarms and started the healing process with a great big sense of community. As you can imagine, people camping on public streets, which are not designed for it, can make things pretty disgusting. Well, these folks came out in just as big numbers as the protesters, held their noses for awhile, and started taking care of business. I wasn’t there, but saw plenty of TV footage, and it looked like a love-fest. The spirit of Buddhism, the warmth and openness of the Thai culture which made me love it in the first place. There were smiles all around, people talking about the future with hope, we hadn’t seen much of that for many weeks in this place that’s been known for a long time as the “land of smiles.”

There are stories that aren’t so good, too. William Barnes of Asia Times, who is doing the best reporting I’ve seen on this (including the one on the composition of the redshirt leaders which I linked in an earlier blog) wrote one called Sifting Through Thailand’s Ashes which is well worth the read, and gets into more detail about the makeup of the redshirt movement, and where it might go from here. The Reddos haven’t given up, but they may be coming to understand that they can’t get away with making claims about being a peaceful movement any more.

So . . . what is to be done?

Well, on the post just before this one, a commenter suggested, getting rid of the leaders, or "cutting off the head of the snake." OK, point taken, I think the leaders who incited to riot and who were certainly responsible for a lot of the deaths should be jailed, for a good long time, too. And if I could add to that punishment I'd have them sit in front of loudspeakers listening to their own speeches 24/7. But there will be other leaders. You know the story of the hydra, right? And besides, they wouldn't have been able to stir up the soup if there hadn't been any soup. So I would look more in the direction of curing the root causes. What were the social conditions these poor people were in that allowed them to be whipped up into such a rage? And I'd try to correct the misinformation that's been spread around.

I’m just a dumb farang, what do I know? I don’t have a lot of successful experience in saving societies from themselves. I wish I did, though, wish I had the experience and the stature to sit in a room with PM Aphisit and give him advice which would start this place moving on the road to a harmony that would make the Buddha proud.

I don’t have that experience and stature. But if I did, I’m pretty sure I’d make one major suggestion. Mr. Aphisit, make a goodwill tour of the entire country, one without a lot of ceremony, but with a lot of substance. I don’t know if the format of a “town hall meeting” would be workable, but get as down and close to the common people as you can.
Start with the Northeast, that is the place where the problems of Thailand come to a head. Oh, and by the way, make sure you’ve got loyal bodyguards. You’re wearing a great big bulls-eye on your chest right now. But show not only that you’re not afraid, but that you welcome the chance to hear people’s opinions and tell them how you see things.
Go there with something in hand to offer them. Not another big dam, no heavy industry, but something down and personal for the rice farmers who can’t get enough for their crop, for the kids who seem to have no future. Land redistribution, microfinance, education for new careers to replace the old that are becoming obsolete. Something big, something real, something they will soon see the fruits of.
Show them that you haven’t stopped the programs Thaksin started, at least the ones that worked, but have rather improved them—they really don’t know this. Give concrete examples, get testimonials from locals.
And wear your big heart on your sleeve. All these people have been told that you represent the “elite” who has always looked down on them. I can see that’s not true, let them see it too. Mix with the crowd, get them to teach you more Lao, try it out on them. They are lovable people, and they’ll love you for reaching out even a little bit, and they’ll laugh with you at your mistakes.
Of course you’ll have set a date for the next election, I know that’s already in the works. But joke around with them about that, tell them if they don’t want all the good stuff you’ve done, they can just zap you out with the stroke of a pen. Take off your tie and get just the tiniest bit funky. Once they see you as a real person, they won’t listen to the lies. You were educated at Oxford, so what? You’re just a guy, and a good guy at that.

I don’t know what to tell you about going to the North (Thaksin country) and the South (those pesky Muslim separatists). But if you can get through the Northeast, I think the rest will be easy. Anyhow, Mr. Aphisit, if you ever had reason to listen to me, these are the things I would say.

A musician friend who happens to also be a psychologist has a great idea which he’s going to sound out some folks about: a tour of like-minded Thai star musicians, especially ones popular in the Northeast, with the theme of harmony, healing, and peace. Get the government to finance this, have free admission. Make it completely non-political, no running people, parties, movents down, but instead have the stars, and others, in between songs talk about the need for building the future together, not as Thais fighting Thais.

Oh, and Mr. Aphisit, one more item. That lèse majesté dealie, you know that good old law where they can throw ya in boiling oil for so much as comparing yourself to a royal, you might want to have the constitutional amendment committee take another look at that thing. I don't think it's helping anybody right now, maybe even especially the royals. But what do I know? I'm just a dumb farang.

OK, I can feel the drowsiness creeping over me, and over you too, so me, I’m going to bed. For you, though, most of you are in another time zone, so you should have the energy to do your assignment for today, which is to think of ways that Thailand can step back from the brink. What do you think can help solve the problems that brought this all about? Feel free to post comments below, even if you ARE Mr. Aphisit. Actually, all of you, elite, serfs, red and yellow shirts, should always feel free to do that, I’d love to see more comments. So, then, till next time! One more post on this situation, then, maybe, take a break?

On reflection . . .

These last weeks have been like nothing Thailand and/or I have ever experienced. I think they mark a drastic change in the direction the country will take, and the way the people will relate to each other for a good long time to come. It's a watershed.

I said early on that this couldn’t be simply seen as a struggle between the have-nots and the haves, the disadvantaged and the elite. That still holds, but I’d now stress the word “simply” pretty strongly: the divisions actually do exist, and they are fundamental to the problems, a key root of the struggle we've just now been living through.

What happened in the society to create these divisions was nobody in particular’s fault. Just 78 years ago Thailand was an absolute monarchy with a rigid class system, and then without much serious thought on anyone’s part it was rudely rushed into what was supposed to be democracy. Then it went through a series of cataclysms, including the Second World War, the mysterious death of a boy-king, and the Vietnam War, with coup after coup, constitution after constitution, the strongest constant in the mix being a king who was just a boy when he was crowned and is now incapacitated, almost unable to speak, and clearly near the end of his life.

You can blame a lot of factors, or blame people, or blame the influence of other countries, or socioeconomic systems, or simply “globalization” if you want, but it won’t change the fact that the blame game can be played by anyone, opposing anyone and anything else, and will really only cause more bitterness and conflict. What needs to be done is to have a look at what needs to be done, get that clear, then start doing it.

I’ve become aware of a lot more players here than I’d known of before, and have spent a lot of time looking at videos of the redshirt rallies and opinions posted on the web. I still am completely convinced that the redshirts were not only wrong to do what they did, but actually evil: they used and duped innocents to further their own ends. There’s irony here, because I remember people calling us U.C. Berkeley students “commie dupes” during the FSM (Free Speech Movement, not Flying Spaghetti Monster) in ’64, and many another time. I supported FSM because I independently came to the conclusion that it was right, I never liked communism, and I still think the FSM was right, so at least I wasn’t duped. But I do think this is quite a little different. There’s the distinct flavor of a cult among the redshirts. If you see one of their rallies, I expect you’ll see what I mean.

Before I go on, for your dancing pleasure, here is a YouTube video, very anti-redshirt, with English subtitles. It makes no pretense at being “fair and balanced,” but it sure hits the nail on the head. I spent most of yesterday looking at one video of a redshirt rally after another. This pastiche has some of the key moments in what I saw in those meanderings. Thaksin, in most of the shots here, is speaking to rallies of thousands of redshirts through the magic of cyberspace phone-ins, which have been key moments for the faithful.





Pretty damning, huh? But it didn’t include Arisman’s “shit” speech, where he told the cheering crowd how much he hated Prem Tinsulanonda (read “King of Thailand” here, as Prem is head of the King’s privy council, “I hate him worse than shit!”) and how he wanted Aphisit to be greeted with Thai protesters hurling bags of shit at his state visit to Australia, then talked about them as “biological weapons” that would be used in Bangkok during the coming protest (this last one). Not only did they throw shit, but their own blood at Aphisit’s house during the protest. These words can’t be spun to be much else than hate speech, right? And prophetic. The burning thing, clearly they had that in mind long before they went to Bangkok.

But the new thing I’ve become aware of, and am kicking myself for not having thought about more before, is how many other people besides Thaksin are involved in this. Not talking about the true believers, but the leaders.

Did you do your homework? Remember, my assignment was the Communist Conspiracy ! Go on, open it up!

OK, Thaksin is no communist. Your garden-variety protester is no communist. Not all or probably even most of the folks behind the redshirts are communists. But especially after reading that article, it does seem they are taking a lot of pages out of the Bolshevik-Stalinist-Maoist playbook. Quoting here from that article, by William Barnes (“Thai Power Grows From The Barrel of A Gun,” Asia Times Online, May 13, 2010, 13 May 2010):

Therdpoum Chaidee, a former communist and colleague of key protest leaders, says “The revolution walks on two legs. One political leg and one army leg. Violence is the essential ingredient in the mix. That is what we were taught . . . the people who are the real planners, not the people up on stage making protest speeches, these people probably keep a very low profile, but they must calculate that aggression is vital . . . Aggression paralyzes and divides opponents. This is what we were taught, this is how a smaller force can defeat overwhelming power. The message was: divide and conquer."

The five tactics they learned for unseating a government included: divide your enemies; form a united front; use provocative violence; secure the loyalty of people inside the ruling regime; and, finally, win over the army.

So, the redshirts have

1. A government with a lot of divisions within it
   
2. large groups disaffected from the current social system, gathered into one,
   
3. Thaksin providing a practically limitless source of funds for infrastructure, while supposedly nonviolent planners mapping out a strategy of violence,
   
4. allies on the inside of the government, many elected and serving in Parliament,
   
5. "Watermelon" (green on the outside, red on the inside) army soldiers and officers sympathetic to the redshirts—though there are probably more inside the National Police.
   

"The tactic is to keep saying that you are a peace-loving people. The many factions folded into the united front [UDD] organization are not told what the real strategy is because they might not agree and they might not act their part convincingly . . . "

When I read this article, the whole thing kind of went KER-CHUNK into place for me. This certainly explains the things I’ve been seeing in a way nothing else I’ve thought of has done. I think that if you’ve been reading my blogs you will likely agree.

So things aren’t so simple, after all. One cannot dismiss those videos of stadiums full of red-shirted fans screaming with anticipation and grinning with pleasure when Nutthawut goads them to burn Bangkok or Arisman tells them how the ladies should package their bowel movements in preparation for the Big Day. That is real energy. It may be fanatical, it may have once had the form of small scattered sparks, and only now have been fanned into full flame by demagogues with their own agendas, but it’s real. Lots of people believe what they’ve been told, and are fired up about it. So indeed Thai society has undergone a basic change. There have never been such clear-cut divisions as this, or an underclass so energized.

But it’s not just the converts in the underclass, that’s the point. There’s Thaksin, one of the world’s wealthiest men. Then there are his allies, many old cronies, many people who are now getting paid off. Then there are the communists, like Ji (see the debate in an earlier post . . . it’s worth seeing), who have their own visions of what the future society will be like. Then there are the people whose financial boats were raised by Thaksin during his earlier administration. Then there are people who just plain didn’t like having their democracy tossed in the 2006 coup, and never saw anything wrong with Thaksin. Some among these groups are plainly visible, but probably more are unknown to the media, the government, to us. That, and maybe more, is the redshirt movement, or, as they like to call it, not acknowledging that at this point Thailand has no dictator, “The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship” (UDD).

A lot of these people, the leaders, the movers and shakers, who are not rice farmers, but usually well-to-do and/or well-educated, couldn’t care less if Thaksin were there—except for his money. I imagine Ji and his pals are already plotting how to get rid of the sucker once he’s funded the revolution. I suspect that Thaksin, actually not having been born yesterday, knows this and in turn has his own plans for that bunch. Anyhow, it is by and large a thoroughly disagreeable mix, seems to me, ripe for intrigues and betrayals. Great literary material, maybe I should change the theme of my book. And--get this--we really have no idea what they stand for! Everything we and the masses of redshirt followers have been told has pretty clearly been dreamed up purely to promote the group's quest for power. About as cynical as you can get. Who are these people, and what do they actually stand for? Anything at all?

But back to the real issue. Thailand has real social problems that need to be addressed, and while these may not have directly caused the recent protests, they have provided the soup that the leaders have stirred up and heated to a boil. Never mind that the points they claimed to be fighting for (Dissolve Parliament! End Corruption! Stop Killing Women and Children!) were bogus, somebody in government has to get out and chill that red soup down to a nice edible gazpacho, and that means figuring out ways of dealing with the problem.

I have my ideas about what can be done. Do you?

Next time: What can be done?