What Thailand and Germany have in common

The seismic shift taking place in Thai society, like so many others, can indeed be described as “a messy and sometimes frightening business”.

But he loses the thread when he assumes I am nostalgic for the old hierarchy and deference inscribed on the Ramkamhaeng Stone. I was merely reporting the imagery that was used by so many Thai commentators in response to the brief political unrest in 1997 when another charismatic prime minister drew on the ancient “us-and-them” card in an attempt to return himself to power. 

My point was that all cultures return to their beloved myths of a Golden Age at such times, and most of those myths include respect for others, for the established laws and structures of the land and, of course, for its most enlightened leaders. Because in times of extreme national trouble those myths are often the best balm for our hurts, so to speak, the oil on our most troubled waters – the most powerful force for the good for most people being respect for their own past.

My observations about the present situation had nothing whatever to do with what might be called “national social justice” either, unless you mean the sort that morphs into dictatorship, as it has in so many modern upheavals. I used the colours brown, white and black not because I was saying Thailand was in any way comparable to Nazi Germany, for example, but because I didn’t want to use the colours that are so divisive here at the moment. My message was not that any colour is morally superior, but that colour-coded divisions in themselves most often lead not to freedom but enslavement!

I would say the only real parallel between Thailand and Germany is the tragedy that two such constructive, intelligent and sensible peoples could be so wound up by the rhetoric of self-interest out of the mouth of one man, and so lose their heads in the bargain!

For you must never forget that Hitler’s message in the 1920s and 30s was “justice” and the “return of power to the people” as well. It was an unabashedly populist movement, and the grievances it addressed were very real and very urgent. When the Reichstag was burnt down it was supposed to have been the people who were taking over. It was supposed to have been the old order that was being overthrown, and the old elite and their hidden levers of power all over Europe destroyed. A new affluence for everybody was supposed to have been just on the horizon. And how the German people cheered at the time, and when the dust settled how everybody in the whole world, including the Germans, agreed. It was insanity!

The parallels to Thailand today are obvious to everybody but those whose vested interests are being served by the chaos, both here and abroad. Indeed, the whole world is holding its breath to see whether Thailand can pass through this trial with its freedom intact. 

Of course the chaos is also part of Thailand’s growth, as Robin Grant says, and of course it’s also about democracy, justice and the empowerment of the poor. But the chances of the movement getting side-tracked by business interests is so enormous. What a tragedy it would be if Thailand were to end up as the failed state of Asean right up there with Burma and Cambodia, its two closest allies in the region right now, and its best, most obliging business partners!

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai