The alleged “double standard” by the urban elite and media is strikingly consistent. It is in fact a single set of standards that laws, reasons, rights, rewards and punishments, and other value judgments should be applied to people according to their different hierarchy. The consistent “double standard,” cannot be explained otherwise except as a form of segregation.
If you read only one article about the Thai crisis, then the following is probably a good candidate.
I’m excerpting the segments where the author discusses the particular configuration of social racism, and how it plays a fundamental role in preventing a solution of the political conflict, and why so many middle class Thais find the demand for the restoration of democracy and free elections so intolerable.
Thongchai Winichakul:
“To describe the incident as a hospital in the battle zone is not quite correct. It is more like an invasion by a cruel army; horrific invaders and the helpless victims. Yet such characterization of war still misses the point.
A Chula Hospital doctor wrote in his Facebook observing that the Red people walk in and out of the hospital to use toilets as if they were theirs at home, and on the day of the “invasion” (buk), he was frightened even by their faces and how they look. A journalist observed that the account of the incident in the media sounds like the bad guys in B-grade Thai films, usually the coarse, plebian, ugly and dirty males, who keep shooting with no reason but simply because they are bad guys.
While the mass media are cautious in characterization of the Reds people as the low-class “hillbillies,” such representation frequently slips through in columns and on TV. The representation is widespread on Facebook. In Thailand, it is a cyber community dominated by people from certain generations and social backgrounds. Although we cannot generalize about these people carelessly, it is safe to say that the Thai Facebook community is heavily populated by Thai “yuppies” (whose historical background may be different from those of other countries) and “snobs” (who are similar to other snobs around the world). They openly talk about the Reds as dirty, ugly, vulgar, low, inferior people who belong to the “bannok” (rural). A typical Bangkok snob remarked in her Facebook that she is terrified and trembling every time she thinks about the Red people because of their behavior and looks: dark complexion, dirty, awful face, and coarse.
At one of the anti-Red gatherings, a placard read, “Phuak bannok ok pai,” (rural folks Get Out!). The spatial term “bannok” literally means the rural, the countryside. Since the early 20th century, probably earlier too, it has been a spatial characterization of backwardness, uneducated, naïve and uncivilized quality. Like the notions of “savage,” it also conveys the state of being innocent, uncontaminated, near natural, a contrast to the modern. So, going “back” to nature in the forest parks or the countryside is a good holiday for people from urban centers. In social order, the “bannok”, like the savage, is supposed to be different, distant and separated from the urban.
The PAD is notorious in calling Thaksin supporters stupid and uneducated, thus unsuitable for a democratic election (equal rights to vote), hence the need for the “new politics” that privileges the educated and people with moral superiority. The PAD is not the originator of these condescending views of the rural folks. They are part of the typical hierarchical ideology in Thai culture.
…
The anti-Red intellectuals vehemently deny that it is a class conflict. They believe and repeatedly assert that the Reds are merely Thaksin lackeys and the deceived (fooled) rural folks. They and the Facebook snobs are never shy of reinforcing their view of the Reds as the lowly foolish “bannok”. Although the Reds are no longer exclusively the rural folk but also include a large sector of the urban poor and those educated middle class in Bangkok who advocate democratic rights, their mass base and strongholds remain upcountry. The disdain of those snobs described earlier confirms such image.
I have argued elsewhere that in Thailand the differentiation of peoples has been configured in spatial terms: the city (krung), the rural (bannok), and the wild (pa), each representing different scales of civilization. This is not to deny other differentiations of class and ethnicity. But, I would argue further, the economic classes and ethnic differentiation in Thailand have been muddled up with the spatial differentiation because they have evolved in tandem. “Class” and “race” in Thai cultural and political discourses have been articulated, confounding in spatial terms. Although they are not identical and cannot substitute for one another, they have spatial overtones. The spatial hierarchy of people, in turn, informs not merely the geographical habitation, but also class, social hierarchy and sometimes race as well.
…
to Thaksin haters, the bannok people are fertile soil for the Thaksin disease, thanks to their lack of education and moral inferiority. Especially lured by shallow and short-term rewards, thanks to their greed and materialism, the bannok people become the germs that are invading the moral political body that have been represented by the urban elite throughout Thai history
There are many elements in the UDD that reflect the characters of the rural folks that probably annoy the Bangkok upper class and those snobs tremendously. Unlike political demonstrations in the past to which most working people were indifferent, the Reds demonstration is greeted by the low and lower middle class people, including street vendors, stores clerks, gate keepers, taxi and bus drivers, and sex workers. The styles of leaders of the UDD are never seen in previous political movements led by intellectuals. They are “nakleng” – the masculine folk hero of rural society. They are humorous but brave, often flirting with women but polite. They are rude and coarse to enemies. They speak no abstract political jargon, except the phrai and the ammat, and rarely care political correctness about homosexuals or ethnic people. In fact their public speeches are not sophisticated and the contents do not improve at all over the month-long demonstration. But they don’t seem to care. They sing folk songs (luk thung) and tasteless pop music far more often than the “songs for life” of the old Left. The Red mass are coarse in their manners, rather rude, and decidedly … (for the lack of a better word) … bannok!
The behavior of the Red leaders and the movement that is probably most troubling to the urban upper class is the fact that they are prone to violent actions and reactions. Despite the movement’s vow to non-violence and peaceful demonstration, they cross the line verbally almost everyday. Their actions court violent reactions. They promise everyday that they would fight back every attack. Non-violence to them simply means being unarmed and never initiating an attack. Theirs is a cosmic distance from Gandhian non-violent actions, but perhaps akin to the “nakleng” concept of non-violence. The Chula Hospital incident was their spontaneous reaction to the information that the hospital allowed soldiers to hide in there possibly to execute the UDD leaders. Without thinking over political repercussion, a few leaders led a group of “nakleng” straight to the hospital to find out the truth. They should have realized that “nakleng” are not appreciated by the urban elite, who usually put them in the same category as thugs.
The Red thugs are contaminating the dominance of the urban elite. They are invading the city!
…
The accounts of the incident at the Chula Hospital in the media and their reactions, and the ones in Facebook community of the Yuppies and snobs read like a horror film or an alien invasion. This is not a coincidence. The UDD mistake is inexcusable. But how their actions have been taken by the media, those Facebook people, and by the consumers of those media, is informed by the deeper spatial, hierarchical differentiation that underlies the current conflict in the larger context.
The media, academic, civic groups, and the Facebook community condemned the Red invasion strongly in chorus. Their condemnations are much louder and incomparable to their mild criticism, if not silence, to the government uses of force and live ammunition that resulted in twenty-five deaths on April 10. The invaded body of the clean moral politics represented by the hospital seems to have higher value than the deaths of the Reds. This reinforces the earlier message that the deaths of army officers who commanded the violent crackdown on April 10 were of higher value than the Red victims of the same crackdown. The alleged “double standard” by the urban elite and media is strikingly consistent. It is in fact a single set of standards that laws, reasons, rights, rewards and punishments, and other value judgments should be applied to people according to their different hierarchy. The consistent “double standard,” cannot be explained otherwise except as a form of segregation.
The Red demonstration at Ratchaprasong is not only an occupation of the most lurid and lavish sector of Bangkok. It is the seizure of the angelic city – Krung thep – by the unclean, the dirty, the coarse bannok – the germs. “The Reds are invading” may be much more frightening than the words convey. The Chula Hospital is on the frontline against the germs and disease. It was invaded by the disease.”
.