Propaganda techniques and their effects on the governance in Thailand
In Thailand, the land where the government claims to be a democratic country, there has been a constant question about the governance of the country and the involvement of higher institutions. Thailand has experienced intermittent political instability and a regular change of leadership, coups, counter-coups, and a switch of power between elected government and dictatorship. Despite all the issues, the only thing that remains untouched by the people in the monarchy. This can be due to the position and role of the monarchy, which seems to be the country’s most respected institution and a representation of the nation’s values and religious roots.
The political disagreement of Thailand over the past decade is partially due to the royalist domination of the legislative system, a control formed and reinforced under the hyper-royalist cultural situation. The love and respect for the monarchy is a mix between the political and cultural situation which the government is a part of creating the situation by making the institution seem so worshipful. Feelings, emotions, and beliefs are manipulated by the propaganda of the government and what it does to people is sweeping away facts and common sense. People who would automatically praise, respect, and submission without doubt or rational thought are what they call “citizen zombies”, the result of successful propaganda. It could be considered as another form of slavery because the government can chain your mind and control your thoughts. Creating citizen zombies has been done all across the world, not just exclusively in Thailand. However, the only difference in Thailand is that the propaganda is very impactful and can influence people very drastically in so many ways. There are various tactics and strategies in order to create citizen zombies. It is the ideal opportunity for the government to manipulate people by starting when they are young. It is the easiest time to plant the ideas of certain things into peoples’ heads. There are so many examples that we can still see even in daily life nowadays such as a certain haircut, school uniform, and other outdated regulations that do not allow children to have their own opinions or characters and cannot express themselves very well. This is an attempt to force kids to not think differently and lose the ability to be themselves. Ceremonies are the requirements in public schools in Thailand and most of the time children are forced to participate in traditional ceremonies where they are taught to follow the cultural practices. All these are methods to keep people in control so that they would believe whatever the government tells them regardless of the impacts that follow after. The government has a strong strategy in building this political machine to the point where people do not see the flaws and where the wrong is. Today, the royal family of Thailand is generally portrayed to the Thai people as both a protector of tradition and an organization to introduce modernity and development. Royalism has been a feature of most peoples’ everyday lives. Everything has gradually come to be filled with activities about or involving the monarchy in the lives of people. Throughout the process, the military seeks to indoctrinate children for love, respect, and obedience in schools across the nation.
Propaganda techniques that are used to brainwash the citizens can vary from the smallest thing that most people would not even question to the most obvious ones. It can start from the abundance of TV shows documenting the charity work, adventures, and specific information of royal family members, they have become a pattern and imprint for almost every media in Thailand. The king and relatives have been lifted up to be greater than everybody else and it has turned them into a sacred symbol. The connections and bonds between people and the monarchy are all based on each persons’ personal beliefs. A mixture of legislation and social initiatives persuades people to show absolute loyalty to the royal family in virtually similar respects. By social mechanisms, including widespread commercialization and consumption, the religious faith of the ideas regarding the monarchy has been largely generated and developed. And since religion is quite a sensitive topic, it has been used as a tool for the government to manipulate people. The relationship that citizen zombies have to the monarchy has become so strong to the point where people cannot even criticize or question the actions of the monarchy and related association without having fears. One obvious example is the use of article 112 or lèse majesté which is a section of the criminal code. It states that whoever defames, insults, or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir Apparent, or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years. The problem is, since the military coup in 2006, this article has been revised and became vague. It allows the authority to distort all critics’ hate speech as well as arrest any citizen who question the work of the government or the monarchy, they will get arrested. That became one of the reasons why the people started to request the government to reform the royal institution. There have been many protests from the Thai people that want change for the country. A countless number of peaceful protesters have been arrested for their actions, to the point where it disrupts the rest of their life. Originally, the requests are not meant to undermine the structure of the monarchy. Rather, it is for good wills, under the democratic system, to respect and preserve the monarchical structure and to perpetuate the institution in the sense of the modern society. The system of the monarchy should not have any political powers, must undergo democratic accountability, must be open to scrutiny, and must not tax the people. Accordingly, in a universally recognized political structure, the monarchical institution continues to live responsibly. However, one of many factors why the intentions of the protesters are distorted is because of the propaganda from the government itself as well as from royalists and citizen zombies. They twist the message and interpret it into the abolition of the monarchy in which a lot of people disagree with. Such biased interpretation has spread through public media and social media and has caused a lot of conflicts within the country in the past year.
In order to build strong governance, the government needs to understand and enforce the separation of three institutions which are the nation, religion, and the monarchy. If they let one institution to influence other institutions too much, it would result in a corrupted system and would lead to so many other bad consequences. The government needs to govern the country with transparency and facts, they need to make sure that every citizen can get the benefits equally and not just one certain group of people. And when they start to listen to peoples’ demands, that is when we can get rid of false propaganda and can have true democracy in the country.
