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I was born in Thailand--though to be clear, I am not Thai. Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king. Their "ideology" doesn't embrace western "freedoms"

I was born in Thailand--though to be clear, I am not Thai. Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king. Their "ideology" doesn't embrace western "freedoms" of speech and protest to begin with. So the implied accusation of hypocrisy in your comment is simply misplaced. Westerners generally, and Americans specifically, don't realize how their constant harping on "basic freedoms" comes across as ethnocentric. My parents are American citizens, but they were raised in Bangladesh and they don't really believe in free speech or democracy. My dad always talks about free speech with implicit scare quotes, like he’s referring to an american custom.

Braxton1980 2y ago
Why do your parents believe this?
- rayiner 2y ago
  It's not their cultural inheritance. Their moms never pulled them aside as children and said something like "you don't have to like what Bobby said to you, it's a free country and he can speak his mind." Quite the opposite: as in most Asian societies, there is an overarching emphasis on social harmony, face saving, etc. As to democracy, that is both culturally alien to them and their experience with it has been one of failure. We have never had a stable democratic government in Bangladesh, and my parents are persuaded that it's not possible. In general, they view democracy experiments outside Europe as something of a cruel joke. My parents felt quite vindicated that democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan failed, because they expected that to happen.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > Quite the opposite: as in most Asian societies, there is an overarching emphasis on social harmony, face saving, etc. to be fair, it's not actually different. in both cases, the more powerful person gets to say what they want and everybody else has to agree or remain quiet. in America, you can get targeted by the state for peaceful protests or posting something on social media in the past because you're a "homegrown terrorist". in Thailand, as described here, you can get arrested for peaceful protest or something you posted in the past. freedom has always meant freedom of the rich and powerful.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      No, it is different, at least in degree if not at the extremes. My wife is an American and the directness and bluntness with which she and her family talk to each other still shocks me after 15 years of knowing them. Even if there are practical limits to American free speech, it’s apparent from simple inspection that there’s a distinctive cultural basis for this political right.
CamperBob2 2y ago
And when a Mao or a Pol Pot comes along, he will find a defenseless culture ripe for the taking.
- hulitu 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - pc86 2y ago
    Why? They were both dictators and both responsible for the deaths of millions, is the scale or exact ideology particularly relevant?
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    I'd like to hear more about the point you're making in that second sentence. Can you elaborate?
alephnerd 2y ago
> Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king They revere Bhumibol, not his philandering, mercurial, and ripped son Vajiralongkorn who is de facto in exile in Germany. Everything in Thailand is de facto run by the military junta and aligned oligarchs like the Chearavanont and Shinawatra families. And the younger generation (Gen Z) doesn't have much affinity for Bhumibol either, because they grew up in the midst of a middle income trap - their lives are better than their neighbors in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam, but CoL and the employment market is hellish, oligarchy and relations matter so if you didn't attend the right schools you're screwed, and abuses of power like the RedBull Heir running over a cop and all the extravagance around the royal family and their extended retinue grew more unpopular. Tbf, I assume your frame of reference was the 1990s, and until the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 Thailand went through a massive economic boom so satisfaction with Bhumibol was high. Bhumibol also at least tried to appear like he cared about normal Thai people.
- rayiner 2y ago
  My parents lived there in the 1980s and we visited regularly in the 1990s, so yes, our perception is anchored in what was generally an optimistic time for the country. It's been sad to see what's happened recently. Thais are incredible people and don't understand why they can't seem to keep a functioning civil government lately. Maybe middle income trap is the explanation.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Thais are incredible people and don't understand why they can't seem to keep a functioning civil government lately. Maybe middle income trap is the explanation Imo, it's the other way around. Thailand wasn't able to build strong institutions as that would have meant devolving power from the Military, Monarchy, and Crony Capitalists. This meant that economic reforms that would have helped Thailand recover from 1997 were not enacted as they would have undermined a lot of well connected and powerful people. South Korea was roughly comparable to Thailand in the 1990s (and one of my professors who worked on Korean democratization confirmed this back in the day), but the IMF and US forced Korea to enact harsh reforms that helped them recover by the 2000s and become a developed country. Also, a number of Thai business families were ethnic Chinese with ancestry in Guangdong, so a number of those families like the Chearavanonts decided to invest in China (the first privately owned companies in China were all Chearavanont funded because they had familial relations with the post-Mao leadership in Guangdong) [0] instead of in domestic R&D, while Korean chaebols didn't have a similar option and preemptively began investing in R&D in the 1990s. [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/14/business/from-chickens-to-chemicals-family-conglomerate-finds-fast-growth-in-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/14/business/from-chickens-to...
pc86 2y ago
Free speech is not an American thing, it's a human thing. The fact that some governments do not recognize it does not make it any less of a right. Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being. Thinking freedom of speech is even remotely ethnocentric just proves that something is broken in that person's head that they don't even understand the basic concept.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being. In theory, yes. In practice, see palestinian protests in western world and others (phone searches at borders, mass surveillance etc.)
- rayiner 2y ago
  You’re just trying to launder your cultural beliefs through fancy language. Westerners developed the concept of “rights” as God-given guarantees that were beyond the power of governments to strip away. But of course Thais don’t share your God. And now most westerners don’t believe in the God that was originally invoked as the premise for those rights. So where do these universal “rights” come from? Do they reflect some fact of human biology? Of course they do not.
  - pc86 2y ago
    I'm not trying to launder anything, I think it's pretty obvious that Western culture in general is superior to others. Case in point: the linked article here. No laundering necessary. But even if you disagree with that, there's nothing preventing anyone from acknowledging my actual point, as well as the fact that belief in inalienable human rights does not by definition require any particular religion or belief in any particular God or gods. It simply requires acknowledgement that all humans are worthy of those rights.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      What does “worthy” mean? Isn’t that a value judgment? Can’t different groups of people reach different conclusions about worth?
fnordpiglet 2y ago
I would note the reverence isn’t as strong today as it was under the prior king. Most homes you’ll still find king Rama ix hung on the wall and I rarely see the current king. Indeed it’s a bit of a surprise when I do and it makes me wonder about their associations. Thai people generally love the idea of democracy. But they’ve been under so many dictators for so long they’ve become jaded. Every Thai person has a strong political view more or less and people absolutely criticize the government, military, and even gossip about the royal family extensively - behind closed doors and with friends. Graft is rampant though, and the powerful with big last names can literally do anything they want and get away with it, the police don’t serve the people, and the individual is generally disenfranchised. There however have been and continue to be powerful democracy movements and political dissent - see the yellow shirt / red shirt riots, the democracy protests and mass killings by the military over the last 60 years, add in it the king Rama the ix personally advocating against the power of the government over its people and the importance of basic human rights. I’d note that human rights isn’t an American concept but a basis in liberal humanism, which has been a conceptual framework evolved over thousands of years. Most my experience talking to people about liberal humanism and the status quo in South and Southeast Asia is “yes of course it’s self evident, but” where the but is effectively a powerlessness over the social structure of society. I’d note further that Theravada Buddhism is at its core liberal humanist as well, which is specifically relevant in Thailand. This is why ultimately with the Thai people the liberal humanist movement is quite popular and there continues to be considerable internal political problems - because the eightfold path dictates a liberal humanist philosophy and the people in power prefer the prior slavery based society before Chulalongkorn.
yongjik 2y ago
As an East Asian, let me say that this sentiment is not shared by everyone. In a place like Korea, if you say that freedom of speech and protest is a western thing, you'll be ridiculed as hopelessly reactionary. We fought for (and continue fighting for) democracy and freedom not because they're western things, but because they're human things. You might as well say heliocentrism is a western thing and Asians should be taught the earth is the center of the universe.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Don’t you think it’s a rather large coincidence that western countries just so happened to discover these “human things” and insofar as these ideas were adopted in Asia, it was after extensive intervention by western countries? In the case of south korea, for example, after military occupation by the U.S.? Heliocentrism is an observable fact about the universe. Can you show me democracy and freedom of speech in a telescope or microscope?
colechristensen 2y ago
>Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king. There are always royalists, Westerner or not. "protesters were met with severe repression" doesn't really sound like those folks have much reverence, eh? >So the implied accusation of hypocrisy in your comment is simply misplaced. It's not hypocrisy I'm accusing anyone of – it's selfish, indifferent tribalism and disinterest in the mistreatment of people as long as they are "other" people.
- rayiner 2y ago
  The preoccupation with “‘other’ people” is a manifestation of western individualism.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    You're talking about how everyone reveres their king and don't share in the values of protest or freedom of speech, in an article about those very people being abused. Arguing with a royalist trying to pretend that opposition and non-unity doesn't exist doesn't really have a point.

Braxton1980 2y ago

Why do your parents believe this?

rayiner 2y ago
It's not their cultural inheritance. Their moms never pulled them aside as children and said something like "you don't have to like what Bobby said to you, it's a free country and he can speak his mind." Quite the opposite: as in most Asian societies, there is an overarching emphasis on social harmony, face saving, etc. As to democracy, that is both culturally alien to them and their experience with it has been one of failure. We have never had a stable democratic government in Bangladesh, and my parents are persuaded that it's not possible. In general, they view democracy experiments outside Europe as something of a cruel joke. My parents felt quite vindicated that democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan failed, because they expected that to happen.
- exe34 2y ago
  > Quite the opposite: as in most Asian societies, there is an overarching emphasis on social harmony, face saving, etc. to be fair, it's not actually different. in both cases, the more powerful person gets to say what they want and everybody else has to agree or remain quiet. in America, you can get targeted by the state for peaceful protests or posting something on social media in the past because you're a "homegrown terrorist". in Thailand, as described here, you can get arrested for peaceful protest or something you posted in the past. freedom has always meant freedom of the rich and powerful.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    No, it is different, at least in degree if not at the extremes. My wife is an American and the directness and bluntness with which she and her family talk to each other still shocks me after 15 years of knowing them. Even if there are practical limits to American free speech, it’s apparent from simple inspection that there’s a distinctive cultural basis for this political right.

CamperBob2 2y ago

And when a Mao or a Pol Pot comes along, he will find a defenseless culture ripe for the taking.

hulitu 2y ago
[flagged]
- pc86 2y ago
  Why? They were both dictators and both responsible for the deaths of millions, is the scale or exact ideology particularly relevant?
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  I'd like to hear more about the point you're making in that second sentence. Can you elaborate?

alephnerd 2y ago

> Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king They revere Bhumibol, not his philandering, mercurial, and ripped son Vajiralongkorn who is de facto in exile in Germany. Everything in Thailand is de facto run by the military junta and aligned oligarchs like the Chearavanont and Shinawatra families. And the younger generation (Gen Z) doesn't have much affinity for Bhumibol either, because they grew up in the midst of a middle income trap - their lives are better than their neighbors in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam, but CoL and the employment market is hellish, oligarchy and relations matter so if you didn't attend the right schools you're screwed, and abuses of power like the RedBull Heir running over a cop and all the extravagance around the royal family and their extended retinue grew more unpopular. Tbf, I assume your frame of reference was the 1990s, and until the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 Thailand went through a massive economic boom so satisfaction with Bhumibol was high. Bhumibol also at least tried to appear like he cared about normal Thai people.

rayiner 2y ago
My parents lived there in the 1980s and we visited regularly in the 1990s, so yes, our perception is anchored in what was generally an optimistic time for the country. It's been sad to see what's happened recently. Thais are incredible people and don't understand why they can't seem to keep a functioning civil government lately. Maybe middle income trap is the explanation.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Thais are incredible people and don't understand why they can't seem to keep a functioning civil government lately. Maybe middle income trap is the explanation Imo, it's the other way around. Thailand wasn't able to build strong institutions as that would have meant devolving power from the Military, Monarchy, and Crony Capitalists. This meant that economic reforms that would have helped Thailand recover from 1997 were not enacted as they would have undermined a lot of well connected and powerful people. South Korea was roughly comparable to Thailand in the 1990s (and one of my professors who worked on Korean democratization confirmed this back in the day), but the IMF and US forced Korea to enact harsh reforms that helped them recover by the 2000s and become a developed country. Also, a number of Thai business families were ethnic Chinese with ancestry in Guangdong, so a number of those families like the Chearavanonts decided to invest in China (the first privately owned companies in China were all Chearavanont funded because they had familial relations with the post-Mao leadership in Guangdong) [0] instead of in domestic R&D, while Korean chaebols didn't have a similar option and preemptively began investing in R&D in the 1990s. [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/14/business/from-chickens-to-chemicals-family-conglomerate-finds-fast-growth-in-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/14/business/from-chickens-to...

pc86 2y ago

Free speech is not an American thing, it's a human thing. The fact that some governments do not recognize it does not make it any less of a right. Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being. Thinking freedom of speech is even remotely ethnocentric just proves that something is broken in that person's head that they don't even understand the basic concept.

hulitu 2y ago
> Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being. In theory, yes. In practice, see palestinian protests in western world and others (phone searches at borders, mass surveillance etc.)
rayiner 2y ago
You’re just trying to launder your cultural beliefs through fancy language. Westerners developed the concept of “rights” as God-given guarantees that were beyond the power of governments to strip away. But of course Thais don’t share your God. And now most westerners don’t believe in the God that was originally invoked as the premise for those rights. So where do these universal “rights” come from? Do they reflect some fact of human biology? Of course they do not.
- pc86 2y ago
  I'm not trying to launder anything, I think it's pretty obvious that Western culture in general is superior to others. Case in point: the linked article here. No laundering necessary. But even if you disagree with that, there's nothing preventing anyone from acknowledging my actual point, as well as the fact that belief in inalienable human rights does not by definition require any particular religion or belief in any particular God or gods. It simply requires acknowledgement that all humans are worthy of those rights.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    What does “worthy” mean? Isn’t that a value judgment? Can’t different groups of people reach different conclusions about worth?

fnordpiglet 2y ago

I would note the reverence isn’t as strong today as it was under the prior king. Most homes you’ll still find king Rama ix hung on the wall and I rarely see the current king. Indeed it’s a bit of a surprise when I do and it makes me wonder about their associations. Thai people generally love the idea of democracy. But they’ve been under so many dictators for so long they’ve become jaded. Every Thai person has a strong political view more or less and people absolutely criticize the government, military, and even gossip about the royal family extensively - behind closed doors and with friends. Graft is rampant though, and the powerful with big last names can literally do anything they want and get away with it, the police don’t serve the people, and the individual is generally disenfranchised. There however have been and continue to be powerful democracy movements and political dissent - see the yellow shirt / red shirt riots, the democracy protests and mass killings by the military over the last 60 years, add in it the king Rama the ix personally advocating against the power of the government over its people and the importance of basic human rights. I’d note that human rights isn’t an American concept but a basis in liberal humanism, which has been a conceptual framework evolved over thousands of years. Most my experience talking to people about liberal humanism and the status quo in South and Southeast Asia is “yes of course it’s self evident, but” where the but is effectively a powerlessness over the social structure of society. I’d note further that Theravada Buddhism is at its core liberal humanist as well, which is specifically relevant in Thailand. This is why ultimately with the Thai people the liberal humanist movement is quite popular and there continues to be considerable internal political problems - because the eightfold path dictates a liberal humanist philosophy and the people in power prefer the prior slavery based society before Chulalongkorn.

yongjik 2y ago

As an East Asian, let me say that this sentiment is not shared by everyone. In a place like Korea, if you say that freedom of speech and protest is a western thing, you'll be ridiculed as hopelessly reactionary. We fought for (and continue fighting for) democracy and freedom not because they're western things, but because they're human things. You might as well say heliocentrism is a western thing and Asians should be taught the earth is the center of the universe.

rayiner 2y ago
Don’t you think it’s a rather large coincidence that western countries just so happened to discover these “human things” and insofar as these ideas were adopted in Asia, it was after extensive intervention by western countries? In the case of south korea, for example, after military occupation by the U.S.? Heliocentrism is an observable fact about the universe. Can you show me democracy and freedom of speech in a telescope or microscope?

colechristensen 2y ago

>Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king. There are always royalists, Westerner or not. "protesters were met with severe repression" doesn't really sound like those folks have much reverence, eh? >So the implied accusation of hypocrisy in your comment is simply misplaced. It's not hypocrisy I'm accusing anyone of – it's selfish, indifferent tribalism and disinterest in the mistreatment of people as long as they are "other" people.

rayiner 2y ago
The preoccupation with “‘other’ people” is a manifestation of western individualism.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  You're talking about how everyone reveres their king and don't share in the values of protest or freedom of speech, in an article about those very people being abused. Arguing with a royalist trying to pretend that opposition and non-unity doesn't exist doesn't really have a point.