IN MEDIA REDS



by philip j cunningham


In retrospect, red shirt calls for free speech and unfettered television access were as deceptive as the big red banner behind their stage at Ratchaprasong, which proclaimed in English for all the world to see:

PEACEFUL PROTESTERS
NOT TERRORISTS

That unforgettable banner, background to a vitriolic karaoke show and some unforgettable hate-laden banter held in the middle of a barricaded intersection, points to an image problem that was never really resolved. Were the reds peaceful and democratic at heart, betrayed by a militant fringe, or was violence and intimidation part of the overall red program from the start?

Not entirely surprising for a movement that enjoyed funding and policy guidance from a corrupt, corporatist CEO/prime minister in exile, the reds used modern media and management technique to create a compelling but deceptive brand image.

Having one banner say one thing in English, another one something else in Thai is just one example, a kind of niche marketing. Having your touts, front men and impresarios wearing shirts with subtle, if not subliminal, non-verbal messaging is another.

The Mahatma Gandhi shirt worn by rebel leader Jatuporn Promphan raised a few eyebrows, but what about other days, and other leaders, when the mood of the moment was captured by song selection and other articles of clothing. There was radical chic (Che T-shirt) but also mellow image mending when seeking foreign intervention (jacket with American flag) and so on. Some of the clothing choices were no doubt random, but there also appears to have been coordinated word and wardrobe coaching for the select few allowed to face the camera’s eye.

Red shirt speakers at one point stopped to explain to their listeners that peaceful protests played better in the foreign press than violence, so the crowd was urged to remain peaceful, admirably enough. But by now who in the "core" could have failed to notice the boasts of Seh Daeng and the taciturn black-shirted guards guarding the perimeter?

If protesters were fooled about the allegedly peaceful nature of the movement when violent thoughts were openly expressed on stage, it was in part because they wanted to be fooled, one eye open, the other eye closed. A red shirt spokesman, for example, denied knowledge of who the black shirts were but said he was appreciative of their support. He later claimed that the red shirts at Ratchaprasong had no weapons but the bamboo used for defense, then qualified it with a semi-truth, saying there were “no visible weapons.” The weapons only became visible towards the end, hidden along the periphery in places like Lumpini Park among other places.

Other reports, detailing the forceful confiscation of ID cards and rude behavior of roughneck guards, suggest the peaceful wing of the movement was somewhat less than appreciative, and rather more in awe of, if not afraid of, their mysterious protectors.

While there’s some room to debate whether the rank and file reds were mostly rural innocents, callously placed on the streets of Bangkok to dignify a basically indecent political campaign aimed at restoring Thaksin to his wealth and power, or willing participants in the same, the result was the same. It was a sham democracy movement crafted to bring a corrupt, lying autocrat back to power.

Cloaking the largely clandestine militant wing of an openly hateful and resentment fueled movement under incessant bromides and platitudes about democracy, Gandhian non-violence and equality might have served to fool some observers. It also helped to reduce cognitive dissonance on the part of wavering supporters, who at times appeared as drugged out and lacking in individual agency as members of a malevolent cult, but it is surprising to see how many in the foreign media and halls of academe also fell for the same sleight of hand. But then again, there were academics who cheered for the Cultural Revolution, and even the Khmer Rouge, not to mention the legions of Stalinists in an early era.

Still, the prevalence of red shirt fever in the academy is disconcerting. What is it about audacious hate and violence hitched to the fortune of a billionaire that Doctors of Philosophy find so find attractive?

A detailed media analysis of foreign coverage is a topic for another day, but it is not too soon to make a few preliminary observations.

Most foreign reporters cannot read or speak Thai which meant that the often charming non-verbal aspects of the rally at Ratchaprasong got better coverage than the acidic vitriol that was spoken from the stage in rapid-fire Thai.

Suffice to say, a handful of reporters, Thai and foreign, and a number of extraordinary photographers were on the front line covering the story in a truly heroic manner. They showed us the human side of pro-government and anti-government forces alike, unflinching when either side engaged in violence. Their hard-earned record, some of them paid with their lives, not only recorded but revealed hidden hands involved in the bitter downtown battles.

And then there were the bobbleheads on CNN in studios in Hong Kong and Atlanta who took greater care to get their make-up, hair-gel and informal banter in good order rather than the facts; a triumph of snazzy media graphics, studio lighting and precisely-timed commercial breaks over the raw truth, on touchy topics such as political bloodshed and monarchical intervention.

Also troubling was the way some print media uncritically absorbed and repeated, often without attribution, the paper storm of professionally crafted PR, op-eds and press releases released by hired flacks, such as Robert Amsterdam, in the pay of red shirt mentor Thaksin Shinawatra.

Australia’s Herald Sun ran a piece called “Thaksin calls for both sides to step back from abyss,” on May 17, 2010, making use of ghost-written quotes provided from the above-mentioned flack source, all the more devious because unattributed.

“Red Shirts had good reason to protest” published in the Australian on May 20 when Bangkok was going up in smoke, was at least attributed to Thaksin’s hired alter-ego Robert Amsterdam, making for a more obvious piece of paid propaganda.

To hear the tin-eared Thaksin proclaiming his innocence very, very loudly, either in his own shrill voice or through the nasal voice of his newly hired Canadian alter ego, shows just how audacious a media manipulator can be, deliberately muddying the waters, effectively making the media outlets who swallow such corporate PR releases hook, line and sinker an extension of the red media machine.

Arrested red shirt leader Veera Musikapong was correct in saying that anger does not produce democracy. Ditto for propaganda, advertising and crafty press releases disseminated by PR flacks.

As the more sensible of the red shirt leaders have acknowledged, a time-out is called for, but not at the expense of truth and transparency.

Vigilance is needed to guard against the audaciously mendacious.

It’s one thing to use TV, magazines and the internet to spread propaganda, quite another to incite violence. The red shirts have proven themselves eloquent, and almost touching in terms of crowd rapport at times, and a number of them sing reasonably well, though even the songs were lies in the sense that some good traditional melodies were hijacked and stuffed with pro-Thaksin lyrics.

But for every good entertainer or engaging speaker there was another speaker who spewed vile, ad hominem attacks, or racist jokes or hate speech as a matter of course. And then there were the snipers, arson specialists and bombers lurking murkily in the shadows.

Human rights groups and media freedom groups take note: UDD and other Red Shirt channels and websites do not uphold the responsibility inherent to freedom of the press if they purvey hate speech, use the medium to transmit coded militant commands or in plain speech tell people to go out and burn and kill.

No serious free speech advocate upholds the right to scream “fire” in a movie theatre.

Yet the red core leaders, including Arisman Pongruangrong and Nattawut Saikua, have been caught on tape saying things along the lines of, “If we don’t get our way, it’s burn, baby, burn.”

The red stage and its broadcast arm was a key nerve center for followers outside of the protest zone, some hundreds of miles away. In order not to alert listeners who were not supporters, some important communications were undoubtedly conveyed in code words, much as US fundamentalists do with right-wing talk radio and militant Islamists do on the internet.

But near the end, even the pretense of code was stripped away. When the self-styled DJ Om, who sounded like an overeager Red Guard on a bad day, took to the stage to face the UDD camera during the last hours of the Ratchaprasong protest, she spoke in terms that needed little decoding for followers around the country.

“Brothers and sisters! Get revenge! Do what you have to do!” she screamed in blood-curdling tones. “Go to the provincial government halls! Go now! Get revenge!”

Shortly after that, there was a “spontaneous” decision of red shirt sympathizers (downtrodden farmers?) in Ubol, Udon, Khonkaen, and Mukdahan to torch their own local government offices. A number of beautiful and historic buildings were burned and innocent rural folk intimidated, but fortunately the “sparks” didn’t light a “prairie fire.”

In fact, the key leaders of the so-called “core” including Nattawut and Jatuporn achieved a soft landing of sorts just as tensions were building to a crescendo in the crowd by turning themselves in to police as the army moved north, slowly, due to intermittent sniper fire, closing in on Ratchaprasong intersection after a series of brief, bloody skirmishes around Lumpini Park.

The red leaders got off light, spared both the anger of the army and the abandoned crowd, but Bangkok was hit hard with a shockwave of concerted violence. Since talk of “burning the city” was a documented feature of red rhetoric in earlier rallies, the periodic volleys of incendiary red rhetoric launched from the stage at Ratchaprasong raises troubling questions about the ethics of the red leadership and the sincerity of their followers.

The word terrorist is a problematic, over-used term in contemporary political discourse, and it is almost invariably used to describe what the other side does. Terrorist is a such a loaded term it is probably better not used, but oddly enough, the red shirts used the term incessantly, often in mocking self-reference, which begs the question whether or not there was a kernel of contradictory truth in their loud, adamant denials, with peaceful protesters covering up, diverting attention from, or obscuring something less savory below.

Sort of like a banner that puts two irreconcilable ideas in uncomfortable proximity;

PEACEFUL PROTESTERS
NOT TERRORISTS?

Source : FRONTIER INTERNATIONAL: IN MEDIA REDS