The terrain of lese majeste

The terrain of lese majeste:
It has been an emotional and (potentially) defining week in Thai politics, with the sad and unnecessary death of lese majeste convict Ampol Tangnopakul providing a much-needed injection of stark reality into the debate on lese majeste. At its most basic, Ampol’s passing makes it clear that the lese majeste law kills.
The use of the law for political purposes by royalists like Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva makes them complicit in another murder. The body count for Abhisit continues to climb. PPT commented on Abhisit’s dross and moral turpitude a day or so ago, so won’t again inflict it on readers today.
Meanwhile the supine position taken by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her government on this draconian and unnecessary law is reprehensible. What is even worse is the stony, cold-hearted silence of the current leadership, including Thaksin Shinawatra, on Ampol’s death. They, too, are complicit in the lese majeste murder of an old, sick and poor man.
The military is complicit too. As everyone knows, its 2006 coup unleashed an orgy of lese majeste use, throwing political opponents in jail, with current Army boss Prayuth Chan-ocha having made accusations. The military has staked out monarchy and lese majeste law reform as “no-go” areas. As the praetorian guard of the royalist ruling class, they remain all-too-willing to kill for the monarchy and to keep the royalist state in place.
And the mainstream media is also complicit. For too long, the media has been supinely hopeless on the monarchy. Sometimes media bosses and journalists have argued that lese majeste prevents their outlets from reporting anything other than hagiographical nonsense about the royal family. Of course, this is an excuse for lazy “journalism” because the mainstream media has engaged in an orgy of self-censorship on critical stories while simply dishing out palace propaganda and royalist twaddle as “stories” when they have no merit other than their propaganda value.
Media, military, monarchy, and lese majeste are intimately linked in a regime of royalist ideological hegemony.