Sinister tirades

Re: “Silly conspiracy theories fall flat with young folk”, (Opinion, Oct 17).

Surasak Glahan is right that whilst such bizarre tirades strike sensible people as silly, they are also profoundly sinister.

It is encouraging that many have laughed at the latest conspiracy theories as they deserve. But bad people, often sincerely believing their own incredible fantasies, have a long habit across history of first making up bizarre tales to divide society by demonising those they irrationally fear before moving against those they have deceitfully demonised.

The Jewish high priests demonised Jesus as a political radical and religious heretic to justify having him executed (religion has always been a powerful ally of bad men). White Americans demonised African Americans as sexual predators preying on innocent white girls to justify repressive segregation to keep them in their place. The Nazis demonised Jews, gays, gypsies, communists and others as undermining good morals and the state to justify the Holocaust.

And Thai army politicians have a long history of demonising patriotic Thai citizens who have a different vision of their nation as a strong, healthy democracy with a respected constitutional monarchy. Such bizarre conspiracies might be very silly, but they have divided Thai society, turning Thai against Thai, and led to the murders of thousands of good Thai men and women in defence of a faith-based ideology that blindly rejects reason, fact, honesty, and the other good morals that founded democracy, the form of government which Section 2 of the Thai constitution explicitly defines Thailand as having.

FELIX QUI