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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people find this stuff hard to wrap their head around. But it's pretty easy if you take a step back.

So if you read this with surprise or disgust - consider what ideas, events or people your own democratic state considers illegal to "defame, insult, or threaten", and then consider that many in Thailand may feel as strongly about their monarchy as you do about that.

You may still be disgusted - as you value your thing more highly - but hopefully you will be less surprised about the world.

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> consider what ideas, events or people your own democratic state considers illegal to "defame, insult, or threaten"

For Americans at least, such a concept thankfully doesn't exist. Threats can be a crime under certain circumstances, but being a specific individual doesn't really make it worse and they're only a crime when it's something fairly tangible. You can say you hate the president and you're going to kick his ass. Lots of people say this daily. Secret Service only shows up when you threaten to kill him because there are plenty of people who actually make efforts to do it--and even then, you could probably be an idiot and jokingly post it without any problem so long as it doesn't seem like a tangible threat. Other police will stop by if you threaten to do the same to non-political individuals for the same reasons.

The United States maintains a no fly list, which is fairly easy to consider an official state punishment with no due process. Aren't a lot of people on it despite breaking zero laws, because of what they say?

Who knows why they're on those lists. A lot are their for starting fights in airports and other stuff.

Whatever it is, being banned from an airplane is better than being arrested and serving several years for liking a facebook post saying "king dum thums up if u agree" as actually happens in Thailand.

I don't think the problem is much about what is illegal or not, but the way it is handled by the justice (lack of burden of proof by those who denounce), the previsionnal detention and the harsh sentences which lead as this law being a tool to arbitrary jail anyone and especially political opposition.

Again... western democracies jails "political opposition" all the time. It's just that no one cares because they're fringe weirdos. (Are anti-monarchists considered fringe weirdoes in Thailand? I suppose it has a certain prestige as it'd be seen as international/cosmpolitan, so not quite the same).

I imagine Thailand - just like the UK, Germany, etc - charges them with breaking a specific law, and the general public thinks nothing of it.

So your point is others do things almost as bad so this is fine ?

No.

I'm pointing out that it's not a completely foreign concept, and easy to understand if you slot in a different value system.

Understanding something isn't condoning it.

>western democracies jails "political opposition" all the time

No they don't. There are some complete nutters in Western politics who have never been jailed and are not likely to be. They are more likely to face the consequences of any law breaking where the "ruling classes" wouldn't and are also far more likely to be under scrutiny by someone looking for a reason to justify the prosecution but they do need to actually commit the crime.

Absolute Monarchies seem to be much better at getting things done because they can avoid the committees but Western Democracicies overall are much more reasonable and tolerant of dissent, even if not by as much as is claimed.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/25-suspected-members-ge...

3000 security personnel arrested members of a fringe German monarchist group, because of their cough credible threat to overthrow the federal republic.

This "political opposition", no matter what you think of them.

> consider what ideas, events or people your own democratic state considers illegal to "defame, insult, or threaten"

...where doing so would lead to 50 years in prison? None. That is a sentence fit for capital crimes, not for insulting something or someone.

> then consider that many in Thailand may feel as strongly about their monarchy as you do about that.

... actually, does anyone have a pointer to English-language material on polling/survey data about how Thai people feel about these laws?

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