Hate speech used to be a compound noun meaning, according to Wikipedia, “Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristic In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristic.”

It is interesting to note, however, that in Thailand hate speech is not a problem. It is absolutely no problem if you stand up to claim you are protecting a certain institution and then you lay into an innocent obstacle on the path to a further decade of illusion as if that obstacle were Satan itself. Then you can say all you want, call the object of your hatred anything you want, do this all from a police station, get it all published in Thai and English media, and then nonchalantly watch as more innocent people become prey to state repression at your behest. These are what Thailand’s new heroes are made of. Innuendo, malice, cowardice, blind self-infatuation and ancient bias against difference.

In Thailand the compound noun hate speech has been transformed into a compound synonym equivocating hate with speech: if you speak you – what you say, how you say it, your nationality, your country, your religion and your point of view, your family members, your parents - will all be hated…and berated, publicly with the help of vested elite interests. Stabbed and pilloried, you will be ridiculed, blamed for the nation’s ills, and ignored, perhaps most tragically, by a system that parades itself in the garb of justice but which instead mocks justice.

Overall in Thailand sentiment on the part of audiences to any given speech is laced with hated. Speech that criticizes the illusion that Thailand has been inculcated with (thanks to the usual ‘gang’) over the decade to be seen as seditious, foreign, and of course, unwelcome in the most severe meaning of the word unwelcome.

One could retain some measure of hope if there were legitimately sincere interests at conflict with one another, each transparently and with timely accountability attempting to redress great wrongs in society. But that is not what we have in Thailand. Instead there is a powerful interloper intruding into the svelte jungle of Thai opportunism and repression that has characterized Thai society since it was first formed. That stranger, born out of the jungle itself, is now hunted. Yet it prowls around the dense underbrush, seeking a way in, a way to once again rule over the land, a young cub at the fore, sniffing the way forward.

Is it too harsh to conclude that Thailand has become a land of overt terror run by covert terrorists who use position, the law and sacred icons to further their interests at the expense of the common man?