Monday, October 13, 2008

Thailand's number one Marxist is number one foreign business news source?

One very strange fact that I've noticed recently is that Thailand's most well-known Marxist intellectual Giles Ungpakorn also seems to be the most quoted source for Thai politics in UK's number one business daily the Financial Times.

Giles is a member of Workers Democracy Group an international Trotskyist organization. How did Trotsky differ from other Marxists?

His politics differed sharply from those of Stalinism, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution (rather than socialism in one country) and unwavering support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles (Source: Wikipedia).
This sure seems like a double standard in journalism. Are British Socialist groups well-represented in the Financial Times also? I sure haven't seen any.

Perhaps British journalists apply different standards for so-called "emerging market" countries like Thailand.

Or perhaps this is just the result of the left-leaning political nature of academic focus on Thailand in western universities.

I was recently looking for academic research on the history of the Eastern Seaboard development project during the Prem era. Couldn't find anything but sure could find about hundreds works on rural farming communities and October 1976.

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