Webinar | Across the Archives: Thai Anti-Communist Posters

Date and Time: April 26, 2024 from 9:00 am HST

To be anti-communist in Thailand during the Cold War meant more than simply rejecting participation in a political ideology called communism—an ideology with which so few Thais were familiar that Bill Donovan, former head of the OSS and ambassador to Thailand, had the Communist Manifesto translated into Thai in 1952. US officials repeatedly worried that Thai leaders were not sufficiently concerned about the dangers of communism, so they helped construct an image of the communist enemy that would resonate with Thais. How to be an anti-communist meant learning to recognize and love the monarchy, to worship Buddhism, to participate in the heteronormative family, to appreciate private property even if one could not afford it, and to celebrate selected (reinvented) Thai traditions. All these meanings were heightened above other cultural traditions to become “the” norm during the Cold War era. And it was created by particular Thai and American “experts.” Tracing the development of this expertise and its unpredictable impacts reveals the limits of US funding and knowledge, on the one hand, and the empowerment of paternalistic cultural authority among Thai leaders, on the other. Despite the asymmetrical power relationship between the US and Thailand and the massive economic, military and police funding provided to Thailand, elite Thais fully participated in and led the shaping knowledge production, unlike rural Thais who became objects of USIS surveys and American anthropological studies. The talk will focus on the anti-communist posters that led me to this project.

Register online:

https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIsdeygrjwrH9C0JHx2b2sGS4REzMt4uWjw#/registration