A 25-year-old Phitsanulok woman said she wanted to provoke a discussion about white privilege when she called out a British influencer adored by a million-plus fans across Thailand.
So she posted to an online clearinghouse for taboo topics, she said in an interview last night, to express her not-terribly controversial opinion that white men can readily find success in Thailand that would be out of reach to them back home.
The example she held up of this was YouTuber Jack Brown, who’s leveraged impeccable Thai-speaking ability and a devoted and wholesome image into a large and lucrative following over the past decade as “Jack Dek Farang.”
Later this month, Fifi – her nickname – is due in court to answer a criminal complaint filed by Brown accusing her of defaming him. Brown said yesterday that he’s standing up to a bully.
“I’m defending myself,” he said in an interview. “They attacked me. I’m just defending myself.”
Brown insists that Fifi’s message, posted nearly a year ago, “incited hatred” against him and contained statements that were untrue. Pressed to identify what specifically was untrue, he declined to respond.
“People are telling lies about me,” he said, adding that “All the other people that said hurtful things, this person had plenty of opportunity to remove their post.”
Brown’s fans see the 35-year-old YouTuber as a sincere partner to a Thai girlfriend who sincerely embraced the wisdom and values of a beloved national patriarch. In the comments, his detractors described him as an opportunist disingenuously cloaking himself in yellow to win fans and paid gigs.
Fifi fell into the latter. In her post, written as Apiyutch Chumsri – a name she said she doesn’t identify with – she took aim at Brown’s once-frequent displays of obeisance toward the monarchy and posted numerous photos of him striking poses sure to warm the hearts of ardent royalists. In the post, Fifi wrote about claims Brown wasn’t “into it” anymore since the death of King Rama IX and suggested that he had “exploited royalism” and the “I-love-Thailand trick” to “to grab onto the monarchy, like Tarzan.” She added that “blind” Thai girls were “crazily in love” with him because he was a white man who could speak Thai, though “back in your country, you’d just be average.”
She added that his seeming embrace of the pro-democracy camp smacked of the same opportunism and was meant to maintain his luxe influencer lifestyle of paid travel and sponsorships.
In a 2015 interview, Brown said he came to Thailand in 2006, traveled in the south before ending up on Khaosan Road for a few weeks. He said that back home in England, most people weren’t interested in the queen. “But I see that every Thai loves the king … I went to visit a royal project and I saw that the king has worked throughout his life, not only five or 10 years, but his work improved Thai people’s living.”
Brown would not be the first minor or major celeb whose views have evolved on the monarchy. Just a few years ago, many of the public figures now calling for reforms were lining up to get tattoos honoring the late King Bhumibol.
At first a typical YouTuber following the formula of “I’m a foreigner who can speak Thai and here are my opinions,” Brown has since transitioned into a luxury travel promoter, though his content gives little indication of what he is paid to promote.
Typically those who seek fame and become public figures accept that it comes with a trade off – stepping onto the public stage opens one up to criticism, mockery and the worst the internet can throw at them.
But Brown says Fifi crossed a line.
“At what point would you say that’s too much? Do I need to have someone attack me? Do I need everyone in the country to hate me?” he said, adding that he was threatened, though he acknowledged that Fifi’s post contained no threats.
“Within the post, the person used photos and content which are up to 7 years old & engaged a witch hunt to bully and defame me online for things that are not true,” he added in a message.
As is common in such feuds, there are disputed details. Brown says he asked Fifi to take the post down; she says that he blocked her after she attempted to engage him and never made such a request.
“We attended mediation, she never showed up,” Brown said, though he could not remember when it was beyond “a few months ago.” Fifi bristled at that, insisting that she spent days preparing what she would say at their March 25 hearing, which she flew from Phitsanulok to attend: “I wasn’t going there to fight with anyone. He didn’t show up.”
Brown filed his complaint at the Ratchada Criminal Court, as defamation in Thailand isn’t considered a bloodless civil matter – it’s a crime. Fifi faces up to a year in prison and THB20,000 fine if found guilty by the court.
Brown discusses his love for King Rama IX in a 2016 interview
Fifi said by phone that she could not discuss the details of the legal case, but that she had only expressed her opinion in the post.
“When I was on The Real World, I got plenty of negative comments, very rude and dehumanizing,” she said, referring to a reality television show she appeared on. “I didn’t feel like suing anyone. I basically asked for it [by exposing myself to the public]. Someone can get mad, and I’m not going to tell them, ‘You can’t be mad at me.’”
She said the post consisted of opinion and materials that were already public record.
“I didn’t come up with things out of thin air,” she said. “The things that I said are in the media.”
She posted it to Facebook’s Royalist Marketplace group, created by dissident academic-in-exile Pavin Chachavalpongpun. The government and Facebook have battled over the group, which had to be recreated after its first iteration was shut down a year ago. It now counts more than 2.3 million members.
Thailand’s defamation law has been used by the government to silence critics and corporations to stop workers and their advocates from discussing labor violations and other abuses. The law has been held up by rights groups worldwide as designed for abuse.
The fact of whether something is true or not is not a defense in personal defamation cases; however the Supreme Court has ruled that, if the message on whole concerns a truth of public benefit, it is defensible.
In his legal complaint, a copy of which was seen by Coconuts, Brown’s lawyer said the post would lead readers to believe that Brown had “used the Thai monarchy as a tool to benefit himself … making himself famous by telling people that he loves the Thai monarchy.”
“The plaintiff did not make himself famous from telling people that he loves the monarchy,” it read. “The post with text and photo of the plaintiff caused hatred and is followed by more than 600 comments criticizing the plaintiff, which created misunderstanding or the wrong image of the plaintiff…”
The lawsuit was filed in December. Asked about whether the punishment fit the wrong, Brown returned again to the wider “piling on” that resulted in others’ comments.
“There were people fabricating things. Complete lies. Pretty much everyone apologized or deleted their post,” Brown said in an interview. Asked if there was anything else he would like to address, Brown asked if he had a right to prevent a story from being published on the matter.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misconstrued Fifi’s reference to a television show she appeared on called “The Real World.”
Additional reporting Chayanit Itthipongmaetee
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