On Myanmar’s Karen and the Philippines’ MILF

The cancel culture is far too easily offended, as James Palmer of Foreign Policy Magazine has found out.

By Chris Devonshire-Ellis  

I’m somewhat ambivalent about the work of James Palmer, the Deputy Foreign Editor of US-based ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine, as he has often been proven wrong in his political assumptions about China, and while in Beijing, he was firmly on the side of those who constantly criticized me on their various blogs during the time he spent in Beijing. A man searching for a career (his Father was Rock singer Robert Palmer), Palmer Junior is somewhat protected by his Dad’s royalty income. Hard graft has never really been an issue, unless a decade in Beijing counts, which many expats there would actually perceive as normal rather than medal awarding.   

I did enjoy his book ‘The Bloody White Baron‘, all about Baron Ungern-Sternberg, who took over Mongolia in 1920 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese, and native Mongolians and briefly declared himself King. It was well-researched and well-written. I should know – I’ve had property in Mongolia for years, way before Palmer turned up, while Dezan Shira & Associates maintains a liaison office there.

For me though, with over three times the China experience that Palmer has, he has morphed into just another of a long line of China bashers – perhaps the result of never really making it there, which is one reason, among many he has returned to the United States, from where his prose about China – and Asia in general – is delivered with a somewhat US biased attitude. “If only China could be like the United States” is the unwritten creed from such journalists, known as the FBTNY – Failed in Beijing, Try New York. The Sup China Project people are other examples, long gone, increasingly irrelevant, with nothing to do except criticize from afar. It’s all rather too easy to write about and adds zero intellect to the US-China debate. Palmer has fallen into the same trap.     

After all, most Americans have never been to China so whatever one says becomes the gospel. Palmer, however, is expendable and becoming more so as the clock ticks further away from his actual time in China. There are other writers rather more immediate these days, and rather too many that take the easy, US policy line, as Palmer, once investigative and insightful, has now become prone to.   

However, despite my overall attitude towards the guy – I generally find him pompous and arrogant and not a little misplaced – I do feel some sympathy for him.  

This is curiously not because of anything he has uttered about China, but a few Tweets he recently wrote about the situation in Myanmar, which mightily upset the local media – and the ethnic diaspora. 

In the first, Palmer wrote, “you might think the problem of women demanding to speak to the manager is bad in the United States, but Myanmar has a Karen National Liberation Army.”  

That is an organization also known as the KNLA.  

Wikipedia’s entry for the name “Karen” defines it as “a pejorative term for a woman seeming to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal.” The term is often used in relation to white women. Palmer got beaten up somewhat online for the use of the term.  

While Palmer’s jibe at women ‘demanding to speak to the manager’ was wholly uncalled for and sexistly clumsy, his reference to the Karen was not. In fact, the Karen are an ethnic tribe essentially of Thai origin but with their own unique culture and heritage. Palmer’s reference to the Karen was to the tribal name, not an insult.     

Palmer though then made a second tweet, in which he referenced the potential for the “Real danger of them [KNLA] hooking up with the Philippines Moro Islamic Liberation Front, creating a unified front of MILF and Karen.” That caused an outcry among Twitter users, a number of whom characterized the tweets as “racist” and “sexist.” Online mayhem ensued. MILF in usual US parlance is a common, yet also a derogatory term referring to mature women as ‘Mothers I’d Like To F*ck’.

It’s unclear whether Palmer was merely stating the case – correctly – that there would be problems if the Karen and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front

(MILF) united, or whether it was just an unfortunate piece of prose. It somewhat beggars belief that Palmer – and Foreign Policy Magazine – were unaware that the tweets could be misconstrued, and if so, this amounts to shabby editorial practice as it implies that Palmer’s tweets were not explanatory enough. It leaves open the question of whether or not the unfortunate innuendo was deliberate – or not.  

Yet on the other side, and here I stand up for Palmer – there is also a lack of education and a rather too easy approach to take when looking at what journalists – or business people are actually saying. It’s happened to me, with Palmer on the side of those who create criticism. This is wrong. It also begs the question as to the quality and educational level of people reading both Palmer’s tweets and Foreign Policy magazine. Palmer didn’t help matters by subsequently tweeting, in replies to criticism, that “I AM UNCANCELLABLE MWAHHAHA.” 

That was also somewhat odious and betrayed any actual feelings for the very people whose plight he was attempting to highlight. This was journalism for self-promotion, and not for any ethnic or human rights cause.  

It was additionally a direct manifestation of the ego above explanation. Is this the desired trait we expect from a senior editor at Foreign Policy magazine?    

But it does describe a unique development as concerns Tweets:  Palmer was caught out by assuming his readers knew what he was talking about. Many of them didn’t – and assumed he meant something completely different. The question to be asking is whether this is Palmer’s fault – or whether his Twitter account is full of uneducated, easily offended wokes. 

Either way, it highlights both the difference in understanding between the East and the West. In South Asia, the term MILF refers to a paramilitary group in the southern Philippines, and the Karen is a South Asian tribal people. While Palmer at least knew that, it is telling that his own followers didn’t. Instead of lecturing people about how things are, the likes of Palmer may be better off eating a bit of humble pie and explaining what they mean, and why, rather than proclaiming themselves ‘untouchable’ when faced with bemusement over their own words. That is arrogance. 

Arrogant journalists are never a pleasant read, especially when it comes to the US perspective, now almost always at odds with everyone else. That prose typically amounts to merely parroting Washington policy, not analyzing it. 

Personally, I would prefer the likes of the now-tarnished James Palmer to return to his explorational, adventurous research. By the looks of him from his recent TV appearances, it would do him – and his readers – a bit of good. Maybe a book about the Karen, and the difficulties they face, would be a good start, instead of making an ass of oneself as an armchair journalist, pompously pontificating from a safe distance thousands of kilometers away. Meanwhile, the real conflict (Palmer: “MWAHHAHA”) remains a serious, and unfunny problem that just four days ago was highlighted in an Open Letter to the United Nations Open Debate on Women, Peace, and Security. Now that is ‘Foreign Policy’. 

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