Political protest in Thailand: not all peasants wear red shirts
The media often portrays the current political unrest in Thailand as a straightforward class struggle, with poor, rural-born phrai (‘serfs’) supporting the radical ‘redshirt’ movement against the powerful ‘yellowshirt’ ammart (‘aristocrats’). But the reality is much more complicated, argues Yoshinori Nishizaki of the National University of Singapore.
Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies, Nishizaki observes: “The image of the oppressed rural masses rebelling against powerful urban elites is intrinsically appealing, but fixing our attention only on [the redshirts’] motivations, actions and goals would give us a limited, uni-directional picture.” This is because, in reality, peasant support for the redshirt movement is not nearly as comprehensive as generally believed – making the redshirts only part of a complex picture of political dissatisfaction.
From his extensive fieldwork in Chaing Mai Province, as well as a thorough analysis of recent election results, Nishizaki has discovered that significant numbers of phrai have not aligned themselves to the redshirt cause, as might be expected from their lower socio-economic position. Instead, many rural-born Thais take a position described by Nishizaki as ‘critical cynicism’: they are neither interested in the activities of the redshirts nor engaged by them.
These Thais believe that the redshirt movement has yet to ‘make a credible commitment’ on either the national or local level to what they have vowed to achieve. They also remain too troubled by the movement’s economic policies, its leaders’ links to the ‘elite’ and the perception of widespread corruption – including the ‘buying’ of protestors and the diversion of funds from rural projects – to join the cause. Moreover, many of the socially mobile rural poor no longer view themselves as ‘serfs’, and thus remain unmoved by redshirt rhetoric.
As Nishizaki concludes: “Despite their relative poverty, these people remain cynical, sceptical or apathetic about the redshirt movement, and display autonomy to assess it in their own ways. Peasants are a more diverse, politically divided lot than we are led to believe. The fact that they belong to a disadvantaged class does not translate into their support for redshirts.” This is important because how ‘robust or tenous’ the redshirt movement’s rural support base really is will have a significant impact on how events unfold in the coming months.
Yoshinori Nishizaki’s article sheds valuable light on the tensions emerging in modern Thailand. It also makes clear that attempting to frame the current political unrest purely as class struggle is not useful for observers – or for the redshirts themselves.
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