• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.89-126
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• 2013

The Red shirts came to attract attention of the international community during April to May in 2010 by successfully organizing explosive popular demonstrations. The momentum was the military coup on September 9, 2006. The Red color was chosen amid movements against the new constitution instituted under the military junta. In discourse struggles, the Red shirts compared their resistance against the Democratic Party government lead by Abhisit Vejjajiva to that of phrai (commoner or serfs) against ammart (aristocrats or bureaucrats) under the pre-modern reign of sakdina. The Red shirts strongly accused Prem Tinsulanonda, the chief of the Privy Council, of being a mastermind of 2006 military coup, who symbolically represents the cohesion between the palace and the military. It has constituted an unprecedented defiance towards national taboo where the trinity of Nation, Religion, and King has been consecrated. The objective of this article is to review the Red Shirts' ideology, organizations and activities in terms of the modernized phrai's struggles for expanding counter-hegemony. While Antonio Gramsci focused on why socialist revolution had failed to materialize in capitalist Western Europe, I pay attention to why political liberalism has failed to wash away pre-modernity and take root in capitalist Thailand, applying the Gramscian concept of hegemony by contrasting 'hybrid ammart' with 'modernized phrai'.