 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to NewsClick and People's Dispatch. Today we're very pleased to be joined by Jiles Unapakon. Jiles was a professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand before he faced the Lee's Majesty charge and fled the country in 2009. He was charged, it was said, because of his book, A Coup for the Rich, which analyzed in detail the 2006 coup in Thailand. Jiles, welcome to People's Dispatch in NewsClick. Thank you for inviting me. Well, you know, Jiles, we're in the middle of this major uprising in Thailand. Thailand, of course, has a history of coups that goes back to the Palace Revolt in 1912, the 2014 coup and so on. Give us a brief sense of the role of the military and the monarchy in Thailand. I think this is a useful introduction for people who don't follow Thailand closely. Give us a sense of the role of the military and monarchy in Thailand. And of course, in all this, where is the United States of America? Well, before I talk about the history of the monarchy and the military, you said that Thailand has the history of many coups. But at the same time, Thailand has a history of mass uprisings against military dictatorship. And those mass uprisings were successful on two separate occasions, despite the violence used by the military against unknown protesters. So really, we should see the long term picture as a struggle between the people at the top, the military, the royalists, the conservatives, and the people at the bottom, the ordinary working people, farmers, and so on. So I would put it in that context. Now the monarchy is actually, if we start with, for example, the nation building in Thailand, King Dhulalongkorn, or Rama V, staged a revolution against the feudal system. It's basically a bourgeois revolution from above. This kind of thing happened in countries where the revolutions had occurred late. For example, a very similar thing happened in Japan with the Meiji Restoration. So the king abolished the Thai feudal system in the 1870s in response to the incrosion of colonialism, the incrosion of British imperialism and French imperialism, and created the nation state of Thailand. But at the same time, he made himself into an absolute monarchy. But this situation was unstable and only lasted about 60 years. Because in 1932, in the midst of the world economic crisis, there was a revolution which overthrew the absolute monarchy. And it was led by a coalition of left-wing politicians and anti-royal militia men. The problem is that these two factions that overthrew the absolute monarchy weren't looking for similar outcomes. The left nationalist politicians wanted a kind of socialist society. The military people wanted something to the right of this. And so it resulted in the number of twoing and throwing between the military and the civilian politicians. But it was the Cold War, really, that established the role of the military dictatorships in Thailand. And they were supported by the United States. And it was during this period that the military brought back the monarchy. The monarchy hadn't been totally abolished, but they started to promote the monarchy as a symbol of conservatism, of a symbol of anti-communism and so on. And ever since then, the Thai monarchy has been promoted like this, mainly by the military, but also by capitalist politicians, right-wing politicians and so on. The current protesters, the majority of them actually believe, well, I would say, the leadership actually believe that the the present king, Wachia Long gone, is trying to establish an absolute monarchy. I disagree with this. I think that the monarchy in Thailand has always been a tool of the military ever since the Cold War period. King Pumipon, the present king's father, who died recently, was weak and unable to actually, he was cowardly and just went with the flow, really. He enjoyed being made and promoted into some kind of god-like figure by the military, but he didn't really have any power in himself. And the present king has a history of failing exams, of being totally uninterested in social affairs. One could say he behaves a bit like a sociopath because of the way he treats women and so on. I mean, he's got a harem in Germany, where he spends most of his time. He treats his consorts who he falls out with them in a barbaric way. Some of them are just put in prison and so on. But the monarchy itself doesn't can't actually control the military. It's the other way around. It's the military that used the monarchy. It's the conservative elites that used the monarchy. Now, in order to understand this, you can see pictures of top military generals, including the present military dictator in Thailand, despite the fact he claims to have been elected, although the elections were for false elections. You can see pictures of them groveling on the ground in front of the present king, almost as though they are servants of this king. Now, I think you have to almost be a Marxist to actually understand what's going on. It's a play act. It's basically the military and the elites foster this view that the monarchy, the king, is some all-powerful godlike figure. The reason they do that is to put the fear of this godlike figure in the minds of ordinary people, and they have been successful over the years in doing this. Of course, monarchies are very symbolic, not just in Thailand, but even in places like Britain and Sweden and other places, because they represent the idea that it's natural, supposedly natural, for some people to be born low and some people to be born high, and you need to know your face in society. Now, it's taken to an extreme version in Thailand, but Marxists have talked about the idea of alienation. If you are weak, if we are weak, if we don't feel confident and powerful, we tend to believe all the crap that the ruling class put forward in society, and those beliefs can be shaken through struggle. That's something that a number of Marxists have talked about. You're seeing this happening in Thailand as we speak, because the view, the fear of royalty, the fear which is imposed also by less majesty laws and people being prosecuted, but also it was a mainstream view in society in the heads of many, many millions of people, but this has been shaken. It's been shaken by the struggles that have broken out over the last few months. It's also been shaken by the behavior, the reality of the present king. We've seen unprecedented criticism in public of the present king and the way he is trying to mass wealth through changing the constitution and the way he spends his time in Germany with his harem and so on, and his total disregard for ordinary people. That has meant that the present demonstrations have got one of their key demands is for the reform of the monarchy to allow people to criticize the monarchy openly and to reduce the wealth of the monarchy and to control his behavior. Now, this is something that is unprecedented, as I've said, but it's also something that the military are not going to allow very easily. There are strong powers within social powers within the demonstration to actually press the military or push the military out, overthrow the military, because the military depend on this image of the royal family and so on in order to legitimize their authoritarian rule. In summary, I would say that if you're looking at the military and the monarchy, the military is the main power base. They have the weapons, they have the armed forces and so on. The monarchy is a bit like the fairy on top of a Christmas tree. It's symbolic but very strongly symbolic so that it was symbolic enough to get people to actually feel fear or love or whatever or respect for the monarchy in the past. Well, you've given a very dazzling portrayal of the structure of the problem. The current Prime Minister, as you said, Pryut himself, after all, was an army general, led the crackdown against the red shirts about a decade ago, comes to power in the coup of 2014 and essentially is a coup prime minister. I mean, as you said, the elections are not possible in this sort of situation. We have a good understanding therefore who's in power. This is the army in power. This particular army officer has demonstrated already by his own hand that he's willing to use the most brutal force to crack down on people as he did against the red shirts. What is the character of the protests? Could you characterize the protests a little bit or at least the social force that's developing? Is it capable of becoming strong enough to provide a sustained challenge to this structure, which as you said is not the monarchy. Monarchy is the mask of the military, the capitalists and so on. How should we understand this social force that has emerged so dramatically on the streets? Well, I think that it's useful to use a Marxist analysis of social movements and so one of the key Marxist analysis of social movements like the pro-democracy movement in Thailand is that it doesn't just appear out of nowhere. It's a bit like a tree with many, many branches. Part of this tree was the mass movements that overthrew the military in the past and people build on movements in the past. The present movement has been building on the red shirts. It's been building on the 1932 revolution. It's been building on the uprisings in the 1970s. It's been building on a spontaneous protest that took place when the present dictator took power in the coup in 2014. But up till now, up till say August, the protests and so on have been small. But what's happened is that the present movement has been fueled and led by young people. Basically, this generation have said, well, we've had enough. We've had enough of the way the world is being run or our country or society is being run and we're not afraid. That's what's new about this is that the young people are not afraid. If you talk to the red shirts who were put down brutally 10 years ago, they will still feel slightly afraid. They carry the baggage of being shot down in the streets and so on. These young people, that was 10 years ago, but then that's like a lifetime away. They're very determined. They're courageous and they're prepared to go out on the street. They're prepared not to listen to people who say, oh, take it easy and so on. And they're prepared to criticize the monarchy. So we've been seeing these protests which have been led by young people. A lot of the leaders are university students. But we've also seen mass movements erupting among secondary school students coming to demonstrations, berating the minister of education, calling him a lack of the military junta, defying their teachers and so on. And prominent among these young students are women. Women have come to the fore in leading this. And the older generation are gaining courage from the young people and are joining in the protest. So since October, there have been a number of demonstrations in Bangkok which have numbered hundreds of thousands of people. And that's unprecedented for this decade. It's interesting that after the Brayutku in 2014, students who were prepared to protest protested in small numbers and they were saying, well, you know, we don't need large numbers of people on the streets because of social media. Well, that idea has been completely turned on its head. People certainly use social media, but they understand that you've actually got to build through face-to-face relationships with people and actually get masses of people onto the streets. And that's what is happening. But the thing is that the movement is just a junction because, as you say, you know, where is the power to actually overthrow the military? And I think that if you look at Thai history, if you look at international history, the overthrow of dictatorships depends on more than just turning out onto the streets. It depends on making the country ungovernable. And this can happen in a number of ways. You could have rioting, but that involves a lot of loss of life as well because the security forces would be prepared to shoot down people. But the other alternative is to have strikes, workers' strikes. And this is possible in Thailand. Already, there have been large gatherings of workers in working-class areas, in industrial areas along the eastern seaboard or north of Bangkok. But gatherings on the streets are not enough. We need work stoppages. We saw the power of work stoppages that built up in the Egyptian Revolution or in Algeria and other places in Sudan and so on. And I think that what is needed is that the Thai working class be mobilized. And when we're talking about the working class, we're not just talking about factory workers. We're talking about white collar workers, doctors, people who work in the health service, people who work in banks and other places. So that is the kind of power, I think, that is necessary. Unfortunately, because the left in Thailand is quite weak, the voices calling for a building of strikes are activists who go out to visit workers in their locations are quite weak. But just one more thing before I let you go, which is that in the context of you gave the example of Egypt, after all, Mubarak left when the military decided to let Mubarak go. And when Cici decided that the Morsi government of the Muslim Brotherhood was no longer going to be tolerated, they did a coup against the Morsi government. In other words, there has to be fissures within the military to allow for the advance of the project of the people on the street. What evidence is available that within the Thai military, there might be significant fissures that allow history to advance. It looks like there are no fissures and therefore history may not advance. What are your quick thoughts about that? Well, in order to get the ruling class to start to crack a power and argue with each other, you need a strong movement from below and the two go hand in hand. And so if you have a strong movement, the people at the top start wondering, well, the guy in charge probably isn't making things any better. We'll remove him in order to save the situation. That's basically what they always do. At the moment, I don't see that happening in Thailand. I don't see the fissures. Although the military in Thailand are factionalized, they're rivals within the military, but they're not about to to support the project that the mass movement in Thailand is putting forward because that would actually put them all out of power. Well, we're going to watch this very closely, Giles. That was excellent. Giles Unpakorn, thank you for joining us at NewsClick and People's Dispatch. Thank you for inviting me.