The Rise and Dynamics of the 2020 Thai Anti-Establishment Youth Movement

• In Event: Are We Seeing a Generational Shift in Southeast Asian Politics?

Abstract

During the past few months, we have observed the revival of mass youth movements in Thailand after a long disappearance. They have used a white ribbon and 3-finger salute as their symbols. Unlike earlier mass movements in contemporary Thai politics, these political campaigns have touched upon and called for reforms of untouchable political institutions including the military dictatorship, bureaucratic polity and monarchy. Based on interviews with more than 300 participants in a series of protests in 7 provinces throughout the country between February and November 2020, this paper explains the conditions that gave the rise to the movement as well as analyzing radical changes and developments in it.

The paper starts with a brief comparison between the 2020 White Ribbon movement and earlier student movements, particularly of the 1970s. The 1970s generation was largely oriented around university students, with a leftist ideological base and relatively unified movement structure. Moving on to the conditions that gave rise to the White Ribbon movement, the paper argues that a clash between changing and unchanging conditions brought these young people to the streets with radical agendas. Driving dramatic changes have been contemporary youths’ more liberal socialization, the pressures of a disruptive world, and both political awareness and proliferating ways to exercise that through social media. Yet political and social foundations, including Thailand’s education system, conservative government and other institutions have remained unchanged, unsupportive of, and inclined to suppress this young generation in fighting with and surviving in the changing world. The major trigger that turned these frustrations into a mass movement was the dissolution of the Future Forward party, the party that represented the aspirations of these 2020 youths.

The last part of the paper analyses the dynamics of the White Ribbon movement in terms of both campaign issues and movement structure. Within only a few months, the movement shifted from a focus on a democratic constitution and parliamentary politics to reform of the monarchy. The structure of the movement and its protest strategies quickly developed from marginal, loose, weak and scattered, to being a more powerful mass movement than the Thai state has seen previously or knows how to tackle. Despite rounds of arrests, the movement has turned from being leaderless to having countless leaders. New faces have proliferated, as ordinary participants have organized freeform protests within protests. New online platforms for communication, too, allow the movement to attack the Thai state and its security units in the way that earlier political movements have never been able to do.

Author

• Kanokrat Lertchoosakul, Department of Government,