Key to understanding the present crisis is the fact that, in Thailand’s modern political history, there has been no decisive break or disjuncture involving mass mobilization. There was no nationalist movement against colonial rule, no war defeat discrediting the elite. The revolution against the absolute monarchy in 1932 enjoyed wide support but required no mass mobilization. The communist insurgency of the 1960s and 1970s was located deep in the forests and hills and never swelled into a mass uprising. Peasant movements and labour agitation have been localized