While the mass media are cautious in characterization of the Reds people as the low-class “hillbillies,” such representation frequently slips through in columns and on TV. The representation is widespread on Facebook. In Thailand, it is a cyber community dominated by people from certain generations and social backgrounds. Although we cannot generalize about these people carelessly, it is safe to say that the Thai Facebook community is heavily populated by Thai “yuppies” (whose historical background may be different from those of other countries) and “snobs” (who are similar to other snobs around the world). They openly talk about the Reds as dirty, ugly, vulgar, low, inferior people who belong to the “bannok” (rural). A typical Bangkok snob remarked in her Facebook that she is terrified and trembling every time she thinks about the Red people because of their behavior and looks: dark complexion, dirty, awful face, and coarse.
At one of the anti-Red gatherings, a placard read, “Phuak bannok ok pai,” (rural folks Get Out!). The spatial term “bannok” literally means the rural, the countryside. Since the early 20th century, probably earlier too, it has been a spatial characterization of backwardness, uneducated, naïve and uncivilized quality. Like the notions of “savage,” it also conveys the state of being innocent, uncontaminated, near natural, a contrast to the modern. So, going “back” to nature in the forest parks or the countryside is a good holiday for people from urban centers. In social order, the “bannok”, like the savage, is supposed to be different, distant and separated from the urban.
The PAD is notorious in calling Thaksin supporters stupid and uneducated, thus unsuitable for a democratic election (equal rights to vote), hence the need for the “new politics” that privileges the educated and people with moral superiority. The PAD is not the originator of these condescending views of the rural folks. They are part of the typical hierarchical ideology in Thai culture.
Ironically, such contemptuous characterization of the Reds is mirrored by the Reds’ themselves, although they turn the contempt upside down.
Phrai versus ammat: a class war of the bannok
The UDD discourse of their struggles as the “phrai” against the “ammat” reveals as much as belies the configuration of class and hierarchy in Thai context. Many Thais and foreign reporters translate the word “phrai” as serf, or bonded subject in the Thai feudal society. The pro-government scholars argue correctly that such a feudal social order no longer exists. But the “phrai” in the Reds discourse does not mean the historical bonded subjects. Phrai and its opposite, “ammat” (the noble, the lords) in the UDD discourse targets the oppression and injustice due to social class and hierarchy such as the one in Thai political culture. The struggle of the Reds is a class war in this sense of the revolt of the downtrodden rural folks against the privileged social and political class, the “ammat.”
The anti-Red intellectuals vehemently deny that it is a class conflict. They believe and repeatedly assert that the Reds are merely Thaksin lackeys and the deceived (fooled) rural folks. They and the Facebook snobs are never shy of reinforcing their view of the Reds as the lowly foolish “bannok”. Although the Reds are no longer exclusively the rural folk but also include a large sector of the urban poor and those educated middle class in Bangkok who advocate democratic rights, their mass base and strongholds remain upcountry. The disdain of those snobs described earlier confirms such image.