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Working Towards the Monarchy and

its Discontents: Anti-royal Graffiti in
Downtown Bangkok
a
Serhat naldi
a
Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Humboldt-Universitt zu

Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin 10099, Germany
Published online: 17 Oct 2013.
To cite this article: Serhat naldi (2014) Working Towards the Monarchy and its Discontents:
Anti-royal Graffiti in Downtown Bangkok, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 44:3, 377-403, DOI:
10.1080/00472336.2013.842260
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2013.842260
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Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2014

Vol. 44, No. 3, 377403, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2013.842260
Working Towards the Monarchy and its

Discontents: Anti-royal Graffiti in
Downtown Bangkok
Downloaded by [103.10.231.71] at 07:14 04 June 2014
SERHAT NALDI
Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin 10099,
Germany
ABSTRACT This article examines the desacralisation of royal charisma in contemporary Thailand.
Over the past few years an underground discourse has emerged among critics of royal ideology and
supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that directly confronts the power of the
monarchy. The images, metaphors and linguistic devices used in the process are difficult to study
because they rarely appear in public. This article focuses on an unprecedented demonstration of
rage against the monarchy on September 19, 2010, when red-shirted demonstrators painted antiroyal graffiti on a construction hoarding at Ratchaprasong intersection in downtown Bangkok. In
analysing the Thai political crisis as a battle of different charismatic groups, the article will present
the September 19 event as the first open strike against the sacred charisma of the Thai monarchy.
This charisma has hitherto been protected by royalists from all walks of life who were working
towards the monarchy. With their attacks on the monarchy the red-shirts were challenging a
legitimacy-conferring system which had benefited wide sections of the Bangkok populace in the
past. At the same time, a competing charismatic movement has emerged around Thaksin, who
himself has to take into account the charisma he conferred upon his followers.
KEY WORDS: Thailand, monarchy, king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thaksin Shinawatra, Max Weber,
charisma, red shirts, graffiti
The parliamentary monarch is retained in spite of his powerlessness, because, by his

very existence and by virtue of the fact that power is exercised in his name, he
guarantees the legitimacy of the existing social and property order through his
charisma; all those interested in this order must fear the subversion of the belief in
its legitimacy if the king is removed (Weber 1978, 1148).
The spread of anti-royal graffiti in downtown Bangkok on September 19, 2010 was a
watershed moment in recent Thai history that has remained almost unnoticed in analyses
of the countrys political crisis. On that day, thousands of protesters donning red shirts
gathered at Ratchaprasong intersection in central Bangkok. The rally took place in
commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the 2006 coup against then Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra. Moreover, the day marked the passage of four months since the
Correspondence Address: Serhat naldi, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Humboldt-Universitt zu

Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin 10099, Germany. Email: serhat.uenaldi@hu-berlin.de
2013 Journal of Contemporary Asia
378 S. naldi
crackdown on a long demonstration which was held in support of the exiled Thaksin and
for new elections with the aim of removing the rival Democrat Party from government.
During that crackdown on May 19, 2010, and in the turbulent weeks leading up to it,
more than 90 people were killed on the streets of Bangkok, many of them around the
Ratchaprasong intersection which had become the centre of the anti-government movement. Following the bloody dispersal, Thaksins supporters and the critics of the 2006
coup dressed in red turned the 19th of each month into a day of mourning and
remembrance.
The September rally remained leaderless because the heads of the red-shirt movement,
the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), were either under arrest or
in hiding. The only visible organiser was the liberal activist Sombat Boon-ngam-anong
who, over the previous months, had kept the red-shirt movement alive with a strategy
described by Kong Rithdee (2010) as guerrilla pop-culture and visual ploys in a time
of social paranoia in which people prefer the numb comfort of forgetting, to the
pungent truth of remembering.
Sombat did not expect that thousands of red shirts would follow his call to gather at
Ratchaprasong on that day (Interview, April 27, 2011). When the designated demonstration area could no longer absorb the growing number of people the intersection had to be
closed. Sombats non-confrontational approach led him to conduct his groups activities
earlier than scheduled. Together with the police he then called on the crowd to disperse to
avoid causing trouble for the surrounding businesses. The photo-journalist Nick Nostitz
remembered:
The red shirts booed Sombat away. Then the chanting started: ku ma eng, ku ma
eng [I came by myself] And so Sombat left with a few of his followers to the
nearby Pathum Wanaram temple. The rest of the crowd just stood there, chanting
[S]uddenly the chant ku ma eng changed to ai-hia sang kha. A tiny group
started it and then the whole intersection followed. Unbelievable (Interview,
March 20, 2012).
Ai-hia sang kha literally means the monitor lizard ordered the killing. Using the term
monitor lizard is one of the strongest insults in Thai. In the context of this particular
demonstration and the unfolding events the protesters were referring to the Thai king.
The culmination of what Nostitz described as a non-mediated and organic escalation came
when some of the protesters started to paint anti-royal graffiti on the 25 m long metal
enclosure around the ruins of Zen Department Store, a once popular shopping centre which
had been destroyed in a fire during the May crackdown. The cumulative message sent by the
amateur street artists was that the monarchy was responsible for the killing of red shirts and is
rotten to the core. This was a bold accusation in a country whose monarchy is protected by a
strong lse-majest law and is routinely prefixed with highly revered in the media.
Nostitz added that he and others were stunned:
The officials who were present did not know what to do What was fascinating
was that there were no protests against the graffiti from other red shirts. Some were
shocked, some just read the graffiti messages, some cheered when they read them,
and others started to write on the wall themselves. Many took pictures with their
Working Towards the Monarchy 379
mobile phones and uploaded them to the internet What happened did not emanate
from intellectually indoctrinated socialist red shirts but from ordinary people
(Interview, March 20, 2012).
Nostitz described the incident as an act of mental liberation and Sombat called it a
reflection of how those people think it released everything [that had been suppressed]. Only a few commentators risked reporting the incident, among them the
journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk (2010). He remarked that [t]he messages on the wall
were unprecedented A Pandora's box was opened when the coup ousted Thaksin
four years ago. The journalist Andrew Marshall (2012) noted that the authorities had the
graffiti removed by the next morning but [t]he fairytale world of the monarchists had
suffered a seismic shock all the same.
No comprehensive analysis of these anti-royal attacks has been completed. Discussion
of the graffiti is complicated by the fact that most observers are residing in Thailand under
fear of the lse-majest law which carries a maximum jail term of 15 years for insults or
threats against the monarchy (see Streckfuss 2011). In a blog entry the academic Nicholas
Farrelly (2010) expressed hope that the documentation of the graffiti would one day
surface to make possible the sociological and historical analysis of the material. This
paper offers one reading of the anti-royal drawings at Ratchaprasong based on photos and
a video of the event.
As noted by Weber above, monarchies are often preserved as a means of allocating
legitimacy to a new socio-economic order. This has been described for Thailand in the
seminal work of Christine Gray (1986; 1991). After a discussion of Webers theory of
charisma, and with reference to Gray, this article advances the concept of working
towards the monarchy, referring to a setting in which a charismatic community uses
and promotes royal charisma to further its own ends while depending on the acquiescence
of the monarch. The concept will be illustrated by an analysis of the function of royal
charisma in Bangkoks Ratchaprasong area, the site of the graffiti incident. The model
refines recent descriptions of Thai politics derived from the idea of a network monarchy
(McCargo 2005) by discussing the roles played by social actors who are not part of the
inner royal circle but who are nevertheless protecting the charisma of the monarchy to
advance their own individual or collective aims. The concept working towards the
monarchy thus draws attention to how the monarchy is anchored in, and manipulated
by, society at large and why some people find maintaining the monarchy useful.
The next part of the article relates to the second point raised in the introductory quote,
namely the fear among those who benefit from the monarchy of movements that question
the legitimacy of the charismatically-sanctioned socio-economic order. The red-shirt
graffiti will be presented in this context as creative expressions of a movement that
included many who had lost their belief in the legitimacy of an authoritarian regime
legitimised by royal charisma as successive royalist movements and governments had
tried to deprive them of their political voice. During the premiership of the business
tycoon Thaksin the first and only premier to be elected under the 1997 constitution
which provided for strong executive authority many Thais had benefited for the first
time from policies which included elements of social welfare, offering them ways to
improve their lives without reliance on royal generosity and local patronage (see Hewison
2007, 938). To those who voted for him, Thaksin appeared as a potent leader who
commanded the power to change their lives. His charisma was based largely on his
380 S. naldi
outstanding managerial and entrepreneurial skills. Indeed, the king had for decades
contributed to a popular perception of market activities as meritorious in transferring his
own royal charisma on business people. Therefore, Thaksin increasingly competed with
the sacred charisma of the monarchy. This eventually led to Thaksins ousting in the 2006
military coup that received royal blessing and threatened to marginalise his voters once
again. Therefore the red shirts took to the streets in support of their charismatic leader as
well as the policies he embodied and against the sanctioning of the old order through royal
charisma.
The final part of the article describes further how Thaksin has emerged as a rival
charismatic figure to the point where he has become associated with royal charisma. But
despite attempts at associating him with old sources of legitimacy, Thaksin can no longer
ignore another kind of charisma: the charisma embodied in the populace which has to
vote for his party (Shils 1982, 142). The rationalisation of the socio-political order
whereby power increasingly emanates from the people might thus develop in the shadow
of traditional beliefs in charismatic individuals.
Charisma: Weber in Thailand
In a lecture entitled Hyper-Royalism: Its Spells and its Magic at Chulalongkorn
University in March 2012, Thongchai Winichakul talked about the modern re-enchantment of the monarchy.1 He argued that the persistence of beliefs in amulets, spirit
mediums and royal cults proves that classical sociology which held that the modern
world would inevitably become more secular was wrong. While labelling European
monarchies rational, Thongchai suggested that Thailands hyper-royalism features
of which are the divinisation of royals, their pervasive visual and discursive presence in
the space and time of everyday life and strict limits on what can be said about the
monarchy reflects a kind of re-enchantment in reaction to the uncertainties of
modernity and of the countrys economic and political future. Hyper-royalism is mediated
mainly through visual culture that creates a royal visualscape which presents the king
not necessarily as he really is but as people perceive him to be, as a visual illusion. This
illusion falls on fertile ground in a country where beliefs in magic are widespread. And,
according to Thongchai, in Thailand magic will never go away.
While this claim that seems to suggest that the monarchy will remain forever is
debateable, this paper argues that, for now, spirituality and a widespread belief in magic
do have an influence on conceptions of the social and political order. In his analysis of the
social bases of autocratic rule, Reynolds (2012, 270) has also referred to charisma,
pointing out that the enduring popularity of single leaders in the country can be traced
back to earlier forms of a political economy of leadership in pre-modern Southeast Asia
based on Buddhism and the big man tradition (such as men of merit or phu mi bun).
Reynolds (2012, 272) warns that the continued influence of these types of leadership
should not be underestimated in the analysis of contemporary Thai politics.
Despite its trust in the triumph of rationality, classical sociology had a lot to say about
societies in which authority is influenced by supernatural beliefs. Particularly Webers
concept of charisma deserves renewed attention as an analytical tool for the study of
Thailand.
Weber (1966, 358), who introduced the concept of charisma as one of the legitimate
types of authority together with legal-rational and traditional types defined charisma as

a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from
ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. The charismatic group, the followers of a charismatic leader, recognises the latters exceptional powers as long as he or she distributes
benefits as proof of those powers. Thailands King Bhumibol and his followers are
examples of the persistence of charisma. These followers seek to maintain a monarchy
as they have benefited economically and socially either through personal or business
connections, through royal charities or through other forms of association.
Conversely, if the leader lacks success and starts failing his followers his charismatic
authority will vanish. It may be that in such an instance competing leaders assert
themselves by claiming charismatic sanction and by gathering followers around themselves (Weber 1966, 360361). Thaksin and the red shirts whose unequal share of
benefits in this kings reign made them receptive to new kinds of charismatic leadership
might fit this description.
In Webers own elaborations, charisma becomes a highly complex phenomenon.
Whereas pure or genuine charisma tends to be revolutionary as it comes into
existence only outside of everyday routines, charisma can become routinised and
embedded in institutions (such as charisma of an office or hereditary charisma).
Charisma is routinised because it is in the interest of the charismatic group to transform
the pure charisma of an individual into a lasting source of legitimacy and to extend it
beyond the leaders death. As Weber (1966, 372373) notes:
To a very large extent the transition to hereditary charisma or the charisma of office
serves as a means of legitimizing existing or recently acquired powers of control
over economic goods [A]llegiance to hereditary monarchy in particular is very
strongly influenced by the consideration that all inherited property and all that which
is legitimately acquired would be endangered if subjective recognition of the sanctity
of succession to the throne were eliminated. It is hence by no means fortuitous that
hereditary monarchy is more acceptable to the propertied classes than, for instance,
to the proletariat.
The fear that the routinisation of the monarchys sacred charisma might fail after an
unpopular royal succession and the desperate attempt to maintain that charisma even in
the face of mounting criticism of Thailands monarchy is arguably behind much of the ongoing effort to stifle debates about the monarchy. Ukrist (2008, 138139) argued that a
major motivation for the 2006 coup was the militarys hope that it might manage
succession.
As mentioned above, charismatic leadership flourishes in an environment of widespread beliefs in supernatural powers (Bendix 1986, 17). The indigenous concept of
charisma in Thailand is associated commonly with the term barami power based on
karmic merit even though other ideas of power like saksit (magico-divine power) and
amnat (amoral power) could also be considered variants of charisma in the sense that their
possession sets their holders apart from ordinary people (see Jackson 2010, 33). It was in
part the effectiveness of political legitimacy based on such claims to spiritual achievements, divine authority and extraordinary worldly strength which has led Thai elites to
draw on and manipulate the sacred charisma of the monarchy after the fall of Field
Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhrams regime in 1957. Even under the leadership of Phibun,
382 S. naldi
who had been instrumental in the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932, the magic
appeal of the monarchy was not lost, as evidenced by reportedly enthusiastic popular
reactions to royal visits at that time (see Handley 2006; Grossman 2011, 86). When
Michael Connors (2011, 659) wonders about the cultural residues for the successful
elevation of Bhumibol, the answer could well be a widespread belief in charisma and
its supernatural sources. Elsewhere, in more secular societies, monarchs gained charismatic appeal from association with a rational-legal democratic order (naldi 2012).
Yet even though Thai culture has in the past created fertile ground for charismatic
leadership it is important to note that the popular will to believe in a cosmic order is
actively manipulated (Bendix 1986, 24). It is manipulated by the kings followers, his
charismatic group, through orchestrated rituals, the mass media, education, and spatial
arrangements.2 Royalists help enhance and maintain the sacred charisma of the monarchy
and are, in return, rewarded with social distinction and material benefits leading to the
concept of working towards the monarchy.
Working towards the monarchy refers to actions by individuals or groups who aim at
expanding and/or protecting the sacred charisma of the monarchy. In turn, the monarchys
sacred charisma serves as the most potent source of symbolic capital in Thailand. It
legitimises the accumulation of other forms of capital, most notably economic capital, for
the benefit of the person or group performing the actions. These actions purport to express
or anticipate, but ultimately need not be, in the interest of individual members of the royal
family and are effective as long as the monarchys sacred charisma can be efficiently
reproduced independently of the incumbent monarch and as long as royal acquiescence
remains intact. Because the sacred charisma of the monarchy is not only symbolically but
also geographically central to society, working towards the monarchy has a spatial
dimension whereby the sacred charisma radiates outwards from royal centres and is most
potent in the physical proximity of those centres. Working towards the monarchy may be
motivated by ideology and/or the promise of legitimacy, material gain and social distinction. Public actions undertaken without reference to the monarchy lack legitimacy, and
will be obstructed by actions towards the monarchy if they stand in opposition to the
interests of individuals or groups who are working towards the monarchy. Individuals who
are considered to be working against the monarchy will be persecuted and their actions
will trigger negative social and legal sanction.3
The terminology follows Ian Kershaws famous concept of working towards the
Fhrer which he developed to describe the Hitler regime. The intention is not to draw
analogies between the Nazi regime and Thailands constitutional monarchy. In contrast to
Kershaw who emphasises the wishes of the leader that were anticipated by his followers,
working towards the monarchy stresses the motives of the charismatic group to use the
leaders charisma for their own interests, occasionally even independent from, or in
opposition to, the actual wishes of the king or other members of the royal family. The
definition advanced here thus refers to the indirect sense in which Kershaws concept
can be interpreted: Individuals seeking material gain the small businessman aiming to
destroy a competitor through a slur on his aryan credentials, or ordinary citizens settling
scores with neighbours by denouncing them to the Gestapo, were all, in a way, working
towards the Fhrer (Kershaw 1993, 117). According to Kershaw (1993, 113), [t]he
function of Hitlers charismatic Fhrer position could be said to have been threefold: that
of unifier, of activator, and of enabler Given the degree to which the monarchy is now
running on auto-pilot as the king is old and in frail health, Bhumibol has become less an

activator than an enabler whose charismatic authority continues to sanction actions undertaken in his name.
Working towards the monarchy may help in explaining how and why the monarchy
has become so entrenched in the lives of many. The strength of the monarchy is not
merely the result of manipulation from above but of a symbiotic relationship which, for a
long time, has served the interests of many who all seek economic capital and social
distinction. In contrast to McCargos network monarchy, which helps to explain concrete political actions of elite groups in support of the monarchy, working towards the
monarchy brings broader structures into focus. It moves beyond clear-cut networks and
the immediate royal circle as units of analysis to recognise the dominance of the
monarchy in Thailands cultural and political life as a widespread, cross-class phenomenon serving the social, political and economic aims of people living in the monarchys
physical proximity from entrepreneurs to slum dwellers. Where the network monarchy works from an active centre which manipulates politics in the interest of royalists,
working towards the monarchy reverses the perspective by putting the focus on the
monarchys followers, its charismatic group, who are legitimising their actions with
reference to that centre which, in turn, depends on the active and continued reaffirmation
of its charisma by the charismatic group.
In her study of the annual royal kathin ceremonies in which robes and presents are
offered to monks after their Lenten retreat at the end of the rainy season, Gray analysed
how this symbiotic relationship plays out in rituals. Studying royal kathin in the 1970s,
Gray (1991, 47) argued that [m]erit ceremonies are the primary context in which
economic power is converted into religious prestige [barami], and religious prestige
entails symbolic and linguistic capital, suggesting that the accumulation of this capital
is prerequisite to the accumulation of monetary capital (Gray 1991, 23). According
to Gray, kathin ceremonies presided over by the king and other royals were not only
means of projecting the monarchys barami, but normalized the role of Sino-Thai business
families who began to conduct kathin ceremonies in lieu of the king at royal temples in
the provinces, especially in the poor Northeast. By performing kathin in the name of the
king, they entered Isan [Northeast] markets as moral conquerors rather than greedy
merchants (Gray 1986, 434). Gray (1986, 431) asserted that: [F]irst the military and
then members of the capitalist elite borrowed or latched on to (phueng) the royal virtue
(phra racha barami) to achieve their personal objectives.4 This arrangement had lasting
consequences. The monarchy helped create a celestial economy in which the capitalist
class itself came to be seen as virtuous, as possessing barami, paving the way for
challenges from business-tycoons like Thaksin. Gray (1986, 721723) predicted such a
development:
The monarchy began its decline even as it reached its apotheosis The government
and the large corporate enterprises that had initially relied on the use of the royal
virtue for legitimacy in their upcountry ventures were becoming independent of the
monarch to the point that they themselves were exercising royal interpretive
prerogatives Success in the marketplace was a sign of virtue of ordinary businessmen as long as they made generous contributions New questions arose. If great
banks, like great kings, made constant, splendid contributions to the Sangha, did they
really need a king to legitimate their activities?
384 S. naldi
Twenty years after Gray completed her thesis, Thaksin who had become a rival
charismatic leader by virtue of his immense business and electoral success and by
showing generosity to his followers in the shape of basic welfare policies was ousted
in a royally sanctioned military coup; but this was just the first stage in an on-going
competition for barami. This competition is carried out in physical spaces and can be
studied in Bangkoks Ratchaprasong area. The next section of this article will focus on the
construction (kan-sang) and protection (pok-pong) of royal charisma before moving on to
a discussion of the attacks on royal charisma.
Siam-Ratchaprasong: Working Towards the Monarchy

Whereas Gray examined kathin ceremonies in demonstrating how the monarchy has been
used to advance political and economic aims, Katherine Bowie (1997, 86) noted in her
work on rituals of right-wing Village Scouts, who were involved in a massacre of
university students in 1976, that the monarchys association with the Village Scout
movement facilitated its drawing upon the vast lore of powers that circulate in Thai
society. What follows is an analysis not of ritual but of spatial arrangements and their
contribution to the maintenance and use of royal charisma. This approach follows Edward
Sojas (1989, 39, 41) pronouncement of a spatial turn and the reassertion of space in
critical social theory. Because the human condition is influenced not only by the
dimension of time, or history, the spatial turn shifts the focus to the dimension of space
and opens up a critical spatial perspective on the arrangements that make up societies (see
Warf and Arias 2009). Thongchais royal visualscape seems to acknowledge the central
role played by spatial representations of the monarchy.
The space examined here is a major part of downtown Bangkok and borders the
Khlong Saen Saeb canal in the north, Ratchadamri Road in the east, Rama I Road in
the south and Phaya Thai Road in the west. Based on land ownership the area can be
divided into two. The western part is privately owned by Princess Sirindhorn who, as the
landlord, earns the income generated from property rents directly. The eastern section is
owned by the Crown Property Bureau (CPB) which manages the assets of the monarchy
as an institution but whose generated income is paid at the Kings pleasure. In a
personal interview (July 7, 2011) CPB director-general Chirayu Isarangkun Na
Ayuthaya explained that the difference between private and institutional assets was that
his private property he can sell and buy. But for the Crown Property His Majesty
cannot sell and use the money, he cannot do it. He can only use the income. The CPB
itself is, however, actively involved in the acquisition and selling of assets.
The land owned by the princess comprises her palace Wang Sra Pathum (completed in
1916) and the sites of the surrounding commercial buildings: the Siam Kempinski Hotel
(2010), the Siam Paragon shopping mall (2006), the Siam Center shopping mall (1973),
the Siam Car Park (1994), the Siam Tower offices (1998) and the Siam Discovery
shopping mall (1997).
The CPB-owned land encompasses: the Isetan department store (1992), the Centara
Grand Hotel (2008), the CentralWorld shopping mall (1989/2006), Zen department store
(1989), the Offices at CentralWorld (2005), Chumchon Lang Wat Pathumwanaram (a
slum community), Suan Pathumwananurak (an unfinished park) and the Wat Pathum
Wanaram school (2007). The land of the Pathum Wanaram temple (1857) is its own
property (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Map of the Siam-Ratchaprasong area. Source: Author.
Both areas are connected by a skywalk over Rama I Road which runs from Siam
Station the only interchange between the two lines of Bangkoks elevated rail network
in front of Siam Paragon to Chidlom Station near the Ratchaprasong intersection.
However, in the Siam-Ratchaprasong area the commercial interests of the monarchy are
served not only by income from its properties, for Princess Sirindhorn and King Bhumibol
are also major shareholders of the retail company Siam Piwat which operates the Siam
shopping malls on Princess Sirindhorns land. The king holds 180,000 shares in Siam
Piwat and the princess holds 4.32 million shares, most of them acquired from the Ministry
of Finance and BankThai (now CIMB Thai Bank) in 2003 and 2005, respectively. This
makes the royal family the second biggest shareholder of Siam Piwat. The family thus
earns twice: from leasing out land to Siam Piwat and from their shares in the company.
The princess could earn an estimated 1.68 billion baht (US$52.5 million) in annual rents
from the mall and hotel operators in the Siam area, calculated on the basis of recent
estimates of land prices in downtown Bangkok of 600 million baht per rai (1,600 m2), a
total plot size of approximately 70 rai and a policy followed by the CPB next door
(Grossman 2011, 297) of raising annual rents of 4% of a propertys market value.
Moreover, in 2010, Sirindhorns share of Siam Piwat's net income amounted to 145
million baht (US$4.7 million) or almost a quarter of the companys total net income
attributable to shareholders for that year.5 Siam Piwat itself subleases part of the land to
the Siam Kempinski Hotel. The Siam Kempinski is owned by Kempin Siam, a joint
venture between the Bahrain-based Al Manar capital group (49%), the Thai property
developer Natural Park (35%) and Royal Wealth (16%) which, again, is co-owned by Al
Manar and CPB Equity, a holding company which looks after the share dealings of the
CPB. Interestingly, by setting up the aptly named company Royal Wealth together with Al
Manar, the CPB helped the foreign capital group to increase its shareholding in Kempin
Siam beyond 49% to become a majority shareholder in a Thai company. Moreover, the
CPB not only co-owns Siam Kempinski, it also owns 86% of the shares of Kempinski
386 S. naldi
Hotels S.A., a world-wide operating luxury hotel chain which manages the Siam
Kempinski. In the mid-1990s the Dusit Thani Hotel Group and Siam Commercial Bank
(SCB, of which the CPB holds a dominating 23.69%) invested in the ailing Kempinski
group. After the 1997 financial crisis the CPB bought the shares from Dusit Thani and the
SCB to face-lift the banks portfolio.
These facts are discussed rarely in public although anecdotal evidence suggests that
knowledge of royal commercial interests exists. The rapid spread of this knowledge is the
Achilles heel of the monarchy which is vulnerable to profanation once its worldly
economic activities become public. As Weber (1966, 363) noted, such activities are the
natural enemies of charisma because, [i]n the pure type, it disdains and repudiates
economic exploitation of the gifts of grace as a source of income. He adds that property
income is not usually acceptable for the normal charismatic revolutionary. Even
though King Bhumibol is hardly a revolutionary, it is true that, in a Buddhist context,
extreme wealth is tolerable only under certain circumstances. In Theravada Buddhism
wealth is considered legitimate only if it is distributed in support of virtuous activities but
not if the holder of wealth is perceived as overly attached to it (Gray 1986, 52). Wealth
needs to become merit (bun) to be regarded as proof of a persons barami. The monarchy
ought to be the most generous example of generosity by putting its wealth to good use.
Therefore, when asked about the economic activities of Princess Sirindhorn in the Siam
area, her Personal Affairs Division (personal correspondence, March 12, 2012) points out
the benefits of the commercial activities: [T]he employment increases around this area.
Furthermore, the income from the land rental would go to charitable organizations.
Of course it is hard to prove whether the income of the princess is indeed donated to
charities. Suspicion about such statements has increased at a time when the flows of facts
and rumours are hard to control. The wealth of the monarchy has come under such
scrutiny only recently (Porphant 2008) as part of a broader trend toward critical examination and humanising accounts of Bhumibol and the royal family (Connors 2011), all
challenging the previously held Standard Total View of the Thai Monarchy (Hewison
1997, 5962). This has seen further details published in a quasi-official royal publication
seeking to appease the public and international observers (Grossman 2011, 283301). But
this strategy might prove self-defeating. In the mid-1980s Gray (1986, 732) commented:
If the details of the kings many business holdings ever became public, which they surely
will, his veracity will be compromised.
Knowledge of the enormous royal possessions and of the financial sources of royal
projects often state funds and donations from private individuals and firms who are
rewarded with a share of royal barami in a magic circle of merit (Handley 2006, 130
131, 164167, 290) lends urgency to another question. Given the kings wealth, why
does the generosity of the new commercial elite towards the Buddhist Sangha and, in
Thaksins case, to the public at large often surpass the monarchys monetary offerings?
Does the king cling to his wealth? And given this imbalance in generosity, who are now
the most meritorious beings in Thailand: the merchant elite or the royal family? Among
his followers, the former Sino-Thai entrepreneur Thaksin may have acquired more barami
than the king himself because he accumulated merit by circulating wealth through
generous welfare policies. It may well be that Bhumibols stance against the introduction
of a welfare state makes him appear less meritorious in their eyes (Hewison 1997, 67).
Ironically, it was the king who endorsed the fusion of religious terminology with
capitalist ideology. For instance, the secular term phattana (development) replaced the

religious term burana to refer to the restoration of Buddhist temples to effect a transfer of
meaning from religious to economic domains (Gray 1986, 578, 610). Similarly, as Panas
Simasathien, chair of Siam Piwat explains, the roots of the company name Siam Piwat,
chosen by Princess Sirindhorn, are wiwat and phiphat (prosperity) and phattana (progress,
development) (Interview, July 18, 2011). The royal family lends legitimacy to material
progress but material progress only in urban areas through the free market, not through
nationwide political interventions and welfare programmes. Meanwhile, rural Thais have
to content themselves with royal charity projects as examples of the monarchys philosophy of so-called sufficiency economy.
Even though the graffiti discussed below indicate that the appeal of royal charisma has
weakened as a result of these imbalances, it has not vanished. It has weakened particularly
among sections of society most removed from the royal centre. The times when members
of the royal family visited people in the provinces regularly are increasingly a thing of the
past and their presence is no longer felt as royal activities have become self-centred in
every sense of the word. Shils (1982, 138) argued that those who live furthest away from
the charisma-generating centre in a given society are most likely to rebel against those
who are closer to that centre and reap the benefits of their proximity. Even though Shils
did not picture such a centre as a geographical unit it seems that physical proximity to the
sources of royal charisma has an influence on its effectiveness.
In the Siam-Ratchaprasong area references to the privileged location of the malls and
hotels are frequent. They are set apart from hundreds of competitors in and around
Bangkok. Royal exhibitions, such as the annual Royal Orchid Festival, in the luxurious
Siam Paragon shopping mall presided over by members of the royal family demonstrate how businesses are latching on to royal charisma. Guests at the Siam Kempinski
Hotel are constantly reminded of their privilege to reside on royal land: on the information
channel on the in-room TV; throughout the building where the colour purple (the colour
associated with Sirindhorn) accentuates the interior design; and in the hotel lobby where a
glass cabinet presented to the princess on the opening day of the hotel exhibits
memorabilia of the neighbouring Sra Pathum Palace (naldi 2013b).
The princess herself has an interest in the success of her enterprises and hence presides
over the opening of new stores in her shopping malls. In September 2010 she graced the
opening of the first branch of the US donut chain Krispy Kreme on the ground floor of
Siam Paragon with her presence, kick-starting a donut-craze in Bangkok.6 Economic
gains even bridge ideological gaps the Krispy Kreme franchisee was the daughter of
multi-millionaire Prayudh Mahagitsiri, who appeared on a blacklist of alleged red shirt
financiers (Washington Post, May 28, 2010). Royals often frequent the Siam malls
whose appeal, through physical proximity to a royal palace, can hardly be replicated
elsewhere in the city. Therefore, business success in the Siam area partly depends on the
continued power of the monarchys sacred charisma. But while the monarchy lends its
barami to the shopping malls it also symbiotically profits from them and not just in
terms of income generated from rents and shareholdings. Subtle references to the royal
ties of the malls link the monarchy with the material progress of the Bangkok populace,
yet carefully avoiding revealing the royal familys direct financial interest in these
commercial operations. As a place of conspicuous consumption, of Louis Vuitton and
Ferrari, and as a royal mall, Siam Paragon is a double source of social distinction.
Yet royal charisma is appropriated not only by the upper echelons of society, such as
retail entrepreneurs and consumers. Conversations with residents in the slum community
388 S. naldi
next to the Siam Kempinski Hotel reveal that the neighbourhood is split. Those who live
in the western part of the community around the rudiments of the planned Pathum
Wananurak Park make positive reference to the monarchy in spite of attempts by the
CPB to evict them for the expansion of the park in honour of the royal family. Most of
these slum dwellers have lived here for generations. Pictures of King Bhumibol decorate
the wall in the community assembly house. Interviewees point to three five-storey
buildings they believe were built on the kings orders after a fire had destroyed parts of
the community in the 1970s. They talk about the nearby Pathum Wanaram School under
Sirindhorns patronage and add that scholarships are handed out to selected children by
the CPB.7 Annually, for the kings birthday, the residents in this part of the slum plan
activities, linking their own local history to a national celebration of the most respected
institution in the country (Johnson 2006, 122).
Some interviewees in the community talk with scepticism bordering on disdain about
their eastern neighbours in an area of the community called rua khiaw (green fence).
Between a fence and a cement storage run by CPAC, a subsidiary of Siam Cement the
largest Thai industrial conglomerate, majority owned by the CPB live migrants from the
provinces. They do not share a direct history with the area, with its royal patrons or the
CPB which owns it. Informants say that rua khiaw is full of red shirts many of whom
reportedly joined the protests in 2010. If they attend royal celebrations, they seem to do so
not out of genuine love for the monarchy but because you have to demonstrate your
loyalty (Johnson 2006, 122). Asked about their knowledge of the plans to turn the slum
community into a public park dedicated to the royal family, the people here seem to know
every detail even though the CPB outsourced the eviction of the slum dwellers to CPAC
under the pretence of industrial development (and to save money since the slum dwellers
would expect higher compensation from the CPB). Whereas, in the rua khiaw area,
election-related stickers in support of Thaksins Phuea Thai Party and against the old
establishment dot the walls (see Figure 2), a community board member in the older part of
the community says: We cannot put up stickers here. We have been living here since the
time of King Rama IV and we are the centre of the community so we have to be neutral
(Interview, July 27, 2012).
It is the long-term physical proximity to the royal centre which serves as a source of
identity and as a means of social distinction and material benefits. Just like the operators
and clients of the luxurious shopping malls and hotels are setting themselves apart from
their peers elsewhere in the city and the country, so are the established slum dwellers
distinguishing themselves from their neighbours, the recent arrivals in the rua khiaw area
(see also Johnson 2006, 118122, 280281). The latter have lived much of their lives
removed from the centre not even in negotiations of their resettlement to the fringes of
the city do they come into contact with the CPB. No wonder they are more responsive to
charismatic shifts as demonstrated by their support for Thaksins Phuea Thai Party and
their affiliation with the red-shirt movement.
If the entrepreneurs and investors in the Siam-Ratchaprasong area consider the sacred
charisma of the monarchy a source of distinction, and if this charisma is a factor that
attracts wealthy customers who themselves latch on to royal charisma which translates
back into monetary benefits for the entrepreneurs then they should have an interest in
maintaining that charisma. Therefore, they are working towards the monarchy. Three
examples illustrate the spatial strategies of the retailers and the CPB.
Figure 2. Red-shirt graffiti. A sticker in the rua khiaw area asks Who is it? [who just] talks a
good game. The sticker is attached conspicuously closely to an older label which refers to the king,
We the King (rao rak phra-chao yu hua). The heart is noticeably bleached. Source: Author.
First, Siam Piwat and Central Pattana, the owner of the CentralWorld shopping mall,
each donated 100 million baht in 2009 to the foundation that was set up by the CPB to
finance the Pathum Wananurak Park in honour of the royal family. The park will be
advertised by the CPB as exemplary of the royal sufficiency economy because now that
we are fairly secure financially we can afford not to commercially develop this area but to
make more parks, as CPB director-general Chirayu explained (Interview, July 7, 2011).
The donation of money for the development of the park by Siam Piwat and Central
Pattana contributes to the protection of royal charisma from suspicion. It enables the CPB
to develop a piece of land for public use which will serve as a fig-leaf to hide the
commercial interests of the monarchy in the Siam-Ratchaprasong area as it will be
portrayed as an act of royal selflessness and of merit-making. It is unclear where the
slum dwellers fit in who resist their relocation to make way for the park.
Second, until the 1980s the land beneath CentralWorld was home to Wang Phetchabun,
the palace of Prince Chudadhuj Dharadilok. According to the 1924 Palace Law of
Succession, Prince Chudadhujs family line ranked higher than the line of Prince
Mahidol, father of King Bhumibol. After the abdication of King Prajadhipok in 1935
the succession was decided in favour of Bhumibols brother Ananda rather than Prince
Varanand, the son of Prince Chudadhuj. Both Varanand and Ananda were born from
commoner consorts, the only difference was that the mother of Ananda and Bhumibol had
been officially accepted into the royal family. After Prince Chudadhujs wife had passed
away in 1980 the CPB had Wang Phetchabun dismantled and replaced by a shopping
mall. Apart from commercial gains, the destruction of Wang Phetchabun was a convenient
way of eliminating an uneasy physical-spatial reminder of a rival dynastic claim (naldi
390 S. naldi
2013a; forthcoming). As Gray (1991, 59) notes, the barami of kings is ultimately
perceived as inhering in their pure blood.
Third, Siam Paragon was planned originally by its European architects with a row of
large windows to visually break up the faade towards the lush gardens of Sra Pathum
Palace. However the faade was eventually closed. The only view of the palace that is
permitted is through the windows of the Platinum Exclusive Lounge, accessible only to
the holders of the expensive Platinum credit card. According to Siam Piwat chair Panas,
the changes were made because it is our duty to ensure the palace that there are certain
degrees of privacy (Interview, July 18, 2011). Ironically, Sirindhorn later complained to
the architects that she liked their original plans better and that she disliked the sight of a
concrete wall during her tours through the gardens of her palace (Interviews with various
architects, October 28, 2011 and July 15, 2012).8 Apart from privacy and security reasons,
the architectural changes arguably served three ends: (i) a general trend towards isolated,
inward-looking spaces and a retreat from the street (Davis 2006, ch. 4; Harms 2009);9 (ii)
the physical disassociation of the princess from her profane commercial activities; and (iii)
the protection of the sacred charisma of the monarchy even against the will of individual
members of the royal family (the uncontrolled public gaze at the princess during her
workout would have tainted the detached image on which royal charisma and hence
the entrepreneurs depend).10 As Bentley (1999, 3) put it: despite its silence, a wall says
no; and it says it louder than any no you will ever be able to hear. The spatial structure
of the room, and of its relationship to the rest of the built world, has a political
dimension.
The result is that ordinary people are denied a view of the palace and are instead fed
with carefully staged royal appearances and exhibitions inside Siam Paragon because they
are deemed unworthy and incapable of seeing the true essence of things. Meanwhile, the
privileged few have their offices inside Siam Tower (among them the executives of Siam
Piwat), overlooking Sra Pathum Palace with beautiful views of the park behind the palace
walls and of the jogging princess. Gray (1986, 2426) argued that seeing the king is the
most efficient means to partake in his barami. She acknowledged, in contrast to Shils, the
close link between charisma and space or geographical centres in her description of
Thailands moral geography: [B]arami has distinct spatial characteristics it radiates
or spreads (phrae) outward from the center to the periphery of the kingdom, from the top
to the bottom of the social order (Gray 1986, 432). The same holds true for SiamRatchaprasong where charisma radiates outward from Sra Pathum Palace where it rubs off
on the companies inside Siam Tower, on the shopping malls and on lower spaces such as
the slum area whose identity and internal status differentiation is tied up with a charismatic monarchy. Those furthest away from Bangkoks royal centres those who have
never been physically close to the king and, since the end of royal country tours, never
came into direct contact with his barami are more prone to look for new orders and
charismatic leaders. It was this group of people that occupied Siam-Ratchaprasong in
April and May 2010 in outright rejection of a system based on practices of working
towards the monarchy.
Siam-Ratchaprasong: Working Against the Monarchy
Once doubt is cast on the qualifications of a charismatic leader the carefully calibrated
charismatic system can crumble, as Gray (1986, 746) noted with reference to Thailand:

According to the most ancient of Hindu and Buddhist notions of rank, blamelessness is
the sign of moral perfection (of Buddhahood); in mythic traditions criticism presages the
deitys plunge from the heavens. On September 19, 2010, the silence over the unequal
dispersion of charismatic benefits in Thailand was broken. Those who had suffered from
their distance from the royal centre came to occupy that centre and used street art to
release their anger about their marginalisation in the absence of the red-shirt leadership
which had previously managed to keep a lid on anti-royal sentiments. In his consideration
of Weberian thought for thinking about the monarchy, specifically using Webers concept
of status honour, Hewison (2013) seems to confirm the reading followed here of the
red-shirt protests as a challenge to, and a rejection of, an unequal political and socioeconomic structure legitimised by its association with the monarchy: Thailand is now at a
critical political juncture, where the forces that congregate around old ideas associated
with status honour hierarchy, social closure and inequality, Thai-style democracy and
privilege are arrayed against forces that champion equality, access, voting and populism.11 Andrew Walker (2012b, 328) has termed this latter group middle-income
peasants, arguing that Thaksin owed his unparalleled success to policies that met the
aspirations for economic, cultural and political inclusion of Thailands rural population.
On September 19, 2010, red shirts openly vented their frustration over their renewed
exclusion and disenfranchisement during the years following the royally sanctioned 2006
coup. Their display of anger went far beyond what Connors (2011, 662) identified as
[m]ainstream red-shirt attacks [that] have mostly concentrated on individuals within the
so-called network monarchy, or more discretely, the Queen and have included occasional renditions of the royal anthem at red-shirt demonstrations. Like most political
graffiti, the writings on the wall at Ratchaprasong offered a snapshot or historical
summary of the social and political struggles of the moment (Chaffee 1993, 25). In his
study of political protest and street art, Chaffee argued that graffiti deserve special
attention in authoritarian states where freedom of expression is suppressed because they
give shape to political sentiments which are hardly ever voiced openly. Therefore, the redshirt messages should be of interest to both royalists and social liberals, because the
graffiti articulate subculture sentiments that should not be discounted, for tomorrow their
ideas could be influential (Chaffee 1993, 25).
Writing graffiti on a wall which had been plastered with feel-good messages of unity,
harmony and peace after the bloody crackdown of May 19, 2010 was a means of
countering the Bangkok elites escapist attempt of return to normal. The symbols of
delusion were overwritten. As with all advertising, the feel-good messages had been
printed on the fence to be decoded passively by consumers. Instead, the red shirts
territorialized decoded urban space and recoded it by starting a riot of signs
(Baudrillard 2005, 31). What follows is an analysis of those powerful signs.
The Red-shirt Riot of Signs
For the purpose of this study a sample of 63 graffiti items were assembled, 51 of which
appeared on September 19, 2010 on the construction fence at Ratchaprasong intersection,
four at Bangkoks Democracy Monument during a protest on October 10, 2010, and three,
and five, respectively, during gatherings on November 19 and December 19, 2010. Most
of the graffiti were transcribed from pictures taken by an observer who made his photos
available to this author. Twenty-six items were transcribed by the author from a video
392 S. naldi
circulated on the internet.12 Entitled Red Graffiti and created under the pseudonym H.
L., the clip has a runtime of four minutes and shows the September 19, 2010 graffiti and
their authors (faces blurred) to the tunes of Vivaldis Autumn from Four Seasons,
probably alluding to the twilight days of Bhumibols reign. In the following, the graffiti
will be grouped into categories for ease of presentation.
Recoding
When the graffiti revolt started, several red shirts began turning feel-good messages on
the construction hoarding around Zen Department Store into feel-bad messages. A
warning sign with the crossed-out English word ANGER was changed into a warning
sign with a strike of a pen, now announcing DANGER. The occasional use of English
indicates that the protesters wanted their message to be spread beyond Thailand.
Elsewhere on the fence two yellow triangle-shaped signs one displaying a heart the
other one a stick figure of a running person were altered by a demonstrator who painted
a gun next to the heart shooting bullets at the person below. The sentence: IT CAME
FROM THE SKY was added to the gun (Figure 3). Sky (fa) is a common synonym for
the king, an association amplified by the yellow colour of the signs, the birth colour of
Bhumibol.13
Sky
The use of the word fa was not limited to this one graffiti but occurred frequently: fa ta
diaw (one-eyed sky); fa bo kan (the sky is no barrier, apparently drawing on the title of a
book by the critical writer Khamsing Srinawk); mueng mai chai fa mang khue ma thi nasomphet (you are not the sky, [but] more likely a pathetic dog); hia sang kha fa mai mi ta
phro fa ta bot (the monitor lizard ordered the killings the sky has no eyes because the
sky is blind). Like hia, ma (dog) is one of the strongest insults in the Thai language.
Mueng is a rough second-person pronoun which carries much weight when referring to
the king, especially in a country where past revolutionaries respectfully addressed the
Figure 3. Stills from the clip Red Graffiti. Source: Anonymous.

dust of the dust under the soles of the royal feet in their communication with the monarch
(Sombat 1992). Instead, the red shirts noted khon thai yu tai khi-fun tai tin khong mueng
ma nan laew (Thais have lived under the dust under your feet for a long time now). Did
they mean for too long? The references to the blindness of the king alluded to his loss of
sight in his right eye after a car accident in 1948.
Vision
Again, blindness was a recurring theme. 14 red graffiti referred to eyes, vision and the (in)
ability to see. The strongest of this type of insults was the use of the spoonerism sot bat,
literally ATM card, to refer to the king. By switching the vowels one gets sat bot (blind
animal). Known as kham phuan, this play on words is a popular device to obscure
meanings. Examples of this spoonerism included THE GREAT PRETENDER, ai sot
bat (damn blind animal; ai is a derogatory prefix when used in standard Thai) and ku ru
wa su yu kap mueng sot bat khatarakon non yu thi chan 16 (I know the fight is with
you, blind animal; the murderer sleeps on floor 16). The king was hospitalised on the 16th
floor of Bangkoks Siriraj Hospital. Other graffiti referring to vision were: tahan bot
(blind soldier); ai bot phu yim mai pen (ngoi) (damn blind person who cannot smile
[cripple]); ku ta-sawang laew laew mueng la? hai bot rue yang (my eyes are now open,
and yours? Has your blindness been cured yet?). Several caricatures of the king wearing
an eye patch were drawn (someone added kha khue jon (I am a thief) to one of them).
The reference to the kings eyesight have to be understood in a particular context. As
Gray (1991, 62 n. 10) notes: The eye is caksu the leading organ of perception. Due
to his barami, the king and his representatives are believed to be able to see through the
illusory faades of people and worldly events. In contrast, those on the social and
geographical fringes of the country are deemed incapable of seeing past the outer, visible
face of events into their underlying causes (Gray 1991, 48). By inverting this traditional
belief system referring to the kings lack of vision and pronouncing that their eyes have
been opened the red shirts denounced the kings barami and ascribed penetrating insight
to themselves: muea kon ku khoei rak mueng tae ton ni ku kliat mueng lae jong chiphai wan ni khon thai thang prathet ta sawang laew (before I used to love you but now
I hate you go to ruin! Today Thais everywhere in the country have their eyes open); A
poem on seeing and goodness was written on a poster in Thai and is translated below:
Are your eyes already open or not? Even though you are blind, you can see things
clearly. Goodness must come from the mind. Its not enough to speak well, but
goodness has to be performed. If you only teach others of goodness be careful
because people will know the words. They are just nice words but actions return
son of a bitch, beast.
Many graffiti expressed doubts over Bhumibols goodness and his model for developing
the country.
Economy
Development seemed to be a particular concern for the protesters as several comments
referred to the lack of progress in Thailand. First, one writer stated: tha di jing prathet
charoen kwa ni (if [name omitted in the original] is really good, the country would be more
394 S. naldi
prosperous). The second was longer, translated as: the country does not progress because
there are no good people. Bad people were taken to rule the land because heaven has no eyes,
because the eyes are blind. [They] see damn animals [ai sat] as good people. I ask for real, you
damn blind man [ai bot], when will you die? Some red shirts were aware that their protest site
was owned by the monarchy and suspected this to be the reason for their violent expulsion
from the area in May: thi khong khot pho-mae mueng rue thueng ma kho khuen phuen-thi
(Does the area belong to your ancestors so that you demand it back?). By painting some
graffiti on the asphalt of the street the red shirts marked Ratchaprasong as their territory: ku
khoey non yu thi ni [I once slept here]. Other street artists took issue with the kings sufficiency
economy: kha daeng yang pho-phiang (killed enough/sufficient red [shirts]); pho-phiang tae
ku yang mai pho kin (sufficiency but I didnt have enough to eat). To this commentator, the
idea of sufficiency seemed to sound cynical given his or her own struggle for survival. Next to
the official sign for the sufficiency economy on the fence at Ratchaprasong one red shirt
commented ironically: pho-phiang ko mai tong tham bai (sufficiency, so dont produce a
poster). These comments were probably the strongest signal of the breakdown of royal
charisma: The king was no longer seen as benefiting the people and his sufficiency
economy model was debunked.
Saksit
One of the most daring graffiti depicted the king as Hitler wearing an eye patch. Someone
added to the picture a drop falling from the figures nose and the expression phra-setho
saksit (holy perspiration). This was a reference to a famous photo which shows the king
sweating from the tip of his nose. The addition that the kings perspiration (setho)
contained saksit might have implied that he was literally losing his holiness and therefore
his charisma. Another piece of graffiti underlined the loss of claims to legitimate leadership: pho ku tai laew thammai mueng chop ang pen pho-mae ku ai-chip (my father is
already dead, why do you claim to be my parents? Damn you!). Another graffiti next to
the Hitler/Bhumibol face read sang kha prachachon (ordered the killing of the people).
Violence
It was clear that those who painted the graffiti blamed the king for the loss of life in May 2010.
Krasun-phraratchathan (royally presented bullets) explicitly associated the monarchy with
violence. Another critique was uttered against the government: phasi sue puen ma ying ku (tax
money bought the guns which fired at me). Democrat Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, often
spoken of disparagingly by his English name Mark, was attacked too: Daeng mai mi wan tai
nao nae ai Mark tai sip koen saen ta sawang laew (Red [shirts] can never be defeated,
damn Mark. If 10 of us die, 100,000 are born. Our eyes are open). Another fragment of graffiti
of which only the final part could be transcribed seemingly linked the king and Abhisit:
mueng Abhisit tit khuk talot chiwit ( you [derogatory you, as in most graffiti referring to
the king] [and] Abhisit go to prison for life).
The Queen
The connection between the monarchy and the military was made most specific in
reference to queen Sirikit. Next to a rough painting of the queen as an ugly figure with

pimples and fat lips someone had written pak daeng hoy kiaw (red mouth, green pussy),
referring to rumours about affairs between the queen and soldiers. Sirikit was a popular
target for graffiti. Red-shirts poked fun at her weight, her makeup and rumours about her
involvement in the disappearance of the Blue Diamond, a gem which was stolen in
1989 from the Saudi Arabian royal family. Several items depicted the queen as a blue
whale, hiding a gemstone in her mouth. Next to one such painting someone had written:
Sa-u ha phet mai joe khrai ru bang (the Saudis are looking in vain for a diamond. Who
knows anything?). Another graffiti mimicked the prohibition signs on the fence and
depicted a crossed out whale, adding khet plot pla-wan (whale-free area). Someone else
had written: Ai bot kap i pla-wan jombongkan tua jing (The damn blind man and the
damn whale woman are the real dictators). Another wrote: pla-wan ran sawat kap
bodyguards (The whale craves the affection of her bodyguards). The description of
non-Buddhist royal desires for diamonds, gluttony and sex was exacerbated by the ugly
portrayal of the king and queen which is relevant in a Thai religious context where
attractiveness reflects the merit accumulated in past lives and the [p]ossession of radiant
beauty is evidence of legitimate power (van Esterik 2000, 156).
The prince
Another family member was not exempt from the puns and denunciations. A few years
ago an infamous clip and nude pictures made the rounds in Bangkok of Crown Prince
Vajiralongkorn and his official wife Srirasmi, the latter wearing almost no clothing. One
commenter wrote: Haek kha thay clip mi chu thang trakun khak-thuy (open your legs
and take a video the whole family commits adultery. I spit on you!). Another one stated:
Mae ko hia mia ko haek (your mother is an asshole your wife is a bitch). The red shirts
let the prince off the hook relatively easily, probably because of his previous connections
with Thaksin (see Handley 2006, 448).
Thaksin
Few references were made to Thaksin. One read: chao suea daeng rak Thaksin chai
prachathipatai khap-lai phadetkan (Red shirts love Thaksin. We use Democracy to
expel the dictators). Whereas this comment referred to Thaksin as a secular ruler, another
comment deserves special mention: Phaendin ni pen khong ku (plon phra-chao Tak) (This
country is mine [you stole it from King Taksin]). Those two sentences summarise the two
bases of Thaksins charisma: success as a democratic leader and a less mundane kind of
prowess, amplified by his association with the ancient King Taksin. Taksin had ruled as
the king of Thonburi following his successful campaigns against the Burmese until he was
executed in 1782 by the founder of the current ruling Chakri dynasty under the pretext
that his alleged mental illness was threatening the country. Both, Taksin and Thaksin were
seen as virtuous leaders who had fallen victim to the Chakris.
T(h)aksin Returns
The graffiti indicate that the king is no longer a legitimate leadership figure in the eyes of
many of those whose aspirations have not been served by decades of royally sanctioned
but highly uneven capitalist development (see Glassman 2011). The kings appeal is no
396 S. naldi
longer universal, if it ever was. As noted above, one of his problems is that he cannot
publicly become a model capitalist although he is one in private to inspire those
sections of society who want to improve their lot because wealth is supposed to flow
magically towards him without having to engage in profane economic activities. In
contrast, by allowing Sino-Thai merchants to appropriate his charisma in return for their
financial and ideological support the king transferred legitimacy to their capitalist endeavours and turned them into virtuous role models.
Thaksin capitalised on the same sources of charisma that are available to the monarchy.
This has been noted by Walker (2012a, 20) who refers to ideas of saksit when he argues
that power is dispersed and mouldable, that people attach themselves to different nodes
of power and that they can look for alternative potent networks if old ones prove
inauspicious. With this potentially subversive take on authority, Walker (2012a, 107) is
able to declare: I would only be a little surprised if, in fifty years or so, the villagers in
Ban Tiam and other parts of Thailand make offerings to Lord Thaksin.
Like every new charismatic leader, Thaksin emerged at a time of crisis (the aftermath of
the 1997 Asian Crisis), when people were most sensitive to new types of leadership
(Weber 1968, 18). Imbued with the charisma of an immensely successful businessman,
Thaksin enjoyed several electoral successes. Furthermore, he was touring the countryside
as the king had done in the early 1960s. In early 2006, for instance, Thaksin embarked on
an anti-poverty mission in At Samat District in Roi Et Province, sleeping in a tent,
listening to problems of locals and offering swift solutions. Hundreds of villagers lined
the streets to greet their charismatic leader.14 By spreading wealth realising that large
shares of the electorate had been neglected in the past Thaksin slowly came to be seen
as a more legitimate leader than Bhumibol among many of his followers.
Thaksin, indeed, went so far as to broaden his appeal by directly adding royal barami to
his charismatic repertoire. This was a dangerous undertaking. Since the barami of kings is
thought to inhere in their blood, commoners who try to appropriate royal prerogatives risk
looking silly (Gray 1991, 60). But Thaksin was no longer an ordinary commoner but a
charismatic leader. His tremendous success as a businessman-cum-prime minister was,
after years of transfer of royal charisma to capitalists, now perceived as proof of his
massive barami.
On March 12, 2010, when the prolonged red-shirt protests started, UDD demonstrators gathered at two places in Bangkok to receive blessings: at the Laksi Circle in
Northern Bangkok and at the King Taksin Monument on the Thonburi side of the city.
At Laksi Circle, an area where a royalist rebellion against the revolutionary regime that
overthrew the absolute monarchy was suppressed in 1933, a statue of King Taksin was
placed on the table of offerings prepared for the Brahman ritual held there (Prachatai,
March 14, 2010). Only a few weeks earlier, the red-shirt publication Voice of Taksin
had run the cover story The Circle of Historical Karma? Taksin Returns! The author
noted that the winner writes history (Tahan-Ek 2010, 5) and defended the virtue of
Taksin against allegations of mental illness, lamenting that the goodness which the
king had shown towards the country was returned with detention and execution and
that he was ousted in a coup dtat (ratprahan) by the founder of the Chakri dynasty
(Tahan-Ek 2010, 6). He made it easy for the reader to read the life story of Taksin as the
story of Thaksin. T(h)aksins lack of connection to old nobility, the ignorance displayed
by the powers that be of T(h)aksins accumulated merit (bunya barami) and attempts at
deleting the memory of T(h)aksins glorious rule. Interestingly, the author noted that

banknotes displaying King Taksins picture were taken out of the market after the 2006
coup. It was rumoured that the tip of the sword of one of Taksins military guards was
inappropriately pointed at the watermark bearing the face of Bhumibol. The coup got rid
of both T(h)aksins.
Even though he accused the royalist press of running a smear campaign by spreading
the rumour that the red shirts considered Thaksin a reincarnation of King Taksin, the
author nevertheless seized the opportunity to report the parallels between the lives of the
two: both are of Chinese descent, both rescued the country from foreign domination (the
Burmese for Taksin and the IMF dictates for Thaksin), and both have similar names.
Although the author complained about the use of black political science (sai ratthasat),
of a political discourse based on occult beliefs, against red shirts he did not refute his
opponents claims. Instead, he drew connections between the first leader of the Democrat
Party, Khuang Abhaiwongse, and Phraya Aphayaphubet, who helped General Chakri
defeat and kill Taksin.
This article and the graffiti which referred to King Taksin were far from the only
manifestations of the T(h)aksin discourse. In 2010, flags bearing the picture of Thaksin
and Taksin were sold at red-shirt rallies.15 In addition, the UDD leadership fostered the
spread of a Taksin cult as evidenced by the use of images of the king of Thonburi in
rituals and his installation in sacred spaces. On May 4, 2010, the author took a picture
behind the UDD stage at Ratchaprasong intersection of an improvised altar (see Figure 4).
Its centrepiece was a small golden Buddha in the subduing Mara posture, symbolising
the moment when Buddha Gotama defeated the forces of evil by calling the Earth to
witness of his accumulated merit. A baisri flower offering was placed on the left side of
the Buddha. More interesting was the piece of red cloth right next to the Buddha,
displaying a portrait of King Taksin wearing a Chinese hat. Next to the cloth stood a
statue of a woman with a yellow garland around her neck, Thao Suranari, a popular
Figure 4. Altar behind the UDD stage at Ratchaprasong intersection, indicating the image of King
Taksin. Source: Author.
398 S. naldi
heroine of Nakhon Ratchasima Province in the red-shirt stronghold of the Northeast.
According to legend, she was the wife of the deputy governor of Nakhon Ratchasima and
saved the provinces capital from Lao forces in 1827. A monument in her honour was
erected in 1934 under the constitutional regime to commemorate the patriotic virtues of
the people of Nakhon Ratchasima (Peleggi 2007, 188; also see Keyes 2002).
In the interpretation of the altar offered here, the arrangement of its components is
interesting for two reasons. First, it seems to represent an attempt to tap a rival source of
royal barami by associating King Taksins barami with the struggle of Thaksin and the
UDD. Second, by paying tribute to an Isan heroine a symbol of regional identity and
pride for many ordinary red shirts and placing her next to the Buddha and an image of
King Taksin, the UDD leadership was seemingly transferring charisma to its ordinary
followers, to Thaksins charismatic group as a whole. It seems that even Thaksin and his
close allies were aware that they rely on the support of their constituencies. This
recognition of ordinary supporters constitutes an important shift and may be a sign of
increased rationalisation of the political process in the sense that citizens are more and
more acknowledged as the source of political legitimacy. This might lead to what Shils
(1982, 139) called charisma of the populace:
The proponents and beneficiaries of this dispersion [of charisma] attribute charismatic qualities to the sectors of society that are peripheral with respect to their share
in the exercise of authority and the embodiment of culture and in the distribution of
wealth, income and education. Where charisma is attributed to these strata [that is, to
ordinary citizens], the distance between center and periphery is diminished
Weber (1966, 386, 390) too acknowledged that charisma can, in a process of rationalisation, develop into an anti-authoritarian direction when procedural democracy gains
ground:
[T]he validity of charismatic authority rests entirely on recognition by those subject
to it, conditioned as this is by proof of its genuineness. When the organization of
the corporate group undergoes a process of progressive rationalization, it is readily
possible that, instead of recognition being treated as a consequence of legitimacy, it
is treated as the basis of legitimacy. Legitimacy, that is, becomes democratic
The anti-authoritarian direction of the transformation of charisma normally leads into
the path of rationality. If a ruler is dependent on recognition by plebiscite [h]e will
attempt to consolidate the loyalty of those he governs by promoting their material
welfare
It may be hard to see this rationalisation evolving in light of the on-going charismatic
competition between different factions in Thailand and the widespread belief in magic.
However, the increased sense of agency among Thaksins charismatic group has made
developments as described by Shils and Weber possible. When, in the first half of 2012, it
appeared as if Thaksin and his sister Yingluck had struck a deal with royalists and
Thaksins followers became increasingly disappointed with him, he eventually apologised to the Red-shirts for his remarks (Nostitz 2012). The fact that he had to backtrack
underlines how much he depends on ordinary followers to acknowledge him as their

legitimate leader. Now that Thaksin has brought them closer to the centre, his supporters
seem to grow increasingly aware of their own agency as the drivers of a new Thai order.
While probably unintentional, the charismatic leader empowered his charismatic group
to a point where the group has itself become a force to reckon with. Eisenstadt (1968, liii)
notes that:
rationality may indeed be very often the outcome of charismatic activities of personalities and groups who evolve new conceptions of order and goals and who are able
to routinize these charismatic qualities and orientations through the crystallization of
new societal centers and institutional frameworks.
Yet the old model of working towards the monarchy is not displaced easily because, as
Bensman and Givant (1986, 39) note, emergent groups like Thaksins followers do not
have as much charisma as those close to the centralized power and institutions in society.
Older ideologists are closer to the moral order of the society. For Thailand to become
democratic it is necessary for those who are working towards the monarchy to attribute
charisma to the mass of the populace as well, to accept that legitimate power in a
democracy is derived from the people. And conflict may arise even between Thaksin
and his followers if one of the parties starts to ignore the charismatic claims of the other.
To quote Shils (1982, 142):
[M]odern societies are enmeshed in a perpetual strain of competing conceptions
about the ultimate locus of charisma. The discerners and interpreters of the transcendent order, the agents of earthly order, and the populace which wishes to share these
higher orders are bound to be in contest with each other And any improvement
in the position of any of the three contestants is bound to arouse and strengthen the
affirmation of their own charisma in the other two.
In Thailand, this contest occurs between royalists as adherents of the transcendent order,
Thaksin and his immediate circle as agents of the earthly political and economic order
and, increasingly, the populace itself. But the divisions between those groups are not as
clear-cut. Ironically, while the current king allowed the transfer of his sacred charisma to
capitalists, it is the capitalist Thaksin who has been linked at times to the royal charisma
of King Taksin. At the same time broad sections of the populace have become charismatised and demand a say in the interpretation of the earthly order. It is between
royalists, Thaksin and the people that the Thai crisis will have to be settled.
Conclusion
From December 2010 onwards, the red graffiti slowly disappeared. The UDD found a
new chairperson in the political activist Thida Thavornseth who visited grassroots organisations to convince red shirts not to escalate the conflict.16 However, the demons that
were unleashed on September 19, 2010 are not likely to disappear. September 19 offered a
rare glimpse of the built-up frustrations with the monarchy.
For a long time people had latched on to the monarchys charisma which easily
transformed into different forms of capital. Close association with the monarchy was a
400 S. naldi
source of social distinction. To benefit from the monarchys sacred charisma it had to be
protected and therefore people were working towards the monarchy.
But not everybody had equal access to the resources associated with the royal order.
Those most removed from the source of power that is royal charisma relied on hand-outs
from local patrons and royal charities. At the same time, the monarchy had transferred
charisma to Sino-Thai entrepreneurs by sanctifying the pursuit of economic success in the
name of national development. It was only a matter of time for one of these charismatic
businesspeople to emerge as a rival player. Thaksins business and electoral success
seemed to prove his almost supernatural ability to master the economic and political
order and imbued him with charismatic qualities. Thaksins charisma was well received
among Thailands middle-income peasants.
But charisma and magic are only one element in the contemporary Thai order. Signs of
rationalisation are emerging. As classical sociology has taught, rationalisation can be the
outcome of transformative charismatic activities. By promising and delivering policies
which met the demands of his followers, Thaksin not just proved his prowess. He
implicitly acknowledged that his position as a democratically elected leader depended
on his recognition as a legitimate leader by the majority of the electorate. Hence
contemporary Thailand is not merely a playground for charismatic leaders. In the shadow
of and as a result of elite power games a process of incremental but steady
rationalisation continued which generated the charisma of the populace. It is yet unclear
whether this mix of charismatic and legal-rational elements of authority constitutes a new
culturally specific modus operandi or whether the country finds itself in a transformative
phase where charismatic leadership is being sidelined. Much will depend on royalists (and
Thaksin) and their recognition of the fact that legitimate democratic authority emanates
from the people.
Acknowledgements
The author owes thanks to Katherine Bowie at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and to Erik Harms at Yale
University for the opportunity to present a draft version of this paper at their universities. Heartfelt thanks are due
to Kevin Hewison who gave valuable advice and to three anonymous reviewers whose detailed reports helped
improve the first draft of this paper. The author is grateful to Chirayu Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya and Somboon
Chaidejsuriya from the CPB for generous support with valuable information on the activities of the CPB in the
Siam-Ratchaprasong area. Very special thanks to the person who made the photos of the red graffiti available.
The research that informs the article is made possible by the support of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
(German National Academic Foundation).
Notes
1
3
4
A video of Thongchais talk can be found online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icM7PtlaSdA. Accessed

September 17, 2012.
It would be wrong, however, to term such manipulated charisma pseudocharisma as has been suggested in
the context of secular, mass-mediated societies (Bensman and Givant 1986, 48).
This is a working definition which will be further developed in the authors PhD dissertation.
A similar observation was made in a classified diplomatic cable authored by the US embassy in Bangkok in
November 2009: Many figures in the various circles attempt to appropriate the charisma of the King and
prestige of the royal institution for their own purposes without any official remit, a process known in Thai as
\ang barami.\ (Thailand: Circles of influence inside the institution of the monarchy in King Bhumibols
twilight, Wikileaks. http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09BANGKOK2967.html). Accessed July 15, 2011.
Information obtained from the database at the Thai Ministry of Commerce, Amphoe Muang, Nonthaburi.

6
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Sirindhorns attendance at the launch of Krispy Kreme appears in the royal duties section on her website:
http://www.sirindhorn.net/HRH-activities.en.html?dc=28&mc=09&yc=2553&month=9&year=2010.
Accessed September 18, 2012.
According to Somboon Chaidejsuriya, Assistant Director-General of the CPB, since 2009 CPB has provided
eight scholarships to the children [in the community] and as of now five remain because two of them decided
to quit from school and the other failed his examination (e-mail communication, July 8, 2011).
For a detailed discussion of the architectural development of Siam Paragon, see naldi (2013b).
I owe thanks to Erik Harms for raising that point.
Given the protection of private royal spaces from profanation it is hard to imagine the development of a
European-style monarchy in Thailand. For Queen Elizabeths Diamond Jubilee celebration the British skaband Madness performed Our House (in the Middle of our Street) on top of Buckingham Palace while a
row of ordinary town houses were projected on to the faade of the palace.
Webers concept of status honour referred to by Hewison (2013) is a form of routinised charisma. In Webers
(1966, 369) own words: With the process of routinization the charismatic group tends to develop into one of
the forms of everyday authority, particularly the patrimonial form in its decentralized variant or the bureaucratic. Its original peculiarities are apt to be retained in the charismatic standards of honour attendant on the
social status acquired by heredity or the holding of office.
A link to the clip was posted on the message board of a red-shirt Facebook group in September 2010. It may
still be found under the title RedGraffiti_xvid.html if typed into a search engine.
McCargo and Naruemon (2011, 997) noted that in 2010 the UDD leaders had adopted the motto Dont
strike the sky (literally, ti fa, meaning dont attack the countrys traditional institutions).
Thaksins sister Yingluck who became Prime Minister in mid-2011, made sure to resume her brothers
leadership style. On her trip to the provinces to inspect flood-prevention measures in February 2012 she
reportedly stayed overnight in the homes of villagers. One former local MP noted in front of a waiting crowd
that the premiers working style was very much like that of her brother, former PM Thaksin Shinawatra
(The Nation, February 16, 2012).
In response to my question why these flags were sold one of the vendors smiled knowingly and said: I cant
tell you.
Thanks to Nick Nostitz for sharing this observation.
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Figure 1. Map of the Siam-Ratchaprasong area. Source: Author.

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Figure 3. Stills from the clip Red Graffiti. Source: Anonymous.

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