Shahzia Sikander. Oil and Poppies, 2019-20.
The march of the Ultra-Right in the Global South continues on, but unlike their Global North counterparts like Trump, Le Penn & Farage, as bleak as the future may seem, there are green shoots amongst the concrete.
On February 8th 2026 following the Thai general election, there was a paradigm shift ushering in a new era of Southeast Asian politics as the ultra-right Bumjaithai Party took control of every organ of Thai state power, democratically or otherwise. The party are relatively new comers to Thai politics but are the clear successor of a long line of monachal-military-capitalist-ultra-nationalists who have long served as a vanguardist nexus of deep state power. They had already allegedly rigged senate elections in the upper-house in 2024 winning a super majority in the supposedly party neutral chamber- an investigation into these charges of vote rigging are now certain to go nowhere. The judiciary, which have long been in the pocket of the aforementioned monachal-military-ultra-nationalists, are also firmly on team Bhumjaithai (BJT), and due to the kingdoms centralised government structure little to no opposition remains in any state institutional form.
For the past two decades, and even going back to the 1960s, Thailand has had a relatively well organised peasant and workers movement, particularly given the highly reactionary nature of the state, which has been a US vassal ever since their war on Vietnam. Up until the 2000s this movement was largely extra-parliamentary, with the poor organising around the Farmers Federation (1970s), the insurgent Communist Party (1960s-80s) and subsequently a web of trade unions and localised peasant groups. In 2001, however, the left-agrarian-populist Thai-Rak-Thai party (today Phue Thai) emerged as the parliamentary representative of the poor, winning landslide elections, countless policy victories and experiencing mass state repression in the form of military & judiciary coups, extrajudicial killings, arrests and disappearances. Despite Phue Thai’s successes, over the past two decades, the reactionary state has developed a complex system of weaponised lawfare, as documented by researcher Tyrell Haberkorn in her book Dictatorship on Trial. In short, the reactionary elite learnt how to bar the poor from parliament, and at the time of writing, appear to have successfully neutralised the threat for the indefinite future.
In the aftermath of the February 8th election, many of those on the left are nervously looking to a future that resembles Hun Sen’s Cambodia (CPP) or Modi’s India (BJP). While these examples operate in vastly different political landscapes, they share striking tactical similarities in neutralising opposition through legal, administrative, patronage network, and state institutional means. A new reactionary playbook is rapidly being developed and exported across the region. One by which the ultra-right are able to capture state institutions, weaponize ultra-nationalist grievances outwards, and crush opposition. The much touted “rule of law” is stripped of its liberal pretences to serve as a naked instrument of class rule and state capital. Which brings us to the question of what the opposition-what the poor-can do to recognise and challenge this.
The repeated playbook in all of these cases rely on three basic pillars, Judicial Neutralisation, Opposition Absorption & Ethno-nationalist Redirection:
Judicial Neutralisation
In these cases, the state was built on Western ideas of liberal democracy. The judiciary, once framed in liberal theory as an independent check on power, has been effectively hollowed out and repurposed. It functions as an open and concentrated administrative force dedicated to safeguarding the interests of the dominant economic class, operating as a tactical instrument for enforcement of economic and political monopolies, ensuring that the legal system actively facilitates the accumulation of wealth and power for the ruling elite rather than providing a check on state power.
- BJP (India): Have repeatedly used law enforcement agencies (ED, CBI) to file corruption or money laundering cases against opposition, often leading to pre-trial detentions that paralyses opposition leadership during elections bogging them down in judicial procedure.
- BJT (Thailand): Benefits from a “Judicial Coup” model where the courts protect the interests of the aforementioned reactionary vanguardist nexus. They benefit from a judiciary that dissolves major rivals and removes opposition leaders (like the judicial coups against Phue Thai Prime ministers & the dissolution of the Move Forward Party) on constitutional grounds. BJT itself rarely initiates these cases themselves but relies of their dependable ultra-nationalist allies to press the charges.
- CPP (Cambodia): Perhaps the most “advanced” form, where the distinction between the party and the state has completely withered away. This is the closest we have to Caesarism, in that the judiciary is simply a department of the CPP used to liquidate the political competition, ensuring that the means of production (land, timber, and factories) remain in the hands of the elite class loyal to CPP project.
Absorbing Opposition
- India: The “BJP Washing Machine” is a mechanism for the centralisation of political rent. Localised political/landowning elites with their existing patronage networks join the BJP to protect their accumulated capital from state seizure and further cement their position locally, while strengthening party hegemony nationally. Former opposition figures become allies and any investigations into their past wrongdoing ar washed away by the power of the BJP “Washing Machine”.
- Thailand: The BJT’s absorption of existing “Baan Yai” (local elites) into the party allows for the consolidation of provincial capital and votes. When the judiciary threatens to investigate non-BJT elites, they simply move their assets (votes and influence) to join BJT, moving from a position of weakness to strength and allowing them greater access to state contracts, legal protections and a seat at the table in Bangkok.
- Cambodia: The CPP’s “Golden Handcuffs” are a form of patronage-based feudalism. For opposition figures, or those who wish to challenge CPP hegemony, instead of challenging the party, joining the CPP is the only way to access markets, votes, state contracts, etc, and avoid liquidation. Once tied or “handcuffed” to the CPP they are richly rewarded and protected, providing they adhere to the party’s hegemony.
Ethno-nationalist Redirection
So as to most effectively legitimise their regimes and justify their extraordinary use of heavy handed judiciary, all three cases have relied on stoking ethno-nationalist grievances against outside forces. Ironically, Thailand and Cambodia are mutually dependent on this, given the recent border war, which was instigated by both sides, so as to create this very outcome. As we wrote at the outbreak of the fighting, it was a war of elite consensus on both sides of the border, which served only to strengthen the elites on either side, to justify their militaristic policies, which ultimately are vested in domestic interests, using the military as an internal repressive state apparatus rather than an external- as is the case with the US & Britain for example. The same is also true of the BJP, who have used the longstanding conflict with Pakistan to justify crackdowns on domestic opposition who fail to show sufficient fealty towards India’s army in its conflict with Pakistan. In Thailand too, this tactic was used against the left-opposition as a means of discipline and control, forcing them to back the reactionary consensus of the ultra-nationalists like BJT or face charges of treason- as was the case with the aforementioned left populist PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra who was evicted from office for this very reason.
The Way Out
The election of Bhumjaithai this month is the most recent country in the region to fall to an ultra-right government using the very same playbook mentioned above. Reactionary forces across Asia are watching closely, taking notes, learning and adapting. It in this moment that those of us on the left, the poor, must do the same, take time to analyse how reactionary powers operate and where their weaknesses are.
The answer, is of course, not the liberal politics that we have been sold by the Western funded NGO’s and thinktanks that for decades have portrayed themselves as the vanguards of democracy against fascism. Indeed, they are, in the best case completely ineffective (as is the case with the Cambodia National Rescue Party) and in the worst case actively harmful (as is the case with The Peoples Party Thailand).
As bleak as the situation may feel in Thailand today in the aftermath of this defeat, there are lessons and examples we can look to as means of resistance, as well as recent moments of such reactionary consensuses breaking- the case of Sri Lanka & Bangladesh (albeit currently in a state of flux). Even within the reactionary consensus, liberatory spaces can be created like the incredible achievements of the left coalition in Kerala.
For the poor of Thailand, we are in the first days of a new paradigm, a new reactionary consensus, where parliamentary political organizing may need to be abandoned for several years. While this particular paradigm is fresh, it is one that the poor have faced many times before. We have seen our comrades dead in the street, we still live with their empty bedrooms in our homes. We have heard the same stories from our grandparents and they from theirs. We have bounced back before and we inevitably bounce back again, as will the poor of India and Cambodia, such is the nature of class struggle. We have won before, and we will win again.
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