One way that artists satirise Thai politics is by punning on the Thai word for democracy itself, ประชาธิปไตย. Parit Wacharasindhu’s book Dreamocracy (ประชาธิปไตยไม่ใช่ฝัน) is a recent example. There have been at least ten Thai puns on ‘democracy’, the most common being Democrazy, first used by the band Heavy Mod as the title of their 1995 album. (That album also includes a track titled ประชาฉิปตาย, which translates as ‘democracy dies’, similar to the “Die mo cracy” t-shirt slogan by Speech Odd.) The short film title Demockrazy (ประชาทิปตาย) includes two puns, while the documentary title Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย) is more long-winded. Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) predicted Paryut Chan-o-cha’s propaganda campaign with a reference to “happy-ocracy!”
The script for the film Nednary (อวสานเนตรนารี) features a pun on Prayut’s nickname, “ประชาธิปตู่” (‘Tu-ocracy’). Political commentators have used similar neologisms to explain the status of Thai democracy under various influential prime ministers: Prayutocracy, Thaksinocracy (ทักษิณาธิปไตย; Thaksin Shinawatra), and Premocracy (เปรมาธิปไตย; Prem Tinsulanonda). Most recently, Tyrell Haberkorn coined the term ‘coupocracy’ to describe the period covering the 2006 and 2014 coups. The forthcoming book Made in Thailand will include Anna Lawattanatrakul’s essay Dancemocracy as Political Expression in the 2020 Thai Pro-democracy Movement.
The script for the film Nednary (อวสานเนตรนารี) features a pun on Prayut’s nickname, “ประชาธิปตู่” (‘Tu-ocracy’). Political commentators have used similar neologisms to explain the status of Thai democracy under various influential prime ministers: Prayutocracy, Thaksinocracy (ทักษิณาธิปไตย; Thaksin Shinawatra), and Premocracy (เปรมาธิปไตย; Prem Tinsulanonda). Most recently, Tyrell Haberkorn coined the term ‘coupocracy’ to describe the period covering the 2006 and 2014 coups. The forthcoming book Made in Thailand will include Anna Lawattanatrakul’s essay Dancemocracy as Political Expression in the 2020 Thai Pro-democracy Movement.
