In less than two weeks, veteran political dissident Shih Ming-teh has conjured a broadly based political movement implacably opposed to Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian serving out his full term - until May 2008. It has mobilised hundreds of thousands of committed, red-shirted supporters for a series of demonstrations and other mass actions intended to force Mr Chen to resign.
Mr Shih's so-called 'red army' includes Mr Chen's traditional enemies - middle-aged and elderly Chinese nationalists, and state-sector employees. This time, they have been joined by a broad swathe of northern Taiwan's urban middle class.
During the first week of the movement, prosperous-looking Taipei housewives in red shirts streamed each morning to Ketegalan Boulevard, in front of the Presidential Office. They carried sandwiches and other supplies for protesters who had spent the night outside. On Friday night, many students and young people joined Mr Shih and hundreds of thousands of other marchers to lay siege to the Presidential Office and its immediate surroundings.
The joyfully triumphant mood of Mr Shih's red army is striking. Its members believe they are making history, and that victory is at hand. Their mood is akin to the spontaneous celebrations and waves of good feeling that had people dancing in the streets after Mr Chen's first election victory, in 2000.
Three major propositions are driving the movement. The first is that Mr Chen, his family, and his administration are incorrigibly corrupt, on a huge scale. This is an unfortunate exaggeration. But, in the court of public opinion, Mr Chen has been tried, convicted and sentenced by the media, much of which is sympathetic to the KMT-led opposition. The blind hatred stirred up against him personally has, at times, resembled something out of the Cultural Revolution.
The second proposition is a Confucian syllogism. Officials who do not serve the people well have an ethical obligation to step down. Mr Chen has ruined Taiwan's prosperity. Therefore Mr Chen should quit. His failure to do so in the face of the people's anger makes him 'shameless', another Confucian sin.
Behind this undemocratic logic lie real grievances. After six years of ineffectual rule by the Democratic Progressive Party, and a stagnant economy, middle-class protesters cannot see the prosperous future they once expected.