Our Government and Journalists have facilitated the rise of the Far-Right in Ireland
This weed must be plucked from the ground before it is too late.
Back in 2020 I was the Comment (Opinion) Editor for the University Observer, the largest student newspaper in Ireland. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic there was a notable rise in fervour towards the politics of the far-right, with anti-mask protests breaking into violence against left-wing counter-protestors in Dublin.
At the time I wrote, “Recent Irish governments have done nothing but encourage the rise of the Far-Right in Ireland, much in the same way the Democrats have in the United States, and the Pre- and Post-Corbyn Labour parties have done in the UK”.
Nothing has changed since. In fact, these parties have only further encouraged their rise. This rise has come from nothing other than a complete and utter criminal mishandling of every inch of Irish society, most notably in the last four decades, and the blame for this in Ireland can only lie at the feet of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party, and the Labour Party when they were in government.
It is their disastrous policies that have led the country to where it currently stands, and the almost complete lack of accountability that they are held to by the media of this nation only serves to help this fervent hatred grow.
There is no mystery to the far-right in Ireland. The organisers have been well known to many for a long time. They have been well documented by organisations in Ireland as well as Internationally, including references to their links with outwardly fascist groups abroad.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in August released a report profiling hateful and extremist groups in Ireland. The report, Irish Far-right Hate and Extremist Groups, details 12 far-right groups in Ireland that GPAHE identifies as embracing beliefs and activities that demean, harass, and inspire violence against people based on their identity traits including race, religion, ethnicity, language, national or social origin, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
According to the report, Ireland’s far-right scene has grown in recent years in reaction to progress for LGBTQ+ equality, increased access to abortion, and the fabricated threat of the anti-immigrant and white-supremacist “Great Replacement,” lie, even though immigration to Ireland has declined since 2018. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, other movements have arisen, harnessing rage over pandemic health measures, such as anti-lockdown protests, and spreading covid-related conspiracy theories, often overlapping with other far-right extremist ideologies.
The people in charge of these movements are egomaniacs. They are only obsessed with the furthering of their own popularity and the goals they have for this nation. While they may hide their views behind the guise of “legitimate concerns for people’s wellbeing”, they ultimately could not care less what happens to the people that follow them, as long as they keep following. This is a fact about fascists that has held true throughout history, and that has not changed.
We can all sit back in collective bewilderment and wonder how such fervent racism has managed to grow across our island, but the sources are clear to see. During the pandemic we had mainstream journalists like Ciara Kelly posting daily articles and rants on Newstalk denying the logical reasoning behind Lockdowns, then wondering how these people could have become so emboldened that they would break the laws of the time on gatherings to attend protests. Gaslighting us as she condemned the same rioters that she has been riling up for months.
Right now there are articles posted daily in the Irish Times and Independent stirring up hatred against migrants, asylum-seekers, transgender people, anyone who dares to look or live their life differently to what these people deem to be “the norm”.
A lack of accountability fuelled by those in the media that would rather further their own careers than criticise the government. These journalists pray they can kiss enough political posteriors in order to earn themselves a six month long run as an “advisor” to the Cabinet, on an extraordinary salary, after which the end up getting cushy jobs on Newstalk or writing a weekly column in the Times or the Independent, leaking out official scoops to the country that only end up making the public more scared and confused about what’s actually going on behind the scenes.
This allows Right-Wing hacks to take a hold over peoples lives with false conspiracy theories about 5G and mass abortion graveyards on the site of Childrens Hospitals, and bus loads of men coming into the country to displace local residents and take whoever and whatever they want.
When people are constantly being fed lie after lie by the people they’re meant to be able to trust, their elected representatives in government, and the journalists whose job it is to hold those representatives to the highest possible standards, they lose all critical thinking ability and will listen to any explanation that allows them to make sense of the world around them.
Back when I initially wrote this piece, I received a reply from Fianna Fáil Senator Malcom Byrne. It’s filled with the usual mud slinging you expect to see from a member of his party, but here it is if you want a laugh.
While the Senator launched off on a nice PR tirade to promote the virtues of his party, he failed to in any way take in the actual point of the article, which is truly astonishing as I basically just spelled it out in the final few lines, which I have now repeated below for you all to see.
The solution to this is an all too easy one, and reminds me of a story told to me in my youth. It is of a king who’s child is prophesised to be the saviour of the land. The child is said to the one that will fight off and rid the land of all evils and bring them into a new era of everlasting prosperity.
When the child eventually becomes monarch, their advisors begin to explore all manners of physical defensive and offensive structures and plans that would keep them safe from any that would seek to take the realm. The new monarch however ignores their calls for strengthened borders and intead focuses on strengthening the infrastructure of the realm.
Once the monarch is old and sick their advisors grievances begin to ring louder and louder. The advisors ask how their monarch will defeat the prophesised evil now that they are old and weak. Yet a new, young advisor, fresh out of one of the land’s new well-funded schools, sees these old statesmen bickering and bellowing about their fears and tells them that they are fools.
The king eradicated poverty, housed the homeless, educated the ignorant, ended class exploitation by abolishing the nobility and imprisoning the corrupt, and established a highly respected guild of doctors that recently figured out how to cure the plague! There are no threats, no brigands ruling the streets with fear. There is enough wealth for everyone to live comfortably, and hiding in the woods, robbing small trinkets from people doesn’t make sense for anyone but the most desperate and disparate, of which none exist.
Evil is a weed. It grows in cracked roads, crumbling houses and forgotten corners. It is a plant rooted in indifference and watered by suffering. But if those with the power to do so demand that broken things are mended and suffering people are made well then there would be no such thing as evil. It would not lie anywhere. It would starve to death in the ground in which it was buried.
This is not just a fairy tale to be told to children so that they may learn what is valued in governance. This is something our representatives must follow to the letter. This is the only way we can ensure that the evils of the far-right can not rise as they have done in our neighbours to the east and west.
Our Journalists at the same time must hold these representatives to account on every single one of their mistakes. They are key members of society, with a hugely important job to do, and that job isn’t upholding the wishes of the ruling class. Once these journalists are doing their jobs, the people of this country must hold both our politicians and journalists to account when they act with greed. When everyone does this part of their job, society works for the better.
We must all work together to root out this evil, and then elect representatives that will make sure the evils in this land are taken away, root and stem, and never allowed to take hold in our country. Never mind our country.
Never again on our planet.
Whatever it takes, this evil must be stopped before it takes over the ground entire.