For years, the Irish Republican Army, or at least the provisional iteration of that organisation, played a vital role in the politics of the Irish Republic. Hard line nationalism was the mark of the beast. Sympathy for it was the thing – the thing – that placed a person beyond the realms of public acceptability. Aside from occasional flare ups of greenery, like during the hunger strikes or in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, when politicians and the public would suddenly rediscover the lyrics to various songs by the Wolfe Tones, the IRA was the demarcation line for decency. It’s us, and it’s them, and if you sympathised with them, well. There was a point where you were so far out of bounds that if it was necessary even to hear your views on the national broadcaster, the law required that your voice be dubbed over by an actor.
That’s all changed now, of course. We’re all ‘RA-men now, in the Republic’s mainstream. We’re all unified in condemning the feckless villainy of the British, with their Brexit and their Boris and their – what is it Fintan O’Toole calls it again? Imperial delusions of grandeur. The very thought of commemorating the Royal Irish Constabulary a year or two ago nearly brought down the Government. Every decent Irish moderate establishmentarian can recite the old RA-man script chapter and verse: What other option did they have, with the RUC burning people out of their homes? Out-shinnering the Shinners is the new way to appeal to the youth. A poll this week found that 70% of Northern Nationalists now say that “violent resistance” was justified. I’d suggest a similar poll in the Republic would find maybe 50% who’d openly agree.
The ‘RA are mainstream now. They can’t be the national boogeyman. Thank God, then, for poor aul Gemma O’Doherty, and those people who object to direct provision centres, and say “jab” or “covid injection” instead of “vaccine” in order to evade the social media censors.
We have a new demarcation line for decency, now. In the Republic, you are either in the mainstream, or you are “far right”. There are no other groups we’re especially worried about – open communists like Paul Murphy and Brid Smith have seats in the Dáil and standing invites to every panel show. Lisa Smith joined ISIS – ISIS – and got less time in jail than some fella who didn’t tell the Revenue about garlic. If you want to make it legal for children to be castrated and change their gender, the state will give you cash to fund your lobby group. If you object to that, the state will fund some clown to put you on a far-right watch list.
There was a video on twitter at the weekend which grabbed my attention: In it, some “far right” activist confronts two people who were filming some protest or other, probably about vaccines or immigration. The two individuals with the camera are accused of being Gardai. They do not deny it. It’s not a secret, after all, that the Gardai have been tasked with monitoring the “far right” in Ireland. It’s been reported, with approving overtones, in the newspapers.
But the far right in Ireland, if we must call it that, has no political representation. God love them, I’m about as close as they get to a semi-mainstream ally in the media, and I spend half my time annoying them about vaccines and Ukraine and the badness of Donald Trump and all the other subjects on which they consider me to be some class of controlled opposition establishment sell-out. They have no elected representation, and, frankly, no polls suggest that this is likely to change.
In what way, then, do they pose a threat? To whom do they pose this threat? Are we to lie awake at night fearing that some fella who believes in Chemtrails (look it up) is going to conduct a citizens’ arrest on Helen McEntee? That @PatriotGames8649 on twitter is going to put Tony Holohan on trial?
The fact of the matter is this: “Far Right” is just the bucket, increasingly, into which the state and its allies toss every issue and group and argument that they do not wish to deal with. This week, for example, both the Irish Times and the Irish Independent carried a report on a “report” (it wasn’t a report) on the “far right” in Ireland. Amongst other people listed as “far right” was a group called the “LGB alliance”. This is a group of gay people who object to the current establishment thinking on Transgender policy. They are people who voted for, and campaigned for, marriage equality. Most of them, presumably, voted to repeal the eighth. Four short years ago, these people were cutting edge progressives at the forefront of Ireland’s liberal revolution. Today, media outlets are calling them “far right”. What changed?
You’re far right, too, if you object to climate measures that will likely impoverish you. Or if you are some class of weirdo who thinks Ireland should be more sovereign, relative to Brussels. Or really if you ask any hard questions at all of the dominant worldview in Leinster House and Montrose.
The phrase “Far Right” is little more than the latest state boogeyman. It’s designed to delegitimise, and stigmatise, and shame, and silence. The “far right” in Ireland is not growing, by any objective measure of that word. The only thing that is growing is the list of things we are not allowed to question, and therefore become the purview of the dreaded “far right”. For if you question them, you must be one of those people. Beyond the pale. Indecent. Telling on yourself. A threat to the very fabric of our hard won Irish (definitely not British) culture.
The trouble is, more and more of us see through it. Over now to Miriam, in Prime Time, for the latest.