At some point in my development into adulthood, I came to the belated realisation that Willy Wonka, Roald Dahl’s most famous character, is an arch-villain. For the few of you who have not read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, the plot goes something like this: Mr. Wonka, the reclusive and secretive owner of the world’s largest and most famous chocolate factory, issues five “golden tickets” to children who will become the first and only people allowed to visit Wonka’s factory and see it’s secrets. Once inside, each of the children – including the eponymous hero, Charlie – fails some kind of moral test and suffers horribly for it. One is effectively drowned in a chocolate river. Another is turned into a blueberry. A third is shrunken to the size of a pencil, and a fourth, if I recall, is eaten by monkeys. All of the children are punished for the same crime: Falling to the obvious temptations of human nature.
They are presented with chocolate on a scale and availability never before seen. They eat the chocolate. They are punished for it. It’s Adam and Eve, for a new audience. Mr Wonka is both God, and the Serpent, dishing out temptation, and damnation, with a cheerful twinkle in his eye.
The story came to mind reading my colleague Fatima’s report, yesterday, on the opening of a new cost-rental housing scheme in South County Dublin. The Department of Housing proudly announced the scheme on social media, and introduced us to some of the new residents. They then turned off the ability to comment on the post, for members of the public. Here’s a representative example of the series of tweets they sent:
"We are very happy here. We are secure. We have a long-term rent…” says Bernardo, who has moved into one of 74 #CostRental homes, officially opened by Minister @DarraghOBrienTD today. https://t.co/ThnRIyGGJJ #HousingForAll @merrionstreet @tuathhousing pic.twitter.com/LKtkI3tdOb
— Department of Housing, Local Government & Heritage (@DeptHousingIRL) August 23, 2022
This is Willy Wonka government: You are not simply being given news, here. You are also being tested for moral fibre. Will you, as a good, fair-minded, progressive, and tolerant Irish citizen, welcome Bernardo from Equatorial Guinea to his new subsidised housing? Or will you succumb to the dreadful nativist impulses of the hated far-right, and feel a bubbling annoyance in your stomach that Bernardo from Equatorial Guinea – for all that he is assuredly a good fellow – is somehow considered a higher priority for a home than a person born and raised in this country who now finds themselves on the streets? It’s not news, in other words – it’s more like a form of training. You will learn to choke down your inherent bigotry, and applaud.
There is, I think, a psychological dichotomy at the heart of the Irish establishment: On the one hand, they fret openly about the “rise of the far right”. On the other hand, they desperately, keenly, want the “far right” to rise. They look, I think, to their heroes on the world stage – the American Democrats, the valiant foes of Brexit in Britain, and so on – and see people engaged in ferocious daily combat with nationalist, conservative forces who have a real chance of victory. There’s excitement and emotion in the potential for defeat: American Liberals never felt their cause so vital, and their efforts so important, as when Donald Trump was President, and they were fighting a world historical battle against the Orange Menace.
For Irish progressives, by contrast, their own utter dominance here must feel desperately boring by comparison: All the dragons lie slain. The Church is an empty, banjo-playing, husk whose only remaining social function is to provide an opportunity for arguments about whether first holy communion is too expensive for parents. Social Conservatism is the laughable pursuit of fringe, relatively harmless fellas like me, and poor old David Quinn. Euroscepticism is not only extinct, but like the “banished” snakes, never really had a foothold here to begin with.
Progressivism, at its core, is an ideology for rebels and fighters. It needs an enemy. It needs something to be progressive in comparison to. Enter “the far right”.
The “far right” would, of course, fail the Willy Wonka test above. They would hold to the view that Bernardo from Equatorial Guinea should wait for his subsidised house in Ireland until the domestic need for housing had first been met. The trouble is this: They are not alone in that. Oh, it’s not a view you’ll hear respectable middle-class people with twitter accounts with their names on them articulate, because that might imperil their jobs, but it’s a view you’ll find in whatsapp groups, or pub corners, or shared between trusted friend groups over a pint, when Big Brother can’t hear.
One commenter on social media wrote, I think perceptively, that the tweet above was about the closest thing we’ll ever see to an official Irish State recruiting campaign for the “far right”. This is what we are doing, and you are not allowed to complain about it, racist.
Spare a thought here, by the way, for Bernardo from Equatorial Guinea. Bernardo and his family have done nothing wrong whatsoever. But the Government, by turning off the ability to reply to the tweet about Bernardo getting his house, are effectively admitting that they know what they are doing: Making Bernardo and his family the subject of anger that should really be directed against them. If you are angry, you see, you are angry at Bernardo, not Irish policy. And you are, therefore, a racist.
This is – and I’m talking here about the tweet, not the policy – about as transparent an attempt to stir up social discord as you’ll ever come across. Some of these people are transparently eager for Bernardo to be unjustly abused. It will give them something to fight against, you see.
Just remember this: Willy Wonka was the villain, not the hero. And what we have, today, is a Willy Wonka Government, intent on testing and punishing its own people for the crime of having insufficient moral fibre.