This week, the Irish Government launched its new hate bill. And then, two days later, it accused migrants of abusing Ireland’s immigration system.
The dichotomy might warrant comment, in most other democracies. In Ireland, it got barely any. This is despite the fact that for months, any assertion that Ireland had an immigration problem was dismissed as some kind of far-right jiggery pokery, and any calls for restrictions on immigration were denounced as far-right rabble rousing.
And so it is, once again, that what was dangerous far right extremism last week is Government policy this week, with not so much as an eyebrow raised by most of our friends in the media who write about what happens in Ireland for a living.
Let’s go back to the start. It is true, for starters, that the Irish people instinctively favour immigration and want to be seen as welcoming to migrants. It goes deeply to our self-image as a nation: Ceád Mile Fáilte, and all that.
One need only look around the country to see this in action: The towns and villages adorned with the flag of Ukraine, the tens of thousands of good faith offers of accommodation for those fleeing war, the efforts to make our Ukrainian guests feel at home. The radical, very online nationalist will decry all these things as evidence of some kind of globally imposed, top-down strategy. The truth is that in almost all cases, this welcome has been a bottom-up one, and that people have been proud to “do their bit”.
This is not a national characteristic that we should decry. On balance it says something good about us as a country that we have never yet had an electorally successful, radically anti-immigration movement. We are a trusting people, and a kind people. What we have, we are willing to share with those less fortunate, and in need.
But it is equally, and objectively, true that in recent times that this trust has been abused. That is not my verdict. It is the verdict of our own Government:
Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said the decision was not “taken lightly” but that where there is evidence that there may be abuse of such systems, “the Government must act swiftly to mitigate the risks”.
“The suspension of the operation of the agreement is temporary and will be reviewed in a year’s time.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said the decision will “assist in the protection of Ukrainians, and those of other nationalities who are fleeing conflict, as it will lessen the incidence of abuse of this system. This step is not unprecedented: other council of Europe member states have taken similar action previously.”
The problem is not, in Ireland, our attitude to immigration. The problem is our attitude to debate.
Consider for a moment what the reaction would have been if, just last week, somebody like Mattie McGrath or Michael Healy Rae had claimed – truthfully – that the immigration system was being abused by some applicants. That this is the case has been obvious to anybody with eyes to see for some time. Indeed, our own Government basically invited this abuse of the system by advertising internationally free own-door accommodation for asylum seekers.
And yet, it is true that almost everybody who has raised this obvious and simple problem in recent times has been denounced as some kind of far-right demagogue. A category into which, we can safely assume, nobody will now put Simon Coveney and Helen McEntee.
It should be obvious by now to anybody who pays the slightest bit of attention to the conduct and attitudes of the Irish establishment that “far right” is a meaningless phrase. It is not simply applied, for example, to people who detest Jews or who hold genuinely racist views. It simply is a catch-all term to apply to those who ask questions which people do not feel comfortable answering. It is applied to those who question gender ideology, and the idea that women can become men, and vice versa, simply by filling out a form. It is applied to those who question the wisdom of the country’s increasingly hysterical and unrealistic crusade on climate change. It is applied to those who questioned covid lockdowns. Now it is being applied to those who simply note that Ireland is inviting in many more migrants than it can ever hope to house.
These are not far right observations. They are observations that are simply obvious. And increasingly, they are vindicated by time.
In fact, over the past couple of years, the so-called “far right” view has been proven correct far more often than it has been proven wrong. Those who questioned the efficacy of covid vaccines, for example, in the face of mainstream assertions that the vaccines were “100% effective” were unquestionably correct, though they were smeared as far right for their troubles.
Those who noted that lockdowns were not doing much to reduce the instance of covid, too, have been proven correct by the data, though many still struggle to accept this: The removal of all covid restrictions had basically zero effect on case levels. But they too, were at times denounced as far right.
Ireland has an entire industry devoted to combatting the far right. There’s a state-funded “far right observatory”. The Journal is one of many media outlets that gets state funding to combat “fake news”, even as – as we saw last week – it regularly spreads it. There are new hate speech laws on the way to clamp down on those who make dangerous hate-filled statements that might incite hatred.
Statements, presumably, like “some migrants are abusing the immigration system”.
All of this – all of it – is a joke. So much so that when I hear somebody’s views described as “far right”, I increasingly assume that they must be a rock of common sense.
There is, of course, a genuine far right in Ireland – as there is almost everywhere. But it is tiny, and irrelevant. Go knock on some doors and tell the voters that Ireland is, for example, at the mercy of a global conspiracy of Jewish finance and see how many votes you get.
What we are seeing is not the growth of the far right, but a relentless effort to redefine almost any and all opposition to the “current thing” as far right and dangerous.
In a democracy, open debate is essential. It is not anti migrant to try and work out, in a national conversation, how many people we can reasonably help. That is, in fact, a sensible thing to do. It is not irresponsible to question the wisdom of – to cite the Matt Cooper show yesterday – banning people from owning two cars. It is a sensible thing to discuss the implications of that for both families, and “the planet”.
In Ireland we do not have open debate. Often, we do not even have the pretence of it. And that’s how Government ends up in the position it has ended up in this week: Pulling up the drawbridge on poor migrants, and accusing them of abusing the system.
But it’s not hate speech if they do it, is it?
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