These days you can hardly listen to the weather forecast without the term “far right” being given a mention: “Met Éireann have issued a warning that a Far-Right area of heavy pressure will bring unsettled weather directed at vulnerable minorities in coastal communities….”
I jest, but you may be surprised to find then that the prominence of the phrase in Irish public discourse does not date back that long. A search of the Kildare Street archive of Oireachtas debates, committees and questions reveals just 591 uses of the exact phrase. The first of these dates to 2003 when it was mentioned by Dana Rosemary Scallon who was then an MEP.
She merely employed it in a descriptive manner in referring to a European Parliament committee which she said was made up of “a very mixed group, from the far left to the far right.” She herself would likely be considered to be on the far right now based on her opposition to abortion – a measure of how freely the term is used.
The first pejorative use of the phrase was by Michael McDowell as Minister for Justice in 2004 when he contrasted the moving away by Irish people from “an introverted view of a homogeneous society” to the emergence of a “far right” in the Netherlands and elsewhere. His own party, the Progressive Democrats, was accused a few years later by Joan Burton of being free market extremists of the far right.
In 2005 Taoiseach Bertie Ahern blamed the defeat of the European Constitution in France on “a coalition of the far right and the far left.” On the same theme in a 2008 debate on the Lisbon Treaty Dara Calleary had a dig at Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh – whose party had yet to jump the broom and abandon its opposition to European federalism – by noting that the anti-Treaty side in Europe was associated with the “far right.”
Also in 2008 – and this is an indication of how the meaning of the phrase has mutated as with Joan Burton’s dig at the Progressive Democrats – Paschal Donohoe claimed that Alan Greenspan of the United States Federal Reserve was “far right” because he was a “libertarian in his views.” Which actually makes historic, if no other, sense as pro-market libertarians would have once been considered to be “far right.” Now, they are generally supporters of immigration based on the “free movement of capital and labour.”
It was the defeat of the referendum on Lisbon in June 2008 that kick started the “far right” scare. Within days of that slap in the gob for the establishment, Micheál Martin – who has grown very fond of the term indeed – noted how the French Communists and the “far right” were over the moon at the Irish electorate’s rejection. Of course, they had another referendum in 2009 so all was well.
The term fell into abeyance for a few years, other than occasional fretting by people like Dan Boyle of the Greens and Labour’s Joe Costello over support for the “far right” in Austria and other places – conjuring up images of a small chap with a bad moustache and a comb-over rather than addressing the growing disquiet over contemporary issues including migration that have nothing to do with the 1930s.
The current Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien – himself now under scrutiny for possible For Roysh deviancy on the housing statistics – could rejoice in 2016 that “Thankfully, we do not have far right parties.” Later that year, Communist TD Richard Boyd Barrett was the first to reveal that by God the far right had landed, and were whipping up fear and racism. So, he should be given due recognition, and maybe even An Post will stick him on a stamp. If only we had listened.
The New Sinn Féin Senator Paul Gavan, an admirer of the open and democratic country that is Communist Vietnam, predicted that “we will see the rise of the far right” unless there came to be a “broad political front for progress.”
After a lull, the term became more prevalent with Brexit being blamed on the “disgusting far right” and the rather pathetic spectacle of people from Fine Gael to Sinn Féin and the far left welcoming or decrying electoral setbacks and victories for the “far right” in Poland and elsewhere as if anyone in Poland or anywhere cared a fart in a bandbox what they think.
The Shinners were particularly prone to this following the takeover of their staffing by NGO types who have since led them into freefall as they discover that the real world is rather different from the students union bar and tweeting about totally irrelevant stuff from the 1930s.
The Far Right, however, mostly remained in the fantasy world of the infantile Left until the Great Covid Panic. It was really handy to have around then because the For Roysh was no longer lads who read the Turner Diaries but anyone who defied the draconian state measures – which were also hugely popular among the totalitarians of the Left for whom it was a vicarious taste of what it must have been like to be in Budapest in 1956 hunting down “the fash” with the secret police. Except the fash now might be Granny receiving forbidden visitors or the extremists who took their bowler for a walk on the beach.
We had former Labour TD Duncan Smith referring to “far right elements, conspiratorial elements and anti-health elements,” Communist Mick Barry claiming that the far right was endangering “the worker behind the counter in the shop” by not getting vaccinated, and SF TD Cullinane accusing the far right of breaking the consensus on public health.
Likewise, Lynn Boylan who considers left wing feminists who don’t think men can become women to be For Roysh TERFs was on No Pasarán overtime against those on the far right who were out to kill everyone stone dead with their germs and all. Leo Varadkar agreed with them on the nefarious role being played by the far right who numbered among them conspiracy theorists and certain media, ahem….
It’s been all systems go since, bolstered by a mainstream media and Home Office pals like Aoife Gallagher and co. Sometimes it leads – as with all other hysteria – to downright silliness. Such as when Senator Alice Mary Higgins shared the cautionary tale of a chap who “watched a video of a dance-off and then four videos later found himself or herself watching a video of some far right rally.”
Senator Higgins told this story at an Oireachtas Committee meeting at which she and other Leftist lovers of freedom were arguing in favour of stricter online censorship just in case some lad who sat down to watch the Sligo county final on his laptop didn’t end up being taught how to use M50 machine guns in a planned assault on her Da’s gaff in the Phoenix Park.
If we have learned anything from this brief genealogical exploration of the far right obsession cherished by our political representatives, it is that their definitions are to say the least loose. Not to say, unhistorical and unrelated to political theory.
While the current line is that “far right” is a long standing neutral term from political science it is in its current usage a relatively new concept, the purpose of which is as Camus and Nicolas, both of whom are of the Left, in their book on Far Right Politics in Europe state is to “disqualify and stigmatize all forms of partisan nationalism by reducing them to the historical experiments of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.”
What the current narrative, especially from the perspective of the Left, also does is to obscure the fact that it is the Marxist adjacent Left – which includes even those who have imbibed soy Marxism in its decadent phase – which shares almost all of the same features of totalitarianism as National Socialism. Not least, adoration of the state and the suppression of all dissent through extreme violence. These things we know.
If actual Nazis need people to forget Auschwitz, the far left and its sneaking regarders need people to forget the Gulags and the Chinese forced famines and Pol Pot. All pups off the same bitch, as my grandad was wont to say. They also need people to disremember the Communist collaboration with the actual Nazis.
It is an officially sanctioned historical distortion that “the Nazis started World War II” and that it was the “anti-fascist” Left who were their only opponents. The truth is of course that the German National Socialists began World War II in alliance with the Marxist Socialists of the Soviet Union when they both invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939. It was Polish Catholics, conservatives and democratic socialists who resisted both.
That alliance lasted for almost two years during which time the German armies came very close to winning the war in Europe. Mussolini likewise was inspired by the Bolshevik coup and had been on the far left of the Italian socialist movement. Mussolini and the Bolsheviks had mutual admirers here during our revolutionary period and on both republican and Free State sides. Ernie O’Malley asked for a photograph of Il Duce to be sent to him in Kilmainham when he was a prisoner during the Civil War.
Nuances and stuff all too complex for the Tik Tok minds of a generation of “Marxists” whose ideology is closer to Hilary Clinton than Rosa Luxemburg., let alone James Connolly.
What we also know is that yesterday’s For Roysh “dog whistles” can become – for Fine Gael and Sinn Féin at least – the basis for their preparations for the coming general election. So it is interesting to look back, and chortle, at their hysterics regarding what others were saying long before they decided we were right.