Last week, speaking to reporters, the Taoiseach said the following:
“the type of language that we’re experiencing around ‘Ireland for the Irish’ and all of that is now having an impact where violence is happening, and it’s tantamount to an incitement.”
If you doubt the context or want to read more of his comments, Ben’s original report is here.
In fairness to Mr. Martin, the logic of his statement is impeccable. There are many problems with his comment but it being illogical is not one of them. You can follow it easily: When somebody says “Ireland for the Irish” that could easily be taken statement that non-Irish people do not belong in Ireland. And if somebody does not belong in Ireland, why not do them harm to ensure that they leave?
There you go. That’s how you get “tantamount to incitement”. A lack of logic is not Mr. Martin’s problem.
No, the problem is some combination of mendacity, snobbery, and stupidity.
Because that logic – calling a political statement “tantamount to incitement” – can be applied to almost any political statement. Here’s one: “Fianna Fáil ruined the Irish economy and caused tens of thousands of Irish young people to have to flee the country due to their incompetence”.
One might see how somebody, hearing and understanding the full meaning of that statement, might come to believe that if Fianna Fáilers are a danger to the country, one should do them harm to ensure that they do not govern it. Here’s another one: “Socialism is a dangerous ideology”.
If the holders of a belief system are dangerous by virtue of the beliefs they hold, then surely some people might be tantamount to incited to do harm to socialists.
Here’s the point: Per Mr. Martin’s logic, almost any oppositional political statement is tantamount to incitement.
There are a few things happening here that explain why the Taoiseach would say, and probably sincerely believes, such a remarkably stupid thing.
The first explanation is the most obvious: That he’s not so much commenting on the statement itself as he is commenting on the kind of people who might utter it. He himself, evidently, would not be incited to violence by the words “Ireland for the Irish”, but he fears that you, you Gript-reading droog, are not as sophisticated and refined as he, and are probably looking for any old excuse to start whacking foreigners.
Campaigns to restrict speech in general tend to be politically motivated – to suppress certain ideas. In Ireland, that is also the case but there’s the added and perennial factor of plain old class snobbery: Somebody like me can get away with saying “Ireland for the Irish” if I so choose because no matter how much of a class traitor I might be, I am still a relatively well-spoken Trinity head. No, the real problem comes when Anto from The Flats says “Ireland for the Irish” in that accent. You know the one. That’s when it goes from “disgraceful dog whistle” to “tantamount to incitement to violence”.
The second explanation is that Mr. Martin really does think, to coin a phrase, that “words can be violence”. That is because Mr. Martin is one of that generation of Irish leaders who thinks that words are all that matter. Words, after all, are all that he is there to do. He issues condemnations and he speaks at commemorations and he came of age in a political era on this island where real political maturity was measured in how nice you could be in your words to Orangemen. He’s not in the business of violence, or the business of action, or the business of delivery. He’s in the business of blather. The most violent thing you can do, in his profession, is to use your words. He has no problem using them to batter his political opponents around the head. He uses words as a weapon, so the idea of language as violence comes naturally to him.
The third explanation of course is that calling words incitement to violence is much easier than engaging with them and deconstructing them. Here’s a question: If “Ireland for the Irish” is wrong, then what is the correct statement? “Ireland for Everybody”? “Ireland for the Multinationals”? “Ireland for the huddled masses of the middle east”?
One thing Mr. Martin achieves, when he says that “Ireland for the Irish” is “tantamount to incitement” is to ensure that not one radio interviewer or television presenter will ever dare ask him for his explanation of who Ireland is for. This is a country full of people in the media forever looking over their shoulder in terror of saying the wrong thing or airing the wrong opinion or being seen to have advocated for the wrong kind of view. Mr. Martin has just told them that “Ireland for the Irish” is one of those statements that cannot be defended, and as such he can now be certain that he’ll never be subjected to a thorny exploration of its merits before the public.
That last point is the only reason why Martin’s comments can’t be mocked as mindless blabber: He is the Taoiseach of the country. His mendacity and intellectual hollowness matters. It sets the tone. He has what the Americans describe as the “bully pulpit”, and in this case he is using it quite literally, to bully a chunk of the population by describing their expression of a perfectly normal sentiment as incitement to violence.
But it’s not: “Ireland for the Irish” is essentially the foundational sentiment of Irish political thought since the days of the Norman invasion. The highest aspiration of the population of this island for a millennium has been to have a country of their own. Now that we have it, on paper, it is no less legitimate to want to keep it.
The Taoiseach cannot muster an argument against the phrase. That’s why he has resorted to the whinger’s tactic of pretending that it is illegitimate.