If you are a parent of children, you may have been alarmed yesterday by a startling headline blared across the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster: “Over half of young people seeing extremist content online – study”.
The report cites a study conducted – with your money naturally – by one of the state’s many other taxpayer funded institutions, the Ombudsman for Children’s Office. That institution, headed by a chap called Niall Muldoon, exists in its own words to “to protect the rights of children and young people in Ireland.” It does this by “investigating complaints about services provided to children by public organisations.”
In other words, it is designed to be a kind of watchdog body for institutions like Tusla, which last week told the Oireachtas that it was pretty proud of the fact that only a minority of children in its care actually go missing on a regular basis.
You might be surprised then to know that the Office of the Ombudsman for Children has issued 25 press releases to the media this year, not even one of which primarily concerned the performance of Tusla. It did however issue a press statement about how all its staff have received equality training, and another one – somewhat incongruously – calling on the government to introduce additional taxes on people with second homes.
Browse its press releases and you’ll get the picture: Lots of calls for more funding for this or that, most especially if the this or that in question relates in some way to services for asylum seekers. But I digress.
The findings of this latest study on “extremism” are stark. As RTE dutifully tells us:
“Six in 10 young people are seeing extremist content online, according to a new study by the Ombudsman for Children’s Office.
Discrimination and a revival of traditional gender roles are all being seen regularly by young people, while a quarter of children surveyed say their friends have views that would be considered extreme.
A total of 626 children aged 12-18 years from 28 secondary schools around Ireland took part in the survey, discussing how they felt about being exposed to extremist content online.”
“Would be considered extreme” is one of those wonderful phrases often inserted into news reports that invite the reader to entirely ignore the passive voice in the statement. You might notice, if you look closely, some missing information: Would be considered extreme… by whom?
Hoping for an answer to this question, I went and vainly searched through the survey itself, which was clearly laid out by one of those Dublin Marketing firms that earn a living laying out endless reports for Government-funded agencies.
There are 18 questions laid out in the survey, not one of which invites young people to explain what they consider “extremism” to be. Further, participation in the survey was voluntary and self-selecting, meaning that it cannot be scientifically adjudicated as valid. Intuition and common sense – and indeed science – tells us that people who voluntarily take part in self-selecting surveys tend to be disproportionately interested in and concerned by the topic of the survey itself.
We do get some clues as to what might be considered extremism in the conclusions to the report:
“Make no mistake that much of the sentiment on display during the Dublin riots and the attacks on IPAS centres is racism thinly disguised as ‘concern’ and it needs to be called out as such. Many of the young people we surveyed talk about how discriminatory ‘jokes’ are becoming more commonplace, and worryingly some of their comments accept as facts things that are not true, or at least not 100% accurate….
….Worryingly we are also seeing that a sentiment around a return to so-called ‘traditional’ gender roles is gaining traction, suggesting the need for discussions around gender at home and at school.”
That’s pretty much all the information provided in the report about what “extremism” might be. Check it out yourself if you do not believe me.
Now, you’ll note here that the first paragraph above is not the voice of children but the voice of the Ombudsman’s Office, which seems to be concerning itself with immigration and integration policy, and deciding that people “accepting as facts things that are… at least not 100% accurate” is the problem with extremism in Ireland’s children.
Then we are told that a sentiment around “returning to traditional gender roles” is “gaining traction”, and that there needs to be more discussion around this, presumably so that it may be combatted.
That, my friends, is it: That is the sole description of “extremism” provided in this report. Which nevertheless goes on to say that:
“The Government should further explore the growth of extremist views amongst children and put in place a plan to tackle this problem from an early age. 69% of the young people we spoke to agree that discrimination is an issue in Ireland today. In the current climate of shifting ttitudes and misinformation, it is more important than ever to bed down our commitment to human rights and decency, and we all have a role to play.
The findings of our survey highlight a clear link between extremist views and online. Therefore with the growth of the AI landscape in particular, the Government and regulators must hold social media companies to account”
You will note a few things about these conclusions, I hope.
First, of course, there is something that taxpayer funded groups always, unfailingly do: There is the call for more money for themselves. This is usually disguised, as it is here: “The Government should further explore the growth of extremist views amongst children” – and how do we think this might be accomplished? Why, by more funding for the Office of the Ombudsman for Children to do research, of course.
Then there is some self-serving preaching: “In the current climate of shifting ttitudes and misinformation, it is more important than ever to bed down our commitment to human rights and decency, and we all have a role to play.” That’s the “we’re the good guys” line that needs to go into most taxpayer-funded productions.
And finally, there’s the call – conveniently echoed by just about every other taxpayer funded organisation – to regulate the internet and tackle misinformation.
Yet you will note that the source of the misinformation in this case comes from two taxpayer funded bodies: The Ombudsman for Children, and RTE. Together, they have combined to inform parents that their children are being exposed to “extreme views” – but neither of them tell those parents that by “extreme views” they mean some skepticism about immigration and a gentle re-evaluation of progressive attitudes to gender roles in society. Do most parents think that it is “extreme” to believe that kids do better with stay-at-home mums? I’m not sure they do, even if they disagree with the proposition.
Yesterday, Cormac Lucey wrote on this page about the inefficiencies plaguing Ireland. One of those is the sheer number of taxpayer funded bodies, all of which spend most of their time producing reports advancing a particular left-wing view of society, in concert with each other.
The Office of the Ombudsman for Children is supposed to be a watch-dog for children. I repeate: It has issued not one statement this year directly engaging with Tusla, or condemning it. But it has multiple statements on issues of political concern to the left. And now it has produced an unscientific junk survey and laundered it through another taxpayer funded media outlet.
This is all a racket, and one which very many people have a huge stake in maintaining.