The coverage of the Dublin Riots or the Rise of the Hard Right depending on who you are listening to, has been quite hysterical. It has overshadowed any commentary on just how it came to be that a five year old girl and other school children were stabbed in broad daylight when leaving school in Dublin city. Or as the Irish Independent called it, “the Parnell Square stab attack.”
If you read this paragraph, from the same report, you would think that the person who did the stabbing was actually a victim. “A female creche worker and a five-year-old girl are in a serious condition after the incident on Parnell Square. Two other children suffered lesser injuries. A man, who is currently under guard, also suffered injuries during the incident. He is currently in an unnamed hospital in the city.”
So Parnell Square itself did the stabbing, and a creche worker, a five year old girl, 2 children and ‘a man’ were also injured in the incident? Confused? I am.
What I found most surprising about the commentary on these opportunistic criminals or “Far Right thugs” is just how naïve and childish much of Irish opinion is. Naïve, childish and also completely hysterical.
Overall, there just seems to be an assumption that Ireland is special, therefore it should never ever experience opportunistic criminality like what occurred last Thursday evening. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris ‘confirmed a total of 34 arrests for public order offences so far.” More arrests were made later.
Harris said 13 shops were significantly damaged or subject to looting, 11 garda vehicles were destroyed through arson or extensively damaged, three Dublin Buses were destroyed and a Luas tram.” According to the Irish Independent, “At the height of the violence, around 400 gardaí were dealing with what has been described as “mayhem” on the northside of Dublin city centre.
Multiple sources have expressed deep concern that many of these officers were not issued with helmets and had no formal training in how to deal with a major public order incident. Sources say the scenes were “unprecedented in this country” and even led to a bizarre situation where garda units were calling other units “looking for pepper spray” It took many hours for gardaí to take control of the situation.”
Reassuring? I think not.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris seemed to be flummoxed at the thought that such criminality could happen here: “An Garda Síochána responded to this entirely and in an extraordinary fashion. Members from across the country responded, returned to duty, public order units from all over Ireland responded to Dublin.
“But we could not have anticipated that in response to a terrible crime, the stabbing of school children and their teacher, that this would be the response. In effect, those filled with hate and the hate directed towards An Garda Síochána, that they would attempt to storm through our cordon and disrupt a crime scene and then engage in violence, looting and disorder.
And also, “We have not seen a public order situation like this before, this may be behaviour that is apparent in other countries, but I think that we’ve seen an element of radicalisation.”
Really? Why’s that then? Because you think Ireland is special and unique and completely immune to the political earthquakes that have hit other European countries in the response to mass immigration, including the liberal Dutch? Drew Harris must live in some fairy land where if you say céad míle fáilte enough times, everyone everywhere will toe the line.
I think this is why I find most of the commentary such as this by Fintan O’Toole so irritating:
“These pitiful thugs are not us. They do not act for us, speak for us or burn buses for us’”
It is true that the thugs burning buses did not do so in the name of Fintan O’Toole. They probably hadn’t thought much about who they were burning buses for, burning buses is just something lawless thugs do. But maybe there is some motivation behind it that might be worth talking about.
Usually, on the left when there is criminality, they are falling over themselves to understand they why and the who, and the motivation. They just can’t stop talking about the motivation behind the ‘mostly peaceful’ Black Lives Matters protest that also involved at times widespread looting and burning of stuff. Even with Israel and Palestine people felt the need to consider the mass rape, torture, murder and burning of whole families, in the ‘context’ of the entire region and history of the event.
Today, very few on the left were seeking to find motivations behind Thursday’s Dublin Riots. Why bother? They are just thugs. As I said all the Garda Commissioner could shout was ‘right wing hate’ while also being bamboozled that anything like this could happen in Ireland (This is IRELAND for goodness’ sake, they voted for gay marriage!)
All the politicians did in the aftermath was run around shouting Far Right and let’s have more Hate Speech laws and Social Media is evil etc.
I mean it’s a strategy, I guess. But don’t expect it to solve any problems. If you think tighter laws on “hate speech” is going to stop thugs setting a Luas on fire, then I say good luck to you. But it is probably worth bearing in mind that there are actual laws against criminal damage and arson and that didn’t stop them either.
Like I said, the commentary has been naïve and childlike. There is nothing special about Ireland. It has its own criminals like every other country and being hip and modern isn’t going to protect you from them. If there is something deeper behind their motivation to set things on fire then it might be worth finding that out.
This article was originally published on her substack and is republished here with her permission.