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Dublin City Council on Tuesday night decided to devote several hours to a special debate on “Misinformation and Public Safety.” Ah yes, Public Safety. The Jacobins had a Committee for Public Safety during the Terrorist phase of the French Revolution. It was responsible for the execution of thousands of people for crimes varying between owning nice stuff to being a priest or a nun; to having gotten on the wrong side of one of the thugs who were either on the Committee or had a pal on the Committee.
I am not suggesting that Independent Councillor Barry Heneghan has ambitions to be the Robespierre or St. Just of Clontarf but it is good to know the pedigree of such phraseology. And it is good for the good burghers of Dublin (not a typo) to rest content that at a time when they might be worried about trivia such as actual physical safety on the streets that their elected Council is engaged in what is in effect an ideological witch hunt, which some – not Councillor Heneghan in fairness – would like to see become a Star Chamber to be used against their political enemies. More of that anon.
The webcast can be watched here if you are of a mind to. After the Council Chief Executive Officer, Richard Shakespeare, set out the parameters and limits of what the Council can do in this respect and that they are bound by the law, Councillor Heneghan set the tone by suggesting that perhaps Councillors be made legally responsible for “misinformation.”
After Social Democrat Councillor Ennis spoke of some soccer team in East Wall as a model of diversity for the planet, Sinn Féin Councillor Janice Boylan cut to the chase by directly accusing unnamed members of the Council chamber of being guilty of misinforming people. Which took considerable chutzpah on a day on which her own party was under the spotlight for its less than open attitude to sharing information regarding such trivia as providing a reference for a child abuser.
After more of this, and a call by far left People Before Profit Councillor Reddy for the Council to take measures against social media companies, the CEO intervened to remind him and others that the Council is “not the social media police.”
Ballymun/Finglas Councillor Gavin Pepper, the target of many of the backers of the motion, provided his own take on misinformation. He listed some notable examples of misinformation targeting him, including claims that he was a landlord – and a false televised claim that he was responsible for a tweet which might have been taken as an incitement to violence.
He also referred to what he claims amounts to official misinformation and even disinformation on the children’s hospital, consultation on accommodation centres, and raised the treatment and even disappearance of children supposed to be under the care of TUSLA.
Several Councillors including Perry and Dunne seem to be living in some time warp where the “rich” are manipulating a “far right” to do down the “left.”
This is the same “left” which is almost entirely dependent on state and millionaire foundation money and is on the very same page as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on almost every issue from mass immigration to state censorship to abortion and effectively the central and dominant role of the EU and foreign capital built on “the free movement of capital and labour.”? Wake up and smell the cappuccino boys.
Malachy Steenson reminded some of the other parties present of the quicksand they stand upon when attempting to pontificate from the moral high ground. He also referred to what he claimed was the establishment misinformation on the two defeated referendums on the family. He said that he would not accept lectures from Sinn Féin in the light of its association with convicted gangster and former party Councillor Jonathan Dowdall.
Christy Burke who was the first Sinn Féin Councillor to be elected for generations in 1985 reminded the chamber and parties represented in the chamber of the treatment they had given him back then, including members walking out of the café when he entered. Janice missed the irony of this, I think, in her applause.
Burke also said that he would make no apologies for communities such as his own when they made valid criticisms and protests over concerns that needed to be addressed. He added that the expression of those concerns did not entitle others to call them racists.
Councillor Conaghan from Finglas also made a big thing – to rounds of applause from the very parties that Christy was referring to – about persons who hadn’t been supportive of nationalists in the north. Well, as he himself knows, the vast majority of people who voted for the candidates he refers to are former Sinn Féin voters. In addition, key former Sinn Féin election workers are also now on that side of the political divide.
I similarly fail to recall prominent persons of my vintage who are now Sinn Féin representatives and staff members having anything to do with Sinn Féin up until very recently. I suspect not a few of them will make their way back to the parties they were with prior to Sinn Féin’s decline in fortunes. Indeed, I suspect some of them never left those parties.
Councillor Reddy has let it be known that he has made a complaint to the ethics committee regarding an alleged phone call from Councillor Pepper – but also with regard to what to my ears and eyes would seem to be nothing more than the sort of heated exchange at a council area meeting which are little different to those that take place in many a political forum.
Another Councillor, John Lyons, also informed Tuesday’s meeting via zoom that he too was making a formal complaint. This prompted Reddy to return to his own issues and to state that the Council ought to be examining Pepper “to see if his behaviour is a pattern.”
The irony of this coming from the left – from the side of the political divide that has traditionally overlookled mass murder, torture, labour camps, the banning of religious expression, the destruction of the family, outlawing free trade unions, the militarisation of labour and so on and so forth when the perpetrators are reds like themselves.
So, when they attempt to ban and shut up their opponents in a democratic scenario it is really no more than a studenty union type of rehearsal for the day when they hope that they have real power.
In the meantime, they might at least have the good grace to stick on the Big Boy Pants and deal with the rest of us while we still have the opportunity to disagree with them whether it be in an elected assembly, through media or by means of legitimate protests.
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