Sometimes the Irish online left shows you exactly what they are, and last weekend they received the backlash they deserved for the vile attacks they attempted on Ryan Casey, who was Ashling Murphy’s boyfriend when she was brutally murdered by Jozef Puška, a 31-year-old Slovak Romani, in 2022.
It’s difficult to understand the mindset of those who take to social media with such venom, attempting to whip up hatred against a young man because he persists in his belief that he has a right to express “genuine interest and concerns about the direction our country is heading”.
Ryan Casey wrote that he had travelled to the U.S. where he was “given the opportunity to engage to discuss areas of concern that I feel passionate about and where I feel, not just on a personal level, but also at a national level, we as a country have been utterly failed in the past and are continuing to be utterly failed”.
“I also took the opportunity to promote Ireland, to promote our culture and promote our strong communal values that shape our national identity,” he said. “I strongly highlighted the importance that the next 5-10 years will be in maintaining and preserving Ireland’s historical homogenous society, which is a defining part of who we are, and how critical it is that we protect and honour it for future generations to come.”
“This trip truly highlighted the importance of having a close relationship between our two countries, a relationship that is built on mutual respect, shared history, shared values, and a commitment to working together on areas of common interest,” he said.
But when he posted news of his trip he was called “nazi scum” and a “fascist”, and subjected to the usual thuggish attempts at bullying for expressing views that, according to opinion polls, the vast majority of the country hold.
As I noted previously, those who have sought to diminish and distort Ryan Casey’s words, to make of them something ugly when they are, in fact, a resonating plea for honesty and re-evaluation, are not just attacking the truth of his words but adding to the weight of his grief.
Ashling Murphy’s murder transfixed and horrified the nation. She was just 23 years old, a beautiful young woman, a beloved teacher and a hugely talented traditional musician from a decent, hardworking, loving family. She had her whole life ahead of her that terrible day when she decided to go for a run and was stabbed to death by a man who, as Ryan Casey pointed out, had been in this country for almost a decade, but had never contributed to society in any way, shape or form. It is worth reminding ourselves of his powerful words in his victim impact statement – the words the media tried to suppress.
It just sickens me to the core that someone can come to this country, be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years – over 10 years – never hold down a legitimate job and never once contribute to society in any way shape or form [and] can commit such a horrendous, evil act of incomprehensible violence on such a beautiful, loving and talented person who in fact, worked for the State, educating the next generation and represented everything that is good about Irish society.
I feel like this country is no longer the country that Ashling and I grew up in and has officially lost its innocence when a crime of this magnitude can be perpetrated in broad daylight.
This country needs to wake up; this time things have got to change.
We have to, once and for all, start putting the safety of not only Irish people but everybody in this country who works hard, pays taxes, raises families and overall contributes to society, first.
We don’t want to see any other family in this country go through what we have gone through and are continuing to go through.
I myself have a little sister and honestly, just the thought of her walking the streets of any village, town or city in this country alone makes me physically sick and quite frankly absolutely terrifies me as this country is simply not safe anymore.
This time, if real change does not happen, if the safety of people living in this country is further ignored, I’m afraid our country is heading down a very dangerous path and you can be certain that we will not be the last family to be in this position.
After Ashling’s murder, it felt as if the entire country grieved the heartbreak of her family and of Ryan Casey. We wanted to somehow try to ease their unbearable burden, to comfort them as they faced the devastating reality that their daughter and sweetheart had been robbed from them by such evil.
But there were others who from the very beginning who sought to suppress the full truth about her murder, to deflect from her killer’s nationality by insisting that this was about the misogyny of Irish men. And then there was the deplorable decision by much of the Irish media to deliberately censor and silence the words Ryan Casey spoke when he got to the heart of the matter: that he felt our country was not safe any longer.
That resentment amongst the media spilled over into the now infamous Kitty Holland interview on BBC where the Irish Times journalist accused Ryan Casey’s words of amounting to “incitement to hatred”. He was, of course, was doing no such thing – rather he was challenging hatred, calling it to account, seeking to protect us from it.
When the BBC was forced to apologise, Ryan said that he took the legal action “not solely out of anger, but out of a need for accountability and dignity for Ashling, for myself, our families, and for all victims who deserve to have their voices heard without such harsh criticism or judgment.”
“This was never just about me, it was about truth, fairness, and decency,” he added. He is clearly still on that quest, and he will not allow those who disagree to simply shout him down.
It was heartening to see the support for him at the weekend, with a chorus of voices defending him against his detractors and excoriating the hatemongers for harassment of a bereaved young man who refuses to be silenced. “Zero tolerance for anyone ‘criticising migration’. It’s always thinly veiled racism,” was the idiotic but pernicious post from one ‘antifash’ moron. They might have got away with such belligerence in the time when twitter mobs had the power to ruin people’s careers, their prospects, and sometimes even sometimes their lives, but the tide has turned if the reaction on social media was anything to go by.
Those days have gone, or at least the power to bully and demonise has been diminished, largely because people like Ryan Casey and others refused to be cowed. Their voices are of the utmost importance in these turbulent and defining times.