On Thursday this week, I was due to speak at an event titled “Is Ireland Safe?” – a straightforward and necessary discussion on the reality of crime in modern Ireland.
Not migrant crime specifically, mind you – that is, of course, a legitimate issue which came up during the discussion, but it was not the particular focus of the event. This was merely an event to discuss crime, full-stop, including organised gang feuds, sentencing, prison spaces, policing priorities, and so on.
It was organised by Breaking Point, a new group seeking to revive political debate on important issues in Ireland. The venue was set for UCD.
Yet, in an irony so perfect it deserves a chef’s kiss, despite the event being planned weeks in advance, UCD cancelled at the eleventh hour the day before it was set to take place, citing concerns about potential disturbances on campus during the exam period.
In other words, an event titled “Is Ireland Safe?” appears to have been cancelled because the university apparently deemed it unsafe to host, believing it would lead to dramatic disruption for students.
If this is the case, one does have to wonder the wisdom of giving in to the heckler’s veto and handing control of free speech to fringe saboteurs whose sole mission in life appears to be ensuring they never hear a view they disagree with.
Enter stage left (pardon the pun), People Before Profit, whose UCD branch eagerly took credit for the cancellation. They celebrated the news on Instagram, announcing, “BREAKING POINT EVENT CANCELLED! Thank you to everyone who signed the letter on behalf of their society and emailed UCD! Only when standing together can we keep UCD an anti-racist campus” – punctuated with a triumphant raised-fist emoji.
Nothing remotely racist was on the agenda, of course – this was, as we have all come to expect in modern Ireland, merely the go-to insipid smokescreen deployed by self-righteous activists with too much time on their hands who are desperate to muzzle opponents.
But despite this craven attempt at censorship, a new venue was quickly found (to the credit of the organisers), and the event proceeded as planned at a Dublin hotel. It unsurprisingly sold out with a packed room.
Far from the chaos and disorder predicted by critics, the discussion went ahead without a hitch. If anything, the event benefited from the controversy.
But it’s telling that for all the talk about the threat posed by so-called “far-right” radicals, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the real threat to freedom of assembly and press freedom in this country comes from the quarter of the Soviet-style Left. We see time and time again that we have self-appointed ideological commissars who represent nobody but themselves, acting like they have a divine right to police public discourse, and yet who manage to somehow claim victimhood at the same time when you offer the slightest pushback to their infantile behaviour.
Despite their feverish attempts to end discussions they dislike, radical authoritarians failed this week. They failed to shut down this event, and they will continue to fail. People in Ireland are increasingly fed up with sanctimonious “crybullies,” whose political methods amount to little more than spittle-flecked ranting and dirty tricks to end conversations they find uncomfortable, all wrapped in the guise of faux-moral superiority.
The truth is, if freedom in Ireland is threatened by some shadowy force, it’s not by ordinary citizens or people with reasonable dissenting views outside the Overton window. It’s by those who are intolerant of differing opinions and who cynically weaponise notions of “safety” as a flimsy pretext for blatant censorship, because they know they have no real argument and would be flattened in open debate.
As Thursday demonstrated, the conversation will continue – whether they like it or not.