IS THE FAR RIGHT MAKING A SURGE IN IRELAND?

One can only observe with distaste the tone of many protests in our capital city in recent weeks. While watching video footage on social media, one can clearly see how this campaign is progressing and is right out of the playbook used so often in Europe since the 1980s and also in America within the last few years. Concerns over immigration policies are legitimate and protest is a necessary part of our democratic process. What I see is a systematic whipping up of fear and emotion in the public to do the work of a core of right wing activists acting within the shadows. Now where have we seen this before? Ireland has experienced this tactic in recent years. We have seen examples in the recent past of protests being controlled in the margins by people that senior Gardaí have described as criminal elements of interest. The recent visit to Ireland of the notorious four-time imprisoned criminal Tommy Robinson only confirms my view.

Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson has a very impressive CV in the far right activist department. He was the co-founder of the English Defence League. The Vice Chair of the British Freedom Party. He was a prominent member of the neofascist party B.N.P. He organised the British chapter of a German far right organisation. He contributes to the ‘Rebel News’ – a Canadian far right website. A guest on the infamous American media programme ‘InfoWars’. This is the character that Dee Wall, who has led several of the re cent protests, welcomes to Ireland to ‘observe’ the protests and would have him as her son. Notorious,

Town Talk

a “full democracy” following its choice of a new President. Ireland is not anywhere there yet but the same M.O. is being used here.

With Keith Doyle

So why should we take stock of this movement’s agenda? Tapping into the anti-immigrant sentiment has grown traction in Europe. Italy has recently elected the most far right government since the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Last year in Sweden a political party with “neo-Nazi roots” received 20% of the votes. In France, Le Pen came close in the presidential election with 41% of the votes. Brussels has described Hungary as being no longer

Politics is a self-preservation society. We have seen this in England where the right wing of the Conservative Party feared the rise of the UKIP eating into their vote. This forced the government to have the Brexit vote which England are still suffering the after-shocks of today. In America, the G.O.P., Republican Party, has struggled with the far right agendas, resulting in “their man in the White House” and the storming of the capital. The common thread is to provoke fear and anxiety into communities. Stoke up the frightened public to do the campaigning for you while they carefully organise from the sidelines. This brings the agenda into the political mainstream. Politicians will take heed of the concerns of local people at a public meeting. This route will be exploited in Ireland.

There will be more protests, more intimidation and more violence and more public meetings. As for electoral success, I think there may be pockets of presence in some big urban areas in the next local elections, particularly in Dublin. There will not be any real breakthrough in Ireland nationally. The success the far right has experienced in other countries was due to their ability to harness the disaffected and disfranchised voters in difficult economic times. There is little room in this area for many gains as Sinn Féin has this sector firmly in their corner. n