For those who monitor far-right activity, extremism, disinformation and hate, and track its tactics and playbook, what has been happening in Ireland over the past few years must be a disheartening frustrating experience.
The media and political narrative is framing “immigration” as an “issue”. Yet the conflation of a refugee and asylum-seeker accommodation crisis underpinned by the broader housing crisis with general “immigration” is not just simplistic, it’s factually incorrect.
Immigration, as has been said countless times before, keeps the country running. Now it is being framed as something we must “tackle”. Ireland is already a diverse society, not that you’d know that from the “debates” in media and politics largely devoid of immigrants themselves.
So is this really the issue of our time? Mad how that happened, isn’t it? Maybe we should look at some of the authentic issues, not the mere rhetorical ones.
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Ireland’s main domestic “issue” is, of course, housing. The tentacles of the housing crisis reach almost every aspect of society. It creates a sharp atmosphere of stress and strain. Its escalating white noise causes social tinnitus.
There is a sense – and a reality – that space is so scarce people are competing for resources. And they are. People are competing with funds and private companies block-buying housing. They are competing with everyone queuing to view a flat for rent. They are competing with the generational wealth of others. They are also not in control of the housing policy negatively affecting their lives – and given the opportunity vast swathes will vote with that issue in mind and change the landscape of Irish political power, maybe forever.
If I were a cynical, nihilistic, far-right agitator, hell-bent on seeding division, housing would be the drum I’d beat. The clichés are abundant; Ireland is full, there’s no room for these people, they’re taking “our” prospective homes, why should “they” get somewhere to sleep when your adult child is still in the box room? This misdirection – blaming asylum seekers and refugees for scarcity when it is the result of Government policy – is a tale as old as time. But it doesn’t work unless people are primed.
So how are people primed?
If there was no Europe-wide refugee crisis, no Irish housing crisis, and if buildings meant for local amenities weren’t needed by Government for accommodation due to the housing crisis, I doubt that, even with all the disinformation tactics we understand, the churning up of the racism that exists in Irish society (as it does everywhere) would gain as much purchase.
Yet in 2004 we did not have today’s housing crisis and a referendum campaign gave a platform to discourse on Irish citizenship that had racist undertones. Like seismic activity, all this stuff operates under the surface. Find the fault line, apply the pressure, hit the weak spots, and it erupts.
When I see “local” protests consistently infiltrated by vindictive and dangerous far-right agitators who have no connection to these communities, I wonder what the media and political reaction would be if those protesting looked, you know, a bit different? What if black Irish youths were holding protests that ended in arson? What if Muslims in Ireland were manning the barricades? Would it then be framed by identity? Perhaps it would even be seen as extremism.
And yet today some white Irish people seem to minimise, rationalise and excuse such protests when they’re presented in a familiar, relatable body and accent. Plenty of people are horrified, of course. “The sad truth,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
What we have seen in recent months is a violent crime wave emerging from a combination of tactical far-right agitation online and offline. There have been contagion-protests, often culminating in instances of harassment, blockade-building, intimidation, property damage and arson. And in Dublin last November there was a full-blown riot. Three broad strands of media commentary have sprung up around this.
Firstly, there is decent expert, fact-focused reporting that interrogates the tactics, playbook, moving parts, and looks at how a situation cascades. This strand is rarer than it should be.
Secondly, there is a strand that minimises, offers myopic framing of incidents as though they’re occurring in a vacuum and not part of a broader pattern.
Thirdly, there is the inaccurate takeaway of “immigration” as an “issue”. Immigration is a fact. How it is leveraged – and what factors underpin that – is the issue.
We are sleepwalking into something very dodgy here, and have been for some time. People need to think beyond the catchphrases. People need to imagine how it feels for immigrants – people in our families, our neighbours, our co-workers, our friends – to be seen as “an issue”. We hear a lot about what the fingers are pointing at, much less about who’s doing the pointing.
Bigotry is going unchecked. Political appeasement is kicking in with an eye on the ballot box. At some point the media narratives, the political sphere, and those who do not self-declare as xenophobic or racist but participate at the outset of the arson crime wave are going to have to have a second thought beyond the first.
Is “immigration” an “issue”? Is it really so simple that – go tobann – this is something we’ve decided to care about? Or are there not obvious moving parts culminating in exactly how the far-right wants things framed?