If you menace people in their homes then accept being labelled a ‘far-right fascist’

We are living in strange times. Angry times. It’s a weird period in our history where it often feels as if all the old rules of civilised behaviour and reasonable engagement have been discarded and the mob has now decided that it has the right to do whatever it wants and woe betide anyone who disagrees with it, its actions or behaviour.

We saw a perfect example of that last week when a group of menacing masked protesters turned up outside Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s house with the express and explicit intent of intimidating him.

It made for a disgusting spectacle.

It doesn’t matter what you may think of any individual politician – and I certainly wouldn’t be voting for him if he were in my constituency – but there has always been a code of conduct about protests that was respected by everyone. Those halcyon days now seem long gone.

Many Irish politicians have been subjected to such behaviour in recent years. New Taoiseach Simon Harris suffered a similar breach of his privacy and right to a family life a few years ago.

Mary Lou McDonald, Paul Murphy and Eamon Ryan have also suffered similar ordeals.

As it happens, the masked mob that gathered outside O’Gorman’s house were protesting about immigration before they were ushered away by gardaí. What on earth did they think they were going to achieve with this action?

Lots of Irish people have legitimate concerns about the levels of immigration. They have concerns about our desperate failure to deal with the housing crisis. They are worried about schools and hospitals and are furious about precious local amenities such as hotels and other venues being shuttered to house asylum-seekers at the expense of the local community.

None of these concerns is unreasonable. They also don’t deserve to be smeared as “far right” or even Nazis by smug, middle-class leftists who live in the leafier areas of Dublin that will never be impacted by mass immigration.

But all of those legitimate arguments and concerns go out the window when a bullying mob hounds an elected representative outside his private dwelling.

After all, if you don’t want to be dismissed as far right, fascist or Nazi, then don’t behave like one.

I’m a big believer in the right to protest and the freedom of assembly. God knows, I went on enough marches and demonstrations when I was younger. But it would genuinely never have crossed my mind, or the minds of my fellow protesters, to venture to someone’s home to shout abuse at them.

Of this, I have some unfortunate experience. A few years ago, when I was subjected to a series of death threats by Islamist extremists, I was concerned about a car full of people that had parked outside my driveway. My address had been leaked online and these idiots thought a good way to spend their Sunday afternoon was to try to intimidate me. I’m not ashamed to say that I walked out and threatened to break their window if they didn’t leave.

They eventually moved on, but I was unnerved and unsettled and, most importantly, I was worried about my wife.

After all, while I’m a big boy and have to take the slings and arrows of frequently robust debate, she is a private citizen with no interest in the issues I tend to engage with. Perhaps irrationally, I felt guilty about bringing such trouble to her doorstep and I imagine those politicians who have been targeted feel the same.

Indeed, one politician I occasionally meet once told me that his wife was so freaked out by repeated threats to picket outside their house that she was prepared to throw a bucket of bleach over them – an act which, given our flawed legal system, would probably have seen her charged with assault.

So where did this flagrant and wanton disregard for the previously accepted rules of normal behaviour come from? When did we reach such a low?

Well, like everything that is rotten in today’s society, all roads tend to lead back to social media, where anonymous cowards feel they have the right to hurl the vilest abuse at anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs.

The internet may well have been the greatest invention of the last 100 years, but its mutant offspring, social media, is surely the worst.

It allows cranks and idiots to fan each other’s flames. How many of those goons who turned up outside O’Gorman’s house, or Paul Murphy’s house, or any of the other numerous politicians, met on social media and decided that this was the best way to make their point?

But one of the worst aspects of such disgraceful antics is that it completely demolishes their argument.

As I wrote at the top of this piece, many of us have legitimate concerns about the way society is going.

But what person in their right mind wants to be associated with people wearing balaclavas, gathering and shouting abuse at innocent civilians who are cowering inside their own home?

There has been much talk in recent days of the laws being tightened to restrict such activities, but as ever, we should always be wary when politicians talk about tightening laws.

That can lead to unintended consequences as we have seen with Scotland’s recently introduced hate-speech legislation (and we will witness it here if our own similar bill is passed).

Why can’t we go back to expressing your opinion as loudly as you like – but leaving the families out of it?

As an old New York friend of mine liked to say – “just be cool”. And for God’s sake, stay away from people’s houses...

“So where did this flagrant and wanton disregard for the previously accepted rules of normal behaviour come from? When did we reach such a low? Well, like everything that is rotten in today’s society, all roads lead back to social media”