Extremism will be price to pay if we allow continual devaluing of politics

The hard left’s depiction of the mainstream parties here has echoes of Trump’s ‘drain the Washington swamp’ cry, writes

THERE has been no shortage of hand-wringing commentary in recent days, despairing as to how we stop the inexorable move towards the far right in Ireland. Nonsense.

What happened last weekend on Grafton Street was certainly disgraceful and dangerous. But the anguish that it is a harbinger for the rise of fascist forces in Ireland is ludicrously premature.

The reality is there is currently zero threat of the rise of the far right here. There isn’t one elected official in the country, even at local council level, touching with a barge poll any of the wacky policies being advocated at this “protest”.

Of course, the hard left love to talk up this threat.

Some of the stuff you read online suggests they actually believe that they are recreating a modern-day version of the 1936 battle for Cable Street — when the odious Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists’ attempt to march through London’s main Jewish neighbourhood was resisted. They seem to believe they are all that stands (or ‘sits’ in the case of the keyboard warriors) between Ireland and fascism.

The reality, thankfully, is that there is no Oswald Mosley-type figure in Ireland today, or anything close to it. Yet even soft left figures tend to buy into all this nonsense — hence the outrage when the Garda Commissioner incorrectly said that far left figures had also been present on Grafton Street.

Of course, the rise of extremism is something every democracy needs to be vigilant against. But don’t mistake what happened last weekend as anything other than a public order issue — albeit a very serious one where lives could have been lost. The 2006 riots, in response to the Love Ulster march, was not a portent of the rise of militant, hard left republicanism. Nor is the Grafton Street riot the beginning of far right totalitarianism.

What is undeniable is that there is a growing sense of alienation and disenfranchisement among sections of the electorate and that was in evidence at the protest on Grafton Street. That does have the potential long term to be dangerous for our democracy.

The causes of that alienation are many and include the fallout from the economic and banking collapse, a dysfunctional housing market and the rise of the gig economy — issues that need to be addressed.

But some of the alienation has also been fuelled by the populist debasing and denigration of politics and politicians that has become rampant, particularly on social media, in recent years. For that, the hard left has to take the lion’s share of responsibility.

The notion of civility in public life is scoffed at today. At every opportunity, politics is devalued, centrist parties such as FG and FF are branded “right wing” and “uncaring”, part of an insider elite, lining the pockets of their friends at the expense of the common man and woman. Left-of-centre parties such as the Greens and Labour are smeared for ‘corrupting themselves’ by going into government. Even elected politicians frequently talk about bypassing the Oireachtas and taking their protest to the streets.

Nor are conspiracy theories the sole remit of the far right. If you believe otherwise, check out social media, where the abuse towards government politicians is jaw-droppingly vicious — and at times seems orchestrated.

Let’s not forget also that it wasn’t the far right that picketed the homes of senior ministers in recent years.

Even moderate left politicians fall into the trap of demanding, as Soc-Dem TD Gary Gannon did last week, that political discourse should be “binary” (don’t ask, I’m not entirely sure what it means). He was criticising RTÉ’s Prime Time for having a “centre right” Fine Gael TD debate the riot with a figure from “the conservative right”, arguing that shouldn’t be the “choice”. Meanwhile, Sinn Féin TD Réada Cronin blamed the “incompetence of FF-FG-GP in a pandemic, aided and abetted by a few shitehawks in the media” for the flourishing of the far right.

Those on the hard (and not so hard) left desperately want the kind of identity or “binary” politics that sadly is now the norm in the US — where both extremes hurl abuse at each other and “debate” only occurs in segregated social media echo chambers.

They complain about the media “platforming” certain individuals, which means interviewing people they don’t agree with and don’t want to see on the airwaves. That’s a far cry from their trenchant opposition to Section 31, which refused a “platform” to SF during the Troubles.

The inevitable impact of all of this is to undermine confidence in politics and taint anybody who has ever served in government. How is the hard left’s depiction of the mainstream parties here different from Donald Trump’s cry to “drain the Washington swamp”? Both have the potential to drive people away to the extremes on either the far left or right.

We’re not, mercifully, at that point right now. But if influential figures continue to encourage people to believe that so-called establishment politicians are enemies of people, then there will be a price to pay at some point. We will get our Trump, and whether that figure is on the far left or far right, there will really be genuine cause to worry about our democracy.

‘Let’s not forget it wasn’t the far right that picketed homes of ministers’