Séamas O'Reilly: It is becoming harder to say that Ireland doesn’t have a problem with the far-right

Seamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

Growing up, it was quite rare to hear about Derry on the news. 

We seldom made it on to the telly in the Republic of Ireland, and didn’t exist at all in the UK press. 

It seemed odd to me that Derry’s population was similar to, or greater than, say, Oldham or Limerick or Hartlepool or Galway, and yet I never saw people from Derry on Bargain Hunt or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and would only see them on RTÉ during the sad, black and white bits of Reeling In The Years, or when our city’s (admittedly intermittent) successes in football would force the issue. 

It was, I supposed, a side-effect of a predominantly nationalist city in the north, caught between two stools of national news, and a corollary sense that we didn’t really belong in either.

So it was with extreme surprise that I heard we had been namechecked on Alex Jones’ conspiracy broadcast/bone pill shopping network InfoWars this week. (I say namechecked but he did apparently refer to Derry as Derby throughout his broadcast — but still, we’ll take what we can get.)

The reason for his sudden interest in Derry was due to the appointment of Lilian Seenoi-Barr as mayor, a position she’ll take up in June. 

Derry’s mayor is largely a symbolic post, granting its holder a single year in office, with holders appointed from a pool of councillors by the two largest parties at the last election. 

There was actually some supplementary intrigue in this story, namely that two of her competitors expressed distaste for the selection process, while — it must be stressed — wishing her well. 

Jones was not interested in that aspect of the story, however, so you might be wondering what it was that rendered the world’s most infamous conspiracy theorist even more red-faced than usual.

The reason is that Seenoi-Barr is originally from Kenya, a former refugee who last year became the first Black councillor ever elected in Northern Ireland, when she topped the poll for the SDLP in the Foyleside constituency. 

She is also a steadfast supporter of Black Lives Matter, and a vocal opponent of the surge in far-right agitators currently whipping up hatred against migrants and refugees across Ireland. 

This, it seems, was reason enough to decry her appointment as evidence of a new world order dismantling the democratic order from above.

“The WEF [World Economic Forum],” he tweeted to his 2.3m followers last week, “is now installing invaders as mayors in Ireland just like in London.” 

Infowars founder Alex Jones appears in court to testify during the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn., on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. A six-person jury reached a verdict Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022, saying that Jones should pay $965 million to 15 plaintiffs who suffered from his lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre. Jones and his company were found liable for damages last year. (Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File)

BEST KNOWN FOR HIS LIES

Jones is best known for his lies about the families of children murdered during the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. 

In 2022, he was ordered to pay $1.5bn (that’s billion with a ‘b’) in damages to said families, who he has repeatedly slandered as liars and crisis actors, alleging that the shooting of 26 innocent people was a “false flag” event designed to curtail Americans’ access to guns. 

In the two years since that judgment, he has failed to pay a dime, presumably because he was too busy boning up on the civic structure of Derry City & Strabane District Council, while continuing to offer 15 flavours of confected racist horseshit, and protein powders, to his tin-foil hat wearing viewers.

It was heartening to see people from Derry rejecting his nonsense, but the reaction of his usual fans was predictable. 

More notable, however, was the reaction of far-right types from the Republic, seemingly delighted to have their spiritual leader voicing their own incoherent hatred from his Texas-based bigotry mill.

I’m not going to quote them, but if you’ve been following the current discourse on refugees and minorities in Ireland, you can fill in the blanks.

Perhaps you saw Athletics Ireland turning off comments for the congratulations they offered Tallaght-born Rhasidat Adeleke this weekend, when she ran the fastest 100m ever run by an Irishwoman. 

Maybe you’ve seen the growing slew of influencer-activists filming themselves near refugee encampments, daubing “Irish Only” on vacant housing, or screaming homophobic abuse at Leo Varadkar from their cars.

We are, I would argue, at an impasse.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald during an interview at her office in Leinster House, Dublin. Members of the Sinn Féin party have adapted similar rhetoric to that used by far-right actors in recent weeks. Pic: Brian Lawless.

POLITICALLY COWARDLY AND INTELLECTUALLY BANKRUPT

It is becoming harder to say with a straight face that Ireland doesn’t have a problem with far-right politics, nor that this problem is not growing. 

It is not enough, as Sinn Féin did last week, to decry the more extreme acts of hatred, but also pledge yourselves to be opposed to “open borders”, deliberately appropriating the language of the far-right when discussing human beings seeking to make Ireland their new home.

It is both politically cowardly, and intellectually bankrupt to tacitly accept the premise that Ireland’s current problems with crime or housing are the fault of immigrants.

An Garda Síochána state there is no causal link whatsoever between increased migration and increased crime, whereas Ireland’s ongoing and real housing crisis is entirely the fault of decades of property speculation and sharp reductions in social housing. 

I may also add that it is patently absurd for Sinn Féin, a party literally predicated on the idea that a very specific border should be dismantled, to describe themselves as hardline border fans.

There is a temptation to view the impact of such types solely through the lens of their electoral success — thankfully, minimal to non-existent in most parts of the country — but this understates the danger they pose to our communities, even if they never get a deposit back in our lifetimes.

Crucially, however, this complacency ignores the fact that attempting to shore up your own political support by paying lip service to their false narratives, will only advance their cause of finding electoral successes similar to those currently seen across Europe and the United States. 

There’s no reason to believe we’re somehow uniquely placed to avoid the levels of legitimised bigotry that now blight countries across the planet. 

The time to reject it, as my fellow Derry people did this week, is now. 

I’m happy that Alex Jones doesn’t know enough about Ireland to get my hometown’s name right. 

We will not sleepwalk into making it a place he’d feel right at home.