Violent extremism - We ignore ethnic issues at our peril

The stories told at last week’s gathering in Dublin of former gang members from around the world at the Summit Against Violent Extremism (SAVE) should be a salutary reminder of the dangers of ignoring underlying social and ethnic problems.

Their stories were varied. TJ Leyden was a former member of a neo-Nazi racist gang, while Maajid Nawaz joined a revolutionary Islamic gang in Britain, where he was born, and Susan Cruz, a childhood immigrant from El Salvador, joined the most notorious Latino gang in Los Angeles. All joined gangs as young teenagers.

Within the gang or organisation, Maajid Nawaz explained, members began to fear and hate each other more than those they were supposed to hate and TJ Leyden explained: “I didn’t fear being killed by other gangs, I was more scared of being killed by people inside my group.”

This certainly has a resonance in Ireland, where many gangland murders are over personal clashes or suspicion that other members are informers. We have the gang culture already and the stories told at the SAVE conference are a grim warning of what can happen when people are marginalised by society.

Some may like to think that Irish people are particularly tolerant because they are overwhelmingly Christian. Earlier generations were reared in a largely homogenous society, where they were encouraged to have sympathy and even provide help for less fortunate people, especially in Africa and the Far East.

Many Irish people were encouraged to join the Foreign Missions to provide spiritual, medical and educational help for those less fortunate, so that they could help themselves. The sacrifices those people made on behalf of humanity are something of which we can be truly proud, and they should not be distorted by abuse of the perverted minority in their midst.

Of course, those in other countries noted that it was easy for people in this republic to pontificate about tolerance and integration when our society was so homogenous. We did not have large ethnic minorities, but on the other side of the border we witness, especially at this time of the year, remnants of a centuries-old conflict that began between branches of Christianity.

In one sense the current growth of gang culture may seem new, but it is not something that has developed as a result of television or foreign movies. The gang culture has been particularly strong in Ireland, but it was cloaked with a distorted respectability, because it was long branded as patriotism. Some of the most vicious criminal gangs had their origins in paramilitary activity associated with “the national question”.

Having had such difficulties as a largely homogenous society, we should be particularly mindful of the likely problems now that Ireland has become more multicultural. The SAVE gathering was intended to highlight ways of preventing the radicalisation of young people. The voice of moderation needs to become louder than that of intolerance or extremism.