Michael Clifford: Mick Wallace is making a right show of himself

Mick Wallace and Clare Daly at Leinster House during their time as TDs. File picture: Gareth Chaney

Mickser, why don’t you come on home? Give up your oul air miles and get yourself back into national politics where you have a record of being useful. And while you’re at it, will you for the love of God lay off the Yanks?

Mick Wallace has been supping with some seriously dodgy people since he won a seat in the European Parliament in 2019 and took flight across the globe. His confederate, Clare Daly, whom many consider to be the brains behind the operation, is at his side, but you sense that Mick is leading the charge on this one. It’s as if ascent to the European Parliament has gone to his head, and a little irritant that once was a bee in his bonnet has now become his raging focus.

We’ll get to the bee in a minute, but Mickser’s latest declaration really took the biscuit. He is, it would appear, a big fan of Chinese totalitarianism.

“The CPC (Communist Party of China) has obviously played a strong role in helping so many hundreds of millions in China to move out of poverty,” the MEP for Ireland South told the Global Times, an organ of the Chinese state that presumably subscribes to the free press mantra of publish and be damned.

“That’s been a remarkable achievement. It couldn’t have been done under the capitalist system. China could not have made the same progress with a capitalist system. So the CPC deserves a lot of credit for the progress China has made.” 

Mick, before you go any further, and just between ourselves, Chinese communism is history, lad. It died around the time the Berlin Wall fell when the bigwigs copped that they’d be heading for the same graveyard as the USSR if they didn’t get their ass in gear.

So they turned to the central tenet of capitalism — market economics. They let rip with commerce, trade, and competition while crucially retaining control at the top. The result is an economy in which the private sector contributes far more to the national income than the state sector. The success has allowed China to spread its wings, investing far and wide, wielding influence and control around the world. In reality, the country practices capitalist markets in which the state intervenes to best serve its own interest.

That’s not communism. It isn’t even socialism. It’s having your cake, eating it, and shooting anybody who says you can’t do that. Control is the feature that separates China’s economic model from that of western democracies. In Mickser’s communist paradise, you can get rich on the back of initiative but you don’t mess with the government or you’re toast.

Then you have minorities like the Uighurs, ethnic Muslims who are perceived not to appreciate that they live in paradise and must therefore be locked up. A million Uighurs are reputed to be held in “counter extremism centres”, which is the modern parlance for concentration camps. Welcome to the new China. If you have an idea to turn a buck, you can become a telecoms tycoon in no time. If your face doesn’t fit, or you don’t know your place, you get locked up.

As for a free press, no doubt the Global Times is, in the best traditions of investigative journalism, preparing a piece about the summary detention of Irishman Richard O’Halloran who has been held in the country for more than two years, allegedly over his involvement in a big commercial entity that went belly up. There is no evidence that the man did anything illegal, but China’s justice system demands that somebody pay when the market doesn’t behave as the politburo deems it should.

If bigging up the Chinese model of totalitarianism was Mick Wallace’s only foray down such dark streets he could be given a pass. Unfortunately, he has a lengthening record in this respect.

He has, since arriving in Brussels, gone out to bat for the murderous thug Bashar al-Assad. Just last week, he tweeted about the Euro championships from Damascus, which is under Assad’s control. A Dutch MEP has accused him and Clare Daly of trotting out pro-Putin propaganda. Earlier this year the pair travelled to Iraq to meet an Iranian-backed militia.

On a different plane, both were penalised in the European parliament this week for undermining work to promote democracy by travelling to Venezuela and Ecuador as “fake” election observers, a charge they deny. After returning from Venezuela, the pair described the election as “very transparent and professional” and that it could offer lessons to the US.

And that brings us nicely back to Mick’s bee. The one common thread running through all the thugs, headbangers, and chancers that Mick has spoken up for is their opposition and often hatred for the US. It’s as if he gravitates to anybody, irrespective of their contempt for human rights, who despise all that the US represents.

On Newstalk Breakfast last Thursday, Shane Coleman interviewed Mick about his comments on China. Yet all Mick wanted to talk about was the US. 

What about the Uighurs, Coleman asked. “The figures the Americans got for the number detained in that region were got by one guy,” Mick responded.

“It’s a gross exaggeration to say one million. Do you know that a quarter of people detained in the whole world are in America?” 

Were the Chinese slow to react to the virus? “They told the Americans in the first week of January.”

 Freedom of the press? “Europe will give out about journalists detained in China but not in the Ukraine and there was a US-led coup there in 2014.”

It would appear that America, in Wallace world, is the great Satan, motherhood overrated parenting, and apple pie the devil’s dessert.

Mick, listen to me. Forget America. The country is in decline. Its brand of capitalism is eating itself. But before you celebrate, pause to wonder about that which is going to replace it. What is going to happen to basic freedoms? On the most mundane level, take, for instance, your heavy metal haircut. Do you think that your new pals would allow a politician go around with that? Not a chance. Short back and sides and if you kick up about it, they’ll just take your head off. Be careful what you wish for.

Just come on home. There’s fierce work to be done here. The cops are still out of control. Nobody but you knows what’s really going on in Nama. Your unique experience would be useful in sorting out the housing crisis. And we could sort something out at Shannon with the warplanes to facilitate the scratching of your itch.

Leave the world to its own devices, Mick. Don’t be making a show of yourself out there anymore. There is more to you than that.