Mick Clifford: Where did it all go wrong for Mick Wallace and Clare Daly?

Three public figures have taken off for the hill country way out in the wilds beyond the public square, up there where conspiracy theories roam free and all reason is culled

Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, along with John Waters, would, in all likelihood, have once given short shrift to the kind of conspiracies which now command their fidelity.

Last week, reading a piece about Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, I couldn’t help but think of George Best. The footballer loved to retail the anecdote about the occasion, sometime after his premature retirement, when he was holed up in an expensive suite with Miss World.

Following a winning day at the races, the bed was papered with banknotes. Then room service arrived with the champers. The waiter looked around at the money, the bed, Miss World, and then at the man himself, and asked: “George, where did it all go wrong?”

Where did it all go wrong for Mick and Clare? Where did it all go wrong for John Waters? All three, in their different ways, made notable contributions to public life in this country, each coming from a position outside the mainstream. All of them have since taken off for the hill country way out in the wilds beyond the public square, up there where conspiracy theories roam free and all reason is culled.

At the outset, it should be recognised that, as far as those mentioned are concerned, it hasn’t gone wrong at all. Take Mick and Clare. They are lauded by the state media of the biggest, fast becoming the most powerful, country in the world. According to Naomi O’Leary’s excellent investigation in The Irish Times, Wallace has even been given a nickname in China. He is the Golden Lion King.

He and Daly are also stars on state media in Syria and Russia, where their anti-American rhetoric and Nato conspiracy theories are presented as the real deal. As far as media coverage is concerned, these politicians are getting more purchase per capita than most politicians in the world, ready made platforms from which to air their views. You couldn’t buy it. And they don’t. It is quite obvious that they believe every word they utter.

Last year in the European parliament, Wallace posited the theory that the chemical attacks in Syria by Bashir al Assad were actually the work of Western forces. He blamed the White Helmets, a volunteer group in the country which has documented extensive human rights abuses by Assad and Russian forces. Both he and Daly have accused Nato of being complicit in fomenting war in Ukraine.

“What is being unleashed is a really dangerous Russiaphobia, which was under way anyway, but it’s now accelerating and Russian children are being targeted in European communities,” Daly said last month in an interview on YouTube, according to The Irish Times piece.

“This conflict in Ukraine is being used to silence dissent,” Wallace said.

This is grist to the mill of the Kremlin, but does any of it stack up, beyond its use to those intent on spreading disinformation? Where did it all go wrong?

Some who see how they now conduct themselves like to ignore the fact that, in a previous existence, they were a pair of unorthodox yet highly effective legislators. 

Before packing up and heading for Brussels, both were involved in highlighting the case of Maurice McCabe in the Oireachtas. Sometimes, they went perhaps a little too far but, without their input, McCabe’s plight might never have fully emerged.

Daly was a driving force behind repealing the Eighth Amendment. She was consistently forensic in dealing with issues that arose in Oireachtas committees. If she had ended up in government — either in a party or as an Independent — she would have made a competent minister.

Wallace had his own qualities, not least his ability to probe Nama at a time when the agency had a free rein over property. 

Both of them are a loss to national politics. Unfortunately, there are few this side of Damascus or Moscow who would describe them as an addition to European politics.

Where did it all go wrong for John Waters? He arrived on the scene 30 years ago with a groundbreaking book, Jiving At The Crossroad, described at the time by Diarmuid Ferriter as “majestic” and by Brendan Kennelly as “utterly fascinating in its insights and conclusions”.

Over the following years, he was often a dissonant, always interesting, voice in the media. In the late 1990s, he began a campaign advocating for fathers of children in broken marriages. He had accurately spotted an institutional injustice, but pretty soon his campaign lost perspective and became what many considered an unhealthy obsession.

Today, he is regarded as a poster boy for the intolerant right. Bryan Fanning, professor of immigration and social policy in UCD, recently wrote of Waters that, “more than anyone else, he has articulated the kinds of concerns and anxieties that have been politically exploited by
nativist populists in other countries”.

John Waters: Regarded as a poster boy for the intolerant right.

Waters’ latest foray, with his confederate, Gemma O’Doherty, was to challenge the emergency powers enacted during the pandemic. At a recent Supreme Court hearing on the case, O’Doherty submitted that the Covid measures were part of an effort to establish a “new world order”, where citizens will live under a regime similar to “communist China”.

Maybe she fears the prospect of life under the yoke of the Golden Lion King. As with Daly and Wallace, Waters is lauded among an international subset, which draws comfort from his obvious intellectual abilities.

So where does it all go wrong for people like this?

On a superficial level, Daly and Wallace are considered left wing and Waters of the right, but what unites them is adherence to conspiracy theories of one hue or another. 

Their respective world visions are replete with conspiracies, whether they be attributable to Nato, the US military-industrial complex, unseen liberal forces, the Euro state, feminists, media, and whatever you’re having yourself. All these views are no doubt genuinely held but for most people they are off the wall.

This is a high time for conspiracy theories, with the prevalence of social media and the fracturing and polarising of political systems. Never have so many been prepared to believe in all manner of conspiracies, mainly designed to do down the believers in one form or another. 

Adherents may place their faith in these theories through desperation or anger or simply disappointment at life. All the tools are there to spread disinformation across digital echo chambers and into the real world. What was once dismissed beyond belief is now regularly digested as God’s honest.

The surprising thing about the three public figures mentioned here is that they would, in all likelihood, have once given short shrift to the kind of conspiracies which now command their fidelity.

They knew up close how public life operated, how the world worked.

They knew that there was clear blue water between corruptions of one form or another and theories that ascribe wholesale depravity to certain allegedly nefarious elements.

They knew their onions, but somewhere along the way, they took off for the hill country, possibly never to return.

Let’s be careful out there. It could happen to the best of us.