Mick Clifford: Banning the Wicklow tech gathering would hand a victory to right-wing populists
Calls to ban or arrest controversial visitors risk weakening the democratic principles critics claim they are defending
Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir is due to lead a conference at Powerscourt Estate next month. Picture: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty
Mick Clifford is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of seven books.
There was a woman on the telly the other night suggesting some millionaires who are not wanted for any criminal activity should be arrested.
The arresting, Niamh Ní Bhriain told The Tonight Show on Virgin Media, should be done by the Government.
That’s the kind of talk one might ordinarily expect from some of these right-wing populists who are gaining traction in various places.
There are “governments” who arrest people, but they tend to be run by dictators.
There are governments who invent criminal charges against their opponents , or more often enemies, in order to arrest them.
Some might even suggest that right now this is the kind of thing that is going on in Donald Trump’s America.
Except Ms Ní Bhriain is the furthest thing imaginable from a right-wing populist.
She is a co-ordinator of the War and Pacification programme in the Transnational Institute.
In broad terms she is anti-war and works tirelessly to protect, as she would see it, victims of war, most often some of the most dispossessed in the world.
In that capacity she has featured on the pages of this newspaper.
The subject that prompted her to call for arrests is a proposed gathering in Co Wicklow in August.
This is a crowd called Dialog, which includes various tech bros and members of, and supporters of, Trump’s administration.
It was co-founded by Peter Thiel, the founder of Paypal and Palantir, which supplies technology to the Israeli military.
They gather every so often to discuss the state of the world and how they would like to shape it. This year they chose Wicklow.
Sinn Féin has called for the gathering to be banned. The Labour party and others want “transparency”.
The owner of Powerscourt Estate, which has leased out the hotel where the event is being held, has said it would cancel it if had the power to do so.
Personally, I would rather be cooped up for a day subjected to the torture of watching Dublin’s six-in-a-row All Irelands on a loop than be in a room with Thiel or the tech bros.
They are the kind of bores who would make a gathering of young Fine Gaelers appear like a Marxist revolutionary commune.
But so what? Are we now at a point where those with offensive views, or loose connections to deeply immoral administrations, should be banned from this country?
On the TV show, Ms Ní Bhriain addressed her fellow panelist, junior minister Thomas Byrne. “They’re all people who are deeply embedded in militarisation, in war,” she said.
“I would ask Mr Byrne if these people come here whether the Irish Government is planning on making an arrest of these people.”
Byrne pointed out the Government doesn’t arrest anybody, gardaí do, and only if they have evidence a crime has been committed.
If there was to be consistency in both moral benchmarks and actions in what Sinn Féin, Ms Ní Bhriain, and others are advocating, then Paypal should be boycotted because of its association with Thiel and Palantir.
The US ambassador should be expelled.
Any tech firms based here who have official or unofficial ties to the US administration should be told to take a hike.
None of that will happen though, because there would be severe consequences.
Instead, we have gestures which appear to be rooted in morality but really amount to little more than perceived cost free, performative exercises.
Leave aside the reliance of the economy on the raft of companies associated with some of those due to attend the gathering.
Let’s just look at it from the point of view of values in the kind of liberal democracy this country purports to represent, particularly at a time when liberal democracies are under threat.
The right-wing populists who venerate Trump — and many of the attendees at this Dialog gathering qualify as such — would be thrilled to be provided with an example of the hypocrisy of a liberal democracy acting so illiberally.
They would point to Ireland, suggest it had gone to pot, and is in the grip of what they habitually describe as “radical-left lunatics”.
What, they would ask, is the difference between the US banning Somali referee Omar Artan from the World Cup because of his nationality and Ireland refusing entry to a bunch of tech bros because of their political views?
The aim of this new breed of right-wing populists is to point to liberal democracies like this one and suggest that ultimately its values are hollow and hypocritical. They would appear to be getting some assistance in assembling Exhibit A in that respect.
Another example of the silly, but not cost free, gestures indulged by some elements occurred outside Leinster House this week.
Not for the first time, members of People Before Profit/Solidarity refused to answer questions from a reporter for the Gript.ie.
The outlet purveys news and opinion that would easily fit into the category of right-wing populism.
As the reporter was asking the question, Richard Boyd Barrett had a quick word with his colleague Paul Murphy and then refused to engage.
A press officer for PBP/Solidarity explained that the party did not consider Gript to be a proper news outlet.
Remind you of anybody else’s approach to freedom of the press?
This sort of thing is a regular feature of Trump’s engagements with the media.
He refuses to answer questions on the basis of his negative characterisation of the reporters asking.
He would be thrilled with Richard and Paul, throwing an arm around them and offering to give them a few lessons on how to wield power with excessive authority, starting with putting the press back in its box.
The stand-off outside Leinster House thus ended as a clear victory for Gript.
Pretty quickly, the video was uploaded to social media, where people were invited to view how an authoritarian regime run by the so-called left might rule were they ever to achieve power.
Talk about being handed manna.
We live in a time when the values that served democracies for the last 80 years and more are under attack.
In the US, in the UK, throughout Europe, political movements are appealing to base instincts, disseminating conspiracy theories, casting immigrants as “the other”, and promising bogus “common sense” solutions to complicated problems.
They have had a fair degree of success, even if the self-styled strongman leader in the UK is beginning to look like he might have already peaked.
So far in this country, they haven’t made much inroads, although a perusal of social media, with its capacity to artificially amplify, might give a different impression.
But in a global milieu where many are — often with very good reason — are alienated from the prevailing system, the seductive pull of the politics of resentment remains strong.
Step forward unwitting recruitment agents playing right into the hands of the Trump wannabes.
