Terry Prone: Dubliner Suad Mooge is a new kind of Rose for a new kind of Ireland

Suad Mooge represents a new kind of Rose for a new kind of Ireland — and a threat to the far right revisionists who want to drag us back to the past

Dublin Rose Suad Mooge: She is is the first to elevate the contest simply by her presence, her vincibility, her job and her cultural breadth.

It’s difficult to grasp the notion of the Rose of Tralee as offering an opportunity to racists to create a controversy around a regional winner, but that’s the reality. And what’s most frightening about the far-right reaction to the recent picking of the Dublin Rose is how clever some of it is.

Take the guy on YouTube who has almost 60,000 followers. He’s so good-humouredly reasonable about the whole thing, it would be easy to be seduced by him. 

Easy to carelessly use that right-wing trope and describe it as no more than “common sense” when he shows footage of Suad Mooge, because that’s the Dubliner’s name, and smiles at the very idea of her becoming the Dublin Rose. 

The footage is of her being told she’s the winner and hugged by other contestants. Lovely footage, because she’s small and headscarved and the other girls are warm and welcoming.

The guy presenting this “report” talks about the history of the Rose of Tralee and goes on to tell his subscribers the name of the Dublin Rose. Twice, he gives the name. Thrice. 

Three times, he manages to articulate it while twinkling an unspoken amused invitation to register just how unusual it is to find a Dub so named. A Róisín Murphy or a Grainne McSharry might be a credible winner, but a Suad Mooge?

He moves on to suggest he himself could enter for the competition if he identified as female. A non sequitur? On the contrary, it’s a way of pointing to just ridiculous it is, in his view, that Suad should be considered for the contest at all, despite her being Irish by birth. 

He tells us he has no axe to grind before proving the opposite by pointing out that Suad works for an anti-racist NGO, smilingly positioning this as in some way another disqualifier for the young woman. Why wouldn’t she work for such an organisation?

Racist propaganda

But that very question points to the cleverness of this racist propaganda: before you know it, you are arguing the individual claims made, as if any one of them had valence. Arguing with someone who claims to have no axe to grind when the axe is front and centre, not to mention being dangerously sharp.

It’s genius. The guy points to how warm and welcoming are the reactions of the other contenders and then manages to suggest the other girls are putting it on, letting on to be happy for Suad, pretending an approval of her win that they couldn’t actually experience. 

The hardsell headline on this online offering wrongly describes the Dublin Rose as Somali. Nope, she’s Irish. A true Dub.

We have to hope that because Suad already works for an organisation that fights against racism she has enough knowledge of the process to manage the terror the social media attacks have to induce. The burden of their tune is that it is ridiculous that Suad Mooge should enter such a competition, ridiculous that someone carrying such a name could win the Dublin heat, ridiculous that a young women with the effrontery to work for an NGO committed to keeping racism out of sport should be a real contender for the top prize in the Rose of Tralee.

If Suad keeps going, she will be part of the maturation of a contest that just about manages to avoid being an outright beauty contest, largely because of the interviewing skills and shrugging charm of Dáithí, the main presenter (and my fellow Irish Examiner columnist.)

Every year, young contestants try to help elevate The Rose of Tralee higher than a looks contest by demonstrating their (sometimes obscure) skills and making a big deal of their intent to improve the world.

Suad is the first to elevate it simply by her presence, her vincibility, her job and her cultural breadth. She represents a new kind of Rose fit for a new kind of Ireland. And a major threat to the racists who want to reverse Ireland back to what they believe it once was.

• Terry Prone is an Irish Examiner columnist