One of the reasons I love living in the West of Ireland is that here I feel far from the madding modern world; distant from wars and Trump’s ragings.
Now that feeling is gone.
Now we are vulnerable.
Despite all the discrimination the Irish have suffered, this country has no Hate Crime legislation. Growing up in England, I saw a generation of racists being arrested and jailed.
Recently this newspaper’s Dara Bradley quoted a senior Galway garda saying: “…racism and racially motivated incidents are not a major problem in Galway.”
Sorry, but that’s not for you to say.
Believe me, when you’re the victim of racial abuse, be it physical, psychological or political, it feels like a major problem.
Today young African footballers are being abused by visiting players and staff on Galway pitches. The Agency for Fundamental Rights ranks Ireland third worst out of 12 EU states for harassment of people of African background.
The reason that Garda have to say what they do is because they have no legal need to collect data about racist incidents.
The fact that reports of racist incidents appear low does not reflect a lack of racist incidents. There’s no incentive for victims to report Hate Crime.
Victims don’t go to the cops if they know there’s nothing the cops can do.
Instead they end up feeling even more powerless and unwelcome in this country.
Around the world, from Turkey to Brazil, the Philippines to the USA and all over Europe people are voting for right-wing extremists.
Surely we’re safe here though? If populism came to Ireland, what form could it take?
No fan of conspiracy theories, I have to accept that the online forces of alt-right have successfully influenced many recent elections around the world.
As we saw during the abortion referendum, they have for some time been slavering for a wound through which they might access Irish politics. Time after time they failed to permeate the arcane crust around Ireland’s unfathomable party political system.
Then an attention-seeking businessman slashed a gash into our decency, enabling the forces of alt-right to flood in.
Irish politics changed forever.
Pouncing on the dragon’s venomous tongue, alt-right finally breached these shores. Users of online forum 4chain left a barrage of anonymous comments praising Casey for attacking Travellers and saying that Jewish people “basically live in the White House”.
Fake twitter accounts were created to promote Casey, whose image was then mocked up as the quintessential alt-right symbol, Pepe the Frog.
Casey doesn’t care that his online supporters are dangerous people. When asked during the Virgin Media debate if he’d run a divisive campaign, his glib response was:
“I’ve been shooting up the polls all week!”
Take a look at his language:
“…people from Africa, people from India, people from all different continents, they are different ethnic status. The people in the Travelling community are not. They are as Irish as you and me.”
If ‘they’ are exactly the same as ‘us’ then why refer to them as ‘they’?
Casey’s racist rhetoric simply makes no sense.
Travellers are different. They are no more ‘us’ than you are Jewish like me, yet all of us - Travellers, Africans, Asians, even Jewish Englishmen - are equally Irish.
Last year I picked up my citizenship certificate and applied for my first Irish passport. Nobody asked about my ethnicity.
I’m no less Irish than you.
Of course Casey’s remarks won votes. We laughed when Brendan Gleeson’s character in The Guard declared: “I’m Irish, sure, racism’s part of my culture!” because it’s true.
This country has a massive way to go to alter its attitudes, as proved by Casey’s rapidly swollen voter base
When Galway Bay FM’s Keith Finnegan debated Casey’s remarks on his show, he said he’d never seen such a vast amount of texts of support for a man simply expressing a point of view.
Overreacting because of my ethnicity, I sent a text suggesting that there were also a lot of people showing support at the Nuremberg Rallies, where Hitler was just a man expressing his point of view.
They call it populist because it’s popular. If the public had their way we’d have public lynchings. That’s why we make laws: to control the angry mob, attain justice and protect the vulnerable.
Casey retreated to “I’m not a racist” but he doesn’t decide that. Along with many other Irish people, he clearly struggles to understand that only your victim decides if you are a racist.
If you abuse people using different words to the ones with which you abuse your friends or family, or display aggressive attitudes and behaviours towards a group you identify as different, then you are a racist.
If those people or groups feel they’ve been abused for being what they are, then they are victims of racism.
Irish people need to stop judging themselves innocent of racism. This country needs Hate Crime legislation, defined by abuse of race, religion, sexuality or disability, so that victims are protected by law.
In the meantime we need to acknowledge that racism is a problem here.
If you’re a victim or referred to as ‘them’ you already know.
©Charlie Adley
11.11.2018.
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