Could there be an Irish Alt Right?
Definitely not today, but perhaps tomorrow…?
Over the last few years populist nationalist political movements have gained momentum across Europe and the US, with a central focus on immigration, multiculturalism and European identity. Trump, UKIP, LePen: could there be an Irish edition? Will there ever be one?
The short answer is not now, but in the long term, who knows?
What’s the longer answer?
First off, immigration. They key focus for all groups that have made in-roads on this topic has been anti-immigrant sentiment, and it’s true that there has been an unprecedented influx of foreigners into Ireland in the last 15–20 years. Leaving aside the UK for a moment, the largest flows have been from EU accession states of Eastern Europe. This has prompted a certain amount of backlash, but it has been contained because most of the immigrants in question are so similar to Irish people. If anything many of the immigrants coming to Ireland (for example, Polish people) are more like the Irish of 60 years ago than the Irish of today are.
Nationalism in Ireland has always tended towards the left rather than the right, which makes the existing Nationalist structures a poor breeding ground for these changes. To pick some random examples: the Proclamation of Independence is an explicitly egalitarian document, and the participants at the 1916 rising were Trade Union activists, Schoolteachers and Civil Servants. The Irish nation hasn’t always (maybe ever) lived up to the ideals of those founders and that document. But if a nation takes on the character of the people who founded it, then the character of Ireland is essentially left- rather than right-wing in some sense.
Germany, France, the UK, The USA – Ireland differs from these countries in the sense that it is a former colonial subject rather than a former (or current) colonial (or Imperial) power. It’s history is one of foreign oppression and outward migration. Accordingly, Irish people see their place in the world differently from the way the citizens of those countries see theirs. The mental leap to thinking ill of people from poorer countries and defending what you hold against their influence isn’t an easy one for Irish people to make.
Ok – so that’s “No”. How might it happen?
The “innate mind-set” point can work the other way, too. Catholicism may be vanishing, but the instinctive illiberalism and resistance to change it leaves behind could easily be turned to conservative purposes.
Notwithstanding it’s lefty-ness, there is an explicitly Nationalist element to Irish politics that existed even when Nationalism was politically unfashionable or obscure in the wider world. Since there’s always been some significant person or group on the Irish political scene proudly self-identifying as Nationalist, that’s not a Rubicon we have to cross. The type of right wing nationalist party we’re talking about here has never established any kind of foothold, but that’s not to say it couldn’t. The recent establishment of an Irish National Party by Justin Barrett and the presence of an Irish Politics General on 4chan’s /Pol/ board indicates that there is a simmering desire to make something happen on the part of some group, however small. It’s important not to dismiss that last point. Donald Trump was a political punchline and a hangover from the 80s, until he was shitposted into the Whitehouse by frogs.
The feeling of discontent from the end of the boom and the collapse of the Irish economy feels like it hasn’t yet been fully expressed or resolved. One way in which it’s finding some kind of an outlet is the on-going Water protests. If you view the Tea Party one historic ancestor of the current Alt Right, you could link the potential creation of a something resembling an Alt Right In Ireland to those protests. Right2Water gatherings sometimes feels like they have a sort of Infowars quality to them, with every anti-authoritarian cause or view getting some representation in sign form. But it ultimately feels wrong to suggest that will go in a populist- nationalist direction. In US terms, the participants of those marches are closer in rhetoric and political outlook to Bernie Sanders supporters, the post-election “resistance” and maybe even Antifa than they are to Trump supporters.
The final point: something is categorically missing in Irish life, and absence will give someone an opportunity. Ireland has changed greatly over a short period, and some proportion of society will always see change as loss, and act (and vote) accordingly. That change includes an unprecedented influx of foreigners and some groups in Irish society will see part of that change as a decision on the part of the powers that be to. surrender or erase their national identity. The decline of the church has left philosophical gap in the centre of Irish life that’s yet to be filled. It won’t be filled by consumerism, and it can’t be filled by a bourgeois liberal identity with no defined edges. Whether they offer answers or not, the new right wing. ideologies have an explicit appeal to people whose lives feel empty and unmoored, especially men, of which there are plenty in Ireland. The pieces of jigsaw are there. Anything could still happen.
