There Is No Irish Alt Right, so Why Is the Media Trying to Convince Us There Is?
The Irish Times has written its immigration article again; the one where it tries to rig discussion of demographic change by presenting an entirely partisan analysis of the situation. It’s getting boring refuting this rubbish month after month but not many other people are doing it in writing so, in the words of Bill Hicks — excuse me while I plaster on a fake smile and plough through this shit one more time.
The twist in this version article is the idea that there is an Alt Right in Ireland. What is the Alt Right?
Richard Spencer, sometimes credited with coining the term, summarised it as people who believe that “race is real, race matters, race is the foundation of identity”. Mike Enoch, who has had more practical influence on the spread of Alt Right ideas than Spencer, once summarised his own understanding of “Alt Right” as “pro-white, race-realist and woke on the JQ.” Enoch and Spencer embrace the label and have actively sought to promote ideas under that banner. If it has owners, they’re it.
As those descriptions indicate, if the Alt-Right exists in any practical sense (and post-Charlottesville I think it’s a question whether it does) it is an American phenomenon that sprang from the politics and history of that country — anti-communism, libertarianism, WASPism, the John Birch Society etc, etc. Ireland has its own reactionary currents, and it doesn’t need to import a non-liberal political culture from America.
To the extent there are people online in Ireland that share a style with the Alt-Right, it is because those people exist in every country on both the left and right. As BAP notes
The Alt-Right doesn’t exist and has nothing to do with media representations of it… the same phenomenon is taking place on the left… a widespread rejection of ruling authorities and their beliefs… an online counterculture beyond any one political or ethnic group….
Just because Irish journalists have chosen to see any manifestations of this trend that they don’t like as “Alt Right” doesn’t mean that’s true.
If an Irish Alt Right isn’t pulling the strings on immigration dissent, who is? The article is clear:
A report published last year by the Social Change Initiative, a Belfast-based international charity, found that 44 per cent of the public (are) open to immigration but expressing “certain concerns and anxieties”.
That 44% predates any internet or on-the-ground activism. It provides sufficient explanation of objection to Direct Provision centres without any need to conjure up images of Russian bots descending on Oughterard like a horde of locusts. If the 44% sentiment is reactionary, it feeds on existing Irish reactionary trends rather than American ones. The Alt-Right isn’t necessary in this argument. So why invoke it?
This is important:
The terms “Alt Right” and Far Right are used to delegitimise any feelings of concern about demographic change, and any activism that might be built around those feelings; but also to simultaneously *legitimise* the far more prevalent, indulged and radical activism in favour of that change.
If any right wing activism happens, it is simply a mirror image of the activism left-wing activists indulge in all-day everyday, from North Sea to the Mediterranean — including in Ireland. Are left wing activists interlopers, bending the minds of local people to their own purposes? If not, why? If you feel we shouldn’t have to tolerate either kind of activist, fine. But in light of that 44% figure to suggest one is good and the other is bad, is wrong.
The implicit purpose of all Irish Times commentary on demographic change is to ensure people understand that there are two sides to this thing. On one side there are the people who are agitate ceaselessly in favour of a maximal and unrestrained version of demographic and cultural change, and on the other there are people who are wrong. The people who are wrong are driven by two impulses — thoughtless bigotry and misguided concern over resources and crime. In both of these they are led astray by malign interlopers. Activists on the other side are the good guys. The Irish Times’ job is to tell and support their story.
This is visible not just in who the Times attacks, but who they endorse and rely on. Every single NGO referenced in this article is explicitly pro- demographic-change. Where are the organisations sceptical of it? Do they not exist? Isn’t *that* the story?
My challenge to the Irish Times owners and journalists remains the same as it has ever been. Write some articles that address the basic essential questions that you haven’t answered.
- What is the level of dissatisfaction with demographic and cultural change you feel is legitimate, and normal? Why?
- What is the outlet for that feeling in the respectable media (especially in your newspaper) and mainstream politics?
If you are journalists, forget these attempts to poison the well on this discussion and to provide legitimacy to far-left activism, and answer those questions.
As a final point I’ll just add that I mostly don’t care about Direct Provision Centres. I think people in a particular area should have a choice as to how and why their area changes; I also think it is in Ireland’s strategic interests to participate to some degree in a functioning and humane asylum system. But I do care that we are undergoing one of the most impactful cultural changes in the history of the island and that there no legitimate avenues to question or restrain it. If controversy over Direct Provision centres provide that avenue, then so be it.
