I’m a filmmaker and Kerry based farmer, currently on a residency at the Fire Station Artists’ Studios in the heart of the city for the next two years. I’m very familiar with Dublin, and it’s fair to say it’s my second home since I came to Ireland in 1981.
I will also be heading to the bothy project (Sweeney’s Bothy) in Scotland in January as part of my research. This is on Eigg, and the island is owned by the community and completely self-sustaining (Eigg Electric).
My research will focus on the concept of dematerialisation in urban environments. The idea is to explore how cities can become more sustainable, efficient, and culturally enriched by re-imagining the use of physical materials and objects. This concept may be aspirational, but I think that is the artist’s privilege.
I cycle to the South Wall, through the docks, past the sewerage treatment plant, incinerator and power station almost every day for a swim. You cannot ignore that the city’s waste is not managed properly, the stench and volume of overflow is there to be seen by everyone.
Moving the port and repurposing the land offers tremendous possibilities, it is obvious when cycling through it. I wish, however, that this vision could be taken even further by considering innovative ideas such as transforming Poolbeg into a cultural hub akin to the Tate Modern in London.
This could not only celebrate art and culture but also serve as a focal point for sustainable energy and food production using recycled waste.
It seems to be that waste management in general in Dublin is oversubscribed and under serviced. There is a saying in farming “where there’s muck, there’s money” and I firmly believe this. People need to face up to their sh!t, people who clean it up should be rewarded more – it shouldn’t be such a dirty job!
There is ample opportunity to reimagine waste management in a way that is both enjoyable, productive and eco-friendly. By making waste management a clean and fun part of everyday life, we can contribute to a cleaner and more sustainable city, it is in fact a no brainer. Why are there no communal gardens?
In my opinion there should be an emphasis on high-rise, high-density living – with greater emphasis on rewilding and natural green spaces to keep people, and their dogs happy. By incorporating such features into the redevelopment plans, we can create a dynamic and efficient urban landscape that embraces modern living while reducing our environmental footprint.
I believe there should be more imaginative thinking and bold ideas in urban development. The transformation of Dublin Port would be a significant step in the right direction, but I think the exploration of additional creative possibilities could make our city a more vibrant, sustainable, and enjoyable place to live.
I hope Dublin can evolve into a city that embraces innovation and imagination, it has everything going for it.
When David Irving, the mad fascist historian imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial, was asked to speak by The University Philosophical Society in Dublin in the late 1980’s, the Student Union – involving the current Labour leader Ivana Bacik – instigated a protest that led to a minor riot to prevent him from speaking.
Given the criminal damage, which included broken windows, it’s miraculous no one was badly hurt. Having stormed the Bastille, they tried to track down Mr. Irving, who, bizarrely, had taken refuge in The Dracula Museum at the very top of the building. In the meantime, I, and others, witnessed him with a load of maps of Concentration Camps on the floor in front of him, in near darkness, insisting it could not have happened. I left the building.
As the events unfolded, I was asked to speak to the chamber and suggested that a much better course of action would have been to allow Irving to speak and then heckle and destroy.
I should add that my original advice that he should not have been invited had been ignored.
David Irving.
Guilt and Attribution
I am loathe to agree with Mr. Varadkar about anything but I can’t help agreeing that the events in Dublin’s fair city on the 23rd of November disgraced Ireland. The question of course is the attribution of blame and responsibility. The Moral ledger. Guilt and attribution.
Before initiating new legislation, I believe Varadkar and his government should read Albert Camus’s The Rebel on the subject of extremism, and how a reign of terror begins. How do we identify in advance the sans culottes?
Here today we see a potential terror, but a terror by whom and for what purposes? And how does the state not become part of the problem – as an ancien regime adopting draconian laws that foment terror in response? How do we prevent the creation of a police state purporting to prevent anarchy?
The far right is a product of neo-liberal Ireland, state authoritarianism and surveillance, and the conduct of our thuggish professional and business classes. The people rioting are Leo’s Picture of Dorian Gray: the generation he inherited as Taoiseach; and let us not forget the earlier, inconsequential, insurrectionist protest outside the gates of the Oireachtas. It wasn’t exactly The Boston Tea Party or the Trumpian storm on the White House, but a worrying indication of the shape of things to come.
Though the numbers are small in Ireland now, the movement is trending with over one-third of Europeans endorsing far right-wing parties. And now the proto-fascist Geert Wilders has emerged as the main victor in the Dutch election; while in Italy far right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni prosecutes the legendary Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, who had the temerity to describe her as a bastard over her immigration policies.
Leo Varadkar ought to understand, as Mr Saviona does, that crony capitalism and drug cartels exhibit similar features. The drug cartels, subversion and gangsterism of the inner-city rioting often finds a reflection in the mendacious and buccaneering conduct of the commercial classes. Varadkar’s government cannot wash its hands of responsibility of the causes of the Promethean storm.
Moreover, irresponsible comments by Mary Lou McDonald that Drew Harris should resign betray a complete lack of empathy with the injured, some seriously, rank and file Garda officers. Whatever I think of the police as an organization – which is not much – the timing of remarks such as these was unacceptable, and in context offensive.
Image: Daniele Idini
Themes of Protests
The themes of the protests are transgender rights, sex education at schools, immigration, corruption, and criminalizing offence. A whole phalanx of designer leftist and so-called progressive issues are under attack. These are issues that need to be disentangled, and the rage of the mob understood if not in some situations, in my view, condoned.
Of course we ought to be highly sceptical of agendas underlying this Populism, not least when it is guided by keeping Ireland for the Irish, or that Irish lives matter. This is a nasty echo of the exclusionary racism and division of our time such that one cannot say all lives matter without generating offence. The extremist reaction in response is to say that non-national life should matter less and can even be destroyed. Sadly, it seems, the moderate, inquiring centre ground has been lost.
The question of sex education at school interacts with religious mullahs and those who enforce dogmatism. But it was nonetheless ridiculous to attempt, essentially, to no platform someone of William Binchy’s intellectual stature – however misguided he may be in my view – disqualifying him from talking about euthanasia because he is a white privileged male further fuels the fire.
Moreover, it is unarguable that the transgender lobby are ludicrously over-represented in the media and dedicated to no platforming.
Clearly, the Dublin Protest on the 23rd became nasty and racist after a social media sensation attributed blame to a non-national for a brutal attack produced a flash mob. Unsurprisingly, the protesters ignored how a Brazilian delivery rider had given the victim a chance of life, in a proportionate defence, acting as the good Samaritan.
Image: Daniele Idini
Understanding Hatred
It is time to rid ourselves of Irish exceptionalism and investigate the gorgon’s head. To condemn at one level is to fail to understand. The indignation is the product and the cause of others.
Let us deal first with the right to protest, as I envisage a new set of laws being promulgated to regulate this. Certainly, the Gardai now need to deal with a situation of extremism spiralling out of control with increased presence on the ground. But now many are calling for them to be equipped with tasers which are useless at preventing a riot such as we saw in Dublin.
The current Minister for Justice Helen McEntee TD previously obtained a High Court order from Justice Owens requiring telecommunications service providers to retain certain data – including user, traffic and location data –for a period of twelve months, for the purpose of safeguarding the security of the State.
Those in power ought to consider Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize winning novel, Prophet Song, a dystopian vision of an Ireland of the near future, which describes:
The dark pouring of the riot police, the rattling staccato of live rounds fired above protesters heads … the slow-motion collapse of the body torn into pixels as it is consumed by tear gas.
Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights provides for freedom of assembly. This means that every individual, regardless of cause, has the right to protest, march or demonstrate in a public space. Historically the police had a duty to refrain from restricting this right unnecessarily and a positive obligation to take measures to protect peaceful protests. It was also the case that any intervention had to be necessary, proportionate and for one of the following aims:
In the interest of national security or public safety
– to prevent disorder or crime.
OR
To protect health or morals – to protect others’ rights.
Freedom of assembly is also guaranteed under the much-denuded Article 40.4 of the Irish Constitution.
In the famous Irish common law ‘orange lily’ case Humphries v Connor, 1864 plucking an orange order lily from a woman in the nationalist area of Belfast was adjudged to be a justifiable police act and a regulation of protest, as this would likely cause a breach of the peace. In these situations, historically, the police may take reasonable steps, including arrest, to prevent or stop a breach of the peace intended to cause harassment, alarm, or distress. The authorities already enjoy sundry other powers about rerouting matches, such as in the Love Ulstersituation.
The Dublin riot should not be used as an excuse to introduce new powers that will have little or no affect on preventing disorder on the streets.
Édouard Vuillard, An Enemy of the People program for Théâtre de l’Œuvre, November 1893
Corruption
One interesting aspect of the allegations made by far right protestors is that our ruling classes is irredeemably corrupt, a view which aligns with left-wing, even Marxist, critiques of crony capitalism.
Although Henrik Ibsen was not an overtly political writer his An Enemy of The People (1882) explores a moral question pertinent to our times. In that play a prominent and well-connected engineer, whose brother is the town mayor, is asked to conduct a survey of the waters of a town which has become famous as a spa resort, attracting a great deal of tourism. When he tests the waters, however, he finds that they are polluted. He informs the town burghers and indeed his brother. In essence, he protests.
Rather than lauding him and complimenting him for a finely attuned sense of ethics and professional analysis, they turn on him with ever-increasing ferocity. He is told that he will destroy the local economy. He is named and shamed. His family is torn apart, and he becomes an enemy of the people.
This was also the fate of Jonathan Sugarman and Garda Maurice McCabe, among others, who have exposed serious wrongdoing in the Irish state. Interestingly, the arrests of those who speak out is also evident in Paul Lynch’s novel.
For Leo Varadkarto say that anyone involved in civil disobedience or protest requires disproportionate sanction is to fail to understand the right in question.
Jurgen Habermas, the greatest living intellectual on the planet, argues for the vital importance of civil disobedience in vitalizing a democracy. The question of civil disobedience has a long history. One of the first exponents was Antigone, who went against the will of the autocratic King Creon in Sophocles’s play in 430 BC, invoking a distinction between positive law and the law of God.
The right to civil disobedience has never featured prominently in Catholic theology and philosophy, as civil disobedience tends to be sacrificed on the altar of order publique. As Catholicism recedes in Ireland we are witnessing the advent of a new corporate theocracy imposing its own order publique.
But the right to disobey against tyranny is important, as Locke argued; Foucault also chastised what many writers have termed blind obedience, as did Hannah Arendt.
An intolerance of dissent is an increasingly feature of our age. In a recent book by Frédéric Gros Disobey! The Philosophy of Resistance (2021) the question of surplus obedience is canvassed. This is a surplus to requirements where one obeys for the rewards or pledges, assumed promises and out of a visceral sense of gratitude. This is what is called anticipatory obedience.
Leo Varadkar ought to recognise that not all protest is comfortable or right, but it is irrelevant at one level if the protester is misguided; he or she ought to retain a right to be a nuisance.
Towards the end of his career Ronald Dworkin wrote an article on the right to ridicule. Perhaps we should also emphasis the right to be a nuisance: for holding awkward opinions.
It should be stressed that the control of protest is also intimately related to the control of dissent. Thus, the dissident or conscientious objector is prosecuted as a deviation from an oppressive norm. Sakharov is imprisoned by the Communist state subversives. Religious mullahs prosecute Salman Rushdie. Thought censorship rules.
Anyone has a right to be a nuisance or a gadfly in a participatory democracy.
The Holiday Inn Express hotel in the aftermath.
Protection Against Hatred
The Gardaí enjoy the right and should be empowered to protect against hatred. If rioters spread hatred against transgender people, then the protest should be stopped, and they should be prosecuted. The same applies if they spread hatred and racism against immigrants. I am talking about thuggish racist behaviour.
There may be a legitimate argument that an indigenous community is being displaced, and even being rendered homeless. But this does not condone anarchical jihadism. The Irish government are to be commended, to some extent, for protecting refugees in temporary accommodation, but not for negating affordable housing and embedding corruption. People have a right to affordable housing and a decent quality of life in a state. The cost of housing associated with the presence of vulture and cuckoo funds fosters hatred in Ireland.
Through neoliberal policies and increasing state authoritarianism, the ruling parties have fostered far right Populism. In my view in moral terms there is little to distinguish many of the police enforcers from the protestors. You cannot claim the moral high ground to condemn unless you understand blame and responsibility.
Thus, in general, in what remains of our democracy, protest rights should be protected. People ought to have a right to say, peacefully, ‘I disagree’ with the government’s immigration policies, but without spreading hatred towards minorities, or attacking innocent bystanders.
The state has facilitated this promethean storm. The mob subscribes to fascists ideas, but it is within the architecture of the state security apparatus that fascism tends to emerge. Our government may not be overtly racist, but indifference to poverty and social exclusion has caused many problems and contributed to racism.
The police should not be granted any further powers than they already enjoy, instead the government ought to alleviate the social conditions that breed hatred. We in fact need another New Deal and not another fictional or reallatter-day Charles Lindberg leading us to Populist fascism as we find in Philip Roths fictional recreation of the 30’s The Plot Against America. It seems to me that the Plot Against Ireland is the twenty-four-hour mass surveillance.
As we witness the barbaric bombing of Gaza by Israel, and as the deaths and horrific injuries of civilian men, women and children rise exponentially, it is necessary to ask: who (apart from the Israeli government) is behind this murderous campaign?
Over decades the United States has liked to portray itself as an honest broker in an intractable conflict between Muslims and Jews, or Palestinians and Israelis.
Nerguizian emphasizes that the current deployment is ‘not intended to be used in an offensive role.’ However, he acknowledges that this could change quickly if Israel finds itself in a ‘total, 360-degree conflict’.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank illegal Israeli settlers have increased their attacks on isolated defenceless Palestinian villages, murdering one farmer collecting his olive harvest and leaving leaflets on cars and bloodied dolls at schools, warning Palestiniansto leave or be killed. We appear to be witnessing a third wave of expulsions, following in the footsteps of 1948 and 1967.
Indeed, even the New York Times is reporting that attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are surging. At least 115 have been killed, more than 2,000 have been injured and nearly 1,000 others have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of violence and intimidation by Israeli forces and settlers since Hamas’s attacked Israel on October 7, according the United Nations.
America does not only give Israel political cover in the United Nations, it is also continuing to supply them with weapons of mass destruction. Along with the British and the French, the United States appears to be playing a more active role in this conflict.
With stalemate in Ukraine, it seems that the U.S.-led NATO alliance is determined not to see an ally lose in Gaza. We can only speculate as to why this is happening, but Joe Biden has repeatedly stated ‘If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to protect our interests in the region’. Israel’s war on Gaza acts as a veiled threat to any nation considering joining a fledgling multi-polar world order.
Many Israelis want to expel Gazans into the Sinai in Egypt and West Bank residents into Jordan to complete the Zionist dream of conquering all of Palestine and expelling its inhabitants.
The current Israeli government that includes far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir may not stop at that, as the illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese Sheba Farms testifies to the endurance of a Greater Israel project, coveting lands much larger than those currently occupied.
Palestinians, however, will not go meekly into the night. Many would rather die than allow another Nakba to take place.
While parents write their children’s names on their bodies so they can be identified in the event of their being slaughtered by American munitions, and as people collect body parts of the dismembered dead around the blast sites, we can only imagine the despair felt by 2.2 million people hopelessly corralled into an area of just 365 square kilometres.
It seems as if Israel is hoping to occupy Northern Gaza and then expel the refugees into Egypt in a campaign of ethnic cleansing seemingly supported by the U.S., its main NATO allies and the European Commission.
Of course, it was Britain that created the problem with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 supporting the establishment of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’, along with the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and France envisaging the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
The current turmoil in the Middle East may be traced to the British and French policy of divide and conquer, a tactic subsequently employed by the U.S..
Perhaps, it is not the words of their enemies but the silence of their friends that Gazans may remember after the deluge – at least those lucky enough to survive.
So, Israel. Is it a good thing? Was it a justifiable demand for a ‘homeland’ by a horribly persecuted people? Is it a land grab, dressed up in religious and ethnic cod history? Is it a cynical manipulation of a dream by U.K. colonial, later U.S. imperial, self-interests?
Or could it have been what Jewish socialist writer Isaac Deutchser called, a totsieg, a ‘victorious rush into the grave’ spearheaded by Zionists, determined to have Palestine no matter what the cost, be the terrible truth?
Of course, OF COURSE, by any standard even approaching decency the Jewish people should be able to live in security and safety. After what the world has done to them as a people, safety and security should be the bare minimum.
As it should be for every human being. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine.
Tragically, from its inception the ‘Israeli project’, the vaunted Jewish homeland that was to solve all Jewish problems, has been racist and colonial. Predicated on apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Many, including many Jews, would argue Israel in its present state threatens not just the security and safety of the Palestinian people, but of the whole world.
If, as famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappe pointed out, ‘the Zionists understood from the beginning that the only way to establish a Zionist state was to cause the Palestinians to leave’, they must have understood the dangers.
‘Zionsm is a racist movement seeking capital to colonise land and exploit religion’ said Pappe.
he delegates at the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland (1897).
Expulsion
Palestinans ‘leaving’ was always part of the story. As Zionism’s founding fathers Herzl, put it: ‘we shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed—the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’.
The thing is most people – rich, poor or middling – don’t take kindly to being shoved off their land or out of their homes, however ‘discreetly’.
The Zionists tried to make out Palestine was a shithole, ‘a malarial swamp’ in Lloyd George’s words. That no one wanted. Early on in the project two rabbis were dispatched to Jerusalem to report on the lay of the land: ‘The bride is beautiful’ said the surprisingly truthful rabbis, ‘but she is married to another man’.
That man was Palestine. O well.
Plans to establish a home in a ‘land without a people, for a people without a land’, barged ahead.
Who cared that this vaunted ‘land without a people’ actually held one and a half million Palestinians on it?
That far from being a ‘malarial swamp’ it was fertile, with cities, farms, orchards, waterways, harbours, schools, markets, a functioning administration, and much loved by its people.
Jerusalem on VE Day, 8 May 1945.
Enter the British.
Still in full colonial mode the Brits decided having Palestine under their control could be extremely useful. The Suez Canal was close by. It was bordered by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt.
In good old colonial divide and conquer mode, they threw their weight behind the Zionist movement now gathering members, and financial backers, throughout Europe and America.
When the British walked into Palestine, Zionists literally walked in alongside them.
Britain’s Governor General said: ‘our aim is to create a loyal little Jewish Ulster in Palestine. To ‘guard against a sea of hostile Arabism’.
Lovely.
The British government ‘gave’ Palestine to the Zionists, and heartily encouraged Jewish ‘ingathering’, while openly supporting, armed, and turning a blind eye to the vicious terrorist activities of Zionism’s infamous militias.
‘We have a strong presence on the ground here’ boasted one militia group, ‘the British cannot say no to us’.
Zionist communes were encouraged and financed, to buy up thousands of acres of Palestinian land and expel the farmers. Zionist militias did what they wanted to the Palestinians, while inward migration of Jewish peoples from Russia, Eastern Europe, Europe and America increased tenfold.
As Zionist terrorists and British soldiers bullied, harassed and belittled the Palestnians, a census of the entire territory was carried out, by the British, aided by Zionists who often entered Palestinian villages disguised as indigenous Arabs taking advantage of traditional Palestinian hospitality, which welcomed, and fed, strangers.
Every single Palestinian village was listed and mapped, the number of men who might resist, where the stores were kept down to the number of olives and apricots on the trees. Crucially how the village could be accessed and exited from.
Arab revolt against the British.
Resistance
When a Palestinian resistance movement rose up, distraught at the stealing of their land, the lack of civil rights, the blatant privileging of the Zionists, and an ever-increasing inward flow of Jewish migrants, the British, and their Zionst pals, were armed with a blueprint of every single village’s strengths and vulnerabilities.
The uprising was put down with extreme brutality.
By its end, three years later, all Palestinian men of fighting age had been wiped out. Thousands of Palestinians driven out, their land confiscated, their homes blown up, while Zionist militias roamed the streets triumphant.
When the ‘catastrophe’, the Naqba came with Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948, and the ejection of Palestinians, Palestinians were defenceless. Hundreds of thousands were forced into exile and refugee camps, carrying what they could on their backs. Their abandoned villages and orchards instantly taken over by the Zionists, or what was now the Israeli government. During the Naqba 530 villages were destroyed.
Then, as one commentator said, the Israelis were handed a ready-made State. The only difference workers noticed when they came into their offices the next day was that their Palestinian colleagues had been expelled. From their own country.
Having utilised their favourite colonisers trick of pitting an implanted group against the local people to further their own ends, the British buggered off, leaving an unfolding catastrophe behind them.
Just as they did in India. In Ireland. In Sri Lanka. In huge swathes of Africa where inequality, historic injustices and bitter racial divisions poison all life and all political institutions to this day.
Palestinian resistance, already fatally wounded by the British, was helpless as Zionist armed terrorist groups surrounded and torched entire villages, blew up Palestinian buildings, killed and displaced hundreds. Entire cities supposed to be under Palestinian control, were surrounded and bombed. All men of fighting age were removed to concentration camps.
Lovely, hey?
As Zionist groups – now the Israeli army – grew ever stronger, attacking and taking over village after village, David Ben Gurion wrote: ‘in each attack a decisive blow should be struck. It should result in the destruction of homes and the removal of the population’.
Sound familiar? Gaza anyone? The West Bank? Silwan?
Zionism’s deadly history of violence against the Palestinian people hit a peak this past ten days as the Israeli army, armed, thanks to billion dollar yearly gifts, grants and loans from the US, and in furious revenge mode after an attack by Hamas, bombs home after home in Gaza, the biggest open prison in the world, where half the population is under fifteen years of age.
Who cares if some old granny, or a few terrified children are still in there? Blast away dear boy, blast away. This is Israel. We can do whatever we want to the Palestinians. The West has always said so.
Fire ahead, say the Americans. We’re monitoring the situation, say the Brits. We love Israel, says Ursula von der Leyen of the EU.
Warsaw Ghetto boy, perhaps the most iconic photograph representing children in the Holocaust.
Sympathy for the Jewish People
The truth is, everyone in the world with a heartbeat sympathises with the Jewish people for seemingly endless pogroms, culminating in the most terrifying pogrom of all, the Holocaust, where six million completely innocent people were burnt, shot, gassed, tortured to death.
But the Holocaust happened in Germany. In Europe. Almost every country in Europe collaborated with the Nazis in ‘exterminating’ – that terrible word – the Jewish people.
France, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Belgium, the Channel Islands, Norway, Albania, Romania, Yugoslavia, Latvia, just to name a few.
Businesses that collaborated include Coca Cola, Ford Motor Company, and IBM.
American companies in Germany included General Motors, Standard Oil, IT&T, Singer, International Harvester, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Westinghouse, and United Fruit.
Hollywood studios ‘adjusted’ films to Nazi tastes.
Financial operations were facilitated by banks such as the Bank for International Settlements, Chase and Morgan, and Union Banking Corporation
And of course delightful German outfits like IG Farben that produced ‘Zyklon B’, the infamous insecticide used by the Nazis to gas millions of Jewish people, communists, socialists, Romanies, jazz players, gays, and ‘undesirables’.
The Allies, horrified at what they’d found in the concentration camps, vowed to destroy IG Farben after the War.
But the top twenty-three directors tried at Nuremberg for their involvement in developing the science behind the extermination of millions of human beings, were given risible sentences of two, three or six years.
And, oops, before you could say ‘O what a lovely Holocaust’ IG Farben was back in production.
No real recompense was ever made to the Jewish people. A handful of Nazi top dogs were topped. Others fled to America, North and South or slid back into their old jobs as ‘captains of industry’. As for art ‘to this day, some tens of thousands of artworks stolen by the Nazi’s have still not been located.’ Never mind returned.
Nobody really paid the price for the horrors perpetrated. Deadly nerve gases magically became pesticides. Companies like IG Farben became vast international corporations gifting humanity: .nerve gases, pesticides, insecticides, heroin, Zyklon B, Lindane, DDT, Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, Round Up, and GM.
Hey ho. Business is business.
‘Somewhere else’
Instead of truly understanding why and how such hatred had exploded, instead of truly recompensing victims, the idea of a Jewish homeland, of exporting the problem to ‘somewhere else’ was promoted ever more vigorously, gaining mythic status.
Far easier to promote Valhalla on someone else’s land than deal with European Nazism.
Exporting the problem to Palestine, which had not been implicated in the torture of a single Jew, never mind the murder of six million Jews in the most horrific ways possible, of stealing the Palestinians land, of getting rid of them by whatever means you could get away with, i,e, anything, was more heavily promoted than ever, with America, now ‘leader of the Free World’, the Zionists new best friend.
America was more or less happy to play along with Zionism. When Israel won the Six Day War in 1967 – against three Arab nations – they became genuinely enthusiastic. As one American Senator (Jesse Helms, 1995)put it, ‘Israel is the equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Without Israel promoting its and America’s common interests, we would be badly off indeed.’
Did somebody say the land on which Israel, Britain and America had built this ‘aircraft carrier’, this militaristic, ethnocentric, ethnic cleansing, colony, actually belonged to the Palestinian people?
Em, no. O well.
Big players play while little people, very often brown or black people, get squished.
Funnily enough, another REALLY big player in torturing the Jewsh people, the Catholic Church, criminally responsible for placing a target on Jewish people’s backs for two thousand years – as ‘THE PEOPLE WHO KILLED JESUS!’ – seem to get a free pass.
This vicious and untruthful slur was only rescinded by the Church in 1960!
‘A Sorry about that lads’ kind of apology issued forth: ‘yeah shure thousands of ye were murdered and boiled alive for killing yer man when we all knew it was actually the Romans what done it, but no hard feelings, right?’
So folks is Israel a land of milk and honey, or a catastrophe? A homeland for Jewish people built on a Palestinian graveyard? An aircraft carrier for the U.S.? Or a Western ‘dagger’ plunged into the Middle East?
Who knows where Israeli/Zionist nationalism – fueled by fear, terror, propaganda, militarism and the cynical manipulations of the Big Powers, and a bad conscience – will lead next.
All out war in the Middle East?
All out war in the world?
In the meantime, one can only pray for Gaza. For Palestine. For the ordinary people of Israel not supporting the madness.
For us all.
Feature Image: The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem. Frank Armstrong, 2003.
And so, the omertà as to the RTÉ personnel getting ‘freebie’ cars has finally broken. It’s no coincidence that this was the only outlet probing this matter five years ago. We knew the topic was highly unlikely to be picked up by media reliant on revenue streams from advertising cars.
We also knew that covering the topic was unlikely to win any friends for this publication in the state broadcaster – generally not a wise move for a fledgling operation trying to make it in the Irish media landscape. Despite the obvious pitfalls, the editor published my original piece – and then followed up the matter in his own stoic fashion.
Sure enough, five years on, despite countless topics having been forensically covered by Cassandra Voices, and despite the editor having previously appeared on prime time RTÉ shows, they have never contacted him or this outlet regarding any topic featured herein. Cassandra was ‘cancelled’ almost as soon as she commenced.
Over the last week a series of detailshave emerged of a culture in RTÉ of personnel entering ‘side-deals’ where they benefit either by additional cash payments, or in kind – by way of high-value items such as cars or other luxury outings to prestigious sporting fixtures. Nice if you can get it.
This has come as a revelation to most Irish people – yet readers of this publication know that there has been a serious issue going back two decades. Unlike commercial operators, there is an onus on RTÉ to be accountable to the public as it relies on approximately €150 million in state funding via the licence fee each year.
Hence, it has long seemed apparent that there is a clear need for transparency to avoid conflicts of interest, especially when RTÉ employees engage in extra-curricular commercial arrangements.
Cassandra Voices has long since called on RTÉ to release an easily accessible register of interests, as occurs with personnel who work at the BBC. Yet RTÉ have steadfastly refused to countenance such a notion – and for that, they are now having to answer.
At the time, RTÉ were asked to disclose records of payments, or payments-in-kind, from car dealership to leading RTÉ stars, approved by RTÉ ’s management since January 1st, 2017 under the Personal and Public Activities Guidance.
RTÉ’s FOI officer responded to say there was no record of any such payments or payments-in-kind. That FOI request was filed with RTÉ following an article by this writer, in which we outlined instances where RTÉ presenters had vilified other road users, notably cyclists – without making it clear to their audiences that they had ‘side-deals’ with car companies.
It seemed obvious to us that there was an ongoing culture of side-deals with car companies, especially given there had been previous public references to this by the then Labour TD, Tommy Broughan.
In hindsight, it was very brave of Broughan to raise the topic, given that TDs depend on media coverage to be elected. Today it turns out, courtesy of the Independent that there are in fact numerous side-deals between many RTÉ personnel and car companies. How credible is the FOI officer’s claim in 2018 that no such deals existed when asked by this small, independent media outlet?
BMW i3
Buy a Car to Save the Environment…
The real problem is not that personnel have enjoyed such arrangements, but that there is a lack of transparency – and that this coincides with an apparent de facto black-out of transport issues being covered in an adequate manner.
Yet there seems to have been little probing by RTÉ into the strategic issues underpinning this malaise. Instead we find the blithe assumption that the airport metro will be a panacea, and in the meantime, sure why not buy an electric car to save the environment?
New cars, by their nature, are of course bad for the environment – and electric cars bring their own set of problems, not least issues relating tomining for batteries, disposal of same, and, potentially, greater erosion of road surfaces, arising from the increased weight.
In many instances, it may make sense to keep an older vehicle, used infrequently, on the road – rather than buying a new car.
It is understandable, if lamentable, that commercial media should shy away from damning stories as it may scare advertisers. That is why the role of a public broadcaster working in the public interest is so important.
Train In Connolly Station – Dublin.
Fail Rail
A good example of how RTÉ operates is how they covered the ‘re-opening’ of the railway that passes through the Phoenix Park tunnel in Dublin. That railway connects the two main railway termini in Dublin, Heuston and Connolly Stations, linking the Cork and south-west commuter line from Heuston, through the north city centre, onto the Sligo and north-west commuter line that runs into Connolly.
The railway has been present for over a century, and for years, carried passenger trains between the two termini – provided the trains were empty. At the same time, Irish Rail, were proposing a multi-billion euro tunnel, DART Underground, so as to create a new link from Heuston around to the lines linking into Connolly.
Hence there was a line that could have been used, which Irish Rail were effectively refusing to use – but were instead proposing to spend billions. Why wasn’t RTÉ probing this matter?
Ultimately, the Phoenix Park line was brought into use in 2017, but the new operation is not without problems. Most obvious is that although trains now run between Connolly and Heuston Stations, the services do not stop at Heuston Station – and instead simply fly by an idle platform!
Although the new service passes through some of the most densely populated areas in the state, such as Ballyfermot, Inchicore, Cabra, and Phibsborough – the train only stops once in fifteen kilometres at Drumcondra, between Connolly and Park West Stations. A fit-for-purpose public broadcaster would surely have examined the issues involved, flagged to the RTÉ Dublin correspondent John Kilraine at the time.
Instead, having studiously ignored the existence of this railway for many years, on the day of the re-opening of the tunnel to passenger services, the matter was simply presented as a ‘good news’ story.
The modus operandi of RTÉ in this instance appears to have amounted to a suppression of the facts, until state policy mandated a change, where upon it was a case of ‘hooray for happy days’. Such an approach is not good enough. Irish Rail would not have been able to obscure the existence of that key railway had RTÉ been doing its job properly.
Irish Independent, 2008.
UnchaRTEd territory?
It remains to be seen if RTÉ staff can redeem the reputation of the state broadcaster. This week’s outings to the Dáil did not inspire much confidence – particularly when the Chief Financial Officer was unable to recall his own payment levels; two hundred thousand euro, as we subsequently learned.
As RTÉ correspondent Paul Cunningham observed, it turns out that there has been a ‘special arrangement for special people’.
Although Cassandra was the lone voice raising such unpopular questions a few years ago, the levee has now properly broken, and it has emerged there have been all sorts of ‘side-deals’ and unusual accounting procedures that have facilitated junkets, luxury outings, ‘freebie cars’ and hidden payments. It will be interesting to see what else comes out. The public deserves a lot better from its national broadcaster.
The significance of Joe Duffy (Liveline, June 26, 2023) insisting that Ryan Tubridy (from 12.30) “really is a unique talent” should not be overlooked.
It isn’t simply that Joe and Ryan (along with a host of RTÉ’s household names) share Noel Kelly as an agent. It also reveals Joe’s interest in maintaining a near-feudal pay structure, rewarding “unique talent”.
Notably, Joe is fixated on maintaining high ratings for his show. As he put it in 2017: ‘One of the reasons I say that we have to have our numbers up [is] because it only works when the numbers are up.’
The Joe Duffy Show is a careful balancing act between heart-rending accounts appealing to an older, pearl-clutching, audience – often sparking moral panic – and outright absurdity or light entertainment (including ‘Funny Fridays’). That is not to say that the show never addresses important issues or even breaks stories, but the formula is clearly calibrated by experienced – and even talented – producers. That’s why other presenters seamlessly ‘take the chair.’
Undoubtedly, the issues they choose to lead on arise from careful consideration. Joe doesn’t simply allow members of the public to have their say. This certainly seemed evident during the June 26 programme, as a succession of callers ‘spoke out’ in favour of Ryan Tubridy. At a point when most of the country was up in arms, wagons were circling.
Joe’s particular skill lies in not offending anyone that matters; this extends to the car company sponsoring his show, but crucially finds him reinforcing key government messages.
For example, during Covid, rather than allowing for a reasoned debate among experts on the thorny question of vaccination policy, Joe chose to platform an individual claiming the vaccine was a ‘mark of the beast.’ Naturally, reasonable Joe rode to the rescue to restore our collective sanity.
Latterly, he has weighed in with belligerent statements on Russia-Ukraine that align with the government’s response. Thus in May, 2023 he opined: ‘War only ends primarily when one side is beaten by the other side.’ As Mick Heaneyput it in the Irish Times: ‘He’s so impassioned that callers with mildly divergent views struggle to get a word in edgeways at times. Talk to Joe? Not when he’s in this form.’
During his 9am radio slot and as presenter of the Late Late Show Ryan was rarely overtly political, although he was happy to endorse a complimentary biography of Leo Varadkar, and chose to interview Micheál Martinon his penultimate outing as Late Late Show host.
Tubridy plays a different role to Joe Duffy, which I have previously arguedis essential to a distinctively Irish propaganda. This is to maintain the feel-good factor. Light entertainment on the airwaves provides a comfort blanket for all sorts of troubles, from Covid to the cost of living. Indeed, Tubridy’s relentless chirpiness recalls the Depression-era song, popularised by Bing Crosby: ‘Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (and Dream your Troubles Away)’
Almost uniquely on RTÉ Radio 1 – the Ray D’Arcy show has a similarly vacuous quality – Tubridy’s programmes became an extended commercial: a kind of dream factory or Late Late Toy Show for adults. Rather than engaging in tiresome arguments over our response to climate change, listeners and viewers are subliminally guided into treating themselves to the latest car model. Smile, it’s easy.
In this argument-free zone, the mask occasionally slipped, as where Tubridy suggested on the Late Late Show in 2018 that cyclists who (legally) cycle two abreast should be ‘binned’.
A significant proportion of the Irish public ignore RTÉ, and aren’t in the least bit surprised by the revelations. The real outrage emanated from RTÉ staff who did not take kindly to their highest earner being over-paid in an underhand fashion. This arrived at a time when, presumably, many are feeling the pinch during an extended Cost of Living and Housing Crisis.
RTÉ staff are a formidable and influential body that seem to have gained control of the news rooms, even if the likes of the Joe Duffy Show may be acting in the interest of Tubridy. The sans culottes seemed determined to eviscerate the ancien regime. Whether the defenestrations of Dee Forbes and Ryan Tubridy will be sufficient remains to be seen.
The looming question is whether these RTÉ journalists, who appear to be led by Education Correspondent Emma O’Kelly are committed to a long overdue overhaul of public service broadcasting. This ought to entail an end to programming that serves as a vehicle for so-called ‘talent’. Notably, BBC Radio 4’s schedule does not contain a single programme that takes its name from a presenter.
But RTÉ staff may have to be prepared to cut their cloth further. It is unclear whether public service broadcasting is compatible with selling advertising space.
A fully state-funded model would also bring its own problems – as we witnessed during the Covid-era when RTÉ often became a conduit for government propaganda – but safeguards, as in the BBC’s commitment to impartiality, could be put in place. A slimmed down model – with a primary focus on current affairs and high culture – would surely represent an improvement on the kind of schlock – epitomised by Ryan Tubridy – we have become accustomed to.
A Basic Requirement
In 2017 I lodged a Freedom of Information (FOI) request seeking details of payments by third parties to a number of RTÉ stars, including Ryan Tubridy, approved by RTÉ management falling under the Personal and Public Activities Guidance for 2017.
The officer refused to divulge precise details, claiming this could be advantageous to competitors, might result in financial loss to contractors, and potentially ‘prejudice RTÉ ’s contractual negotiations in respect of future engagements with independent contractors’.
He revealed, however, that ‘the total number of requests to engage in external ventures that RTÉ received was 122. Of that number, 114 were approved and 8 were refused. Of those granted, 97 were independent contractor requests and 1 was a RTÉ employee request. Of those refused, 7 were independent contractor requests and 17 were RTÉ employee requests.’
That the vast majority of requests were approved, particularly to independent contractors, demonstrated that the organisation was taking a permissive approach on conflicts of interest.
RTÉ claimed the majority of payments were for ‘non-commercial events, and mostly in support of charitable or other not-for-profit organisations’. In the absence of further details, however, it was impossible to verify this claim. If their work really was benign, why were they withholding the information?
The claim that divulging information would “prejudice RTÉ ’s contractual negotiations” suggests the likes of Ryan Tubridy would have been lost to commercial competitors if information entered the public domain. That contention may be questioned, in the case of Tubridy at least. After moonlighting with the BBC in 2016 Tubridy admitted he had found connecting with UK listeners difficult, while leaving for Newstalk or TV3 would have represented a career regression.
Most of RTÉ ’s household names found fame, and fortune, through extended exposure on RTÉ. The failure of Pat Kenny to draw a substantial number of his former listeners away from the station, when he departed for Newstalk, indicates most people are in the habit of tuning into the state broadcaster, rather than to listen to the unique talent.
Transparency?
This week I sent in another FOI seeking records (if they exist) of payments or payments-in-kind to the same ‘stars’, approved by RTE management falling under the Personal and Public Activities Guidance since 2017. It will be interesting to find out whether transparency is now given a higher priority than “contractual negotiations”.
U.K. lawmakers, unlike their Irish counterparts, are currently agonising over the Online Safety Bill 2023. It is far less draconian than the recent Irish Bill, which I recently assessed.
This is currently being reviewed in the House or Lords – a body not to be automatically dismissed. This archaic assembly is still capable of acting as a real corrective to the excesses of Parliament. They can delay and amend, but also, crucially, awaken moral authority to invite reconsideration, as with Tony Blair’s draconian anti-terror legislation.
Thus, the U.K. is not passing a misguided and extremist Hate Speech Act, as in Ireland, but will continue to rely on its existing empiric and specific Protection Against Hatred legislation.
The core differences between the Irish legislation and that being considered for the U.K. are as follows:
First, the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill is primarily concerned with protecting underage minors from harmful content online. Assuming material is not subject to an existing criminal sanction, adults are allowed to be self-regulating, when viewing, for example, pornography or extremist political content. This is a sensible response that recognises that censorship can often be counter-productive, and treats adults as adults.
Secondly, the U.K. is not establishing a potentially political controlled commission in Ireland which will fine, pressurise, and finally enforce compliance.
Finally, the U.K. legislation is primarily concerned with taming the Wild West of the internet and social media, not established media. The Irish legislations targets all media.
At one level this shows that the British state is confident in the conformity of established vectors of public opinion. But there is a world of difference between the rambunctious content found in, for example, the right-wing Telegraph or the left-wing New Statesman, and servile and increasingly anodyne content found in legacy Irish media. However, the Overton window is narrowing over on Fleet Street too.
The era of Covid-19 has witnessed unprecedented conformity, censorship of scientists and censorship-by-omission. This dangerous trend recalls Clarence Darrow’s speech in the Scopes Monkey Trial in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school is apposite:
Today it is the public-school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honour, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century weights burdened the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
The British have a long tradition of being protective of intellect and permissible disagreement, which is, arguably, innate to Protestantism. They have never been subject to Savonarola figures, as in culturally Catholic countries like Ireland. Today civil society in the U.K. has not uniformly approved of a glossary of politically correct terms – as we seem to have in Ireland, where the Bishop’s crozier has been replaced by the corporate induction.
The recent criminalisation of the mere possession of offensive materials in Ireland is akin to the banning of books from libraries in the U.S. Bible Belt.
Yet remarkably, when the Irish government consulted the public over 70% of those who responded suggested they should not enact it. The rubber-stamping exercise had backfired. In response, Leo Varadkar airily claimed ‘the vast majority of people, don’t make submissions to public consultations’, meaning they’re ‘not necessarily reflective of public opinion.’ So why bother with the exercise?
Yet it is clear the Irish establishment does not appreciate expert independent opinion when this diverges from an intended outcome – an opinion recently expressed by Supreme Court Justice Charleton. Intelligent opinion cannot be allowed to upset vested absurdity. There really is nothing worse than a so-called moral principle cloaking a vested interest.
The ultra-censorious Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid offers an interesting case study in this context. He was like Richelieu or Talleyrand – more important than the monarch du jour. In Ireland today religiously ordained censorship has been replaced by proto-corporate social control. Fintan O’Toole’s is probably the leading ideologue in Ireland today.
Sinn Féin’s unwillingness to oppose the Bill demonstrates a distinct lack of judgment, naivete and even a certain quality of turkeys voting for Christmas, as we the inexorable crisis in what Jürgen Habermas calls participatory democracy continues.
I suspect that prior to the forthcoming 2025 election the new law will be used to nullify dissent, perhaps extending to opposition to support for the War in Ukraine. Sinn Féin may wish to become the arbiters of acceptable speech, but they must get into power first. That ought to have led to a cautionary opposition.
It is of course necessary for the State to regulate the Promethean capacity of the internet and, in particular, protect children from harmful content. The question is how to police and monitor it. One solution that China offers is complete censorship. It is fair to say that Ireland is veering in that direction.
The question is thus one of nuance and balance. The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill seeks to protect children in a variety of ways from accessing illegal content, by providing for risk assessments and modes of entry, including age identification.
But the Irish act applies this restrictive approach to adults and established media and then sets up a commission of politically appointed individuals to determine whether the content provider is to be fined or prosecuted.
The Irish polity has never trusted independent adults to form their own opinions, and the current legislation reflects that paternalistic attitude. A chill wind blows in the U.K. but a hurricane is raging in Ireland, with the steady denudation of what Habermas has called the civic space.
Last November, in one of his final outings as Taoiseach, Micheál Martin delivered the annual Romanes Lecture at Oxford University. It’s unusual to find a senior Irish politician laying out a political philosophy, and for this he deserves credit, even if I take issue with his claim to occupying a ‘liberal’ middle ground.
Since the nadir of the 2011 election, when Fianna Fáil won just 20 seats with 17.6% of the vote, Martin has steadied that ship; winning 44 seats with 24.3% of the vote in 2016, and 38 seats with 22.2% in 2020, in the face of Sinn Fein’s surge.
Importantly, during this holding pattern, Martin has restored the party’s access to levers of power and patronage. A romantic yearning for an overall majority associated with the leadership of Charles J. Haughey is a distant memory. In its place, we find steely pragmatism under Martin.
One commentator recently argued that Martin, ‘has remade Fianna Fáil from a party with pretensions of national leadership into a reduced but successful vehicle for its leader.’ This seems unfair. It is difficult to imagine any leader re-invigorating the party sufficiently to remain ‘the natural governing party’ after the car crash years of Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen.
Whatever about the morality of the issue, Martin’s decision to endorse the Repeal of the Eighth Amendment in 2018 – in contrast to the majority of his parliamentary colleagues – was politically astute, given the low age profile of the ‘yes’ vote.
Nevertheless, Fianna Fail is still struggling to attract younger voters, remains moribund in Dublin and vulnerable to rural independents. It is still being argued that a party lacking obvious rising stars could cease to exist. A competent leader, however, cannot be blamed for the relative mediocrity of his colleagues.
Martin’s relationship to his lieutenants recalls a story about Charlie Haughey bringing his cabinet to the exclusive Coq Hardi restaurant. The princely Haughey ordered Steak Tartar, and when asked, “what about for the vegetables?”, replied “they won’t be dining.”
Moreover, Martin’s personal approval ratings consistently exceed those of the gaff-prone Leo Varadkar. This has implications for the forthcoming general election, when we may expect presidential campaigning, with relentless media focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the main party leaders.
Finally, when it comes to deciding the composition of the next government, Martin’s Fianna Fáil is in less of an ideological straightjacket than Fine Gael. With an election looming, Martin may be happy to occupy a putative political centre, while watching sparks fly between Sinn Féin and Fine Gael.
Charles J. Haughey in 1989.
Embattled
Thus, in the Romanes Lecture Martin lays claim to what he describes as an ‘embattled liberal middle ground’, pointing to threats posed by the technological rupture of the Internet and nefarious Russian interference in our democracy. These developments he ties to the recent political earthquakes of Brexit and the Trump Presidency, as well as the expression of conspiracy theories.
This familiar narrative contains some truth, but ‘an angry public discourse’ in most countries can be traced primarily to a decline in manufacturing and heavy industry, the widening gap between rich and poor and a global housing crisis.
Martin nonetheless contends: ‘In terms of basic concerns such as incomes, life expectancy and education, the scale of progress over the last century is beyond anything which was predicted, yet this is largely absent from the public discourse’.
This idea that we have ‘never had it so good’ ignores that since the 1970s real wages have barely budged; life expectancy now appears to be declining, in the U.S. at least; and how in Ireland we have an education system designed to produce nothing more than ‘second class robots’, according to an OECD expert. And that is to ignore more existential threats such as climate change.
He weakly recalls ‘the best’ losing ‘all conviction’ from W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’, a poem anticipating the victorious march of ideologies such as Communism and Fascism in the 1920s. Today, in contrast, we find a distinct absence of fixed ideologies animating the ‘Populist’ movements Martin decries.
Thus, Martin’s broad-brush account of Populism joins left (including Sinn Féin presumably) opposition with that on the right, to a point where, it seems as if anything other than his own centre-right viewpoint is, at best, fiscally irresponsibility, or, at worst, a ‘threat to core principles of liberal democracy.’
Implicitly, any deviation from a neoliberal consensus reigning ascendant in Washington and Brussels is illegitimate. This amounts to a denial of a core principle of democracy: the sovereignty of the people in determining policy decisions through their elected representatives; as opposed to politicians facilitating a permanent government of unelected civil servants and unaccountable corporations.
Martin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Ukraine in July 2022.
Undermining Democracy?
Furthermore, Martin’s assessment that ‘the efforts by autocratic governments to undermine democracies is a relatively recent development in terms of its scale and ambition’ absolves the U.S. from responsibility for its long-standing interference in democracies, including Ukraine. He expresses no condemnation for the U.S. hatching coups.
Moreover, according to the American Bar Association: ‘Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not find sufficient evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the United States’ 2016 election and did not take a clear position on whether Trump obstructed justice.’ Thus, to insinuate otherwise is simply a conspiracy theory.
A lack of perspective is also evident in his contention that ‘Russia’s escalation of its eight-year war against Ukraine draws on a vision of restored imperial grandeur, but it is ultimately more about the desire to prevent liberal democracy succeeding in a former imperial domain.’
This disregards an obvious reason for the invasion, anticipated by, among others, George Kennan the architect of containment: the prospect of NATO expanding as far as the Russian frontier. Democratically elected, or otherwise, any Russian leader would object to this. This is not to justify the invasion, but to explain it.
We might reasonably expect greater historical insight from a holder of an MA in the subject. Approval for Timothy Snyder’s ‘wonderful work in linking historical insight to contemporary action’ suggests he is not reading widely enough.
A withering 2018 assessment of Snyder by Research Professor and Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the George Washington University Dr Marlene Laruelle is worth recalling:
The fact that Timothy Snyder is an influential public intellectual and respected historian is no reason for scholars not to challenge his facile and polemical analysis of the contemporary Russian state … Distortions, inaccuracies, and selective interpretations do not help illuminate what motivates the Russian leadership’s self-positioning on the international, and in particular the European, scene. Simplistic reductionist techniques and invalid reasoning further confuse the analysis—and bias policy responses.
The hawkish Snyder recently dismissed the danger of nuclear weapons being used in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, blithely claiming a nuclear bomb ‘would make no decisive military difference.’
Martin meets with U.S. President Joe Biden at Carlingford Castle in April 2023.
Atlanticist
It might be noted that in 2003, immediately after the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq that caused up to one million deaths, as Minister for Health and Children, Micheal Martin voted alongside his government in favour of a motion endorsing ‘the long-standing arrangements for the overflight and landing in Ireland of US military and civilian aircraft’ – essentially sanctioning the refuelling of U.S. jets in Shannon.
During that debate then Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny warned perceptively that the U.S. invasion invited anarchy in the global system. Indeed, it is believed to have had a significant effect on the psychological and political climate in Russia.
It should also be noted that as chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations then Senator Joe Biden actively championed the invasion of Iraq. As President he has included in his cabinet neoconservative hawks, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO from 2005 to 2008. In early 2008, NATO promised Ukraine and Georgia they would one day join the alliance ‘after rebuffing U.S. demands to put the former Soviet republics on an immediate path to membership.’
Both as Taoiseach and now as Foreign Minister Martin has proved a staunch ally to the Biden administration, using Ireland’s platform as a member of UN Security Council to argue that Russia’s conduct could not be reconciled with its place on the Security Council. This hardly enhances the prospect of Ireland ever using its non-aligned status to work as an intermediary for a negotiated settlement to the war.
Any Irish leader is likely to bow to realpolitik considerations, but Martin might have done well to peruse the response of his former party colleague, and Minister for Foreign (or External) Affairs, Frank Aiken to the U.S.-funded Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
In the U.N., Ireland supported the U.S. position, but Aiken also expressed an understanding of the Cuban reaction. He counselled the Cubans on the fundamentals of de Valera’s neutrality policy, specifically towards our own large neighbour: ‘That principle was that under no circumstances would we allow our country to be used as a base for attack against our neighbour Britain … It has special validity in the case of small countries placed beside powerful neighbours with whom they have disputes or disagreements.’
The same logic might apply to a smaller country such as Ukraine, offering a base from which NATO could attack its powerful Russian neighbour. Martin might have let it be known that Ireland favoured de-escalation, acknowledging Russia’s anxieties arising out of a collective memory of World War II, when the Soviet Union suffered up to 27 million deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their allies. Instead, we hear unrelenting belligerence towards Russia – including an apparent disavowal of Irish neutrality.
Also in that lecture, Martin referenced the apparently undifferentiated views of the people of Ukraine:
Just as they did in 2014, the people of Ukraine have been willing to sacrifice everything because they want to secure a free and prosperous future for their country.
In the Romane Lecture, Martin argues that the liberalism he espouses ‘is a set of values which inherently respect the legitimacy of diverse political and social views.’ But this hardly tallies with his record as Taoiseach.
The reaction of the Irish state under Martin as Taoiseach to Covid-19 can hardly be described as liberal. Lockdowns, vaccine passes and forced quarantine for travellers in reception facilities were unprecedented interventions by the State into people’s private lives.
Doubtless, he would argue that a test of proportionality applied. In the lecture he maintains that COVID-19 ‘presented just as serious a threat to governments and institutions’ as the Spanish Influenza pandemic.
The Spanish Influenza (H1N1) pandemic of 1918-19 carried off an astonishing fifty million people, most of whom were in the prime of their lives. In contrast, globally, there have been just under seven million confirmed deaths ‘with’ Covid, the vast majority over seventy years of age and suffering from significant co-morbidities. This at a time when the global population is six times that of 1918.
We find further pieties from Martin such as condemnation of ‘widespread attempts to question core public health advice and to spread doubt about the efficacy of vaccines and the intent behind them.’ Unrestrained scientific debate is surely a key feature of liberalism.
The Irish economic model remains highly dependent on foreign direct investment, including from pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer. Martin may consider preserving their goodwill to be his priority. But it leaves him open to the accusation that he is, at the very least, inadequately attentive to the conduct of companies with a long record of corruption, and criminality.
Martin showed poor judgment as Taoiseach during Covid-19, invariably resorting to draconian interventions. Thus, Ireland became the first European country to re-enter lockdown in October, 2020, based on speculative projections. Then he promised a ‘meaningful Christmas’ later that year, when opening up prior to the annual winter respiratory season, generating the world’s highest Covid rate.
Commendably, Martin ‘placed an unrivalled emphasis on keeping schools open,’ but he played a curious role in the introduction of face mask mandates. In Pandemonium: Power, Politics and Ireland’s Pandemic by Jack Horgan-Jones and Hugh O’Connell we learn that Martin’s phone had been ‘buzzing with texts from his sister-in-law in Singapore. ‘Masks, masks, masks,’ she told him.’ Earlier, however, Professor Martin Cormican informed NPHET that, ‘if there is a benefit, it is very small’, and that ‘widespread mask use also rapidly degenerates with poor practice, which could increase the risk of Covid-19 transmission.’
We also learn of Angela Merkel ringing up the Taoiseach to air her concerns about the Irish case trajectory in the Christmas of 2020, and Martin recalling her bringing this up again ‘at the bloody EU Council meeting.’ Merkel appeared to be demanding a level of stringency in other European states that ignored wider impacts. Just as during the era of austerity, the Irish government under Martin endeavoured to be the best boy in the European class and disregarded the consequences.
Paddy Cosgrave in 2022.
Pervasive Division
As a politician who has survived in government, and as leader of Fianna Fáil, for longer than most, Martin obviously recognises the importance of maintaining warm relations with the press corps. Critical, or investigative, journalism, however, would hardly be a welcome intrusion into his affairs. The press, as the editor of the Times wrote in 1852, ‘lives by disclosure … The statesman’s duty is precisely the reverse.’
Martin nonetheless said:
Support for professional and independent journalism has become an urgent need in our societies. We can see what happens when we no longer put value on journalism which takes time, involves expertise and operates to high ethical standards. The dominance of current affairs by partisan media or by a limited number of the wealthiest in our societies is always destructive.
His recent broadside, however, impugning the motivations of Paddy Cosgrave, Chay Bowes and The Ditch, delivered under Dáil privilege, is more revealing of his attitude. This further lapse into participation in “an angry public discourse” was criticised by the National Union of Journalists.
Associating the Ditch’s impressive record of exposing corruption with Russian interference is a worrying sign of Martin being prepared to employ ‘McCarthyite’ tactics.
Martin refers to ‘a pervasive division in public discourse is directly undermining the ability to develop effective responses to complex problems.’ His problem is that young people, in particular, angrily contest the effectiveness of his government’s response to these complex problems.
In his role as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Micheál Martin may be somewhat insulated from the enduring failure of the Irish government to deliver on housing, which is now being preyed on by an incipient far right. But possessing an ability to survive in Irish politics is surely not the only epitaph he craves.
Micheál Martin may only consent to his epitaph being written once a majority of the young people of Ireland look forward optimistically to a reasonable standard of living under a Fianna Fáil-led government. Unless there is a significant change in circumstances, however, any second coming for him as Taoiseach appears remote.
Outrage is the currency of the times. Nearly everyone in New York City and a healthy proportion of Americans are by now aware of the latest outrage to command Gotham headlines: the tragic death of a mentally ill ‘black’ man on an NYC subway after being choked out by a ‘white’ ex-marine. Some said the victim died while pinioned in the arms of his attacker. Others said he died later, on arrival at the hospital. After questioning the police let the marine go, and he vanished into the night. He was later arrested for homicide.
I italicize the words above because they are not factually derived descriptions so much as ideologically derived. Another common recap of the event puts it differently: A derangedcriminal, arrested forty times and released each time by Democratic government, threatened violence to innocent subway passengers. A heroic ex-marine approached him, put him in a headlock and, in UFC parlance, put him to sleep. The individual later died in hospital. Cause of death as yet unknown.
A Jesuit priest once said that nobody argues about reality; rather we argue about our interpretation of reality. The former interpretation is the version of events embraced by most liberals, the latter by most conservatives and many independents. The liberals have come under intense criticism for their—some would say—extremist approach to policing, or rather not policing.
In liberal capitals, prosecutors no longer prosecute misdemeanors, and hoodlums of all kinds are released back into the public despite their offenses. Police are decried for systemic racism. Immigration is embraced without question. Whites are reviled. Men are despised. Trans people are celebrated without rest and anyone who objects is deemed transphobic. Gender pronouns are enforced. Anyone expressing traditional values or ways of communicating are labeled with a battery of accusations, including being patriarchal, privileged, racist, sexist, and of committing horrid microaggressions. Social media has been aflame with predictable hot takes from both sides of the proverbial aisle.
‘A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient.’ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1966)
Apogee of liberal decadence?
It makes one wonder if we are witnessing the apogee of liberal decadence. A bonfire of ideals. Something of the kind that emerged in Weimar Germany before it fecklessly succumbed to the National Socialists. It seems the liberal ideology of multiculturalism and identity politics has run its course. As I understand it, it was first encouraged in the Sixties as a left counterbalance to the Communist left and, crucially, a form of progressivism that didn’t threaten capitalist profiteering the way Soviet socialism did. From there it progressed through the mild discomfort of political correctness to the full-blown hysteria of misgendering crimes.
We are now witnessing a liberalism that is by many accounts excusing crime at the expense of its victims. A liberalism that is practicing an extreme form of social engineering, attempting to hire for diversity sometimes at the expense of merit, forwarding reparations legislation as the middle class drowns in debt, and driving immigration even as homelessness among citizens swells. In short, racism and sexism mean that minorities and women are blameless and ought to be privileged at the expense of whites and males.
I am reminded of passages in Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift. After being extorted by a small-time crook with mafia connections, the narrator, Charlie Citrine, an effete and wealthy writer and intellectual, is subjected to regular visits from the criminal, who sees an opportunity to expand his horizon of scams. Citrine comments:
Rinaldo was ticking me off for my decadence. Damaged instincts. I wouldn’t defend myself. His ideas probably went back to Sorel (acts of exalted violence by dedicated ideologists to shock the bourgeoisie and regenerate its dying nerve)…Maybe this was in part a phenomenon of modern capitalist society with its commitment to personal freedom for all, ready to sympathize with and even to subsidize the mortal enemies of the leading class, as Schumpeter says, actively sympathetic with real or faked suffering, ready to accept peculiar character-distortions and burdens. It was true that people felt it gave them moral distinction to be patient with criminals and psychopaths. To understand! We love to understand, to have compassion! And there I was.
Later he notes that “Goethe was afraid the modern world might turn into a hospital. Every citizen unwell.”
Seems Bellow—a Nobel Prize winner and one of America’s great pulse readers—had identified decadent virtue signaling liberalism in its infancy. In the name of progress, of multiculturalism and diversity as progress, liberals find themselves surrendering their class privileges and even the conventions of societal security and law and order since these must by definition not be civilization guardrails but instruments of oppression for which we, via our ancestors (sins of the father, in the old language), are wholly responsible.
Saul Bellow.
Reenacting Oppression
What is lamentable in this capitulation is that the minorities—at least in the public realm—to whom bourgeois liberals are ceding every cultural corner seem to have few better ideas than to reverse and reenact the oppression itself, driving toward a mythical notion of equality of outcome that confuses inequality with unfairness. Many have critiqued the ideology, even a small minority of liberals, on a variety of grounds including evolution. Is this justice or thinly veiled vengeance?
The entertainment industry is perhaps Exhibit A in this phenomenon. Hence the relentless insertion of minority actors into the old vestments of oppression worn by white people in the near and distant past. Blazoned across the marquee of my Netflix app is, “Queen Charlotte,” a beautiful black woman adorned in royal vestments. At once the show denies the historical accuracy of the British/Irish queen and repurposes the oppressed as the oppressor, as though it were some sort of social progress. It is progress in the cinematic universe, as people of color are now playing characters previously withheld for white actors in the interest of historical accuracy. But now fidelity to history has been discarded to advance minority representation in film and television. Soon we will march to make the executioners’ union more diverse. More females manning the gallows. Be careful not to misgender your local hangperson.
In his prescient comments, Bellow notes Sorel and paraphrases Goethe. Then he cuts to the chase, hoping to explain the feebleness of liberal society, “Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor who said: mankind is frail, needs bread, cannot bear freedom but requires miracle, mystery, and authority.”
Too true. One can trace the need for the miraculous to the liberals’ desperate embrace of draconian public health mandates and a swift demonization of anyone that resisted. As the hysteria of the pandemic has worn away, the public health response is increasingly seen to have been a series of disastrous dictates from compromised public health institutions beholden to amoral industry. A society of the unwell, gratefully heeding the guidance of benighted institutions. Goethe and Dostoevsky together confirm the worst elements of mankind, realized in the 21st century.
Featured Image: A member of the Peruvian Army with a police dog enforcing curfew on 31 March 2020.
Pandemic
The pandemic revealed the open sore of liberal credulity, as it clutched the hems of the CDC and NHS and the other infallible acronyms of our salvation. But liberals had been trending in this direction for some time. The unforgivable original sin committed by unlettered philistines in flyover states and incalcitrant financiers in coastal megacities was the denial of Hillary Clinton of her rightful coronation—which was to be the capstone achievement of liberal Boomers of the old identity politics left.
Elevating a black man and a woman to the highest rank in consecutive terms would have been the ultimate confirmation of their identity politics. In the wake of this catastrophic defeat for liberals (a catastrophe in their worldview), the bourgeoisie dropped their long-held antipathy for federal intelligence agencies and embraced the CIA, NSA, and DIA, taking their word as gospel in the prosecution of Donald Trump. How easily they forgot Cointelpro, the slaughter of the Panthers, not to mention their murky proximity to the deaths of both Kennedys and King. So the miraculous authority of the daddy state has once more taken hold of a significant portion of the population.
It is a perhaps positive sign that on Rotten Tomatoes, Queen Charlotte scored an all-time low audience score of 1 percent (spilled popcorn icon) and just 11 percent with critics. Though it must be noted in fairness that the series has tripled its ratings among viewers since then, now subsisting at three percent approvals. Likewise, the disastrous Bud Light campaign using a deeply controversial minor trans celebrity has thus far engendered some $15.7 billion in losses. Thanks in part to its line of Pride month clothing for toddlers, Target has watched $9B vanish from its coffers in like fashion.
But the mainstream media wages its holy war. Vogue furiously said of Queen Cleopatra criticism, “Let’s call it what it is: racism.” The Guardian said, “…the idea that you need a white actor is utterly insidious.” The New York Times couched the negative critiques as revealing, “Fear of a Black Cleopatra,” and offered its usual casuistic evasions by declaring nobody meaningfully identified as white in Cleopatra’s time. (Note, of course, how identifying as a race supersedes being a member of an actual race. Of course, liberals have long argued there is no such thing as race, much as transgender activists often argue there is no such thing as biology, aside from a patriarchal construct ginned up by mad misogynists.)
Writer A.J. Kay nicely summarized the movement as, “The rigid moral paradigm in which anything short of ‘affirmation’ is bigoted and hateful.” It is an ideology of total affirmation of ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and women, behavior notwithstanding. Its flip side is the total condemnation of whites and males, behavior notwithstanding. If white, one’s only recourse is to don the sackcloth and ashes, fall to one’s knees, and beg forgiveness from one’s victims. Their response is immaterial. One must atone.
This stridency is born of extreme ideological bias. We are no longer a united states. We now live in a society of seething ire beset by social division, with a doddering senior citizen in charge, a carnival barker awaiting a second act, a legacy of Camelot calling for a great renewal. Everyone angry. Everyone lost. Some blinded by despair, some by rage. The collapsing scenery is perhaps more Shakespearean than Bellovian, Recall the opening scenes of King Lear, “In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d ‘twist son and father… We have seen the best of our time.” As an infamous communist once wrote: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
Julien Charles is a critic, corporate drone, and New Yorker hoping to call attention to the authoritarian drift of states across the Western world, and the narratives promoted to gain consensus for such measures. He has been published in, Off-Guardian and The Hampton Institute, among other publications.
We are sodden with fake news, hyped-up and incomplete information, and false assertions delivered non-stop by our daily newspapers, our televisions, our online news agencies, our social media, and our President. Seymour M. Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir, New York (2018)
I doubt there are many career guidance counsellors now advising school leavers to become journalists. This is down to a serious depletion of the Fourth Estate, in Ireland and around the world, especially attributable to the technological rupture of the Internet. Investigative reporting is really being squeezed. This spells danger for our democracies, as power is not being adequately held to account.
In IrelandMediahuis, a Belgian company which owns a host of newspaper titles including the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday World and Belfast Telegraph recently announced a voluntary redundancy programme. It seems highly unlikely that any of these positions will be re-filled once “re-structuring” is complete.
In 2022 the profitability of that company’s Irish operation fell considerably (€117.3 million to €65.3 million) from the heights of 2021, when the government’s Covid advertising bonanzawas still in full swing. Although online subscriptions increased by 13% over that period, this does not translate into direct profitability.
I review in depth a recent history of dissenting journalism in 20th Century Ireland. It is a concern for Irish democracy that the editors wonder whether it will be possible for future historians to compile two volumes on 21st century Irish periodicals.https://t.co/aRG0FSymnp
Journalism, as an industry, is still reeling from the original sin of publishing online in the early noughties. Once a legacy publisher – the Guardian under Alan Rusbridger in particular – broke ranks and put “the news” online for free, the rest were forced to follow suit, with varying paywalls, or risk irrelevance.
Declining newspaper sales eventually brought an end to what now seems an Edenic era: when real journalism represented a viable career option for a young graduate, or even a person straight out of school.
In America the number of journalists fell from 60,000 in 1992 to 40,000 in 2009,[i] a pattern seen all around the world.
As revenues have diminished workloads have increased. Cardiff University researchers recently conducted an analysis of 2,000 U.K. news stories. This showed an average Fleet Street journalist was filing three times as much as in 1985. Or, to put it another way, journalists now have only one-third of the time they previously enjoyed to perform their jobs.[ii]
This gives rise to an unprecedented amount of what Nick Davies has defined as ‘churnalism’, as journalists become passive processors of ‘unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve a political or commercial interest.’[iii]
One suspects recent developments in AI will accelerate existing trends, and hollow out the industry further. A latter-day Napoleon might not now consider four hostile newspapers to be more formidable than a thousand bayonets, as government subsidies or a philanthropic grant might easily quell opposition.
There are a few bright spots on an otherwise bleak horizon – such as the vibrancy of contrarian podcasting – but it’s hard to disagree with the pessimistic conclusion of ‘the last great American reporter’ Seymour Hersh:
The mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television networks will continue to lay off reporters, reduce staff, and squeeze the funds available for good reporting, and especially for investigative reporting, with its high costs, unpredictable results and its capacity for angering readers and attracting expensive law suits.[iv]
We now encounter an industry captive to social media behemoths, who demand coin in exchange for boosting and blue ticks. In order to finance the few remaining full-time employees, legacy media relies increasingly on biased “philanthro-capitalism”. Moreover, without a steady sales income, the sensitivities of advertisers – including emanations of the state in the era of Covid – are also less easy to disregard.
By its nature, investigative reporting struggles against constraints, legal or otherwise. Indeed, Seymour Hersh’s frustrations with his employers in the New York Times over a lack of support for his investigations into corporate America in the late 1970s led him to hurl his typewriter out an office window at one point.
If current trends continue the practice of investigative journalism in legacy media will go the way of the newspaper boy and shorthand.
In this country an aspiring journalist would want to be well insulated against poverty to challenge the dominant neoliberal consensus expressed through the print duopoly, and RTÉ. Having investigated any aspect of the state-corporate nexus a job applicant might have to field uncomfortable questions in any subsequent job interviews. Ireland is a small country after all, where whistleblowers are generally considered a nuisance.
Those decent ones still working within the profession must maintain a steely reticence, recalling Seamus Heaney’s poem about ‘politicians and newspapermen’ in Whatever You Say Say Nothing (1975):
‘O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,
Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks’
Successive revelations of corruption among elected politician by what is essentially a two-man journalistic operation at On the Ditch – backed by Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave – serves to expose the paucity of investigative reporting among the dominant legacy players, where hundreds of journalists rarely, if ever, land direct hits on the political class. Some are obviously frustrated in their efforts, while others are presumably selected for deference.
F**king Ditch
Without The Ditch, Robert Troy would still be a Minister, without The Ditch, Damien English would still be a Minister – no wonder you are attempting to undermine the Ditch, because they have been quite successful in exposing corrupt, unethical practices by… pic.twitter.com/dPPr7mQRLF
In Irish journalism today, a little investment goes a long way, especially when combined with a willingness to contend with defamation actions, and the more insidious methods that have been employed by emanations of the state in the recent past.
We hear repeated warnings on RTÉ and in print about the dangers of conspiracy theorists and the purveyors of disinformation. This blithely ignores that, time and again, mainstream media has erred in its assessments and failed to provide an adequate account of “the facts”, let alone acknowledge their own internal contradictions.
In Ireland the collective failings of the media came to a head during Covid, when a cabal of civil servants unlawfully usurped power from elected politicians and set in train an unprecedented spending bonanza. There have been few if any sustained investigations into how all that money was spent from a media that was awash with advertising revenue. Nor was there significant dissent from clearly damaging policies, such as extended school closures, or the undermining of previously sacrosanct civil liberties.
Then the Covid crisis gave way to the Ukraine crisis – in what appears a continuation of the Shock Doctrine – and we find a fresh wave of manipulation seemingly designed to nudge a reluctant Irish public into acceptance of NATO membership. Even a token left-wing voices in the mainstream media often reveal themselves beholden to the dominant interest.
It is instructive how many mainstream journalists seem inclined to undermine the case for neutrality, despite successive opinion polls showing the Irish public overwhelmingly wish to remain non-aligned, or militarily neutral. There are some obvious conflicts of interest, at the very least.
It is both our greatest strength and greatest weakness in Ireland that as English-speakers we are subject to relentless propaganda, but are equipped linguistically to cut through the Gordian Knot.
Key critical skills are, however, often lacking, in large part due to an Irish education system that has downgraded the humanities and social sciences, and which according to the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher must avoid producing ‘second-class robots’ – the obvious implication being that is exactly what it currently produces.
Perhaps this explains the cacophony of bewildered voices on social media that lapse into outlandish conspiracy theories. False prophets like John Waters offer a vision of a return to de Valera’s Ireland, which was in many respects a miserable, post-colonial epoch with no place for youth or vibrancy.
Foreign friends wonder why the Irish people are so passive when it comes to housing and securing other rights vis-à-vis the state and dominant corporations. The absence of investigative reporting and critical insight is crucial to maintaining this status quo, where young workers are fleeced by landlords, including REITs that barely pay tax in this country.
Stopping the rot, and saving Irish democracy, surely begins with reforming the public broadcaster, which barely maintains the pretence that it conducts investigative reporting. Sadly, it has long been beholden to advertisers.
The malaise has been brewing for some time. The director and authorBob Quinn in 2001 argued that RTÉ had become a:
bloated and swelling corpse, feeding the increasing number of parasites but incapable of directing itself because there is no life, no human spirit to quicken it … This despite the efforts of bright young men in advertising to string gaudy beads around the neck of the corpse, the vile body, in an effort to persuade the people of this country that their property is still working on their behalf. It is not. It is simply the vehicle for the frustrated fantasies of ad-men, the megalomania of insane technocrats and the sanctification of the acts of a conservative government. If one looks closely at those lines, one will see evidence of the greatest sell-out ever perpetrated on a nation – by the nation itself, through its sons.[v]
In the past there was at least one national newspaper that tended to go against one or other of the dominant centre-right parties, who have since entered coalition.
Any country lacking a media prepared to conduct hard-hitting investigative reporting and which prevents divergent opinions from being ventilated cannot remain an independent republic, or a genuine democracy, for any length of time. Despite a groundswell of support for the opposition, removing the current coalition from power without a change in the media landscape may prove extremely difficult, just as in other European countries.
Feature Image: Daniele Idini
[i] Alan Rusbridger, The Remaking of Journalism and Why it Matters Now, Canongate, Edinburgh, 2018, p.163
