Brendan Ogle: There was a fascist demonstration outside the Dáil last Saturday in pursuance of building an Irish Nazi Party. Yes, in the era of Trump the virus has international tentacles which have reached here. For the first time since O’Duffy’s Blueshirts, fascists are on Irish streets.
About 200 turned up. The pretext was protesting because a gay Government Minister was photographed years ago with some English lad with questionable views on the age of sexual consent.
This is enough for the gay Minister to be called a paedophile by fascists using the decades-old trope that gay people abuse children. Funny, where this actually happened (actual child abuse) for decades in the Catholic Church, the fascists not only didn’t notice it but they applaud the Church and its extreme conservative lobby groups. They even write for them and invite them on their fascist protests and everything,
But don’t expect consistency. These are fascists, arch advocates of ‘the end justifies the means’. They wave Irish flags too, and declare themselves patriots, yet their organisers have links with loyalist paramilitaries, UKIP and the English Defence League. International fascism. A century and a decade ago, Connolly would have dealt with them. Dublin then had the forebears of this rabble, they were always among us, but there weren’t any of them in the Irish Citizen Army. No, they were the ones throwing rotten fruit and vegetables at them in 1916 and siding with the oppressor.
You can see the lines of argument though. Agree with our fascism or you aren’t a patriot. Agree with us or you support paedophilia. They’ve already used the ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘anti-corruption’ tropes. It’s classic Germany of the 1920s, if any of them had ever read a book. But it appears only the ringleaders have, and they are following the supremacists’ ‘to do list’ assiduously.
Predictably, the event was full of angry men roaring and spouting hate into microphones, threatening people. In case anybody is unsure of their hateful intent, they usefully produced banners with nooses on them. A small number of people (10) turned up to counter protest, and were violently attacked. It looked like a KKK rally; all it was missing were hoods and a burning cross.
But here’s the point. They are disappointed at the numbers and I have seen them frustratingly asking “why did so many people turn up for anti-water-charges protests but not for us”?
This puts me in mind of this photo. This is the Garda Public Order Unit at an anti-water-charges march on 10 December 2014. I’m wondering why did these guys turn up for the Right2Water march, but not on Saturday?
The march back then had 70,000 attendees and ended with a five hour rally. There was no hate speech, no incitement, no fascism, no defamation, no violence. But the Government of the day was threatened, and ultimately defeated, on the issue. And because they were threatened, they sent this.
But it would appear they aren’t threatened by Saturday’s mob of hate. They are probably right. Certainly the numbers attending and the pathetic election results would suggest they are right. But it’s fascism. It’s violent and it’s inciting violence and hatred. The public deserve to be protected from such menace.
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