Where were these guys on Saturday?

The Gar­da Pub­lic Order unit at a Right2Water demon­stra­tion, 10 Decem­ber 2014

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.

ENDS