Last week, footage of tech lackies like Mark Zuckerburg (Meta/Facebook), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Sam Altman (OpenAI) was published by The Wall Street Journal, with some of the richest people in the world fawning and licking the boots of Trump around a dinner table. The footage was compared to something from South Park, however it was beyond satire, and makes for vile viewing.
Meanwhile, NHS medics alongside hundreds of others are arrested in the UK for protesting against genocide. In Gaza children, journalists, doctors – anyone and everyone – are being murdered on a daily basis, not to mention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and a litany of other countries, rarely if ever making the front page. While the wealthiest have dinner and discuss data centres in the face of environmental destruction and climate change, while funding genocide and defending cobalt mining in the DRC, others take a stand, fruitless as it seems.
Live on your knees, or die on your feet. The only thing these boot-licking lackies are good for, is stepping over.
Cracking down, or not
While other governments are ‘cracking down’ on the right to protest, we have something to be very proud of in Ireland. The Palestine protest in Cork City last Saturday was attended by maybe 700 people, banging drums, holding up pictures of emaciated children, murdered men and boys. People watched and clapped or supported those protesting genocide. To control all of these peaceful activists, were perhaps seven Gardaí. The one at the back was strolling along and texting. Another, protecting the right flank, inadvertently joined the march in his casual stroll maintaining law and order. No bloody noses, no one being hauled out of a wheelchair into a cop car.
God bless Ireland, and for the luck of geography to be living or born here rather than elsewhere. Some would love to have us believe it’s all bad, but it’s not. It’s really not.
Threats are vile, but are they a consequence?
Politicians spoke to The Irish Times last weekend about the threats and abuse they are enduring, which according to them, is escalating beyond anything encountered before, including threats to Simon Harris’ children. This is abhorrent, unreasonable, and disgusting behaviour, no matter what academic and sociological explanations there are for those who lean into conspiracy theories and misappropriate blame to immigrants, despite all the facts and data before them.
It’s worth highlighting a Guardian report here, where 40% of far-right protestors arrested in the UK had been previously reported for domestic abuse, an intriguing Venn diagram of their thought process.
No one deserves this abuse, let’s be clear on that. However, these far-right, violent, and sometimes unhinged people were stoked into this unreasonable hatred and burst out of their Facebook groups a few years ago and onto the street, and it was in a vacuum created by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
When these far-right protests had their nascent beginnings at the end of 2022, when there were protests in Fermoy, Watergrasshill, Roscrea; we saw it with our eyes. We saw the vacuum that government parties left by refusing, absolutely refusing, to get out in front of the problem and meet the communities where asylum centres were going to be situated.
They allowed these lies to invade that space. They left communities and volunteers to welcome these new residents, refugees, evacuees. They left these towns and villages to pick up the pieces afterwards, to hold fetes and fairs and how many times did local news reporters hear the words from ordinary people, that ‘it’ll give us a chance to come back together after all that division’.
The way they handled the government bodies handled the situation was cruel and bizarre. They persisted and persisted in this weird dribble of information, that had to be sought by newspapers rather than freely given, ducking and diving and not just standing in front of a town or a village and saying the facts.
The abuse isn’t deserved, no, but actions have consequences, and this is it.
