Opinion

Allison Morris: I have no desire to be dragged back to a bleak Ireland where women were second class citizens

President Donald Trump speaks from the South Lawn of the White House on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention last month. Picture by AP Photo/Alex Brandon
President Donald Trump speaks from the South Lawn of the White House on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention last month. Picture by AP Photo/Alex Brandon President Donald Trump speaks from the South Lawn of the White House on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention last month. Picture by AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The mobilisation of the far right in Ireland has been a strange episode to watch from afar.

It has thrown up some very unlikely figures, some who previously existed on the fringes of society now awarded a platform via the internet, some who had a fall from grace and are using it to maintain relevance.

In America the swing to the right - and the kick back to that - has seen that country divided as never before, neighbour turned against neighbour.

The people are now the enemy who Trump seems determined to throttle into submission.

Fixing the cause of unrest is always easier than subduing an uprising.

Trump chose the latter.

Fixing the huge inequality, disparity of distribution of wealth and the racial divide is not in the current president's purview, his votes gathered from division rather than unity.

This should all act as a cautionary tale to those of us watching a nation devour itself from the other side of the Atlantic.

In Ireland the movement is less about inequality and seems more driven by egos, the leading lights in the far right, yellow vest movement include those who have been scorned at some point.

People with means and privilege who seem obsessed by the lives of those who have nothing.

Those with an axe to grind against the state or simply society in general.

Rather than face the cause of that resentment, it's easier to lash out and place all responsibility for their own predicament onto others.

For how can they be to blame when the state, Bill Gates, George Soros, Hillary Clinton or any of the other popular current supposed villains of the hour are controlling our minds?

The Great Replacement theory, that a new world order is plotting to replace us all with migrants from the developing world is so fragile a conspiracy it doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

Footage of desperate people making perilous journeys and crammed aboard unstable dingies or into the back of sealed lorries, seems a very inefficient way for the new world order to conduct its business.

In reality at the root of the Irish 'patriot' movement is racism and a fear of a world that has changed socially so as to leave some baffled by their surroundings.

Just as the English far right, the EDL, Britain First and before that the National Front, dreamed of a post war, white only England, when Britannia ruled the waves, the Irish far right want a return to a world where Church and state were as one.

An Ireland where women were treated as second class citizens, who were punished for having children and punished for not having them.

A bleak, grey, awful Ireland that I feel no nostalgia for.

Whether their cause be immigration, abortion, same sex marriage or more recently, the right to not wear a mask, 'patriots' trek across the land with a camera phone in hand just waiting on a challenge they can upload for self affirming attention.

Conspiracy theorists are impossible to reason with.

When presented with facts they simply turn the facts into part of the conspiracy.

They turn any criticism of their conspiracy into proof that there is a deep state plot and anyone who disagrees with them is part of that.

It is a rabbit hole that once down there's no coming back.

It is easy to dismiss this movement as crackpots, far right loons, rabble.

But that would be to feed it, create resentment and turn ordinary people into fodder for the far right.

Racism and sectarianism are two sides of the same coin, and both need confronted.

We of all people should know what it is like to live in and feel part of a divided society.

I want to live in a new Ireland, one where were there is hope and equality, not one with cross-carrying racists calling the shots and trying to drag us back with them to a time best confined to the history books.