We elect lawmakers to make laws. If lawmakers who are not fascists don’t act to clamp down in the necessary manner on fascism, you’ll get fascism. If the Gardai don’t do it, who will? Currently, the response is pathetic.
Hate speech is rampant in Ireland.
The trick fascists perform is to brand hate speech as “free speech”.
This is literally what the right wing fake campaign for “free speech is” - a campaign to let hate speech run rampant, while clamping down on the free speech of decent people. Elon Musk bought Twitter precisely for this end. Another word for this is fascism. Fascism has only been defeated in the past by war. Fascism isn’t another part of healthy political debate. It’s a cancer that ends democracy and ends free society. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, as somebody once said.
I’ve been proven correct on this stuff over and over and over again and it drives youse lot up the wall.
The likes of this is a good start. Put up stats, bombard people with real life refugee stories etc.
Of course the elephant in the room is we probably have made and continue to make huge mistakes with our immigration policy and how the influx of people over the last few years has been handled. There’s absolutely no questioning of the policy allowed as this would be pandering to the far right which in turn helps lead to the rise of the far right. The awful pity that we were the only country without a significant far right party. Maybe that was never going to last but I think it could have been slowed better with some proper debate and the tweaking of policy that would lead to.
That’s all great what yer man is doing online but none of it will work in the long run because involves engaging your brain and the type of people who are amenable to fascism would never even dream of reading it. Fascism and so called “populist” right-wing discourse in general doesn’t involve engaging your brain, it only involves endless repetition of a load of hateful slogans, buzzwords and lies. The problem is they work and the information landscape we now inhabit is probably more favourable to the growth of fascism than it was even in the 1930s. Lowest common denominator bullshit always works.
The so called “respectable” people who have “concerns” about immigration never ever challenge the blatant racists. Experience tells us the so called “respectable” people with “concerns” are just more covert, more sneaky about their racism.
They never address my extremely legitimate concerns that a bunch of filthy racists is all they are.
So for me, I have no issue with immigration but it should be visa based or genuine refugees. I don’t want any chancers coming in to the country. Is that fascist?
I’d consider the people who go on about this as if it is a major issue to be far bigger chancers than anybody coming in here without a passport.
Vincent Browne used to correctly state that welfare fraud was framed as a bogus “major issue” in this country despite it being in reality an absolute drop in the ocean scarcely worthy of any media attention.
The same is true of the so “asylum seeker issue”.
There’s a massive crossover between those who frame asylum seekers as an “issue” and support for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Have these idiots ever thought of what the likely consequences of Russia winning their barbaric war of invasion would be? We would have hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian refugees and every western country would have an absolute moral duty to take them in, because the west would have failed in its moral duty to protect an ally from rapacious imperial conquest.
The west also has a moral duty towards the people of Gaza and the people of Syria, because in the first instance a western ally is committing genocide and in the second instance the west encouraged popular revolution against a tyrant before abandoning the people of Syria to that tyrant and his tyrant ally.
It’s absolutely the way to do it. Acknowledge there is an issue and counter bullshit with facts and you’ll get the vast majority of people on board. There is a growing sense of unease among a lot of people about immigration, far far more unease than there was 2 or 3 years ago even so this should be acknowledged and facts should be communicated and bullshit merchants like that Mick O Keeffe lad should be publicly challenged and show people that most of what they peddle is bullshit.
Or else sneer down your nose at people, pretend there’s no issue and that everyone is racist and then the whole right wing issue goes away just like what worked so well in Sweden and the Netherlands and other countries recently.
It’s going to be a long year with all
The elections that are going to happen across the world . Far left , far right , a splash of AI. This time next year we’ll be a lot nearer to the end game of civilisation.
Once right wing propaganda gets a foothold facts become a steadily declining currency.
It’s painful to confront this fact. But it’s a prerequisite to have any hope of actually defeating it. The alternative is delusion. Simply appealing to people’s better nature and using facts to do so won’t work in a wild west of lies. Society is a fragile creation and when enough people reject society, which is what the current far right insanity promotes, society collapses and people turn to fascism. We are seeing an attempt by the far right to make society crash and literally burn.
Facts are not about sneering. The entire right wing modus operandi is about sneering. Gript is about sneering. Our resident far right head the balls like @Tierneevin1979, @maroonandwhite, @Kyle and @glenshane are about sneering. Anti-immigrationism is about sneering. Sneering at people who look different or speak differently. Sneering at anybody who uses their brain or dares to be in any way different.
This is a planning permission notice for a housing scheme for elderly people. But you here you have one of chief dog whistlers trying to incite people to attack it.