Something of a European blackspot when it comes to right-wing populism, a remarkably well-attended event in Ireland over the weekend offers tangible hope that a political thaw could be coming to the Emerald Isle faster than originally anticipated.
Billed as a rallying point for Irish citizens against draconian new hate speech legislation scheduled to come onto the books over the next few months, the conference, dubbed “Ireland Uncensored” managed the best part of a thousand attendees in a country where the ruling party can scarcely manage 700 at their annual conference.
The Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill, which has earned global notoriety for its loose definition of ‘hatred’ and North Korean-style penalties of up to five years upon conviction, is more than halfway through its journey into becoming law. This, despite sparking a vocal national debate about the state’s policing of free speech at a time when failures around asylum and social policy in Ireland are becoming ever harder to ignore.
The Dublin conference was a joint initiative of Free Speech Ireland a student-led organisation established to campaign against the Bill as well as Gript, a media organ of the Irish pro-life movement that in its four years of existence has arguably done more to lay the journalistic groundwork for political change in Ireland more than any other vehicle.
While seemingly relevant to only a small national jurisdiction, the Irish hate speech bill has potentially major European connotations, considering Dublin’s prime of place when it comes to the location of various American tech giants and the prominent role Ireland has in the management of data flow.
Elon Musk has promised to mount a legal challenge against the bill, with Ireland already a major battleground between the EU and Silicon Valley when it comes to privacy and data collection.
Among the names addressing the conference were Helen Joyce, a former editor with The Economist, the politically promising Irish Senator Sharon Keogan, and the artist and former presidential candidate Kevin Sharkey as well as American journalist Michael Shellenberger, the co-author of The Twitter Files and an assortment of other domestic names.
A growing feeling of public unease towards the status quo in Ireland was best articulated by journalist Ben Scallan, who implored the audience to make combating hate speech legislation central during any future national election. A legal breakdown of the prospective bill was given by lawyer and feminist activist Laoise de Brún.
Questions about the effect of mass immigration into Ireland were also fielded as Kevin Sharkey, one of the speakers, himself of dual Irish and Nigerian heritage, remarked that “Africa into Ireland won’t go” as he opined against migration from the third world.
Since November of last year, a series of grassroots protests against Ireland’s overstretched asylum system has carried the migration issue to the front door of Irish politics at a surprising pace, leading many political insiders to think that it’s a question of when rather than if a right-wing populist movement emerges.
To recap, politics in the Republic of Ireland has been passed back and forth between two identical political factions (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) over the past century, formed out of the ashes of the Irish Civil War and buttressed by smaller leftist parties. With the electoral rise of the former political wing of the IRA (Sinn Féin) increasingly pivoting towards the progressive centre, a substantial segment of the population has been left uncatered to.
While the weekend conference saw important mingling between libertarian, Catholic, and nativist segments of the general Irish conservative scene in a neutral space, Ireland has a long way to go before replicating the populist successes common across much of Europe.
By pure coincidence, the free speech conference coincided with a rally in another part of Dublin by the trans-critical feminist Posie Parker and dissident TV funnyman Graham Linehen, which saw equal numbers of concerned citizens turn out against hundreds of left-wing protests, a feat inconceivable even two years ago, considering the Republic’s unipolar political environment.
In a country that seems destined to make all the same mistakes as Western Europe and the United States have already made when it comes to clamping down on freedom of expression, Saturday’s conference was a small but strategically very important light in a country that is fast emerging as one of the last remaining total liberal holdouts.
The author of this article is on the board of one of the organizers of the conference. This information was omitted when the piece was first published, due to an editorial oversight.
