L | A
By Dr. Matt Treacy
Much has been made by polite society, and others, of the poor electoral showing of persons who they have designated to be on the “far right.” There is some point to this and one person helpfully compiled a list which included a number of “citizen journalists” and others whose polling numbers would not suggest that they have much traction, influence or support.
Which is Fair Dinkum as our antipodean friends might remark. However, surely it ought to apply as much to the performances of certain others whose status appears unsullied. Roderick O’Gorman the outgoing Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth only managed to secure 6.57% of the vote in Dublin West.
In fairness he was re-elected to one of the five seats there but only through doubling his final tally from lower transfers and finishing 1,077 votes ahead of Ellen Troy who had been a mere two votes behind O’Gorman on the first count.
Such are the vagaries of the proportional representation system. Such also is the groupthink that embraces a range of parties who had been bitterly opposed to the government of which O’Gorman had been a prominent Minister- and had attracted much criticism from them over his stewardship of TUSLA.
The same level of criticism was not levied by them at O’Gorman for having been the minister most associated with that government’s asylum policy, which of course all of the establishment parties supported even where it was obviously unpopular with the communities in which the IPAS centres were being placed. So, O’Gorman will have suffered no loss of caste and is an not an object of mockery among the bien pensants.
No more than his constituency “rival,” the chairperson of the Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council Dr Umar Al-Qadri, who despite a pretty dismal showing last Friday has not gone away you know.
In fact, far from it, because he has been given a prominent place in today’s Irish Times to deliver yet another panegyric on the state of Irish society, history, diversity and all.
He personally has been the victim of this, including what he claims was a physical attack last February and “continuous online abuse.” He does not say whether he thinks this impacted on his electoral campaigns. The only reference he makes to the election just gone is that “the recent general election provided some comfort that the far right has not entered the mainstream.”
Well, and at the risk of being blunt, nor has he, electorally at least. But don’t tell the Old Lady of D’Olier Street. If the “far-right” has not prospered electorally nor be deserving of a “platform” then what might one say of a chap who last week managed to come 15th of 16 candidates in Dublin West on a paltry 381 votes – 0.86% of the more than 44,000 votes cast?
Normally I would take the sporting view that losers ought not have their noses rubbed in it, but sauce for the goose and so on. Also, it’s not like Al-Qadri did not have name recognition nor oodles of publicity. Nor was it the first time that some terrible psychosocial flaws on the part of the Irish electorate caused him to do as well as the Sligo junior hurlers might be expected to fare against the Clare seniors.
If we cast our mind back to the European elections in which he stood for the Dublin constituency, his candidacy was announced with much fanfare across a range of media including The Journal which mentioned the dreadful attack and how Al-Qadri was hoping to make Ireland “the voice of diversity” in Europe.
Whatever about that, the electors of Dublin chose that it not be him. For on that occasion, he was rejected by 98.5% of those who had the option to send him away to Europe. Perhaps the electorate was expressing a preference that he would stay and make a bold bid for the Dáil or simply hang around to remind us of all the flaws of a much less diverse Ireland than he would wish to see.
That is what he is at again in today’s Irish Times. He claims that “Irish identity has always been dynamic and has been constantly shaped by history and by the people who call this island home.” Which is true, but the major impacts have been wrought by hostile arrivals who decided to call Ireland “home.” To date these have included the Anglo Normans, the Tudor planters, the Cromwellian planters and the Williamite planters.
Far from enriching the existing population – which was virtually a monoglot and later Catholic nation – the successive waves made what were tantamount to efforts at eradicating or at least drastically reducing not only the power but the physical existence of those natives. They were certainly successful in eventually destroying the dominance of the preexisting Gaelic and “narrow and outdated definition” of Irishness with a new one which reflected “the richness of this island’s history and diversity.”
It is not a given that diversity in the Irish context is the unremitting good which he depicts it as. But when examples of this manifest themselves the lesson to be learned apparently is not that some of that diversity might present a danger to the existing society, but that its consequences might be “weaponised.” That was Al-Qadri’s reference to the little girl who had her throat cut by her father, Mohammad Shaker Al Tamimi, in New Ross last weekend.
Where people fail to buy into the diversity mantra, fear not for there is always more scope for “Antiracism education … prioritised in schools so that future generations understand the strength of a diverse society. And at the national level, the new government must lead a unified campaign against hate, rejecting division and championing inclusion as a core part of Ireland’s identity.”
Which begs the question: If all of this was such a good thing then why the relentless need to ram it down peoples throats? And the never-ending gaslighting of people in the service of the putative and unmitigated benefits of mass immigration if those benefits are not immediately obvious to all? And not just to Google, meat packers, landlords, NGOs and leftist political parties wishing to expand their voter base?
Al-Qadri concludes by declaring that “integration is not just possible but transformative.” His own native country Pakistan is hardly an advertisement for integration, diversity or tolerance. His first adopted new country of the Netherlands is increasingly an example of how immigration can negatively impact a liberal European society – to the extent where the government has declared a national asylum crisis, and taken strong measures to curb migration.
Ireland is on the same trajectory, but at an accelerated pace and in much greater quantitative terms.
I will give him this much. It is certainly transformative.
By Dr. Matt Treacy
Much has been made by polite society, and others, of the poor electoral showing of persons who they have designated to be on the “far right.” There is some point to this and one person helpfully compiled a list which included a number of “citizen journalists” and others whose polling numbers would not suggest that they have much traction, influence or support.
Which is Fair Dinkum as our antipodean friends might remark. However, surely it ought to apply as much to the performances of certain others whose status appears unsullied. Roderick O’Gorman the outgoing Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth only managed to secure 6.57% of the vote in Dublin West.
In fairness he was re-elected to one of the five seats there but only through doubling his final tally from lower transfers and finishing 1,077 votes ahead of Ellen Troy who had been a mere two votes behind O’Gorman on the first count.
Such are the vagaries of the proportional representation system. Such also is the groupthink that embraces a range of parties who had been bitterly opposed to the government of which O’Gorman had been a prominent Minister- and had attracted much criticism from them over his stewardship of TUSLA.
The same level of criticism was not levied by them at O’Gorman for having been the minister most associated with that government’s asylum policy, which of course all of the establishment parties supported even where it was obviously unpopular with the communities in which the IPAS centres were being placed. So, O’Gorman will have suffered no loss of caste and is an not an object of mockery among the bien pensants.
No more than his constituency “rival,” the chairperson of the Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council Dr Umar Al-Qadri, who despite a pretty dismal showing last Friday has not gone away you know.
In fact, far from it, because he has been given a prominent place in today’s Irish Times to deliver yet another panegyric on the state of Irish society, history, diversity and all.
He personally has been the victim of this, including what he claims was a physical attack last February and “continuous online abuse.” He does not say whether he thinks this impacted on his electoral campaigns. The only reference he makes to the election just gone is that “the recent general election provided some comfort that the far right has not entered the mainstream.”
Well, and at the risk of being blunt, nor has he, electorally at least. But don’t tell the Old Lady of D’Olier Street. If the “far-right” has not prospered electorally nor be deserving of a “platform” then what might one say of a chap who last week managed to come 15th of 16 candidates in Dublin West on a paltry 381 votes – 0.86% of the more than 44,000 votes cast?
Normally I would take the sporting view that losers ought not have their noses rubbed in it, but sauce for the goose and so on. Also, it’s not like Al-Qadri did not have name recognition nor oodles of publicity. Nor was it the first time that some terrible psychosocial flaws on the part of the Irish electorate caused him to do as well as the Sligo junior hurlers might be expected to fare against the Clare seniors.
If we cast our mind back to the European elections in which he stood for the Dublin constituency, his candidacy was announced with much fanfare across a range of media including The Journal which mentioned the dreadful attack and how Al-Qadri was hoping to make Ireland “the voice of diversity” in Europe.
Whatever about that, the electors of Dublin chose that it not be him. For on that occasion, he was rejected by 98.5% of those who had the option to send him away to Europe. Perhaps the electorate was expressing a preference that he would stay and make a bold bid for the Dáil or simply hang around to remind us of all the flaws of a much less diverse Ireland than he would wish to see.
That is what he is at again in today’s Irish Times. He claims that “Irish identity has always been dynamic and has been constantly shaped by history and by the people who call this island home.” Which is true, but the major impacts have been wrought by hostile arrivals who decided to call Ireland “home.” To date these have included the Anglo Normans, the Tudor planters, the Cromwellian planters and the Williamite planters.
Far from enriching the existing population – which was virtually a monoglot and later Catholic nation – the successive waves made what were tantamount to efforts at eradicating or at least drastically reducing not only the power but the physical existence of those natives. They were certainly successful in eventually destroying the dominance of the preexisting Gaelic and “narrow and outdated definition” of Irishness with a new one which reflected “the richness of this island’s history and diversity.”
It is not a given that diversity in the Irish context is the unremitting good which he depicts it as. But when examples of this manifest themselves the lesson to be learned apparently is not that some of that diversity might present a danger to the existing society, but that its consequences might be “weaponised.” That was Al-Qadri’s reference to the little girl who had her throat cut by her father, Mohammad Shaker Al Tamimi, in New Ross last weekend.
Where people fail to buy into the diversity mantra, fear not for there is always more scope for “Antiracism education … prioritised in schools so that future generations understand the strength of a diverse society. And at the national level, the new government must lead a unified campaign against hate, rejecting division and championing inclusion as a core part of Ireland’s identity.”
Which begs the question: If all of this was such a good thing then why the relentless need to ram it down peoples throats? And the never-ending gaslighting of people in the service of the putative and unmitigated benefits of mass immigration if those benefits are not immediately obvious to all? And not just to Google, meat packers, landlords, NGOs and leftist political parties wishing to expand their voter base?
Al-Qadri concludes by declaring that “integration is not just possible but transformative.” His own native country Pakistan is hardly an advertisement for integration, diversity or tolerance. His first adopted new country of the Netherlands is increasingly an example of how immigration can negatively impact a liberal European society – to the extent where the government has declared a national asylum crisis, and taken strong measures to curb migration.
Ireland is on the same trajectory, but at an accelerated pace and in much greater quantitative terms.
I will give him this much. It is certainly transformative.
