III

The Liberal Media has not been shy about expressing its disappointment that the Far Right has had such a poor showing. The Irish Times podcast the day after the election was titled first counts trickle in and anti-immigration candidates falter. In fact the exit poll that that paper had co-commissioned had already shown that immigration was far down the list of priorities:

The most important issue for voters in Friday’s general election was housing and homelessness, according to the Irish Times/RTÉ/TG4/TCD exit poll.

The issue was the clear leader on 28 per cent, followed by the cost of living on 19 per cent and health on 17 per cent.

Economic stability (9 per cent), climate change (4 per cent), crime (2 per cent), local transport and roads (2 per cent) and childcare (2 per cent), all played lesser roles.

Immigration – which had been prominent in the list of issues of public concern for much of the year – played a minor role, nominated by just 6 per cent.

Note that immigration was given its own paragraph; the reader can tell that the paper was furious not to be able to shoehorn immigration any higher up than the fourth paragraph. Ah but someone had the bright idea to make the lack of concern about immigration into the story! The podcast’s title was particularly jarring as the episode did not actually dwell on the failure of the Far Right but rather on more obvious features of the day—doubtless this type of aberrant behaviour on their part will be rectified in future, after all the hosts made time to discuss, in appropriately sombre tones, the astonishing and unprecedented hot topic of Sinn Féin’s links to the IRA! So we know that these people are not unwilling to repeat themselves when it comes to the lines that they are fed.

The Liberal Right hypes the Far Right not only because the latter represents the logical endpoint of Capitalism, a system based on inequality, and not only to sell ad space in a media environment where citizens consume news to see what the local nazis are up to: they do so because they want Ireland to resemble more closely the vocal Extremists of the English and American political scenes, since these are the only two countries that the Partionist Elites care about. We will be better white people if we also have a spiteful nativist movement. Why do we have to be different, with our history of inclusive nationalism? To consider our difference is to be reminded of our history of anticolonial struggle, which is not at all what the Irish Times/RTÉ set want to think of, or have the rest of us think of.

But let us not disregard the fact that in the Irish context, the championing of the Far Right by the Liberal Media offers an opportunity to despise the natives, to show disgust at the Irish people who are contemptible, base, lumpen. As for the fact that the policy of not providing sufficient houses is used by the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Labour-Green Party to foment racism (as well as to make themselves rich): this is a structural feature of Late Capitalist ideology that is so obvious that anyone who points it out must be labelled automatically as pandering to racists. 

IV

The shape of the election results having been clear from the outset, the media has been mustering enthusiasm for a totally unchanged political environment. Ireland: protected once again from the threat of Politics, History, Ideas, Events. Outside of a couple of hundred people directly connected to the Partionist Party, there cannot be a single person who feels any active enthusiasm for the continuation of the lazy Class War conducted by the Party of the Establishment. They have benefitted from the problems that they have created having come to seem so intractable that they no longer count as reasons to keep the Party out. In fact they no longer even seem like policies of the Party. Health, housing, corruption, organised crime, the Occupation: no one—we are told—could possibly undo what the Partionists have accomplished. Their greatest achievements are all these invisible things that ruin lives and seem as unavoidable as an earthquake, generic Crises that any Government must face.

The Irish Times and RTÉ have been pushing a continuation of the previous coalition. One early headline boasted that the people preferred a FF/FG coalition, although the first line told readers that such a coalition without other partners was favoured by only 31% of respondents. Others wanted the coalition with one or other of its sacrificial sisters. This seems to the current writer more like resignation than preference. Meanwhile FF and FG remain separate parties despite years of being in power together, with in-depth coverage taking place of their extensive negotiations, which must have all the excitement and unpredictability of watching a man talk to himself in the mirror.

It has been hard for your correspondent to pull together his thoughts in this post-election moment; it feels like something has to give, like we are witnessing an interregnum, but Macdara, like so many others, has said so before. The Partionist Party has always found a way to keep its weak hands locked around the country’s throat. With emigrants and those living under Occupation denied a vote, those who are benefitting from the fixed system have been able to meet every challenge to it that the People have mounted so far.

And here we are yet again saying yes this election did not bring about any change, O but the next one…