As the Liberal Right continues to promote the Extreme Right in Respectable circles—looking for a local Führer to help them sell more papers and gain more viewers or votes—we find that the killing has started. Josip Štrok and David Družinec were attacked in Clondalkin by extremists on 30 March. Štrok, who was 31 years old, died as a result of his injuries. They had been speaking Croatian when they were set upon by a gang who said they should speak English because this is Ireland. What more vicious, pointless, stupid act can be imagined? 

Since the present writer can say little more on the real point of this story, the horrific murder of a man and assault on his friend, other than to express his condolences to Štrok’s loved ones and to Družinec, who found himself thrown out of his accommodation as a result of his having been attacked, let Macdara dwell a little upon the words used. 

There can be no better indication of the mindlessness of the Far Right than the fact that these murderers said to speak English in Ireland. In doing so, they reveal themselves as unthinkingly occupying a colonial space. The violence would be no less if the attackers spoke in Irish and said this is Ireland, speak Irish, but in the first place this is unthinkable, and, secondly, at least there would be some consistency to this statement: as a proposition it is structurally sound, even if spoken by racist thugs. But these people, who make such a show of representing the Real Ireland, despite their lack of any electoral success, are illiterate in our national language, and only seek to imitate the worst of the extremist element in US and UK politics, perhaps with a dim awareness of a hinterland of fascisti across Europe and elsewhere.

Speak English: these men want to homogenise public space, to ensure that all communication is knowable to them, without understanding that for an Irish person to speak in English means that she or he has already been captured by a system of homogenisation, one imposed upon us at a cost payable in lives. The truly Irish thing would be to foster and promote the speaking of every language other than English, including Croatian.

The violence these men visit upon others is a continuation of the Imperial project. To their being murderers, let us add the crimes of hypocrisy, idiocy, and—in their own view, worst of all, perhaps—a despicable betrayal of the Nation that they claim to represent.