Throughout this weird election campaign cycle, there has been one constant. Week in, week out, leaflets steeped in racist and xenophobic messages have dropped through letterboxes. Instead of addressing this and demonstrating real leadership, some in mainstream political parties have floundered. They have also adopted policies and campaign messages that – intentionally or not – appease bigotry.
Perhaps in time we will look back on this campaign as some sort of fever dream. How could you possibly explain it to someone who was away from Ireland for years, and returned to a context where anti-immigrant (racist) bigotry had become normalised?
How could anyone,attempt to frame the fundamental issue in Irish society in terms of policy – housing – as the fault of anyone but those who designed and implemented those housing policies? Where has this misdirection come from?
The current wave of unhinged ire that has shouted the loudest during this campaign, and will hopefully end up with few votes in support of its intentionally divisive nihilism, has deep racist and fascistic roots. But its contemporary context can also be traced back to disinformation that circled around the accommodation needs of refugees and asylum seekers pre-pandemic.
Had that been addressed then, alongside the housing crisis, we wouldn’t be here. But, as the evergreen adage goes in Irish politics: we are where we are. Where we are is ungrounded, with a clatter of candidates attempting to incorrectly frame “immigration” as the issue that has the most negative material impact on everyone’s lives (it doesn’t). Some in mainstream parties flirt with it too, tempted by the hypothetical votes in it. This has also allowed latent bad actors, waiting for their moment, to re-emerge.
The pandemic broke a lot of things. The damage has not been adequately processed. Collectively, we appear to lack the tools to really share how vulnerable we felt, how scared we were and how much we hurt. I think we can all relate to this regarding other moments in our lives – a death in the family that goes unspoken in any meaningful way, an illness or addiction that is avoided, an instance of sexual abuse that’s brushed under the carpet.
When a social contract is shattered – and in Ireland that has happened in relation to housing – the pieces can get picked up in strange ways. Often these shards can be used as weapons. None of this is an excuse for deciding that ‘immigration’ is a ‘problem’
But these things leak out. Complicated feelings of pain and trauma have to surface at some point. How many of us have felt our anxiety peaking? Our anger and frustration leaking? How many of us have lashed out, or experienced others lashing out? How many of us have sought simple answers in a complex context? But anger is a secondary emotion. It masks fragile things: fear, pain, vulnerability.
When a social contract is shattered – and in Ireland that has happened in relation to housing – the pieces can get picked up in strange ways. Often these shards can be used as weapons. None of this is an excuse for deciding that “immigration” is a “problem”. It is, however part of our context.
If there was no acute housing crisis in Ireland, the difficulties people face – homelessness, inadequate “emergency” accommodation, ridiculous rents, unaffordable homes, life milestones stalled – could not be leveraged to seed, articulate and spread racist and xenophobic resentment around scarcity of shelter. The mental and emotional toll of the housing crisis has created a profound sense of social stress. No immigrant, no asylum seeker, no refugee is to blame for that.
Bigots, racists and people with nothing to say for themselves beyond an unhinged pointing of the finger at those they perceive as “different” and conjure as a threat, exist in every era. They are clowns roaring on the sidelines until, instead of people rolling their eyes and dismissing them, a crowd gathers. They are unelectable, until they’re elected.
We all know what they’re like and what they’re about, and sometimes they’re just outright cynical, knowing exactly what base feelings they’re stoking. What’s important is how many people are willing to follow them down the rabbit-hole. (It’s worth noting that People Before Profit has been the most significantly vocal, consistent, organised political force in party form on the ground attempting to address racism in society.)
Observing the explicitly “anti-immigrant” candidates, it’s clear they’re looking for an easy outlet for anger, resentment and blame. They’re asserting a strange sort of bullying, macho, performative supremacy: I’m not hurt, I’m hard, I’m the boss. If this is your stance, you’re actually none of those things. You’re fronting. Sort yourself out.
In the aftermath of this campaign there will be plenty of time to rake over the strange ashes left by those starting fires with no consideration for the land that gets scorched along the way. For now, unless people vote with their heads, and understand those gurning with rage to be utterly out of control when it comes to their personal emotions, resentments and fantasies of authoritarian policies, we are in for a curious time, where empathy, logic and rationality collapse.
A good rule of thumb is not to vote for racists or their appeasers in whatever packaging they come in, because when one straw man is exhausted as a target they tend to look for another.