If the politics of public face-masking was fraught in pandemic times, watch what happens next. Back then the “freedom” boys swaggered through lockdown Dublin flaunting their anti-mask sensibilities. Now a Venn diagram of the heavily-masked “patriots” on the “[Any town] Says No” circuit on the one hand and the “freedom” boys on the other would probably yield a massive overlap.
The inconsistency won’t bother them of course, in the same way that Tommy Robinson’s foot-soldiers in Dublin and Belfast will see no irony in the far-right criminal stoking race riots from a Cypriot holiday resort while simultaneously whinging that “quality time” with his children has been ruined by newspaper exposure of his whereabouts. “My kids are crying … Now they are scared people are coming to get them…” The fact that his tormentor is the Daily Mail with its rich history of race-baiting headlines, raises the irony meter to combustion levels.
Robinson’s Irish fans and other freedom-fighters will be interested to hear that the Minister for Justice is exploring ways to ban protesters from wearing masks with the intention to intimidate others and frustrating Garda efforts to identify them in a suspected criminal act.
To the “common sense” caucus, unmasking the thugs would be the obvious law and order move. But awkwardly they overlap heavily with the same Incitement to Hate Bill opponents who will no doubt balk at the notion that someone can be found guilty of simply wearing a face covering that someone else finds offensive. The problem with post-pandemic public face-covering is that it can signify both an individual taking responsibility or one attempting to evade it. A face-covering can signify so many things apart from a fragile immune system: a political statement, or a religious practice, or a handy cover-up for a thug with an urge to hurl a firework at a garda or burn down a building or roar abuse at vulnerable women and children.
How are authorities to distinguish between potential criminals wearing masks to protect their identity and individuals just protecting themselves against disease? Context might be one answer. Among the protesters in Belfast were many with masks covering the majority of their faces – some waving Irish flags. These self-proclaimed proud Irish “patriots” who cravenly need to hide their identity is another of those inconsistencies.
The wearing of masks of any kind in public protests is a hot-button issue in many countries. UK police officers already had the power to ask people to remove face coverings at designated protests where they believed crimes were likely to occur. Now a new offence allows them to arrest protesters who disregard their orders, with offenders facing a month in prison and a £1,000 fine.
On the other hand when a motion was put before Southend-on-Sea city council to ban the wearing of face coverings on the high street and seafront by groups of youths following masked-up antisocial mayhem last summer, it was rejected over concerns that it would be unenforceable. Anyone challenged could say it was for health or religious reasons, one councillor said.
At its simplest, it’s hardly likely that a balaclava-clad protester could be confused with an immunosuppressed passerby in a medical-grade face mask or a Muslim woman in a niqab. But what if a group gathers around Simon Harris’s home in surgical face masks (which cover two-thirds of the face) and baseball caps? Is it more or less tolerable if the protesters are masked? Should a black person in a racist hotspot regard an approaching group of masked people as more or less menacing than a barefaced group?
The mask debate has thrown some odd bedfellows together across the US in the febrile aftermath of the Hamas atrocity and Israel’s merciless response. In New York State where the governor has floated the possibility of banning masks on subways over concerns about public safety and anti-Semitic protests, a supportive #UnmaskHateNY campaign has sprang up that includes the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People), Jewish civil right organisations, faith leaders and a dozen Democratic state legislators.
It’s complicated by the fact that New York State had a mask ban in place since 1845 in response to tenant riots, which was repealed during the Covid pandemic. This ban had been successfully used against the Ku Klux Klan. But anti-mask laws passed by many states in the 1940s and 1950s as a response to the KKK have recently been repurposed, for example in a letter from the Ohio attorney general warning universities that the 70-year-old law could be used against masked protesters.
Supporters of a ban say their intent is not to outlaw medical masks, that it’s just to prevent people from concealing their identities. Opponents say it will hurt people who are still masking for health reasons and could be used as a pretext to criminalise pro-Palestine demonstrations and to clamp down on disfavoured groups and movements.
Protesters against regimes such as China and Iran have also pointed out that a ban could prevent UK-based dissidents, for example, from organising demonstrations outside embassies, that their faces could be recorded and their relatives punished or disappeared in their home countries.
Just like social media anonymity or hate speech, protecting people’s freedom to wear masks has consequences.
The trade-off is never simple. This is just another of many difficult balancing acts to come.