General Irish politics discussion thread

Like immigration, Sinn Fein are on the wrong side of that debate, favouring the abolition of the Special Criminal Court, opposing bodycams and FRT for the Gardai. They seem to have picked a few losing horses.

I agree. It will start with calling the relevant Minister to account along with the Garda Commissioner to account. No doubt, we'll see the familiar attempts to blame the state of the Gardai , our streets and our courts on parties that have not been in power here.

Nor I am a solicitor. What I am putting forward is that legislation be passed that makes sure social media are held to the same standards and account as TV Media and news media and radio media. It's not difficult just like if a TV station allowed blatant racism hate and incitement to violence be broadcast they would be and rightly so sued into oblivion. Social media are a new modern form of media who are been allowed to run amok and are causing clear damage to society because they promote hate and incitement to violence with impunity. This must stop and they must be held to the same standards and face the same consequences as other media for misbehaviour. As things stand now social media companies actually can benefit economically from promoting hate and violence and do so with impunity. They have absolutely no incentive to behave and have shown very clearly for years now they are utterly incapable and indeed unwilling to reign in hate speech and incitement to violence on their media platforms. Social media companies should be forced to have a duty of care to not allow hate speech and incitement to violence. How their sites are designed and how they behave is the key issue. Social media companies often use algorithms that promote hate speech, wild conspiracies, misinformation lies etc and benefit from it economically. They should be held liable for that if they do it in future and indeed they could just as easily use algorithms to negate that kind of hate, misinformation etc.

I have no problem with anybody on any social medium having a handle, but if you post anything that breaks the law or encourages others to do so, the social medium that hosts you must readily be able to supply your identity to the relevant authorities. If you post it, you own it.

My post was in answer to @Strazdas post where he looks into FF past for links to right wings ideology. I was pointing out that he was looking at the wrong party.

I agree that ultimately the "Blueshirts" under Duffy failed. But part of that failure was Fine Gael disaster in the '34 local elections which was not simply a vote for or against fascism.

I would like to think that your point that "the Irish tradition of social and economic conservatism, whatever else we might say about it, was pretty inimical to fascism" might be true. But , the fact the "Blueshirts" emerged and that political parties were willing to assimilate with them makes me think we were no different to a lot of societies in the 1930s. And that the lessons need to be learned that pandering to the far right is likely to lead to their growth. In a different country, the Netherlands, already the the outgoing government party VVD is already saying it might cooperate with some of Wilders policies even if they will not enter coalition. In Poland the president has sworn in a PiS government even tough it does not have sufficient seats to form a government ( and I accept this might be tradition or procedural - I don't know) . Hitler was sworn in by the president because everyone though they could control his worse excesses, or more likely that he would fail,, even though again , he didn't have sufficient support. There is a danger which comes from these far right groups.

It's easy, but perhaps a bit simplistic, to equate ring-fence Irish fascism to the Blueshirts because of, you know, the whole shirt thing. But there's a bit more to fascism than shirts.

To the extent that we do identify fascism with the Blueshirts, FG seems to me to have done the country a great service by absorbing them and then burying them. That isn't FG flirting with fascism or pandering to the far right; that's FG dealing very effectively with the far right, and seeing them off.

If we look beyond the shirts, if you want a movement that was practising the tactics of fascism in Ireland in the 1930s it was, highly arguably, the Republican movement, or at least elements of the Republican movement — the use of violence, the attempt to disrupt the political activity of others by force. And, sure, there were elements in the Republican movement in the 1930s that espoused the principles of socialism. But, then, there were elements in the Nazi party at the same time that were doing the same thing. Crossover with socialism is not completely inconsistent with fascism, by any means. And of course Ailtiri na hAiseiri, perhaps the most distinctively fascism party in Ireland, emerged from dissident anti-treaty Republicanism.

We could say that just as FG neutralised one brand of fascism by acquiring it and burying it, so Dev sought to neutralise another by repression, and he was largely successful.

The truth is, I think, that both the pro-treaty and anti-treaty traditions of Irish republicanism were susceptible to finding fascism appealing, and to some degree both in fact did. If you're looking for evidence of flirting with fascism, you can find it on both sides. And if you only see it on one side, perhaps that's because you're being a bit starry-eyed about your own preferred tradition. (This is the generic "you", not you, rock22.) But it was always a minority in both traditions, and the majority in both traditions effectively froze out or rejected fascism, for which I think both traditions can claim some credit.

Not to try and derail the discussion, but some historians are of the firm opinion that Michael Collins was heading towards being a military dictator type at the time he was assassinated, sort of an Irish General Franco. They suggest it might not even have been too bad a thing that he was replaced by the much more normal WT Cosgrave, a regular parliamentary politician with no military inklings.

Sadly your probably right.

It's a balance of rights. Are we better served by allowing people to post, pretty much any obnoxious thoughts that swivel around in their heads or contain it by, the writer owning it.

I don't see any very sacred about the right to anonymous posting, especially if it ends up putting democracy at risk.

There us no appetite among any of the parties to regulate SM.

. Didn’t a party leader advocate the use of anonymous accounts to promote his party after all.

They know it’s a double edged but useful sword.

Plenty of talk but nothing will be done.