Paul Hosford: Those who kick the hornets' nest have no defence when others get stung

A video of Leo Varadkar sitting on the step of a house, chatting with a friend.

“You fucking scumbag prick. I’d love to put this [van] up on the path and fucking flatten you.”

Graffiti on a wall in Tallaght reads “Paul Murphy RIP”.

In a Facebook group discussing migrants being housed in Newtownmountkennedy, posters talk graphically about planned violence if those seeking help are housed there.

A minister’s home draped in a spray-painted bedsheet that says he hates children, another moving her two children out of their family home due to a bomb scare, masked and hooded protesters on the footpath outside the Taoiseach’s — a father of two children under five — home.

Are you uncomfortable? You should be.

There is much to be uncomfortable about. Across Ireland, the level of discourse, how we treat each other and how we interact with those in elected office, has been declining for the better part of a decade and has now reached the point where small, loud groups can weaponise vitriol in online campaigns where the participants most engaged are often thousands of miles away.

The worst of bad faith actors disguise this hatred under the guise of “concern” or “simply asking questions”, but we have all seen the outworkings. Those who kick the hornets’ nest have no defence when others get stung.

And this is nothing new, despite what some who now stand po-faced might say.

Sinn Féin’s then justice spokesman Martin Kenny’s car was burned in a suspected arson attack outside his home in 2019 at a time when he had been speaking out in support of asylum seekers being housed in Co Leitrim.

A 50-year-old Leitrim man who claimed Mr Kenny had not assisted him with a forestry matter would later be jailed for driving a van intentionally through the gates of Mr Kenny’s home. Mr Kenny’s wife told the court that the family assumed initially it was “an accident or a stupid drunken mistake” but the CCTV footage showed that the defendant had intentionally crashed through the gates.

This started with small local protests and has coursed through an ecosystem of misinformation, disinformation, and hatred that has spread due to fear, confusion, and, in some cases, the very real desire to see harm come to those who are deemed different.

This week, the issue of immigration was front and centre of Irish political life as a comment at an Oireachtas committee became a diplomatic spat between Ireland and Britain.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee later revised her figure of 80% of arrivals seeking protection coming from across the border upwards to 90%, offering the British Tory Party a gift that said its Rwanda policy was working, despite not having actually done anything just yet.

In Ireland, we saw more than 200 men who had been sleeping rough at the International Protection Accommodation Services offices in Mount St, Dublin, finally moved to more suitable locations, but locations which Tánaiste Micheál Martin admitted were “not perfect” before it emerged that some of the men had not been accommodated anyway and had instead moved their tents to a Ballsbridge park.

This is not a defence of the Government’s handling of migration, though the bad faith actors who read the headline and share a screengrab will say it is. 

There have been weak messages, poor co-ordination, and confusion allowed to reign in local communities where there are bound to be questions and concerns about the potential impact of a rapid increase in population.

However, we can, at the same time, accept that those with whom we disagree on policy or execution are acting in good faith. We can assume that they are, at a base level, human. We can accept that the way to change policy is to engage in debate with those who make it, not those whom it affects. We can accept that if you believe you have the majority of the country behind you, you will put your name on a ballot paper and will run for election and your opponents will then treat you the same way. With criticism, held to account, but free from personal abuse, free to walk around or sit at home unmolested.

Last week, Athletics Ireland celebrated the run by Rhasidat Adeleke in Texas where she would have smashed the Irish record in her third favourite event but for the wind. The tweet could not have replies because faceless Twitter/X accounts decided that a young woman born and bred in Tallaght, who represents the country and wears the green jersey with pride when she sprints, is not Irish. Not in the right way. Not in the way that passes their arbitrary test. They, the arbiters of what is and is not Ireland and what is and is not Irish.

Ireland stands at a crossroads right now and the choices are empathy and apathy. 

We can look away because the rage, the anger, the violence make us squeamish. We can say it is not our battle, that it is not for us to interject or question. Or, we can refuse. We can refuse to allow Irish discourse to be shaped by the loudest minority, refuse to allow those around us, whether they are born here or across the seas, to be seen as subhuman purely because of who they are.

We can refuse to accept that Ireland is a place where hard-working individuals can be run out of towns because of the mere whiff that what they build might be used by asylum seekers. We can engage with those around us who, however innocently, spread the type of misinformation and hate that has become endemic.

This is not a warning that something bad will happen. Bad things are happening now and they are no longer confined to the dark recesses of the web.