The media, the election, and the politics of fear

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Has there ever been a General Election campaign in Ireland before in which the role of some elements of the mainstream media seemed so clear? Not to report the truth, or to compare policies, but to cheer on the establishment parties and spread an irrational fear of change.

For months now, we’ve been told that this election is giving us a choice between “stability” (voting for the parties who either bankrupt the country or imposed austerity on thousands of us) and “chaos” (God forbid if those upstarts from Sinn Fein or the small left wing parties came within a million miles of power).

Sometimes the mask slips, and you wonder whether Irish democracy is any better than the kind of electioneering you would find in modern day Russia or even North Korea.

Malcolm X had a jaundiced view back in the 1960s

Such as when the nation’s biggest selling newspaper gives over its main story to attacking Sinn Fein policies for three days in a row. That’s not balanced election coverage, that’s naked propaganda.

There is nothing wrong with challenging a party which has a sinister past, especially if they are a rising force on the brink of gaining power for the first time in the Republic.

But where is the investigative journalism into the policies of the Fianna Fail party which caused the economic crash less than a decade ago? Are they really ready to return to power?

And where is the acknowledgement that, by going into power with the DUP and embracing the peace process, Sinn Fein have actually come a long way in the space of a few years?

Where is the analysis of why the Labour Party abandoned their core voters (and all their principles) or why Fine Gael think it’s perfectly acceptable to punish so many for the sins of so few?

The same newspaper sent a representative, a crime reporter, onto the nation’s most popular chat show at the weekend. 

He managed to insult hundreds of thousands of people on Friday night by suggesting that anyone who votes for Sinn Fein is a drug-dealer, a killer, or a thug.

People have a right to be concerned at the prospect of former terrorists going into Government, but blatant scare-mongering is another thing. 

I’m not a Sinn Fein supporter, but I don’t need crime correspondent Paul Williams to ram his views down my throat. A man who has made a lot of money out of crime, by writing about it and spreading fear, Williams’ favourite word seems to be “scumbag” when he talks about drug gangs.

It was hard not to see his Late Late Show appearance as a hatchet-job on Sinn Fein just a week before the election.

On the day after his TV appearance, thousands of people marched through the streets of the capital to protest against austerity. The Right 2 Change march merited just one paragraph, and not a single photo, in one of the nation’s biggest selling Sunday papers the following day.

Six days before the election, thousands of people insisted that austerity was still a big issue. They said that the march was about so much more than Irish Water. But a Rupert Murdoch-owned ‘paper decided their march did not merit any coverage, even though so many of them took over the city centre.

Across the city, another editor was putting together a piece which suggested ten different reasons not to vote for Sinn Fein. Which was fair enough, but you’d be waiting a long time for ten different reasons not to vote for the party which bankrupt the country in the first place.

Sadly, the people who cover politics in Ireland largely move in the same circles as the political masters they write about. They broadly share the same views, seeing nothing wrong with the bank bailout or Ireland’s failure to stand by our Greek cousins when they sought debt relief last year.

To support Syriza in their hour of need would have involved challenging the status quo and an admission that the Irish were wrong. And nobody in the Irish Government wanted that!

So we get “fluffy” pieces from the campaign trail, in which reporters get access to our leaders as long as they play by their rules.

Still marching against Irish Water

So they can spend days on the campaign trail with Enda Kenny or Lucinda Creighton, as long as they never ask a tricky question such as why so many ordinary people had to bail out a tiny group of unsecured bondholders, bankers, and developers. 

Asking those type of questions is not part of the game and will soon get you thrown off the bandwagon.

Asking the Taoiseach why so many people are languishing on hospital trolleys is not part of the accepted script, either, nor is questioning why so many people are put on Job Bridge schemes in order to massage the unemployment figures.

This after all is the “best little country in the world to do business in”, especially for the multinationals who pay so little corporation tax compared to what they’d pay in other countries.

This election is all about the “recovery”, so it’s just not on to ask about the thousands who have been made homeless, the rental crisis, or the mental health crisis which has seen so many young people take their own lives in recent years.

Ask those questions and you will be soon denied access to the great and the good.

So a young lad with a video camera attends a “rally” in support of the Taoiseach in Castlebar, only to be man-handled out of the premises by Gardai because he’s not part of the inner circle. He hasn't learned how to play the game.

The “handlers” choose who gets access to our Prime Minister, so those who want crisp copy for the editors have to play by the rules. No hard questions about policies, when people keep talking about a recovery which seems to be on another planet as far as many of us are concerned.

So we are given “colour pieces” about An Taoiseach singing Bruce Springsteen songs to the faithful, rather than insightful articles which might challenge why his party has imposed such harsh austerity on those who could least afford to pay over the past five years.

The man who is on the verge of leading FG into office for a second term doesn’t like tough debates or probing questions. And his handlers, with the complicity of key elements of the media, ensure that he can get away with banal phrases most of the time.

When he allows the mask to slip, such as when he moans about “whingers” in his native Castlebar, the handlers try their best to ensure he has minimum engagement with those who ask the probing questions. The whole run-up to the election is perfectly scripted and staged.

There’s a good reason why Enda Kenny never appears on Tonight With Vincent Browne, he just can't cope with that kind of questioning. For our media, those kind of questions are reserved for People Before Profit or Sinn Fein, but the Taoiseach is largely left alone.

He is far more comfortable pressing the flesh with little old ladies than answering tough questions. He doesn’t stop for long enough on “walkabouts” for anyone to ask anything that might make him or his party handlers uncomfortable.

His stage-managed tours bring him to “positive” places, rather than the midland towns and city housing estates deep in recession, which have yet to be touched by the recovery.

So he talks about “recovery” and “stability” and anyone who threatens his narrative is seen to support the kind of “chaos” which will ensue if Sinn Fein, People Before Profit, the Social Democrats, or the myriad of independent factions get anywhere near power.

And everyone plays along. Access is granted if the hard questions are avoided. People can write all day about how good he is at pressing the flesh, but they never get to ask a serious question about issues such as homelessness, health care waiting lists, or how schemes like JobBridge are abused.

In this election, though, we should be grateful for social media. The landscape has been transformed. When people see videos of 100,000 people marching through Dublin city centre on Facebook, getting next to no coverage on national television, they begin to ask about pro-Government "spin".

More and more, people are beginning to ask questions about the information they are being fed. 

We see Irish Water protesters being labelled as the "sinister fringe" on the TV news, but the only footage we see of Gardai beating up protesters is away from the mainstream media.

On Facebook or Twitter, you can see photos of thousands upon thousands marching through the streets of the capital to protest against austerity, even if those images rarely end up in the national newspapers or on TV.

You can see the establishment politicians make fools of themselves, by trying to defend the indefensible in unguarded moments on Twitter.

You can find out about the parties’ policies by accessing their websites and avoiding the scare-mongering among some elements of the media.

By all means, question the policies of left wing groups such as PBP-AAA and Sinn Fein. A hung Dail, with so many Independents, is a scary thing. Perhaps they would lead Ireland to ruin. Fianna Fail certainly should know – they led Ireland to ruin only five short years ago.

By presenting voters with a stark choice between “stability” and “chaos”, though, elements of the establishment have gone too far. 

People don’t like to think they are being brainwashed or led a merry dance by those who have hidden agendas or a vested interest in holding onto power.

There is some vile stuff out there on social media, but it’s only there that you get a real taste of the anger running through the housing estates and parts of rural Ireland over the past five years. That anger surfaces at the Right2change protests, but rarely gets a look-in on national TV or our newspapers.

We have so many sources of information in 2016 that people can see right through the “spin”, in a way which would have been unthinkable before the advent of Facebook and Twitter. 

That can only be a good thing, when we’re sometimes faced with the kind of propaganda which would not seem out of place in Russia or Cuba.

A hatred based on ignorance

This time last week, I attended a Muslim festival.

A local school about 2km from where I was staying had been completely taken over by colourful food stalls, clothes stalls, children’s amusements, and temporary concert venues.

There were about 400 islanders milling about the place – and maybe ten tourists.

The welcome we received was incredible. Villagers were dressed to the nines for the three day festival and had a huge welcome for the two big Irishmen who arrived on motorcycles to see what all the fuss was about.

Koh Lanta is a pretty unique place. It had no electricity until 1997 and, before the tourists arrived, the population was a mixture of Muslim villagers and sea gypsies.

It’s been developed at an incredible rate since I first landed on Saladan pier 15 years ago, but still retains the kind of charm which has seen Thai Buddhist, Muslim, gypsy, Chinese and ‘farang’ (white foreign) immigrants live side-by-side in harmony for the past two decades.

My travelling companion had never been to Asia before and was blown away by the welcome of the ordinary people we met during a fortnight on the island, which has a popluation of about 30,000.

As we browsed through the market, people invited us to check out the home-made fare on offer. A young woman offered us a cup of tea, not looking for a cent in return.

The language barrier did not seem to matter, people genuinely wanted us to check out local hand-made goods and home-cooked foods, to make sure we were having a good time.

We had some wonderful banter with a group of young lads when I decided to buy a Liverpool FC beach towel and enjoyed sampling some of the local dishes as we made our way around the festival site.

This being 2016, the era of the mobile phone, we were able to meet a couple from home in the island’s only Irish bar a couple of hours later.

Long Beach, Koh Lanta

But, that night, so many of our preconceptions were blown away. 

We saw that ordinary Muslims love to dress up for special occasions, like most people do, and that the locals have a huge welcome for foreigners despite how much tourism has changed their island over the past two decades.

Even within Thailand, Koh Lanta is a special place. For over a decade now, Muslim separatists have been battling Thai Government forces in three of the nation’s southern provinces, but those hostilities have never reached the islanders on the Andaman Sea.

The warmth we experienced at that festival – even though we could have felt completely out of place – got us to thinking about people like Donald Trump and the irrational fear of the Muslim world they are trying to spread across the globe.

People like Trump don't want us to visit Koh Lanta or Malaysia, to see that ordinary Muslims are just like us, with hopes and dreams for peaceful, happy lives. That doesn't fit the current narrative.

A few days later, at the end of a fantastic holiday, I found myself back in wet and dreary Dublin only to be told that a new Islamophobic group called Pegida was about to hold their first public meeting in Ireland.

I was too jet-lagged to attend the counter-demonstration as I made my way home to Galway, but it was awful to think that people with racist or even fascist ideas were assembling in the capital of my country.

Ireland, more than any other country, has sent so many of its people away to live all across the globe and now people want to close our borders to troubled people who are fleeing persecution and slaughter in countries such as Syria and Iraq.

Thankfully, very few turned up to support the extremists' cause on Saturday.

I’ve seen the images of the clashes on social media and it’s clear that the fascists were put in their place.

The few who turned up were even chased by anti-fascists into a two euro store, as a large crowd chanted "Fascist scum off our streets".

For me, racism is based on ignorance.

The welcome my friend and I experienced from local Muslims on Koh Lanta last week was in complete contrast to the Islamophobia which seems to be sweeping across Europe and the US at the moment.

Instead of blaming the refugees for our nations’ ills, we should ask why our leaders are bombing the hell out of their countries and why so many have been displaced from their lands.

It’s a pity that the demonstration in Dublin ended in violence and that the Gardai drew their batons on the protesters.

It would be better if children could be brought along to an anti-fascist rally and that people could celebrate diversity in peace, harmony, and with a sense of fun.

Just as the lovely people on a Thai island made us feel so welcome 10,000kms from home.

The violence was regrettable. But at least the Islamophobes got the message that they are not wanted in this of all nations, the one which has exported so many of its people through good and bad times.

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After CRH, it's now time to look at G4S

In this globalised world, we are all interconnected.

When NUI Galway students voted to become the first in Ireland to adopt boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of Israel as official Students’ Union policy, the international campaign against them was incredible.

For weeks leading up to the vote, posters popped up all over campus encouraging the students not to adopt the boycott as official SU policy.

One memorable poster told the students they should boycott Facebook if they intended to boycott Israel, because the founder of the social media site, Mark Zuckerberg, happens to be Jewish. 

The implication was that a boycott of Israel was an action against all Jews, rather than a response to the colonisation and occupation of Palestine, plus the illegal ‘settlements’ which have ruled out any possibility of a ‘two state’ solution.

The implication was crystal clear. Those who had any concerns about Israeli policies were branded as “anti-Semitic” and the Israeli Embassy in Dublin waged a propaganda campaign against the SU.

Despite the scare tactics, an overwhelming majority of students voted to adopt BDS as official SU policy in 2014.

The vote generated headlines across the world. It has prompted other third level institutions across Ireland, including the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), to adopt the same policy in response to the illegal occupation.

Galway protester Tommy Donnellan in the West Bank

I reported on the outcome of the vote for the local ‘paper, The Sentinel, and was then subjected to a barrage of abuse from throughout the globe. It had been quite a nasty campaign relating to an emotive issue, with abuse coming from both sides.

As they celebrated the election victory, the students vowed to remove global security giant G4S from the Galway campus.

G4S have been providing equipment and services to Israeli prisons, in which political prisoners including children are held without trial and subjected to torture, for years.

Every night after dark, security men from G4S patrol the NUI Galway campus. It didn't take the students long to realise that there was a connection between the vans driving around the University grounds and the people who are helping to run Israeli state prisons which are full of political prisoners from Palestine.

The day after the vote, a G4S van was parked outside my office. The company has a presence in 120 countries and I suddenly began to notice G4S vans all around Galway city centre, outside banks and other businesses.

Most people in Galway, and other Irish cities and towns, probably have no awareness of the vast reach of this security giant.

By helping the Israeli State to run five prisons and “interrogation centres”, G4S helps Israel to use torture and mass incarceration of more than 6,000 Palestinians. The British-Danish company promotes and prolongs an occupation which is illegal under international law.

Day by day, this firm facilitates racist policies against people who have been living under occupation since 1967.

G4S provide services and equipment to the checkpoints which see Palestinians being subjected to daily humiliations at the ‘Apartheid Wall’, which has cut many West Bank villagers off from their own land. 

This week, a prominent Irish firm, CRH, divested from Israel after coming under sustained pressure from activists opposed to the occupation of Palestine.

For over a decade, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) had urged CRH to cease operating in Israel. CRH held 25 per cent of the shares in Mashav, the owner of the top cement manufacturer in Israel.

It is believed that cement owned by the firm was used to build the ‘Apartheid Wall', which was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice over a decade ago.

Cement owned by the firm has been used to build illegal Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land, further reducing any hopes of a long-term peaceful solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

Over the years, CRH had learned that it doesn’t pay to do business with the Apartheid State. According to the IPSC, CRH's divestment is better late than never.

Two years ago, when I reported that the NUI Galway students wanted G4S to be removed from campus as a response to the company’s activities in Israel and Palestine, I received a torrent of abuse.

Protesting against G4S human rights abuses

People said that G4S staff in Galway were “only doing their jobs”. They said it was unfair to call for a boycott of the company in Galway.

But, like CRH, they can’t have it both ways. They can’t drive around a university campus in Ireland at night while facilitating human rights abuses in Israel.

If a company with a significant presence in Ireland is facilitating the imprisonment of children without trial, people have a right to know.

It’s time to look at G4S.

If they continue to trample on the human rights of children and teenagers across Palestine, Galway students have a right to insist that the University authorities remove them from their campus.

There are plenty of other security firms around with a far less murky record when it comes to human rights.

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A life without fear

If I had one wish for 2016, it would be for a life without so much fear.

Not just for myself, but for the whole wide world.

Because fear seemed to overwhelm too many people over the past year. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of the unknown.

I have quite a few scuba diving friends who usually travel to Egypt or Thailand in search of sunshine and fun at this time of year. Now, for obvious reasons, they are abandoning their sense of adventure this time around.

People don’t want to travel in the face of the threat posed by ISIL terrorists, and who could blame them in the wake of attacks in Paris, Tunisia, and Egypt over the past year? 

Nobody wants to risk their life for a holiday and the fear is understandable following the appalling scenes in Paris in November. But it seems so sad that people are letting fear rule their lives.

By not travelling, they are not meeting ordinary Muslims, which is scary too at a time when xenophobia and racism are on the rise across Europe and North America.

How can we possibly understand each other if we never interact any more?

The saddest image of 2015 was that of a three year old boy from Syria washed up on a European beach in late August. His family’s bid for freedom, their desire for a new life, ended in appalling tragedy.

In the wake of the subsequent outcry, it was hard not to forget that some of the newspapers who raised the most concern had been referring to “swarms of migrants” only a week before.

Some papers used the migrant crisis, caused by military intervention by the West, as an excuse to generate fear.

Across Europe, people were being told that the migrants entering Europe included ISIL terrorists determined to cause havoc.

The reality was that toddler Aylan Kurdi and his family were fleeing fierce fighting in the northern Syrian town of Kobani. His parents took desperate measures in a bid to escape terror and to build new lives in Canada.

In my own case, fear dominated life far too much and curtailed my ability to live in the moment. I had a seven month battle with the MRSA bug, only getting the all-clear in late May, which seemed to be incredible timing just after I took voluntary redundancy from a job I’d held for 22 years.

It’s too easy to let fear take over, to worry about an uncertain future, when none of our futures are set in stone.

During my daily visits to the clinic in Galway, I built up a huge affinity with a small group of community care nurses who did wonders to boost my spirits and speed up my recovery.

When the nurse who took care of me most dropped dead suddenly, leaving a devastated husband and three young children, I had more time to contemplate how fleeting or temporary life can be.

I will never forget how much care and attention I received from that nurse during one of the most troublesome periods in my life.

She taught me a lot about acceptance and the importance of focusing on the positives in life.

During 2015 I completed courses in digital marketing and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and I’ve experienced new jobs.

And yet I’ve allowed the judgement and uncertainty which followed the redundancy to dominate my life and take away from my sense of fun and adventure.

It’s too easy to close your mind, to allow your world to shrink.

It’s too easy for Europeans to distance themselves from ordinary Muslims, to build up an irrational fear of the unknown. Terrorists don't represent ordinary Muslims any more than the kind of people who shoot up US abortion clinics represent Christians.

And I've been guilty of my own irrational fears.

It’s too easy for someone who has been made redundant to despair that he or she will not find a rewarding job.

We all have spontaneity, adventure, bravery and excitement within us, if we don’t allow our lives to be dominated by fear. 

So that’s my only wish for 2016, not just for myself but for everyone on the planet . . . that our lives won’t be dominated so much by fear and that we will see the huge possibilities out there in this crazy, cruel, but wonderful world.

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