The Fascist Tiger and the Fragile Left
A post-Water Charges retreat to the cosy consensus of left liberalism, data-driven electoralism, and the reign of the slick SPAD has left us unable to run a bath.
In late 1932, against the backdrop of a stricken economy and a dying political system, the Berlin Transport Company (BVG) proposed a pay cut of 2 pfennigs per hour for their workers. While the social-democratic trade unions, like the ADGB, refused to back a strike, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) led a strike anyway. Afraid of losing the streets to the KPD just before an election, the Nazi party joined the strike, and picket lines had the surreal sight of swastika and Communist flags flying side-by-side.
Within less than a year, leading Communists were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered in Dachau and other early concentration camps throughout Germany. All of this should be sufficient warning for anyone tempted to take Cillian Ó Riain, who yesterday argued in these pages for us to 'Strike While The Iron Is Hot', seriously.
Anyone who knows their history knows that, the KPD was brutally suppressed following this short-lived alliance despite being a strong and well-organised political force. The same cannot be said of the Irish left today: a post-Water Charges retreat to the cosy consensus of left liberalism, data-driven electoralism, and the reign of the slick SPAD has left us unable to run a bath.
If you think I'm exaggerating, ask yourself what years of polite, middle-class marching en masse has achieved for the beleaguered Palestinian, and latterly, Iranian and Lebanese people? Weapons and purveyors of death and destruction still fly through our airports and airspace on their way to destroy homes and lives, and even the most symbolic of gestures, promised in their own manifestos—a watered-down Occupied Territories Bill—is unlikely to ever be passed by this government.
When a group of protesters, including regular contributors to these pages, decided to escalate their efforts for Palestine, they were abused and sworn at by Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign stewards. Within hours, they were unlawfully tear-gassed by members of the Gardaí. The same Gardaí who have, in recent days, demonstrated superhuman restraint and dedication to 'policing by consent' in handling the fuel protests.
These protests represent no ideological or material opportunity for the left. Marshalled by a ragtag collective of fascist reactionaries and capitalist lobbyists, they hold no prospect of empowering the working class.
I would not presume to tar every protester with the same brush, but let no one be in any doubt about the ideology of those leading these protests: Christopher Duffy of Navan, who once hoped that Greta Thunberg would be raped by the Israeli military. James Geoghegan of Westmeath, who alongside convictions for animal cruelty, recorded tax defaults of over €500,000 in the last six and a half years. Work backwards from those figures, and it implies he turned a profit of at least €1 million in that time - and potentially more than €4 million if he was not operating as a sole trader. Some 'ordinary man'.
The Muslim Sisters of Éire have provided their weekly Friday soup kitchen at the GPO for over a decade now. In the febrile atmosphere created by these protests, they were racially abused and intimidated for the first time in that decade. Even if white lefties naïvely believe they can successfully ride the back of the fascist tiger, they simply do not have the right to decide that a febrile atmosphere where women of colour feeding the homeless can be intimidated and abused is a price worth paying for some illusory victory against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Turning to the material reality of the protests, in a week of listening to the various spokesmen's demands, I have yet to hear a single mention of heating oil: the fuel that working-class people outside of cities and towns across Ireland use to heat their homes, in a country where one in eight people live in fuel poverty. It's almost as if this isn't about ordinary people.
Indeed, the strongest indications coming from talks with government is that the likely outcome is a 'rebate scheme' for hauliers and farmers: meaning you and I will pay not a cent less at the pump. In such a scenario, are any of the left commentators who have argued so passionately of 'common cause' with haulage and agri firms naïve enough to believe they will hold out until they reduce the pump price for struggling nurses and tradies too?
The sad truth is that far from representing an opportunity for the left in Ireland, the fuel protests are a sad indictment of how far the left has fallen. Just over a decade ago, in the heady aftermath of the Water Charges protests, the left would have been front and centre in organising these protests.
We could have done so from a grounded, class-centred perspective. A perspective that was unafraid to centre the role of US-Israeli aggression in the current fuel crisis. A perspective that argued for extensive, fully-funded retrofitting and renewable energy options for working-class people that will suffer the most from worsening fuel poverty. Instead, the best we can do is debate whether we should or shouldn't support tax dodgers, cattle killers and rape enthusiasts.
I respect the sincerity of those on the left who wish for a shortcut back to relevance through the fuel protests. I do not, however, agree with their analysis. Bitter as acceptance can be, it is time for the left in Ireland to recognise how far we have slipped since the Water Protests. Now is the time to return to base principles: sustained organising, a turn away from the 'twinks in suits' who infest Leinster House, and a return to building working-class power.
