The Performative Left and Right Are as Bad as Each Other

Tommy Hickey is a socialist writer and activist based in Dublin.

Despite the term itself only being coined in 1991, the culture war is as old as capitalism. Whether we call it a duopoly or a false dichotomy, political debate has to be managed within parameters acceptable to elites. What’s notable in the West today, as opposed to say 20 years ago, is how intense and far-reaching the culture war has become. Times have become more unstable and hence more political. Propaganda has become more omnipresent, and hence society is more divided. 

Each country adapts the culture war to their own conditions. In Ireland the results are vulgar and infantile, given the historic lack of sovereignty in politics. While the same political and financial elites are as firmly entrenched as ever, serving multinational corporations and US-led western imperialism, a circus of performativity is dominating public life. 

By comparing the culture war icons in different political arenas, we see that they feed off each other’s strength. A sort of a Show-Horse Shoe Theory, so to say. Buckle up as we look through the dystopian world of the Irish Culture War Icons of the 2020s.

The Pits of Politics- Online Race-Baiters and Mass Violence-Inciters

Neither the Performative Irish Left or Right (PIL/R) lack icons at this lowest ebb of politics. Let's get the worst over with first. 

The likes of Chloe Power aka “Empathchan”, who, when not spitting on and abusing foreigners including children on the street for content or working on her OnlyFans or appearing on US Manosphere slopshows, she is on X terminally abusing the left as “faggots” and “race traitors”. 

People such as “This is Dublin”: the racist, slopulist, often criminal, citizen journalists, always present and virulently angry at anything involving a foreigner. 

The likes of Andre Buchanan, a Jamaican-born Irish citizen who through social media videos regularly called for black people to “strap up” and essentially target any Irish or white people. Word for word from a 2024 tiktok:

 “The next time these dirty racist people in this country oppress me and my family I’m taking a tool, and I’m strapping up, and I’m going house to house and I advise every migrant …”.

 That wasn’t a once off for Andre, incitement was his grift, but the Irish Daily Mail still victimised him when he received death threats from the “far-right”. 

And the likes of Stephen Bedford, a socialist “revolutionary” who got 16 months in prison for driving into anti-migration protesters while livestreaming in February 2023. According to himself, he was conducting a one-man counter-protest.

Let’s step out of the rabbit hole and move into another arena of politics, for reasons of maintaining faith in humanity…

The Streets - “Pedos Out” vs “Anybody In”

There is no better anecdote to explain Irish Culture War Street politics than the Battle of Pearse Street in May 2023 - where the Revolutionary Housing League squatters (of whom Bedford was a member), along with PIL students and homeless migrants they endangered by inviting them to a squat and small street in a crowded working class area, were forced to flee into Trinity under Garda protection by the overwhelming presence of angry locals. Even as they were being evacuated they kept chanting slop like “All refugees welcome” while taking eggs to their heads. This writer watched the entire event unfold in person (among locals) and can confirm it was the largest social and political humiliation I’ve ever witnessed in my life.

But that’s not to deny that among locals there were grown men, with black caps, sports jackets, and loudspeakers screaming “Pedos out”, insinuating all migrants and leftists are paedophiles, which of course is a slogan the local youths were happy to get behind. Here we meet the Hacktivist Culture War Cadres of the PIR. Their mission is clear and simple: to take whatever legitimate anger there is out there and direct it towards starting two civil wars, against migrants and against communists in the Government and on the streets, before Hitler descends in the rapture and kisses Trump’s forehead before measuring everyone’s noses and extent of sacrifice made for preservation of the white race to be deemed worthy of escaping Armageddon to Valhalla… Either something like that, or they're trying to fill a deep psychological unhappiness with slop narratives provided on X

The likes of Justin Barrett and his Clann Eireann, the Coolock says no lads taking pics with the UDF, all see themselves on such a noble mission. But hopefully, the worst of these white supremacist folks won’t ever be let into our next arena, electoral politics, but you never know, sadly.

Every demo and counter demo about migration are dominated by chants along the same lines “Get them Out, All refugees welcome, Pedos Out, Nazi scum off the street” etc etc.

The Hacktivists on either side, capitalising on genuine anti-racist and anti-migration sentiments, never chant about what a controlled migration policy for a small, but aging and developed country should actually look like…

Electoral Politics

While the neoliberal government elite nowadays try tow a socially centrist line so the Culture War can continue to distract from the humanitarian crises their policies cause, fringe parties use it to get their foot into the doors of potentially being in government some day. 

On the left, of course I’m mainly talking about PBP, with their anti-racist, open borders, identity politics messaging. And yes, their criticism of Israel is needed, but their condemnation of the USA is tellingly lacking, as is their proclivity to promote Big Media’s imperialist narratives of wars and revolutions around the world. An Algerian man stabs children and a teacher and it inspires a riot? Let's have an anti-racism protest! The cost of living is rising? Let's have a protest and listen to Richard Boyd Barrett on a stage tell us to give ourselves a pat on the back after walking from O’connell street to Merrion Square!  Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, Solidarity etc etc are all guilty of the same. 

And while as of yet there has been no major electoral breakthrough for the Performative right, the cadres of Independent Ireland, the Nationalist Party, Rebuilding Ireland and others are doing their best to change that. Here it’s the performance of proposing anti-migration as a manifesto, as well as contrarianism as values.

But that’s not to say every member of every group similar to the aforementioned parties has a bad heart. Councillors  Gavin Pepper and Malachy Steenson, for example, are genuine voices for Finglas and Eastwall and the majority of the Irish working classes’ legitimate concerns with mass migration who actually centre class more than most of their political adversaries on the PIL. And there are somewhat honest souls amongst the electoral PIL too, maybe, and they are correct on certain issues - usually housing and Palestine - to an extent. 

Big Media: “conservative” Friends of Israel and “liberal” Friends of Ukraine

The last culture war arena we’ll look at is within Mainstream Media. In the Irish Big Media Culture War, the clash is between US interests and foreign Oligarchs on the one hand, and the Irish State, the EU’s  (and by extension the US’s) interests on the other. All are for a wide open, FDI-dominated economy. Both are for US Hegemony and forever wars - just in different places, like against Muslims through Israel or against Russia through Ukraine. 

The PIR icons in big media are the loud friends of Israel like Ian O’Doherty, John McGuirk, and Alan Shatter. Their unconditionally zionist, brain rotting pseudo-conservative observations find more and more audiences through Musk’s X and foreign donations.

The PIL Big Media icons that come to mind are the Boomer liberal starboys like David McWilliams, Fintan O’Toole, as well as the entire staff of RTE. And their grift is that this Ireland is pretty damn good actually thanks to FDI, all opposition to mass migration is racist, and that young people who complain about the housing crisis or the means of family formation becoming unaffordable to most just need to pull up their bootstraps, quit the lattes and read a few novels about Magdalen Laundries and the Troubles to realise how much worse it could be… Nothing except their own impoverishment could convince them the Celtic Tiger generation they are wrong.

Conclusion

This piece tried to refrain from criticising political actors in every arena who are not partaking in the Irish Culture War, meaning they enter politics for their principles, not their status. There are many such individuals and even organisations across the political spectrum.  These are the movements which could eventually end this ugly Irish culture war, which only benefits the status quo and the survival of our own crooked political elite at home as well as the blood-soaked elite of the wider Western world today. 

What I hope this piece did demonstrate, however, is that in the Irish culture war, both sides are as bad as each other.