The State Is At Fault for Pattern of Abuses by Gardaí and Loosely Regulated Private Security, While Media Fuel Culture War
The state and mainstream media are comfortable for the public response of this tragedy to be trapped within the polarity of two captured politics; the first being a dishonest strain of anti-racism politics by the NGO ecosystem and liberal left, and the second being a pole of fear-politics.
Yesterday, The Journal released an article bringing to light a story about a man who died as a result of fatal compression to his neck whilst being restrained by private contractors in December 2025. The first-time publication of this story must be understood in the wider context of the death of a Congolese man whilst being restrained by private security earlier this week. The state and its mainstream media outlets are comfortable for the coverage and public response of this tragedy to be trapped within the polarity of two captured politics; the first being a mainstream and dishonest strain of anti-racism politics which is tightly regimented by the NGO ecosystem and liberal left, and the second being a pole of fear-politics trying to exploit people’s anxieties about unchallenged crime in the inner city as well as migration.
The former pole of politics serves to move general concerns on custodial abuses towards an insular and non-class centered racialist politics, the latter to exploit the aforementioned anxieties into a politics that justifies a precedent of abuse which will inevitably apply to all working class people in Ireland.
Whilst the outrage is contained within this paradigm, the introduction of this newly published story serves to diffuse the outrage over the death of a black man supposed to have an underlying racial element with another instance of outrage over a death, this time of a white man. Both are ultimately victims of a State which does not effectively uphold appropriate standards for a security industry which they have offloaded the work of public safety on to.
Regardless of whichever actions are charged towards the man who was killed earlier this week, there is no legal or moral excuse for what seems like criminal negligence to many, which allegedly resulted in his death. This is a downstream consequence of a lack of criminal proceedings following the 228 deaths in Gardaí custody over the last 15 years and as Aontacht’s investigative journalism into the security firm employed at Arnott’s showed, alleged improper management and questionable training of security personnel. In fact, brutality by private security is not a new phenomenon, from evictions, bouncers in nightclubs to staff at hotels, it is a well-known fact of life amongst the working class.
