Sinn Féin vs Twitter libs, What is the Soul of the Irish Left?
Timely as ever I have decided to return to Medium after a four month hiatus to discuss a two week old story. Following the social media fallout resolving around “controversial” tweets made by Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley I feel it is a good time to ask what is the state of the party and the broader Irish left. The 2010s brought both a huge upsurge in support for the Irish left and liberal social issues, however I have to ask will the 2020s bring about a split between the class first left and the woke liberals.
A good place to start is with the recent controversy. Following a widely unpopular vote by the government to deny pay to student nurses working in hospitals Fine Gael had to do what they do best, shift attention to why Sinn Féin are the real bad guys. The target of last week’s two minutes hate was Public Accounts Committee Chair and Laois-Offally TD Brian Stanley. The initial controversy was over Tweets by Stanley commemorating the Warrenpoint Ambush, the PIRA’s largest attack against the British Army during the Troubles. Fine Gael being pissed at Shinners doing Shinner stuff is par for the course, however the ensuing outrage is what really peaked my interest.
In addition to giving his support to the boys in green Stanley had a few more controversial statements in his past, such as the following Tweet in response to an interview in which then recently elected Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar claimed the party of people who have to get up in the morning for work (as opposed to all the skangers who support Sinn Féin and love nothing more than collecting welfare) and that they are liberals who don’t care what you do in the bedroom (despite being gay Varadkar himself, as with the rest of his party, has long history of opposition to gay rights).
In addition to being a gosh darn homophobe Stanley also did a hecking racism by suggesting we should stop importing foodstuffs from China at the start of the Coronavirus outbreak.
This absolute non-story was bolstered by all of the government’s wonderful friends in the media, who “shockingly” didn’t pay the same amount of attention to a Fine Gael TD liking a tweet calling SocDem TD Holly Cairns “an ignorant little girl” the week previously. The government and media dogpiling on Sinn Féin is no surprise, but the extent to which liberals and leftists on Twitter parroted these smears uncritically really interested me. Seeing so many self described leftists falling for lazy smears from the establishment hook line and sinker and claiming that Sinn Féin aren’t real leftists is sadly unexpected and showcases an emerging divide among Ireland’s left.
Before we move on I feel that I should speak on the ensuing controversy following Christine O’Mahony’s resignation. O’Mahony, a Sinn Féin PR officer, announced that she would be leaving the party after they told her to delete Tweets criticising Stanley, a breech of party policy, and sent a party representative (who was also her neighbour and a family friend, rather than a random IRA hardman like the media and Fine Gael tried to make out) to discuss her breaking of party policy regarding criticism of elected representatives. She has since been the subject of harassment from alleged Sinn Féin supporters on Twitter. Obviously if she was uncomfortable and disagreed with the party she has a right to leave and I support that, but I don’t support her running straight to the media and being disingenuous about the reason that she was told to delete her Tweets, she broke party policy. I’m not going to pretend that Sinn Féin are perfect and that accusations of bullying should be ignored, but the way a certain element of the left has reacted to this as conformation that Sinn Féin are pure evil and their uncritical support of the establishment’s narrative is truly disheartening to me.
Now to get into the meat of this self-indulgent think piece that no one asked for, the divide between the “traditional” left (republicans, unions and the working class in general) and and the “new” left inspired by US imported woke politics and progressive social issues (the type of people who thirstpost about news anchors). What fascinates me is how this divide isn’t between centrist liberals and socialists as with most previous left wing feuds, rather it exists within both groups. This year’s Labour leadership election was fought between Alan “AK-47” Kelly (a man who’s brash machismo and authoritarian power hungriness makes his seem like he would rather be Tipperary’s very own Orbán or Erdoğan rather than the leader of social democratic party) and pseudo-progressive Aodhán Ó Ríordáin. Meanwhile in actual leftism, rumours are flying around that the highly progressive Connolly Youth Movement are planning to split from the more class reductionist senior Communist Party of Ireland.
My opposition to woke social issue centered leftists isn’t because I’m an angry cis straight white man incel (even if all that is true), instead its based on actual election results. When Sinn Féin tried to half-arse being woke following the legalisation of abortion (a campaign that seemed to mark the beginning of American style woke liberalism in Ireland) in the 2018 Presidential election and the 2019 European & local elections the results were disastrous. Liadh Ní Riada’s Presidential run failed to get 40% of what Martin McGuinness got seven years earlier and in 2019 they lost half of their MEPs and local councillors largely due to low working class turnout as a result of being alienated from the Shinners’ campaign. Then came the 2020 general election in which Sinn Féin ran on a fairly basic manifesto focused on housing and healthcare and despite having to deal MMA fighter turned county councillor Paddy “The Hooligan” Holohan being involved in a scandal almost identical to Brian Stanley’s they managed to win the popular vote and 37 seats. A recent poll conducted in the midst of this controversy has show a 2% rise for Sinn Féin and a 4% decline for Fine Gael, simply put these smears don’t work.
It seems clear that the best thing for the Shinners to do is listen to their base and focus on material issues that affect them such as housing, healthcare and corruption. I’m not advocating for a socially conservative left (I mean look how well Aontú are doing), but I think the left needs to accept there are some socially conservative working class people (many of whom are immigrants) and acknowledge that our goal is first and foremost improving the lives of working class people regardless if they agree with us 100%. I believe that the left should be representative of the working class, the issues affecting them and their views even if that means being weird and kind of stupid at times, which Sinn Féin is as the controversies around their TDs views on conspiracies about fluoride, 5G and 9/11 have proven… that and their more old fashioned weirdness like that time a councillor and his dad held a man hostage in their attic and tortured him because he tried to rip them off for a bike. Honestly I think these examples (save for the last) show that Sinn Féin really is the party of the everyman as stupid as he may be.
Another takeaway from this kerfuffle and the election results it is that nothing Sinn Féin do will ever please the establishment. There is no point selling your ideals (and by extension those of your supporters) to try and get some South Dublin, rugby loving, private school educated, Trinity arts degree graduate liberal to vote for you. Republicanism and left wing views are popular among the general public there is no point in playing them down just to win over the yuppie shitheads that dominate the media and Twitter who hate you on principle. Keep in mind this whole discussion is about a centre left social democratic party, if you’re a socialist and you think we should try to reach out and appeal to these people you are simply an imbecile.
I wonder what the future will hold for this divide, the controversies around Stanley and O’Mahony have shown that even among their youth wing Sinn Féin aren’t too fond of the PC stuff and the woke liberals seem to congregating around good boys left wing parties (ergo useful idiots for the right) such as Labour and the SocDems. I predict that in years to come Sinn Féin will become slightly less weird (no more torturing a lad in your attic) but still remain a left-leaning republican working class broad church, taking a similar role to Fianna Fáil’s for most of the last century. I think the woke liberals will take over a revitalised cosmopolitan Labour, which I also assume will have absorbed the SocDems because there is no reason for them to be separate parties. As for the Trots do what they always do, they’ll split over trivial nonsense.
The spilt over culture war issues is occurring among the left across the world but hopefully, unlike their counterparts in the UK and USA, the Irish left won’t fall victim to a liberal takeover and will instead stand by their basic principles of economic justice for the working class and real societal change. But if past experience is anything to go by then things aren’t looking bright and hope for true left change is but an infantile fantasy…
In other equally depressing news I have started a Twitter account, @fidel_kushtro, if you couldn’t tell from the fact that I wrote a Medium piece no one asked for my head is firmly up my arse. Please follow me for more dime a dozen basic bitch leftist takes. I will try to write more pieces about Irish politics on here but don’t expect anything regular since I have other more important things to do (eg pretty much anything else).
