Elected Tyranny: Irish Government Dublin Down on Big Brother

(Valerie O'Sullivan/Failte Ireland via AP)

It has been absolutely horrifying watching what’s been going on in Ireland since this past Spring.

But to see what had become kind of a firewall of debate about freedom get blown to smithereens by rabid and immediate government overreach to an immigrant’s stabbing of 3 children and a teachers in Dublin – HOLY SMOKES.

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It shows you in real time just how quickly a poisonous snake can turn back and fatally fang you, even if you’re holding on well down the tail. If you don’t have the head pinned right behind the neck, you’re always vulnerable to a lightning strike.

The Irish are finding out THEY’RE the terrorists the government is moving against.

They’ve got a “Justice” Minister who seems cut from the same cloth as our very own arbiter from a bastion of unbiased jurisprudence, Merrick Garland. She’ll shortly be waving a magic wand stripping everyone of what they thought were their “rights.”

Gardaí will be able to access and intercept private conversations on social media sites under new legislation, as the Justice Minister promised to crack down on crime following the riots in Dublin.

The move from Minister Helen McEntee came on Tuesday night as she continued to battle to save her political career, after calls for her to resign followed the multiple stabbings and ensuing chaos caused by rioters in the capital last week.

The Cabinet also gave approval on Tuesday for an amendment to data legislation which will permit Garda inspectors to require communication service providers such as Vodafone to provide ‘cell site location data’ in the interests of protecting a person’s safety or life.

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Now, these “powers” haven’t been authorized by any legislation – oh, no, no, no. Since that’s still tied up in the Dáil, this will all sort of magically happening and is going to be given to pretty much any old officer any old time.

…Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday night, Ms McEntee said she would be ‘updating powers’ available to An Garda Síochána to ‘access communications on closed social media sites’.

The move would mean that officers, under certain circumstances, could access private WhatsApp, Facebook messenger and Signal messages.

The Government has previously committed to giving powers to gardaí to allow them to access private messages on social media sites, but the legislation has never made it onto the statute books.

They’ve got to hurry along and get it all wrapped up before people notice what they’ve pulled off. Or before the people who have noticed and are raising a ruckus start to gain traction. It’ll be too late for anyone to do anything afterwards.

Leo Varadkar’s Ireland is flirting with a new form of totalitarianism

…Since riots broke out in Dublin last Thursday, following the stabbing of three children, the cries for action have become ever louder. The government led by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has now pledged to have the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill on the statute book “within a matter of weeks”.

The new law would surely have escaped international attention had those riots not happened, but Dublin’s eagerness to regulate hate speech has, as internet parlance puts it, “gone viral”. Now the whole world knows that Ireland is poised to pass one of the most draconian pieces of legislation in modern times, which will see Irish people facing potential jail sentences of up to two years for the possession of literature “likely to incite violence or hatred” against others on the grounds of certain protected characteristics, including race, gender and sexual orientation.

The police and courts will not even need to demonstrate that the material in question was intended to be distributed to anyone other than the owner. It will be “presumed, until the contrary is proven” that it was. It’s reminiscent of the Soviet Union, where having copies of literature banned by the state, known as “samizdat”, was enough to fall foul of the KGB.

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This will give the Irish elite the control they’ve long sought over a citizenry they really don’t seem to care for. Now, that’s not a new concept by any stretch – you only have to look at the bulk of our ruling elite here. They wouldn’t soil their hands on any of us unless it was to help get that campaign donation out of our pocket faster and, even then, they’d wrap a Kleenix around their fingers before reaching.

But it takes a different level of menace to become a dystopian sitcom kingdom in real life, complete with a collective Commodus-like sneering at the peasants who enable your reign when they register the occasional complaint.

Perhaps the best way to describe Irish politics in the present moment is as follows: The Irish ruling class — a term I use to include politicians, most journalists, the majority of academia, our NGO sector, and senior executives in the techy Irish business sector — simply does not much like the electorate, or the population, that they govern.

This dislike is expressed in various ways. It is no exaggeration to say that one cannot turn on the radio in Ireland without hearing an advert, paid for by a Government agency, warning the public about their behaviour. Amongst other things, these adverts warn us, we eat too much meat. We also drink too much. Those of us who are young men, the adverts warn us, are insufficiently respectful of women. We drive too fast. We consume too much misinformation, and disinformation, especially on social media. We cause climate change. We use too much plastic. On, and on, it goes.

…To say that tensions in Ireland over immigration are simmering would be an understatement. Consider the facts: Over the past decade, the average population increase in the EU is 1.6 per cent. In Ireland, that figure is 12.7 per cent.

One of our leading housing economists estimates that we need 70,000 new homes annually just to stand still: We are building just 30,000 — itself a record effort.

…Despite the insistence of politicians that this influx is Ireland’s “international obligation”, and overwhelmingly pro-immigration media coverage, opinion polling shows that the public have had enough. 75 per cent say that we have taken too many migrants in general, per the last poll to ask the question. This weekend, 66 per cent said that we had taken too many of the relatively popular — and sympathetically viewed — Ukrainians.

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Which makes the Irish, carrying their little #IrelandIsFull signs on the weekend, annoying as hell. And then a few even have the nerve to get out of control when something goes awry, as if it was the government’s fault.

The government’s fault that a ten year long effort to remove an “immigrant” was unsuccessful and he was left in the country to eventually slash school children.

Again the question raises itself – whose country is it, and who has a right to be angry that it apparently doesn’t belong to them anymore?

Over the border in Northern Ireland – where, until now, I wasn’t aware there were also deep-seated problems with immigration – making an “Irish centric” statement is considered a hate crime.

Local authorities there will be havin’ none o’ that…Irish hate?

…A sign, which appeared in the Tildarg Avenue area, said that the community “will no longer accept the re-housing of illegal immigrants”.

The poster also used an offensive term while referring to “other communities”.

Graffiti reading “Irish lives matter” was also daubed on the wall of the Kennedy Centre on the Falls Road overnight.

People Before Profit’s Gerry Carroll said there was “no place in our society for this kind of racist poison”.

We are under no illusions that ‘Irish Lives Matter’ is a racist slogan which is directly counterpoised to movements against the oppression faced by black people and other ethnic minorities,” he said.

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Is everyone in both Irelands tired of the nanny state, the arrogance, and feeling as if this is their last best chance to break free? To remain “Irish”?

…For some, the thing to blame is that my media outlet reported on the attacker’s nationality this week, thus sparking a riot. On television on Monday night, I received a dressing down on that point, with a former Lady Mayoress of Dublin telling me that the media’s job is not to report the news straight, but to “focus on unity”. If only the public had not known, in other words, they might not have reacted. This was not an uncommon sentiment.

For the Government, the solution is to crack down on the so-called “far right” with a new, draconian hate speech law that will simply outlaw any criticism that might conceivably lead to rioting. One wonders though — if reporting the news also leads to rioting, might that, too, not need regulation?

Indeed it might. The Government has recently launched a new “Comisiun na Mean” — a commission for the media, whose job it will be to “combat online misinformation” and to “stimulate the provision of high quality, diverse and innovative news and comment on current affairs”.

In a country where the public are already lectured, every week, about their shortcomings, it is not hard to see the general direction of travel. More money is to be provided, too, to bring the media alongside the NGOs in the category of “sectors of society mostly funded by the state”.

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I’ve always said, as blessed as this country is, we owe a debt to the world to make it a better place, but we don’t owe the world our country.

I think the Irish Irish feel the same. But they’re going to have to plow through their own before they can stop the world arriving, and they are fast losing the means to do so.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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