One reason why so many British people voted for Brexit was because of concerns about migrants exploiting the system.
We don’t want an open house,” one man declared during the referendum campaign. “We don’t do criminal checks on them. We can’t stop certain types of people coming in.”
Others insisted that they weren’t against immigration per se. They simply wanted a say over who got in.
“What we don’t want,” another man said, “is more people who won’t bring anything positive and will just take.”
What was interesting about these comments is that they came from members of the Pakistani community.
Support for Brexit among South Asians was much higher than expected by pundits, partly because they had made communities for themselves in which they felt comfortable, and in which there was a high degree of cultural and social compatibility.
They didn’t want that harmony disrupted by outsiders with whom they didn’t feel they had much in common.
Pro-EU voices were quick to pull Pakistani Brexiteers into line. One Labour councillor said: “It is very easy for some people to forget where they have come from and to stoke up a rhetoric of fear and hatred.”
As protests grow against migrants around Ireland, it’s interesting to see the very same playbook being used against working-class Irish communities uneasy about immigration.
They too are being told that they should not “forget where they have come from” and not to “stoke up a rhetoric of fear and hatred”.
The Taoiseach even says Irish people “should know better” as a result of their own experience of emigration.
The use of shame as a way of bringing the unruly to heel is as old as time.
So is guilt by association. If protesters don’t desist, Leo Varadkar warned in the Dáil last week, they will “inadvertently play [the far right’s] game”, which he said was unacceptable “no matter what problems a country faces”. To repeat: “No matter what problems a country faces.” How convenient for those whose job it is to tackle these problems to decree that holding them to account for failure only plays into the hands of extremists.
Varadkar is not wrong to say there are dangers in giving respectability to sentiments previously associated with the “far right”, albeit that such a political entity barely exists in Ireland.
But there are also dangers in giving credence to sentiments associated with the “far left”, not least that expressing any unease about dramatic demographic changes to one’s neighbourhood is, by definition, racist.
At pro-migrant protests in Dublin last week, people held up banners saying: “No borders. No nations.”
The belief that there should be no checks or limits on who is allowed into the country, and that sovereign nations are effectively a racist construct, is little short of insanity, yet it’s also being pushed by extremists under the cover of “anti-racism”.
It could be argued that Leo is “inadvertently” falling into their trap too.
One striking example of the narrative currently being pushed by the political and media establishment in response to protests was seen on Monday on RTÉ’s new current affairs show Upfront With Katie Hannon.
Speaker after speaker talked of their personal experience of racism in Ireland. The stories were terrifying.
But those experiences are also being exploited to paint a picture of Ireland as a racist country, for which certain solutions must be imposed regardless of democratic opinion on the matter.
Are there racists in Ireland? Of course. Racists exist in every country.
But does that mean “Irish people” as a group are racist, or that it’s fair to call Ireland a “racist country”? That depends on how you define racism.
Verbally or physically assaulting someone because they’re black is unquestionably racist. But is believing in the value of strong borders, or wanting limits on the number of people allowed into a country, also racist?
Democratic opinion on the controversial issue of immigration matters
That’s where it gets complicated.
RTÉ presenter Emer O’Neill, who recently called out Tommy Tiernan for a racist joke about Dublin taxi drivers, was also on Upfront to describe her experiences growing up black in Ireland. No one could listen to the 35-year-old and not feel appalled.
But she had other complaints to make about the Ireland her mother found when she arrived here from Nigeria in 1985, recalling how she was “never taught by a person of colour in my entire life” and had “never seen a person of black heritage in a leadership position within education”.
She was, of course, not challenged on those statements. The optics of a white, middle-class woman taking issue with a younger black woman on air are too horrible to contemplate.
But it does need some clarification. Because what exactly is blameworthy about an absence of black role models in a predominantly white society?
Had O’Neill’s mother gone to China in 1985, she wouldn’t have been taught by black teachers or seen black people in leadership positions. She’d have been living in a society whose population was almost exclusively ethnically Chinese. It still is today.
In India, there are still only 10,000 Nigerians like O’Neill’s mother, out of a total population of 1.4 billion. Had she moved there, her daughter wouldn’t have seen anyone of African heritage in leadership roles either.
That India is full of Indians, and Brazil of Brazilians, and Africa of people of African origin, is never regarded as a problem. Why would it be?
But Ireland being a mainly white society is seen as something that Irish people should wring their hands over.
O’Neill made an interesting point when she spoke of trying to explain to white people the racism she experienced and being “met with questions of authenticity”, adding: “You have to prove what’s going on.”
Even after justifying yourself to the doubters, she said you usually get “zero supports from anybody”.
Is that not exactly the same thing now being experienced by working-class communities around Ireland when they try to articulate why they’re unhappy about immigration?
They are met with the same “questions of authenticity”. They too are made to “prove” every assertion.
They too are “gaslit” — another phrase O’Neill used — by being told their reasons for being uneasy are not valid and they’re really just racists or “far right” sympathisers. More pertinently, they too get “zero supports”.
Part of the discontent now being expressed by protesters is to do with the disproportionate strain being put on economically disadvantaged areas; but it’s not only about resources.
Another reason why many South Asians in the UK voted for Brexit is because they didn’t feel “European”. They felt Pakistani or Indian. They felt British. But not European.
In other words, identity matters.
Asians felt comfortable in areas which they’d made their own, and didn’t like it when that homogeneity was threatened by incomers from other cultures. It’s basic human nature.
The difference is that, while this strong sense of identity is lauded in black or Asian communities and countries, it’s damned as disgraceful when white people feel the same way.
Working-class communities are being made to feel that their very sense of Irishness is problematic, toxic.
Once whole swathes of the country are demonised in this way by the ruling class, the seeds are only planted for further discontent. Have we still learned nothing from Brexit?