Irish Examiner view: Black November is a wake-up call for Ireland
The havoc of Thursday night was of a different and sinister order of magnitude, and has reverberated around the world to our discredit. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA
In his dark and foreboding Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Prophet Song, the gifted Dublin writer Paul Lynch envisages an Ireland which is inevitably transmuting into a fascist state. Under the disquieting and authoritarian influence of a new police force, the Garda National Services Bureau, the country is riven by riots and arrests.
The nation is still divided into the Republic and the North, with the latter fulfilling the safe space function that is provided by Canada in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic A Handmaid’s Tale. In that novel, it is women of child-bearing age who are fleeing. In Lynch’s bleak future history, it is young people attempting to avoid conscription.
Lynch says his work reinforces the idea that “the unwanted likes to knock on our door”. And that thought will come to the front of many minds as we review the detritus and reputational damage inflicted by rioters and anarchists on the streets of Dublin and the image of the Republic.
There has been disquiet for some time about street safety, lawlessness, and threatening behaviour in our capital city since lockdown was lifted, with grievous attacks on tourists and delivery cyclists; protests against the housing of refugees and asylum seekers; unpleasant scenes outside Leinster House which have required barriers to be erected; an incipient serious drugs problem; murders.
But the havoc of Thursday night has been of a different, and sinister, order of magnitude and has reverberated around the world to our discredit. A riotous mob caused huge destruction, with 13 shops looted, three buses and one Luas tram set on fire, and 11 Garda vehicles damaged. Social media footage showed gangs setting upon gardaí; the number of officers injured is as yet unspecified.
While shopkeepers and store owners swept up the broken glass and restored their premises for what should have been one of the busiest pre-Christmas days of the year for the retail industry, the consumer bonanza which is known as Black Friday, schools in Dublin were closing for the day.
Some 34 people have, so far, been arrested with Justice Minister Helen McEntee declaring that “violent thugs and criminals” could face up to 10 years in prison for an assault on a member of An Garda Síochána.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was quick to point to enhanced legislation as a potential remedy to increased disorder, confirming that the Government will expedite the passage of the new hate speech bill, alongside laws on the use of facial recognition technology.
“These criminals did not do what they did because they love Ireland,” he said. “They did not do what they did because they wanted to protect Irish people. They did not do it out of any sense of patriotism, however warped. They did so because they’re filled with hate. They love violence, they love chaos, and they love causing pain to others. Looting a shop was more important to them than protecting the lives of our children.”
There is a sense that groups, members of which Garda Commissioner Drew Harris describe as “radicalised”, have been seeking an opportunity to give prolonged vent to their hostility and it was feared that the sentencing of the murderer Jozef Puška earlier this month might have provided such a trigger.
On Thursday night it was the social media-fuelled rumour that the perpetrator of an attack which left three children and a carer injured, two of them critically, was a foreigner. The suspect, reportedly a naturalised Irish citizen in his 40s, is in custody and requires medical treatment.
It is clear that we are at a dangerous pass when the Muslim Sisters of Eire is compelled to cancel their charitable city centre soup run because it cannot guarantee the safety of its volunteers or the users of the service.
There are two Irish candidates for the Booker Prize tomorrow night. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, tells the stories of a dysfunctional, but recognisably modern and big-hearted Irish family. But Paul Lynch’s novel, say the judges, captures “the social and political anxieties of our moment”.
Lynch, a former deputy chief sub-editor and film critic of the , says he was “trying to see into the modern chaos. The unrest in Western democracies. The problem of Syria — the implosion of an entire nation, the scale of its refugee crisis and the West’s indifference.”
Our friends and neighbours internationally will be able to determine, given the grisly images of the past 48 hours broadcast around the world, which work of fiction best encapsulates Ireland at the end of 2023.
Given the appetite for performative protests and symbols of solidarity which attend on numerous international events and tragedies, it is difficult not to acknowledge that there is some wisdom in the decision by England’s football association to no longer illuminate the Wembley arch for political and social causes.
The decision has been taken through a recognition that the organisation, however well-meaning its intentions, has lit up the arch too frequently in the past, generating criticism and misunderstanding.
Among the issues marked in recent times have been the terror attacks in Paris and Belgium, a day of reflection for covid victims, a thank you for the national health service, Remembrance Day, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a celebration of LGBT+ rights on the opening game of the Qatar World Cup, and the death of Pelé.
Most recently, the association did not light the arch for the attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel and, had they done so, it would have been an act which would almost certainly have demanded reciprocity and equivalence by pro-Palestinian groups.
Politicians have expressed irritation that, in future, the arch will only be lit for football games or concerts, and have said it is important that businesses and organisations make a difference by “calling things out”.
But there is no shortage of “calling things out” in the modern world. At times, it seems that people are doing little else. And there are a multiplicity of platforms for doing so. If sport becomes less of a drum major for competing special interest groups, that is no bad thing.
Matters are not getting any easier for the British Library.
It was the victim of a ransomware cyber-attack which has locked up its systems for nearly a month and forced it back to the Dark Ages — when we paid for things with cash and WiFi didn’t exist to speed our research options and assist us with ordering pizza.
The group thought to be responsible — Rhysida — has upped the ante and is threatening to sell stolen data, including scans of employees’ passports, in an online auction on Monday.
The reserve has been set at 20 Bitcoin (€700,000) — the preferred currency of crooks and terrorists.
Rhysida first came to the attention of cyber
security experts last May and has targeted sectors such as education, healthcare, manufacturing, IT, and government.
“Seize the opportunity to bid on exclusive, unique, and impressive data,” a message on its website says.
“Open your wallets and be ready to buy exclusive data. We sell only to one hand, no reselling, you will be the only owner.”
There are echoes of the damaging attack on our own HSE of two years ago, when all IT systems had to be shut down after they had been infiltrated and compromised by a criminal hacking gang, believed to be operating from St Petersburg, Russia.
On that occasion, confidential medical information for 520 patients was published online, in order to pressurise the organisation into paying the digital equivalent of the Danegeld.
It’s Ransomware-as-a-Service, or RaaS — another of those unlovely acronyms, bequeathed to the world by the technocrats, with which we are likely to become wearyingly familiar.
