7 Questions To Ask A Workmate Who Marched With Far Right

Thousands of people marched through Dublin behind the banners of the far right and although many say they were marching against the government we need to show other working class people that the far right are friends of the establishment.

Here are some questions that might help you convince people in your work canteen or in your community that the far right don’t have their best interests at heart.

QUESTION ONE: If the far right are anti-government why’d they help Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael get back in?

The whole immigration debate helped shift the political spectrum to the right and guaranteed the re-election of the same old establishment parties that have ruled and ruined Ireland for a century.

Socialists want far more change than a Sinn Féin government would offer but we also recognise that getting rid of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would be a step forward on the path to further change.

The far right spend all their time attacking the opposition and not those in power. They follow and harrass oppositon activists and TDs. You think Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael don’t laugh their heads off behind the scenes when they see this?

QUESTION TWO: What’s the end game?

So your workmate thinks the far right are fighting the establishment - but what’s their endgame? What do they ultimately want? For groups like the neo-Nazi National Party that’s simple - they want to go back to the dark days of Church control and abuse cover ups.

That’s a nightmare world for all workers. They talk about the “remigration” of all migrant workers. That would mean setting up an Apartheid state that segregated the population. A state capable of actually enacting those deranged fantasies would be strong enough to resist any calls for progress from the working class.

For most of the other far right groups they just want the same old Thatcherite economics that has hollowed out the world for the last four decades. The AfD in Germany for example was set up by people from the German equivalent of the bosses’ union IBEC.

It’s literally a party of employers who want to distract workers from economic issues like pay and get them focused on immigrants. All the problems we face in Ireland have been decades in the making and are the result of Thatherite economic policies, which most of the far right groups support.

They condemn public housing or public services as “socialism” - but seems this country has far too little “socialism” - not too much.

Some bloke who just arrived with his belongings in a plastic bag didn’t travel back in time and get Fianna Fáil to spend the 1980s selling off public housing stock and limiting new builds.

QUESTION THREE: Do they know how vital immigrant workers are to the economy?

It has been estimated that migrants contribute €3.7 billion to the economy every year through taxes, PRSI and work permit fees. That’s not counting the profits they produce for their bosses or the billions in goods and services they create.

Migrant workers made up 18.5% of the Irish workforce in 2022. Labour productivity for the domestic economy was €61.50 per worker per hour. There are 2.78 million workers in Ireland. Almost half a million of them are migrant workers - just imagine how much wealth they are generating every single year.

The lunatics like the National Party would collapse the economy and all workers would suffer. We’d be far worse off.

But it’s not just about wealth - we need nurses, bus drivers, cleaners and security workers. They provide vital services. The far right would collapse the economy, collapse public services and then step in to say they’d sort out a crisis that they created.

QUESTION FOUR: Isn’t working class Irish culture closer to the culture of another worker than to the culture Irish D4 rich?

I’m an immigrant. I arrived in Ireland twenty years ago and have been working since I got here. My father worked his whole life in a washing machine factory in a small town in Sweden and my mother was a nurse. They’re working class.

They’re really down to earth caring people who look after their family, friends, workmates and community.

You’ve more in common with them than with some D4 privately educated posh boy in Fine Gael who despises workers and wants to use politics as a path to a career on the board of a corporation.

The Irish working class and poor suffered centuries of oppression under the bootheel of British imperialism. There’s an amazing culture of resistance and songs about failed rebellions and lost heroes.

But that culture would be recognisable to any ordinary Iraqi or Palestinian - people who have fought for decades against unjust and criminal regimes, against imperialism and sing songs about their failed rebellions and long dead heroes.

The Irish rich are the culture that won’t integrate into our world of work. It’d take a revolution to get those parasites to actually do a day’s work. We’ve more in common with a worker from anywhere in the world than we do with billionaire Denis O’Brien.

QUESTION FIVE: If you protest outside an IPAS centre why not protest outside every new housing development in an area?

Across Dublin there have been protests outside IPAS centres. But sometimes the same areas have seen a massive increase in population caused by a new housing development. Ask your workmate what’s the difference?

IPAS is a scam funnelling millions into the hands of rich friends of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. That’s true. But that’s a problem with a government who do the exact same thing with housing, healthcare and anything else they can sell off.

Protest the government, not the people seeking asylum. The same goes for how they’ve neglected our estates. We need to join with groups like tenant union CATU who’ve mobilised council estate tenants to protest at Dublin City Council. We need far more of that.

QUESTION SIX: Why are there so many drug dealers involved in the protests of the far right?

Many deprived areas have had their legitimate anger over government neglect misdirected at asylum seekers. But many of those doing the misdirection have an agenda to cover up the damage they’ve done to our communities.

Do a quick Google search of people arrested at far right protests or outside IPAS centres. Why do so many have multiple drug convictions? Are these people going to “save our communities” when they’re the ones contributing to violence and crime in our communities?

Drug dealers are illegal businessmen, they believe in capitalism. That’s why they’d rather find a framework that allows them to sound like they’re against the system but actually offers a diversion and leaves capitalism untouched.

Conspiracy theories offer that framework. They can rant and rave about conspiracies but they never actually name the real problem - capitalism.

QUESTION SEVEN: What kind of change do you actually want?

The only way we’re escaping the endless cycle of rising rents, housing crisis and political corruption is through a revolution that puts workers in the driving seat of a 32 County Workers’ Republic.

To get that you need to build roots in workplaces and in communities, you need to support every strike by workers, you need to build community resistance on issues like the water charges.

The far right want to distract workers from that hard work of deep organising and thereby destroy any prospect of real change. They’d divide our ranks and distract us from the work we need to be doing. They are trying to block the path ahead.

Socialists have a clear track record. In the last fifteen years I’ve helped the MTL dock workers fight back, I was outside Thomas Cooks when workers occupied, I organised street meetings across Clondalkin when the water meters were on their way.

I’ve stood with every group of workers that has fought back, from bus drivers and security workers, to Lloyds pharmacy workers and the brave Debenhams pickets. In the community we’ve fought to compulsory purchase vacant homes and taken thousands of case work calls, helping people with everything they need help on.

I was the chair of Together For Yes in Dublin Mid West and have tried to be a thorn in the side of the establishment parties in South Dublin County Council since I took a council seat there.

Ask your workmate what kind of change they want? The same old rotten system but with more attacks on migrant workers? Or a rising of the people alongside the activists who’ve proven they have the best interests of our class at heart. You decide.

If you agree join the Reds.