Jennifer Horgan: Elections will test how much Ireland has been fooled by the far right

Many odious leaflets dropped through my door this week. One of the first was Michael Leahy’s leaflet. A founder member of the Irish Freedom Party, he is vying for a European seat with the declared aim of de-stabilising Europe. His party pamphlet is green. It has a harp on it. He looks a bit like my father — an ageing man in a suit, a congenial half-smile, wisdom across the eyes.

But we are known by the company we keep. Last week, he appeared as a most eager guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast ‘The War Room’. Steve Bannon deserves our attention today because he is a significant figure in any not so magical, de-mystifying tour of far-right agitators. If you want to avoid the far-right, you avoid Steve Bannon.

Many readers will know Bannon as the political advisor who served as chief strategist for the first seven months of Trump’s administration. His desire is to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement". That’s the extent of his interest in Ireland, although during his conversation with Leahy he mentions his Irish roots and the Irish fight for freedom before promising to have him back on again. Of course he does. He is an opportunist, preying on people’s patriotism and anger.

Bannon recently added the word ‘lawfare’ to his warring lexicon. Lawfare, as he defines it, is the strategic manipulation of legal mechanisms to achieve political ends. He is not interested in etymology; his wordplay is part of his game plan to spread hatred and fear within communities, until they self-destruct.

Bannon was held in contempt of Congress in October 2021 over the January 6 attacks on Capitol Hill. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on two criminal charges and was convicted on both counts. This new term of his, ‘lawfare,’ incorporates his effort to defend himself and Trump, a fellow convicted felon. The foundations of American democracy are rotten, they tell their zealous mob, it is engaged in ‘lawfare’ against them.

Beneath the green and the harp, Leahy’s election pamphlet may as well be a Trump pamphlet for all its imported American rhetoric, including all the usual buzzwords: free speech; anti-transgender activism; open door migration. Of course this is not a solely American phenomenon. It is global, but Ireland looks to America; it always has done.

As voters, it is vital that we recognise these politics as having very little to do with Ireland. Other European candidates, people like Andy Heasman and Hermann Kelly, who also blame Ireland’s problems on immigration, are deeply manipulative, and they are dangerous, considering the tide of anger and hate rising in Europe too.

Anyone who understands or indeed cares about the Irish context will know that an infrastructural problem is at the root of our housing crisis, our sprawling dereliction, our tragic levels of homelessness. Such problems, deeply historic problems, cannot be assigned to asylum seekers. It is a far more complex issue in need of thoughtful consideration and action. Unless, that is, you are happy to pull a pre-written page from the Trump play book.

Derek Blighe, leader of the new Ireland First party is cut from the same cloth.

In the place of a harp, Blighe presents himself as “a proud Cork native”. His website is similarly awash with green. You can predict the front image: a white, nuclear, heteronormative family gazing out to sea. Across to America no doubt, to his militantly populist buddies in Washington DC. Or possibly over to the United Kingdom, from where his ally Tommy Robinson hails. Like Leahy, he forefronts his Irishness, settling a paper-thin veil over a wholly imported rhetoric.

Mirroring Bannon’s actions before the storming of the Capitol, Blighe responded to the stabbing of school children in Dublin by telling Irish people that their children were in “mortal danger” and needed to “mobilise”. He later shared the false rumour that the girl who was attacked had died.

Children are at the centre of his rhetoric. On this, Blighe’s party Ireland First is closely aligned with the Natural Women’s Council (NWC) led by Jana Lunden.

Lunden is an American whose NWC, not to be confused with the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) brings to Ireland an exact replica of Moms for Liberty in the States, if you haven’t heard of the moms, they are a populist group intent on breaking down state education in America. 

They share ideological roots with wealthy conservative organisations in America like The Heritage Foundation. Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is an educational and research thinktank. You would recognise their messaging; it is the exact same bile being shouted by Lunden and her tribe outside libraries across Ireland.

Both Moms for Liberty in America and the Natural Women’s Council in Ireland claim that schools have adopted a ‘woke gender ideology’ and are ‘grooming’ children. They also promote a version of womanhood that is seemingly unthreatening and wholesome. Underlying their rhetoric is a hatred of feminism and vulnerable minorities. Just like Moms for Liberty, they want to dismantle our education system from the inside out.

This attack on education hits a very personal nerve for me. This week is the first time I have ever seen the word education on an election poster on my road. For years I have called for education to feature in our election literature. 

Our system needs better funding to adequately care for all children. We need to do so much more to support autistic children and their families. We need proper teacher education when it comes to key matters likes neurodiversity and AI. We need to reform the Leaving Cert. We need adequate school buildings and school places for all school-going children. We need to support teachers in the vital work they do, offering them fair conditions and full-time jobs.

I know the Irish education system. I know what any genuine person would care about in an Irish context. Accusations of grooming are ludicrous.  The new curriculum at post-primary — that includes objective information about sex and relationships — is the most consulted curriculum in this country’s history.

The primary version will be no different. Schools know to consult parents on anything their child is taught on these topics. Schools know how horribly politicised it has become. Most will recognise it as an intensely strategic game plan, with a distinctly American flavour.

Sadly, the much-awaited appearance of the word education on my road, a peripheral road in Ireland, is an import from America. From Moms of Liberty. From the likes of Bannon and Lunden and Blighe.

And yes, this is where we circle back to Steve Bannon. Moms for Liberty owes its success in America, its book-banning success, its traumatisation of vulnerable people, to right-wing media. Since the organization’s first appearance on The Rush Limbaugh Show in January 2021 it has appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room at least 14 times.

Friday’s voting will test just how much Ireland has been duped into thinking certain candidates have any interest in Ireland, or indeed any knowledge of our specific context. I have every faith that we will not be swayed by these Americanising Trump puppets. Irish people are not fools; we don’t appreciate being treated like fools either.