With the shit show that is the by-election in Dublin Bay South still gurgling away, casting the main parties – and some of the main candidates – in a less than flattering light, the reactionary press is getting a wee bit jittery at the prospect of Sinn Féin striking deep into what should be unassailable Establishment territory. How else to explain this McCarthyite analysis from John Lee, the politics editor with the Irish subsection of the British-led Daily Mail group?
Winston Churchill said of Sinn Féin’s ideological forebear, Communist Russia, that it was ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’.
Sinn Féin are so different from the traditional parties that they are an enigma that is difficult to decipher. There is, perhaps, a code, again to be found by studying Churchill.
Sinn Féin is a fanatical, revolutionary movement. So radically different are they from their rivals that they cannot be judged by their standards.
Sinn Féin believes of the Establishment as Adolf Hitler did of Russia before Operation Barbarossa: ‘We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.’
But as Barbarossa shows us, freedom and the urge to defend the homeland are powerful things. Don’t write off the Establishment yet. It still has one or two chess moves to play.
Even by Lee’s turgid standards this is risible stuff. But clearly indicative of a Leinster House clique that is feeling apprehensive about the vote on the 8th of July.
Meanwhile, as the Cedar Lounge Revolution notes in its regular weekend media review, we have this conspiratorial contribution from identikit right-wing newspaper columnist Larissa Nolan:
We’re living a far more restricted life now than we were this time last year, pre-vaccines. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to keep lockdown for good, even when the whole country is vaccinated.
For a democracy to thrive it must have a healthy and vigorous press; a news media that speaks truth to power. Not one that colludes with power to undermine a plurality of representation and opinion within the democracy or that promotes views that are toxic to the good functioning of that democracy.
