Donald Trump is coming to Ireland.
The surprise announcement last Friday caught everyone off guard. Nobody knew where to look or who to blame. Simon Coveney quickly became a lightning rod for the ire when he said that “the President of America is always welcome in Ireland”.
Very noteworthy, though, that our government didn’t actually know he was coming. This isn’t a state visit. He’s literally just stopping here briefly while on his way to an Armistice Day memorial in Europe.
In all likelihood he’s going to turn up in order to make sure everything is going to plan at his Doonbeg golf resort. Maybe Air Force One needs to refill at Shannon Airport. Maybe he just thinks we’re Scotland. There are all sorts of possibilities.
Sadly, we can’t actually deny the man entry into Ireland just because he is morally repugnant. So we’re stuck with him. The question now becomes… how do we react?
Blindboy, a good man to turn to when you need an opinion on basically anything, has instructed the Irish public to ignore Trump’s visit, and instead galvanise their efforts for real issues closer to home — like the housing crisis.
“If you’re going to mobilise, mobilise against something that truly matters and has an effect in your country.”
We caught up with Blindboy in Stradbally, who reckons this is the best way for Irish people to protest Donald Trump's visit here…
Day 3 @EPfestival w/ @TescoIrl pic.twitter.com/VQud36sIlx— JOE.ie (@JOEdotie) September 2, 2018
Prima facie, his logic seems sound. Ireland’s housing crisis — from renting, to home-ownership, to homelessness — is crippling the country. It would be more than appropriate for people to take to the streets in their tens of thousands to protest such a sorry state of affairs.
Thankfully, protest is not a zero-sum game. It’s not like we’re allocated one issue we can choose to protest each year. We can protest Trump. And the housing crisis. And direct provision. And whatever the hell else we want. Scratch beneath the surface and you’ll often find that the most socially conscious among us who are inclined to protest are inclined to protest as many injustices as they can, rather than just the one.
This is because the principles of deprivation and inequality and cruelty at the foundation of these injustices remains constant. The lack of humanity that allows Trump’s administration to commit atrocities is the same lack of humanity that sees the Irish government turn a blind eye to the ever-growing number of homeless children.
Donald Trump’s visit has virtually, if not absolutely, nothing to do with any of the most pressing issues facing Irish people today. Nevertheless, he remains a demagogue whose rhetoric and policies fly in the face of democratic principles and human rights that are tantamount to our quality of life in Ireland.
To let his visit pass without dissent would be an insult to everyone, everywhere, who expects solidarity from a free and democratic society. Our legacy of famine, and war, and colonisation by imperial powers, and forced economic migration that goes on to this day absolutely dictates that we should not shirk our responsibility to those who are forced to suffer those same atrocities on an even more severe scale.
Just this week, supporters of tragic Trump lapdog Ted Cruz chanted that his political opponent, a man named Beto O’Rourke should “go home to Ireland” — where his great-grandparents were born.
It should serve as a reminder that those on Trump’s side of the fence are prepared to weaponise race, nationality and ethnicity at the drop of a hat. It should remind us that Ireland has spent its history underneath the feet of people like Donald Trump and that anyone who dares stand up to people like that instantly become second-class citizens.
Sure, it’s been a long two years. Even the most socially conscious people could be forgiven for feeling fatigued at the endless stories about things that Donald Trump has said and done. It is this cycle of repetition that wears us down and normalises the kind of behaviour that would have been unthinkable from somebody in public office just three years ago.
That’s not an excuse to ignore this visit. When we have the opportunity to contest something so odious, we have no right to be ambivalent. Indeed, silence on the part of those who do detest Trump will do nothing but embolden the Irish people who admire him.
Similarly, we could also stand to resist the worst impulses of our British brethren and forego the pathetic Trump balloon antics. The puerile jokes about Trump’s body and hands and name are nothing more than a reminder of the toothless way that America’s talk-show hosts and politicians treated him all the way up until he took charge of their country.
The balloon proved itself to be pointless the first time around when it was flown in London. It doesn’t need to go on a world tour for smug liberals to get in on a joke about something that’s gravely serious for so many.
Is there a hypocrisy that we have an entire plaza (read: Supermac’s and a filling station) dedicated to Barack Obama? Barack Obama, who also deported children and old women and sick people from the US in their droves? Barack Obama, who ordered assassinations by drone strike of people around the world with no accountability to anyone?
And what about our tribute to John F. Kennedy’s ancestral home? A man who escalated the Vietnam War? Committed a disastrous failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs? A man whose personal womanising certainly rivalled Donald Trump’s?
Yes, there is. Is that an excuse to give Trump a free pass? No, it’s not. It’s an opportunity to better understand the geopolitical dynamics and global imbalances that facilitate the worst behaviour of the world’s most powerful men.
When you truly understand what you’re protesting against — violations of human rights, racial prejudice, subversions of democracy — you can to identify the properties, rather than the people, that are worthy of your dissent. And you can begin to challenge them everywhere.
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