Fascist Barrett scores hit with great & good of NUIG

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Friday October 15, 2004 22:48 by jamesmactaffe - Galway Grassroots Network (personal capacity)

Closet fascist ingratiates himself with Galway's university elite

Closet neo-fascist Justin Barrett gained a considerable coup on Thursday night in ingratiating himself with the debating elite of the Irish universities’ societies circuit.

Closet neo-fascist Justin Barrett gained a considerable coup on Thursday night in ingratiating himself with the debating elite of the Irish universities’ societies circuit.

After more than an hour (although it felt like days) of private members’ time in the Kirwan Lecture Theatre in the National University of Ireland, Galway, Barrett was allowed take the podium to outline his grievances with the new EU constitution.

Something approaching a hero’s welcome was laid on for Barrett after the chairperson’s introduction commiserated him for the ‘disgraceful’ conduct marring his engagement the previous evening in University College, Dublin, when anti-fascist activists physically prevented the ultra-conservative from speaking.

A spark of discord greeted Barrett’s stepping up when one member of the audience played some bars of 1930’s marching music from a stereo smuggled into the auditorium, before quickly axing the music and apologising to Barrett and the general assembly for any offence caused. The playful sabotage of Barrett’s entrance fitted well into the atmosphere of merriment that Barrett’s presence aroused amongst the jest-loving young orators of the Literary and Debating Society, the event’s hosts.

Barrett gave the case against the constitution alone, Dana Rosemary Scallon having pulled out of the programme upon reflection on the implications of sharing a platform with Barrett.

Opposed by Proinsias De Rossa of Labour and his future coalition partner, Fine Gaeler Madeleine Taylor-Quinn, Barrett identified the threat to the integrity of Dail Eireann as sole organ of democratic authority in the Irish state supposedly encapsulated in the EU constitution.

He asserted that the implementation of the constitution would mean the debasement of any kind of continuity between the contemporary Irish state and that conceived of in the 1916 proclamation of the republic, an assertion put to dramatic effect by Barrett’s tearing up of a wad of paper representing the proclamation, much to the delight of the great and good of the Lit ‘n’ Deb.

After bland defences of the constitution were offered by De Rossa and Taylor-Quinn, the former insisting the document would blueprint the construction of a fairer society all over Europe and in fact add to the Irish domestic constitution rather than detract from it, the first round of innocuous contributions from the floor was initiated.

Niceties of the constitution debate were picked at, blissfully circumventing the issue of an outed neo-fascist being given a platform via the debate.

It was not until the second and final round of contributions from the floor, close to the end of the debate, that a dissenting note was offered by a member of Galway Grassroots Network.

The grassroots activist expressed his dismay that the Literary and Debating Society would select as a speaker a political operator such as Barrett. The speaker highlighted Barrett’s status as would-be organiser of Ireland’s node in the network of continental neo-fascist groups such as Italy’s Forza Nuova and Germany’s National Democratic Party, and pointed out the irony of hearing a defence of Dail Eireann’s integrity from a fascist who describes parliamentary government as ‘foreign’ to the Irish people and ‘unsuited’ to our needs.

The speaker accompanied his critique of Barrett and his politics with a warning that the ‘easy ride’ Barrett had enjoyed in Galway might not be repeated next time he attempts to ply his wares in the city.

The Grassroots activist’s words went down, predictably, like a bomb amongst the bourgeois sycophants of the Literary and Debating Society. A formal remonstration was delivered by the auditor of the society, as were impassioned and well-received tributes from the floor to the Lit ‘n’ Deb’s upholding of Barrett’s freedom of speech compared to their counterparts in UCD’s failure in that regard.

All in all, Barrett’s appearance in the university marked a victory in his quest for respectability and acceptance amongst the heirs of the professional and educated classes of Irish society.

The import of such achievements for Barrett is debatable. Demand for a radical right-winger such as Barrett in power might be low at present amongst such sections of the middle-class Irish intelligentsia as are exemplified by the Lit ‘n’ Deb. But crucially, the presence of this political opportunist is not anathema to them. Affronts to his political nature, however, and the questioning of giving platform to his ilk, are.

Considerable hostility is shown to attacks from the left. When the fascistic character of Barrett’s continental allies was illustrated by the Grassroots speaker by reference to their violence, the mention of the bombing by FN members of a left-wing newspaper was greeted with a shout of ‘Good’ from the back of the auditorium, which was not poorly received.

This was the prevailing tone of the discourse, perhaps a little over an hour after private members’ time had been dominated by a debate over the motion ‘that this house would negotiate with terrorists’. As it happened, the motion, proposed by one of the more liberal society darlings in attendance, was passed, but only after a (seemingly interminable) series of impassioned expositions on the subhuman nature of ‘the terrorists’, and the corruption of the very bedrock upon which our civilisation is founded that would be entailed in engaging in any form of dialogue with their likes. These pomposities were, almost without fail, rapturously received.

The irony that the questioning of the right to speak of an agent in league with active fascist militants was attacked so harshly, in the aftermath of widespread sympathy with the argument that the only acceptable means of interaction with ‘the terrorists’ is through carpet-bombing, needs little extrapolation.

Barrett may continue to be a political non-entity for the foreseeable future, and in any case would have other constituencies than the university elites to win over as priority in his quest for political significance. But the notion that Barrett’s politics can only find resonance amongst the most bog-minded of Catholic Ireland’s darkest recesses must equally be called into question in light of his warm reception in Queen’s College, Galway.

Nonetheless, even if the Barrett threat ultimately proves negligible, the sheer vacuousness of the university elites that would host and placate him points to problems in the ideological framework of Irish society perhaps equally profound.