Last weekend, while I was going about my everyday business in Dublin city centre, I came across a populist protest. Curious to see who was organising it, and what the group were protesting, I chased after the mass of banners, placards, and tricolour flags. I was expecting a protest against immigration, Roderic O’Gorman, or perhaps even the meat plants at the centre of the recent Covid clusters.

To my surprise however, it was against none of these things. What it was about was, as far as I could see was face masks. Protestors shouted slogans such as “Only Slaves wear masks!”, and largely made claims such as Covid being if not completely fake, then a virus drastically blown out of proportion.

This is not the first time I’ve heard such rhetoric. I heard whispers of it before, both online and off, and the anti-mask position only appears to be getting stronger amongst the Irish Right. 

As such, I want to point out why such a position is not only flawed, but self-destructive, and why the Irish Right should not only be pro-face mask, but the most pro-face mask group in Ireland.

First off, I want to establish some ground rule. I want to attack the strongest version of the anti-mask argument. As such, I will assume in this article that masks do absolutely nothing to protect people from Covid-19, or any other disease. 

While I myself am unsure of the veracity of such claims, I do openly admit that such statements are not merely those of netizens. People with serious credentials have argued against the mandatory use of face masks using variants of such arguments, and my agnosticism is the result of medical ignorance, not skepticism.

However, even with such an assumption, it is clear that the Irish Right should be well behind the proliferation of mask wearing across the country. This is because they provide the wearer with protection from many of the modern world’s greatest dangers. The nature of these dangers, however, aren’t viral. They’re social.

Every single day, dissidents in this country have to live with the risk of being doxxed. Whether one is actively involved in Rightist politics or not, the risk always hangs over a dissident like a professional Sword of Damocles. 

Over the past number of years, we have seen countless examples of people, both activists and otherwise, being ‘canceled’ by NGO or Corporate sponsored agitators. While sometimes these episodes of public excommunication are a result of countless hours of research done by nefarious actors against a specific target, more often than not, they are a result of opportunism. More often than not, people get canceled after being identified, either via video or image, as doing something heterodox, saying something blasphemous, or being present at an unsanctioned event or with a famous Right-wing activist.

Let’s examine this most common of doxxing scenarios for a second — what is it that allows the nefarious actor to cancel their victim? The answer is obvious: an image, either still or otherwise, of the person’s face. It is only with this that a perpetrator of wrongthink can be identified, and in turn attacked. Without that image, the nefarious actor cannot harm their victim.

This is where face masks come in. Up until the Covid crisis, we lived in a society where privacy was being eroded by the day. It was getting to the point where you couldn’t go anywhere without being watched, either by the state, corporate actors, or other citizens with smartphones. It was slowly getting to the point where you were never alone.

Post Covid, you can go almost anywhere in a state of near anonymity thanks to a cheap facemask. Previously, you couldn’t go into so much as a petrol station wearing a cap. Now, you can walk into the biggest bank in the country with your face covered, and no one will bat an eye.

Now consider your own situation — have you ever done or said something in public that you could have been canceled over? Perhaps you made an off-colour joke to a friend that could perhaps have been overheard, or perhaps you attended a protest in good faith that was later deemed to be evil and racist. Now consider how a face mask may have mitigated that risk, and suddenly you may begin to see my point.

What’s more, imagine if you had been canceled in the past. Imagine that you just had your face smeared all over both social and dinosaur media, and had been labelled a racist, xenophobic wrongthinker. Imagine how that would make everyday life more difficult, and how showing your face in certain parts of the country would put you in genuine danger. Now imagine you lived in an Ireland where face masks were common, and you could wear one without raising any suspicion. What a lifeline!

Even when we assume that face masks do nothing to protect against disease, it is crystal clear that the social protection they provide dissidents is invaluable. No longer will people be as much danger of malicious actors covertly recording private conversations in order to ruin the life of a Right wing brother, father, or community leader. With face masks, Rightists have a constant layer of social anonymity hitherto unheard of in the digital age. Even if they do not work against viruses, why should we ever argue against their mass usage, when they benefit us so much?

The only counterpoint I can think of to this argument is that relying on anonymity is cowardly, or otherwise antithetical to Rightist activism. I reject this position outright.

Looking at history, we can see quite clearly that the coward who fights well is almost always more effective than the soldier who fights bravely. Compare the IRB during the Rising to the IRA during the War for Independence. While the IRB were perhaps some of the bravest men Ireland had ever known, their Rising was effective only as a means of blood sacrifice. Militarily, it was a complete, abysmal failure.

Compare this to the method of the IRA, especially directed by Collins. I do not mean to insinuate these men were cowardly in any way. However, it is plain to see that their method of fighting was asymmetrical at best. The IRA frequently relied on ambushes and surprise assassinations to bring the British administration in Ireland to its knees. Direct use of force meanwhile was only met with failure.

Nowadays it is no different. While it is often rather impressive to see someone publicly stand for hardline Rightist values, their presence in the movement is frequently short lived. This is because, after sticking their exposed face above the parapet, they and their family are put under continuous bombardment by the Corporate-NGO complex until their complete social pariahs. For reference, see the harrowing tales of both Richard Spencer and John Connors. 

Meanwhile, Rightists who act anonymously may not gain as much traction, but are able to act against the system of postmodernity over a greater period of time, and are so, in the end, more effective. The ability to fight another day should never be underestimated, and this ability is almost solely enabled by anonymity.

The established gombeens and cranks know this as fact, hence why the fight against the very notion of anonymity like there is no tomorrow. Not a day goes by without a blue checkmark complaining that they get the greatest pushback from anonymous accounts. They will frequently resort to mocking these people, who often hide behind images of flags, statues, or anime girls. 

They brand these users cowards for not showing their face, however, these sponsored talking heads care nothing for bravery. What angers them so much is that they cannot strike back against anonymous users in the same way they can public figures. If they cannot cancel an interlocutor, they have no power over them. In short, their only option is to engage intellectually, and as we know, this never ends well for establishment stooges.

Face masks both enable and augment this power of anonymity in all of our daily lives. As this world edges every close to the limit of insanity, the face mask provides an invaluable defence for those who want to fight against the tyrannical power of the postmodern age. As such, to fight against the use of such protection is a blunder of massive proportion. 

The Irish Right should champion face masks, not ridicule them. Face masks enable anonymity, and anonymity enables resistance. Resistance, in turn, enables us to have a shot of fixing this mess of a country.

Posted by Daithí O'Duibhne

11 Comments

  1. An amusingly provocative article given that hoodies and helmets were effectively banned from businesses a few years ago for masking identities. However, when it comes to Covid-19, the anonymity benefits of face-coverings only kick in if we have something to be anonymous about. Otherwise we are only reinforcing the sinister agendas behind this Covid-19 insanity. How about an organised “contagion” of genuinely anonymous masks (of the Guy Fawkes variety) or patriotic green scarfs with the words “Masking the Truth”? This would leave the authorities with a horrible dilemma. Should they ban such face-coverings and be forever mocked? Or should they endure this unstoppable fashion craze until their best-laid plans descend into a farce? Let them live and die by their own sword. ..before it’s too late!

    Reply

  2. A very fair comment on anonymity, and the ability to carry out any and all actions with the knowledge you will be hard to pick out of a line up.

    Reply

  3. A very thought provoking article. Thank you .

    Reply

  4. I was once asked to remove a flat cap entering a bank. Now I can enter wearing the cap, a scarf to cover my face and dark shades so I don’t touch my eyes?

    Reply

  5. While people may be tactical on the issue of masks there must be no compromise whatsoever on a mandatory DNA altering vaccine which will be passed on generationally and which the ‘Irish’ government will no doubt enforce on decent people who have very legitimate objections to the most rushed vaccine in history.
    It is my view that the government members who do this should and will go down in history as the greatest traitors the Irish people have ever known.

    Reply

  6. Daragh Finneran 14/08/2020 at 4:06 pm

    I’d like to give my two cents in relation to the making of masks mandatory in shops now as well as public transport.

    It’s incredibly naïve to think that if the government pretends to have the power to force you to cover your face on pain of a fine, that it won’t pretend that it has the power to get you to uncover your face when you’d like it covered but it suits them to unmask you. It’s incredibly short sighted to be pro mandatory masks and as a society it’s a sign of great diabolical disorientation.

    Personally speaking, as someone with severe M.E. my cells already lack sufficient oxygen and so I won’t be risking hypercapnia by wearing a mask. There is a complete lack of consideration for people suffering from things other than Covid these days in the actions of the government; the average person with M.E. is far sicker than 95% of those positive for coronavirus – and M.E. is just one of many conditions that people suffer with in this country.

    Despite this we are told that we must change our lives because of a not particularly lethal cold virus (that’s not merely my opinion but that of an official source in Britain – Public Health England IIRC). The CDC stated months ago that a death rate of only 0.26% (including asymptomatic cases) was the most probable scenario in their opinion at that time.

    Bar those relationships were there is direct responsibility to another, such as parent to child, one’s own health is one’s own responsibility. We have a sick situation at the moment where one has more of a duty to a complete stranger than one’s child in utero.

    We should all be very concerned with the trampling of people’s civil liberties.
    Not only are many of the measures wrong in principle but also physically harmful; we need to socialise, we need businesses for livelihoods and we need human touch – these aren’t optional for the health of society. We need true normality, not a “new normal”.

    Daragh Finneran
    Dublin 1

    Reply

    1. Dr. Barry Bradley 21/08/2020 at 12:02 am

      I am of a medical generation that considered ME to be the ‘yuppie flu’, at least we learned from our mistakes. Mr Finneran keeps repeating th same rubbish about his cells being depleted in oxygen because of ME and that wearing a mask will induce hypercapnia. Both are flat out garbage, I have COPD, pulmonary fibrosis and cardiac Amyloidosis, all of which conspire to drop my O2 saturation to a low level. Do I use this as an excuse not to wear a mask? Now I gladly wear one as my way of showing concern for my fellow man/woman.
      Please stop giving a voice to an armchair expert like Mr Finneran to help him spread his toxic crap!

      Reply

      1. Dr. Bradley, I also work in a very specialised profession and have seen too many so-called experts go down rabbit holes due to various combinations of emotional investment, group-think, virtue-signalling, external pressure, cowardice and careerism, often at a cost of millions. Those who tried to ask the hard questions were often vilified or sacked. This all-too-predictable facet of human nature is perfectly captured in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s Clothes”. The 2008 Financial Crisis was the perfect real-world example. Only a year prior to bankrupting our State, a certain Taoiseach suggested that certain detractors of our great Economic Miracle should “commit suicide”.

        Whatever about the early stages of Covid-19 when the info was scant, the data is now undeniable and this so-called casedemic is the greatest government-sponsored scam in human history. Over 99% of reported cases are now asymptomatic. You don’t need to be a qualified GP to see this. A basic perusal of the case/death figures would be obvious to the little boy who pointed out to the clever adults that the Emperor had no Clothes.

        The Corona virus became political around March. Having been stopped in their tracks by Trump a few years ago, the shapers of the Great Reset made a very deliberate decision to use this new crisis to bring their social engineering dreams to fruition. Suddenly masks were de rigeur when this contradicted almost every WHO advisory that had been given before. Even members of the WHO have admitted that this was a political decision foisted on them from above. This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s all out in the open. The Secretary General of the UN spoke recently on video about the narrow window of opportunity that he and his acolytes were presented with.

        The suppression of facts, pertinent research and proper debate is akin to to what was already happening with Climate Change when rational discussion was nigh on impossible unless you bought in completely to the hysterical narrative. And, as with Climate Change, the Covid data has been twisted beyond recognition to put the Fear of God into everyone. We have seen media hit jobs on anyone who questioned the narrative. We have seen the censoring of respected medical experts including front-line staff. We have seen virtue-signalling and group-think on a monumental scale.

        Dr. Bradley, I put it to you that COVID-19 is bad, but it’s not Ebola. Based on the figures and the prolonging effects of the lockdown, it’s maybe twice as bad as the Aussie Flu of 2017, but that’s at a stretch. I knew many more elderly people who died around that time from influenza-induced pneumonia and the like. My own father was hospitalised around that time and the elderly were dropping off like flies. I got the Aussie Flue myself and it took me 6 horrible weeks to shake off. And a general straw-poll amongst people I meet suggests that I am not too far off the mark in making these comparisons.

        So no more “new abnormal” for me, Dr.Bradley. I urge you to keep an open mind about what I am saying. Masks are only helping to mask the truth and they are causing severe distress for many people, especially the elderly and infirm whom I see down at my local Supermarket on a regular basis. It’s time to uncover our faces and open our eyes. It’s time to get on with our short lives before we end up in a Police State.

        Reply

      2. Daragh Finneran 22/08/2020 at 2:08 pm

        Between wanting to silence me and wanting people to wear face muzzles you seem to have a penchant for tyranny.
        One’s own health, bar in relationships with direct responsibility to another, like parent to child, is one’s own responsibility – otherwise we have tyranny.
        It’d be one thing if covid19 were particularly lethal but it’s not. I’ve heard selfishness mentioned by people during this feardemic but the real selfishness is trampling on people’s fundamental freedoms in order to make a portion of the population feel a bit safer.

        Reply

  7. Daragh Finneran 14/08/2020 at 8:05 pm

    The fact that it suits some people from a tactical point of view that masks proliferate does not change the fact that currently fundamental freedoms are being trampled.
    If the government claims the right to mask people don’t be surprised if it claims the right to unmask people.
    Now is not the time for hiding one’s identity but the time for men and women to stand up publicly for what is right, even if there is a cost to oneself.

    To Mod: I hope that my previous comment will be published.

    Reply

  8. On the issue of mask wearing I was recently involved in a incident with a Bus Eireann driver who
    aggressively insisted on my wearing a face mask and who asked me to produce a letter from my doctor stating I was extempt. On having spoken to a member of staff at Bus Eireann who deals with complaints, I was told that I am not required to present such a letter as this is private information which I am not required to share and also that I have a right not to wear a mask or covering if I find it ‘distressing’ or ‘ very uncomfortable’. The literature from the HSE and Citizens Advice makes that quite clear also .

    What we are seeing with some people and with Government is blatant bullying. Even if you do not have a diagnosed medical condition exempting you from wearing a covering you can argue that the mask is very uncomfortable and distressing. With the threat of massive fines and long imprisonment sentences the ‘Irish’ Government are clearly bullying and intimidating Irish people into compliance with these demands. People should most definitely find mask wearing uncomfortable and distressing. They suppress your immune system, cause carbon dioxide toxicity, hypoxia in some cases, bacteria and viruses build up in the moisture trapped in the mask, cortisol levels rise which causes your body to pump out stress hormones.There is much medical literature supporting this.

    Although it is dismissed as a conspiracy theory Covid is make no mistake aTrojan horse so the State can have unlimited power over its citizens hence the reason why you should find it very distressing. The mask is a symbol therefore of your compliance and a preparation for mandatory and undoubtedly dangerous vaccinations, greater curbs on your freedom and greater austerity measures.The government are being total bully boys and the people can legally and legimately reject mask wearing anyway. If enough people did this the truth would be out. The Government are practicing lies and deception.The truth is a far superior weapon and should and hopefully will in the end defeat them.

    Reply

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *