GRIPT vs Trots and how PBP Suffocates the Irish Neutrality Movement

John McGuirk’s succinct response to the recent outburst of contempt People Before Profit (PBP) TDs showed accredited journalists from GRIPT and other media outlets should not be the last word in this spat. 

PBP’s contempt for GRIPT is based on the undeserved sense of moral superiority they feel their overall outfit has over GRIPT itself and, in particular, over Fatima Gunning and Ben Scallon, two of GRIPT’s journalists, both of whom have multi-cultural roots and one of whom, Ms Gunning, is a young woman.

Gunning’s sin, in PBP’s eyes, is that she was active on the “wrong” side in the anti-abortion referendum campaign, and Scallon’s sin is that he once stood as a candidate for the “wrong” party. If either of those were cardinal sins, then PBP should also have problems with a wide range of journalists, ranging from Trotskyist Eamonn McCann (the father of Irish Times journalist, Kitty Holland) to all the various journalists.

TV presenters and sundry media personalities, who have recently stood here for election for a whole range of disparate parties. Because PBP have no problem with working with any of them, that only reinforces my opinion that PBP is a core part of the establishment, albeit a particularly noxious and fork-tongued one.

Although I have laughed along with the rest of my compatriots at PBP’s economic pronouncements (nationalise Intel) and at Paul Murphy’s inability to decide whether his child is a boy or a girl, it is really PBP’s meddling in foreign affairs that gets my goat. This is particularly the case with respect to Palestine, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, to which I now turn.

Although a majority of Irish people are disgusted at what is going on in Gaza, I believe that PBP’s role is to emasculate all efforts to bring that catastrophe to an end. I believe that PBP uses the Gazan tragedy simply to enlist new members and to top up direct debits going either directly to them or to one of their “anti-war” front groups, which have had the most colourful of folk on their governing boards.

Indeed, with the return of Irish neutrality as a hot button political issue, there has been an upsurge in pro-neutrality groups, many of them associated with the PBP chameleons and their sheer profusion thereby disabuses the idea that there is strength in unity.

Moving on now to the Syrian crisis, PBP were notable for their support for the Muslim Brotherhood, who now rule the roost in Damascus and who are still slaughtering Druze, Alawites and Christians on an industrial scale. What makes PBP particularly problematic here is not so much their frequent visits to the Muslim Brotherhood aligned Clonskeagh mosque but that they frustrated efforts in the Oireachtas by Clare Daly to highlight the massacre of scores of Shia children in the April 2017 Aleppo bus bombing and, if we examine their Oireachtas record more closely, it seems these anti-war warriors are always on the side of NATO when push comes to shove.

Although Ukraine presented a problem for these serial posers, they linked the war there up with that in Yemen, of all places. Though one can be opposed to the war in both Ukraine and Yemen, or support one and not the other, it is a stretch to directly link the two of them, as they have very little in common in terms of players or issues.

But not to PBP, though, whose game is to milk the anti-war sentiment for what it is worth. Though Ukraine and Yemen both show up their hypocrisy, that can best be seen in the context of Gaza, where the best one of their Parliamentary colleagues can do is paint her fingernails in the colours of the Palestinian flag, and where the best PBP’s rank and file can do is block the entrance to Leinster House under the flag of convenience of Mothers Against Genocide.

Leaving aside the fact that blocking an entrance, let alone one to the national parliament, is a criminal offence, there is another issue with that grandstanding and, by extension, the support PBP and other showboaters extended to it. If PBP and their Parliamentary colleagues are so solidly behind the cause of the Palestinians, why is there a need for their foot soldiers to block the entrance to their workplace, when PBP and similar Parliamentary showboaters are in a much better position to effect action on that issue, should they genuinely wish to do so.

Although those are questions the PBP TDs could easily weasel themselves out of, their recent rude behaviour towards GRIPT and other Press Council accredited journalists is, to me at least, just further proof they have no intention of honestly answering those or other questions because they prefer to remain part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

*Dr Declan Hayes is a retired professor of Finance, who has been active in highlighting the victims of the war in Syria. He does not vote People Before Profit or paint flags on his fingernails.