The biggest challenge posed by the far right in Ireland is convincing yourself to take it seriously. It must be done but it’s not easy. There is even a strange comfort that one of the two Irish novels shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize, Paul Lynch’s gripping Prophet Song, imagines an Ireland of the near future in which a far-right party has taken power. Comforting because the book demands quite an effort of the imagination. Lynch makes this possibility chillingly real, but it is a reality that, as of now, only a very good novelist could create.
Last week, 200-odd (some very odd) demonstrators in effect blockaded the seat of parliament in Dublin for most of an afternoon, preventing members from entering or leaving. They erected a mock gallows bedecked with pictures of leading members of all the main Irish political parties. The effigy hung from it had pictures of both the commissioner of police and the minister for children, equality and integration, who is particularly hated by the far right because he is both Green and gay. They shouted racist abuse at people of colour passing by, threw plastic bags filled with urine at two women, and a young American on her first day as a parliamentary intern had her phone stolen.
