The Citywest Hotel in Saggart became the scene of violent clashes in October as part of a pattern which is becoming all too familiar.
Resentment towards the establishment in working-class areas is at boiling point. Meanwhile, hardline racist thugs are becoming increasingly emboldened by exploiting genuine anger and diverting it towards reactionary channels.
These riots are a stark reminder that all the inflammable material that exploded in Dublin City two years ago is anything but gone. The far right will continue to pose a threat until they are politically isolated by a revolutionary alternative.
A heinous crime weaponised
The crowd gathered following reports of a sexual assault against a 10-year-old girl near the Citywest Hotel (now an IPAS centre). The alleged perpetrator is a foreign national from Africa with an active deportation order.
Needless to say what happened is horrific. Sexual assaults, including those against children, are tragically endemic under capitalism. The hands of the Irish ruling class in particular are soaked in the blood and tears of countless innocent children. They are a particularly disgusting reflection of this rotten system.
But these crimes seldom attract such a response from the far right when the perpetrator is Irish. Clearly the reactionary thugs of the Irish Freedom Party, Sinne na Daoine, etc. leapt at the opportunity to weaponise a monstrous crime for their own agenda.
Indeed the crowd at the riots wasn’t just concerned locals. People travelled from as far as County Laois to stir trouble. Meanwhile, there were calls online for lynchings of migrants and setting the hotel on fire.
Far from ‘protecting’ women or children, these violent thugs terrorised both those inside the hotel and those outside. As one local put it, “I’ve seen parents running through the village trying to get home safely, carrying children in their arms. It was absolutely horrific.”
Working-class communities squeezed
But how is it possible that these reactionaries are regularly able to gain the ear of a layer of the working class?
When the hotel was being bought by the government, a campaign was launched called Stop Citywest Hotel Purchase. In its description we read:
“[T]ransforming such a significant local landmark into a permanent center […] is placing a burden on our public services, such as education, healthcare, and transportation, and we have seen no help from the Government.”
This is the key to the issue. As the crisis of Irish capitalism intensifies, workers across Ireland are feeling a tremendous burden. Rents continue to skyrocket, waiting lists are out of control and inflation is back on the rise, all whilst cost-of-living measures are cut. As a result of the economic and social crises, Dublin is indeed becoming less safe.
It’s by leaning on these very real issues that – in the absence of a revolutionary left-wing alternative – reactionary thugs are able to attract a layer behind them.
In this they are assisted by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who have taken a harder stance on immigration in recent years. For them, migrants are a convenient scapegoat to distract from their failings. For example, recently, Simon Harris had the cheek to blame the government’s abysmal housing record on the growing number of asylum seekers. Similarly, Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration Jim O’Callaghan has promised to be tough on illegal immigration.
In Citywest, the ethnicity of the attacker provides a convenient diversion from the shameful failures of Tusla, the state agency that was responsible for the young girl.
These hypocrites might qualify their statements and condemn the violence, but the real message is clear: ‘If you’re going to blame someone, blame the asylum seekers and not us.’
No trust in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael
If Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are to blame for the rise of the far right, we cannot for a second rely on them to put a stop to it.
Any ‘defeat’ dealt to the far right by the establishment is a defeat in appearance only. When anti-immigration candidates lost out on seats to FF/FG or when Maria Steen was excluded from the presidential ballot by the undemocratic nature of the election, this didn’t stamp out the racist threat; It added to the false ‘anti-establishment’ credentials of these demagogues.
Likewise, this menace won’t be stopped by the Gardaí. They learned their lesson from their humiliation in 2023 and this time they brought new tools of repression including a water cannon. But that does nothing to address why the far right is growing.
There is only one way to defeat this scourge. It’s by exposing the truth that the demagogues peddling anti-migrant talking points are not at all anti-establishment as they claim. By blaming the crisis of capitalism on asylum seekers they are playing into the hands of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
We need to crush the racist animals who try to incite pogroms whenever a migrant is accused of a crime! As to the honest workers who only see their living standards decline while the number of IPAS centres grows, we must tell them the truth:
It’s not the asylum seekers living in slumlike conditions who are to blame for the crisis. It’s the billionaires, bankers, landlords and their corrupt lackeys on Kildare Street! And only the united might of the working class can take them down.
