XPost: alt.politics.immigration, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns XPost: talk.politics.misc
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HTTPS://Gript.Ie/premium-thoughts-on-the-peadar-toibin-interview
is saying:
"Brian Williams
7 hours ago
“We’ll take this in order: The Irish “anti-immigration” movement is essentially an online movement with a street element. Its online leaders
are loud, brash, and uncompromising, and communicate in the style and
language of Donald Trump. They rally behind unserious political figures
like Conor McGregor, and they talk about Ireland in terms of plantations
and invasions and – increasingly often these days – racial conflict between the white “natives” and the darker-skinned “invaders”. Much of their commentary is hysterical, because the more hysterical you are on
social media the more attention you get.
One obvious problem here is that what generates clicks on social media
does not necessarily translate into popular support, or even mean those
clicks are coming from Irish people. Go to a tweet from somebody like
arch nationalist Mick O’Keeffe, and observe the people in the replies – you will find as many if not more American flags in profiles as you will Irish. The online nationalists, ironically enough, are talking to an international audience rather than to Irish voters, most of whom are not online. The second obvious problem is that the internet rewards extremism
and the real world punishes it. It’s easy to like a tweet demanding “mass remigration”, but voters tend to want somebody who also understands how
to fix a pothole and knows what the rate of child benefit is.
Those online influencers, I agree with Tóibín, are doing real and
permanent damage: Their stock in trade is to cry “betrayal” at every
turn, and to tear down every moderately successful institution on their
own side in an endless purity spiral. In the process, they drive their
own followers half mad and render themselves into minor, but ultimately pointless, online celebrities. They are not in the politics business, but
the entertainment industry.”
This needs to be printed out and stapled to the forehead of every single hysterical ‘anti-immigration’ supporter."
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