I am not a member of People Before Profit. In fact, if anything I am skeptical about the Irish left in general and would avoid committing myself to a particular party and instead wait until election campaigns to determine which individual candidates I consider to be worthy of my first preference.
But I am conscious of how the left leaning parties are portrayed in the Irish media. Take the framing this “story” on Extra .ie :
Just to be clear, the actual story featured in this article is meant to be the response of the PBP to President Zelenskyy’s address to the Dáil this week. But what the article actually does is present as news the reaction of other parties.
Apparently the PBP’s objection to further sanctions against the Russian economy is considered to be a “contradiction” given they recently proposed sanctions against Israel. On the surface, that seems a very straightforward way to characterise. However, the Russian sanctions have been widespread and increased gradually since the beginning of their occupation of Ukraine. Meanwhile Israel have no sanctions at all despite their actions against the people of Palestine.
So to summarize, the two situations are very, very different. For Russia, they condemn Putin’s actions but suggest that maybe continued sanctions will tend to hurt the people not those in charge. For Israel, they are calling for sanctions that will hurt the government.
I notice the article does not include this particular quote from the PBP statement on this matter…
This is why the best hope for peace is not rowing in behind our own government in its efforts to use the Ukraine crisis to militarise our society. The Irish government’s main interest is using the conflict to hammer a final nail in Irish neutrality. If they were serious about the defence of human rights, they would have stopped the US army from using Shannon airport as a transit point for flights to torture centres. In reality, they have been turning a blind eye to Irish neutrality, and are now using the rhetoric of the conflict in Ukraine as an excuse to disband our neutral position entirely. They want to draw Ireland closer to NATO and increase military spending.
Maybe THIS is why the Irish media wants to focus on a disingenuous claim of contradiction? So that nobody sees the (actually obvious) threat to Irish neutrality?
Again, I am far from a spokesperson for PBP. But I do see how the left is portrayed in the media which is clearly trying to shape a particular narrative, which usually means it is hoping a different one will not take over. JLP
#IANWAE
First Person Plural 