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One day, in the late 1980s, I was walking with a classmate into Dublin city centre (along Summerhill) and a guy jumped out of nowhere and started throwing digs.
We got away without any of the blows landing. We would have always watched our back in parts of the city, back then.
Random acts of violence on Dublin streets is nothing new. However, the vicious attack on Olympian Jack Woolley, which took place close to the city centre a couple of weeks ago, is a reminder of how dangerous the city remains for ordinary people going about their business. He was assaulted out of the blue and is just one of many that this has happened to.
For the first time, I have concerns about walking around the city late at night. There is a threat in the air and it has become endemic in certain parts of the city (though not confined to those parts). Ryan Tubridy went public recently about how he was verbally abused in the middle of the day by two young men in separate incidents in Dún Laoghaire. He was called a “paedo” among other insults.
Underbelly of anger
Again, it reflects an underbelly of spontaneous anger which is bubbling inside young men and some young women, also. Society is becoming polarised and breaking down into people being labelled as right or left, anti-vax or pro-zero COVID. It is reflected in social media, where insults, anger, hate and cancel culture run through the veins of almost any discussion which touches on social issues and politics.
Constructive discourse has collapsed and, as territories are carved out in society based on your political, religious or moral views, it can only lead to this form of labelling people based on their jobs, their looks, the way they dress and of course their ethnicity.
Tubridy is not the only media personality or journalist to feel the wrath of out-of-control aggression.
The emergence of these small pockets of hard-right clusters has firmly put mainstream media in their line of fire; trying to disrupt the normality of news telling with their own mixed up impression of the world.
It is nothing new, of course, to see politicians relentlessly ridiculed and protested against. It comes with the territory and politicians are well able to give each other what-for, but there is a real nastiness to the sniping at Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar, in particular.
Blissfully unaware
I am sure they are blissfully unaware with more important matters to be concerned with. Still, shouldn’t we want political parties to call out their supporters who troll and spread hate online? Well if it means the Taoiseach or Tánaiste or a political foe is trending for all the wrong reasons, why bite the hand that feeds you?
When you see how far the threshold of moral decency has been crossed on social media, is it any wonder we see such mindless disregard for others seeping on to the streets in the form of angry insults and violent random attacks?
It’s scary and surely time we took hold of this, to source the reason for this burning anger, mob rule and lawlessness.
This polarisation of society, as we can see in the US, for example, threatens democracy, especially when politicians and journalists and others in the public eye feel the need to watch their back.
We can’t simply blame drink and drugs. There is something deeper at work and it has to be tackled fast.
Limerick slam dunk
The performance by Limerick last Sunday was arguably the greatest big occasion slam dunk in the modern history of elite sport. A team for the ages, that couldn’t be begrudged or disliked despite their potential for dominance.
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