Sooner or later, everything crosses the Atlantic to wash up on Ireland’s shore. Generations of us have scavenged among the flotsam for blue jeans and bluegrass, hamburgers and Black Friday, the Kardashians, Mickey Mouse and Lisa Simpson’s accent. But the tide has turned across the water and now here comes the jetsam.
If you want to know what the latest assassination attempt on Donald Trump has in common with road closures in Ireland by fuel price protesters, University of Chicago academic Robert Pape provides an answer. It’s not brain rot (“all hell will reign [sic] down” Trump threatened over “the Straight [sic] of Hormuz” while scarce diesel went up in smoke from blockading vehicles in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Wexford and Offaly).
Nor is it the contagion of vulgarity (“open the f***ing Strait, you crazy bastards”, Trump demanded while protesting contractor Christopher Duffy declared in Ireland: “There’s not a f***ing oil truck moving in this country until we get what we want. We have the country by the balls.”)
What ties events on both sides of the ocean together is an increasing toleration among the middle classes for individuals taking matters into their own hands, even to the detriment of others.
Ireland has not exhibited the acceptance of political violence the US has seen with the murders of Charlie Kirk and United Healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson; the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by immigration agents; the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul, and three failed attempts on Trump’s life. When rioting erupted in Dublin in 2023 or when Minister Helen McEntee’s home was evacuated during a bomb scare and Tánaiste Simon Harris received online death threats, the culprits won no widespread approval. Yet, there are signs that this country may have entered its own transitional phase. Call it callous populism.
What is happening in Ireland is not about violence, but the blockades created a societal milestone. They were mounted primarily by and for the benefit of business owners – hauliers and agricultural contractors in the main – and were supported by 56 per cent of respondents to a newspaper poll.
This was despite anecdotal accounts of pregnant women being delayed reaching maternity care; a mother trying to keep her two children with special needs calm in her car while being held captive in the obstructed traffic; images of airline passengers trudging with their luggage to Dublin Airport on the M50.
Pape argues that the relatively well-to-do, college-educated profiles of the men accused of trying to kill Trump and the men who killed Kirk and Thompson reflect a fundamental shift in America’s psyche. These are not the “make babies, not bombs” flower-power students of the 1960s. Nor do they hail from society’s downtrodden margins. They are, he says, a class of people who feel their status and influence are slipping away.
[ Could Ireland face a period of worker discontent after the fuel protests?Opens in new window ]
That same apprehension was audible in the fuel protesters’ demand for a meeting with the Government, though that is not to suggest there was any inclination to violence among them. But they wanted to be heard. Though truckers’ and farmers’ representative associations were negotiating with ministers, the protesters seemed to believe pluralism was no longer working for them.
When they tried flexing their muscle with the warning “no fuel – no food”, they were reminded that most of the food produced in the country is exported, to the value of €19 billion last year. Duffy’s triumphant “we have the country by the balls” evoked a reclamation of power.
Agriculture was Ireland’s biggest contributor to the economy for most of the 20th century, imbuing farmers with enormous political clout, but it has been overtaken by tech, pharma and financial services. According to data from the Department of Agriculture, only about 7 per cent of the country’s workforce is involved in the agri-food sector. Gone are the days when farmers ruled the roost. Yes, the sector scored a triumph in January when the Government opposed the EU’s Mercosur trade deal because of concerns about Brazilian beef imports, but it had the feel of a dying wasp’s last sting. The tectonic plates of national influence have shifted and those who once took theirs for granted are struggling to find their footing.
Any interpretation of the fuel blockade as an urban-rural divide is contradicted by the finding that more than half the country backed it. About 65 per cent of the national population is urban and, while Fine Gael may still regard itself as the farmers’ party, respondents who vote for Sinn Féin, which is strong in cities, were the most enthusiastic supporters of the protest.
A pattern has been discernible in the US. Trump’s first election as president came on a wave of antipathy to the Washington elites and his promise to “drain the swamp”. His defeat four years later culminated in a lethal riot.
Last year, he returned to the White House on a wave of public anger about the price of eggs, after declaring he was saved from assassination by divine intervention. He has coarsened public discourse, lied, bullied, started wars, mocked the dead, reneged on promises, posted racist commentary on the internet, instigated global inflation, and stamped his signature on the dollar bill, but 42 per cent of Americans still back him. Which means 42 per cent of Americans are as thick as planks or Trump’s a genius, right?
Wrong.
It’s worse than that. At the heart of all this is a rejection of one leg of Republicanism’s tripod – the bit called fraternity. Fuel protesters seemed oblivious to this contradiction when they flaunted the Tricolour and claimed to speak on behalf of the people of Ireland; the people who had to abandon their own vehicles when their fuel ran dry in the traffic impasse. One demonstrator even had the temerity to complain on RTÉ Radio that people were out driving their cars while they were protesting.
For years, we have been debating the financial predicaments of Ireland’s squeezed middle commuting long hours, paying royally for childminding and unable to afford a place to call home. But there is another burgeoning phenomenon in urgent need of attention. The squeezed-out middle has shown it can bring the country to a standstill.