John Lee: Sinn Fin are true populists reform is the only way to defeat them – Extra.ie

In Norfolk, Virginia in 1769 early attempts to vaccinate people against smallpox caused riots. Only the rich could afford to have small amounts of smallpox administered safely by doctors. The rest were left to their fate. Those poorer sections of society those who lived blamed the government, which, like in Ireland at that time, was the British Crown. They rioted because their rulers were perceived to not be representing their interests.

Through the centuries since, the United States (as it became) has been a hotbed of populism.

As early as 1828, citizens elected a populist president, Andrew Jackson.

However, four years earlier, he was deemed by many to be a better candidate than the eventual president, John Quincy Adams, because he had not been educated at foreign courts and reared on sweetmeats from the tables of kings and princes.

Jackson won the most votes in a wide field of candidates in 1824, but did not meet the quota needed to become president, in what supporters called a rigged election against him.

Then at the end of the 19th Century a movement, a political party, rose in the south and the west. The party was actually called the Populist (with a capital P) Party. Old Confederate soldiers and freed slaves, established Americans and immigrants unified to fight the robber barons who underpaid millions of farmers for their goods. They even found a charismatic leader, a virtual demagogue William Jennings Bryan.

But eventually, they caved to accept modest settlements and were subsumed into the Democratic Party. In what was to become a common theme, the Budget populists themselves became the Establishment.

LEGENDARY president Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, who became a progressive, could even be termed a populist though from old money himself.

He believed that multi-millionaires like John D Rockefeller (relatively, no wealthier man has ever lived) and his company Standard Oils wealth was so gargantuan that they were destroying America. He then broke up Standard Oil. Populism, in the greatest democracy and elsewhere has so often been a force for good.

Simply defined, by the Oxford dictionary, populism is a type of politics that claims to represent the opinions and wishes of ordinary people.

Populist movements have always grown from a united belief that a ruler or government no longer represents the ordinary people.

Sinn Fin is the first truly populist movement in our 100-year-old State. The electoral success of the party has grown in more than a decade since the economic crash.

It has grown, partly, because the centrist parties have failed us.

When Sinn Fins finance spokesman Pearse Doherty rose in the Dil to condemn the Coalitions as a con job he will have found many reasonable citizens who agree.

Words he chose to criticise the Government in that speech, that it was out of touch, out of ideas and out of time were straight from the classic populist playbook.

But this column has been saying something similar for six months.

I have been approached by some of Taoiseach Michel Martins advisers in recent months, unhappy that this newspaper has been unkind to him and his Government. But we have often said that Mr Martin is an admirable man and the politician who brought his Fianna Fil an important party in democratic politics back from the brink.

But history shows that populist parties, sometimes reckless, sometimes not, advance only when citizenries become desperate at the inability of Establishment rulers to reform.

Fianna Fil, Fine Gael and the Green Party need to concentrate on their own failings rather than those of the advancing populists.

What this column, guided by briefings from within the centrist parties, of course, has been saying is that it is the decadent, complacent, rudderless Government parties themselves that are responsible for what is coming.

And many fear the advance of an unreconstructed Sinn Fin. For populism can go horribly wrong.

The obnoxious, vicious, malignant Donald Trump was only hunted out of the US Presidency a year ago. Yet, to appropriate a line, he hasnt gone away you know.

Trump and Trumpism rose from the deficiencies of the Establishment. Millions of Americans were ruined by the 2008 crash, gifted to them by the wolves of Wall Street.

The banks recovered but the bluecollar workers the American working class didnt recover.

Trump prospered, no matter what outrage he committed. Thats what anger and disenchantment will do. At one point it was going okay, until he was confronted with a historic challenge, the Covid-19 pandemic, and he failed tragically.

It is seen as almost vulgar to point out that Sinn Fin display characteristics that could be deemed unpalatably unique in most other parties in western democracies.

The party condones and celebrates an illegitimate violent campaign of terrorism. It is a broad church but some members espouse proto- communist beliefs.

Supporters have used social media to turbo-charge the descent into debased political interaction, participating in the use of Trumpian nicknames like #meehole, #leotheleak.

Sinn Fin are late adherents to democracy. It is not long ago that they did not recognise the Dil and it still abstains from taking its seats at in Westminster.

Only 18 months ago, the party hosted a series of rallies in the wake of the 2020 election and before Fianna Fil and Fine Gael had entered coalition with the Greens arguing that Fianna Fil and Fine Gael were planning to carve up power and reject what people voted for.

Still, only 20% of the electorate voted for Sinn Fin. Most of the rest voted for centrist parties.

Some of their TDs espouse conspiracy theories. Tipperary TD Martin Browne supported claims that the 9/11 attacks were faked, using augmented holograms.

The party still opposes certain aspects of the court system.

It might seem like a little thing, but their leader does not give a press conference at their Ard Fheis. (An Irish Mail on Sunday reporter was physically restrained when trying to question her a number of years ago).

Then theres the money. The media cannot obtain a cogent explanation of who in their party is paid the average industrial wage and who isnt. They can use their status as a Northern Irish party to access funding streams not open to other Irish parties.

Ten years ago, I interviewed a Sinn Fin TD, Sandra McLellan, and she claimed that the party took her expenses. The Standards in Public Office Commission held a hearing, at which senior Sinn Fin figures accompanied Ms McLellan, where she dismissed the claims.

Though I had notes and tapes of the interview, I was not asked.

Ms McLellan has since left Sinn Fin, in an unhappy departure. The incident, in microcosm, shows the threat to the many if the guardians of democracy are underfunded. Sinn Fin will come to power in some form because of the somnolent, torpid response of the centre to the disenchantment of an electorate that does not benefit from surging economic growth, multinational profiteering and iniquitous distribution of wealth. If the centre cannot tack its sails quickly enough to avoid the rocks, do we blame its decision not to switch to steam or do we blame the rocks?

Housing For All, the National Development Plan and the Budget were the air, infantry and armoured wings of the Coalitions counterattack against the Sinn Fin invasion. They have failed. So what will they do next?

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John Lee: Sinn Fin are true populists reform is the only way to defeat them - Extra.ie