The ''Look After Our Own'' Brigade
The Look After our Own Brigade. Who are they? Do they have a colourful language and a rather vicious behaviour? Do they tend to spit their venom instead of arguing sensibly? Do they repeat the same thing over and over? Are they outraged at the notion that one may suggest they are utterly wrong with their actions and school of thoughts? I am afraid the answer is yes to most of these questions. But who are really those guys and gals?
Nowadays I would say you are bound to find them proliferating on line mainly. They cowardly love Facebook and the online outlets. Tabloid newspaper platforms provide them with a great opportunity to magnify their irrationality and antagonise with anybody who dare advocating anything that is different to their beliefs.
We have loads of them here in Ireland. In fact its a widespread phenomenon. Any day of the week you find them trolling on the Journal.ie comment threads, the most adventurous would even dare tagging along an article of the Irish Times providing its posted as an excerpt on the FB feed. The one topic that do agitate them frenetically is homelessness. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, ''bien au contraire'' I would say as it is really one of the burning issues here among a few others.
For them the root cause is the government quickly followed by the asylum seekers and foreign nationals. Its not necessarily always in that order but they systematically claim that we should be looking after our own before giving money away to refugees. Add the unhealthy obsession the Irish nation has about the travellers community being responsible for 95% of the crimes on the island (there are less than 15000 of them) and you get a perfect recipe for casual racism as a ratified chapter.
You would think that a country with a gay prime minister who is half Indian half Irish would be progressive at its core. Que nenni, at this stage it is more like a window dressing exercise. Am I too harsh ? I don't know Peter Casey's score boost at the last presidential election a few months ago have raised a few eyebrows. Its DNA comment about the travellers community went down like a storm among the blinkered minds. At last somebody who said loudly what everybody thought behind closed doors.
What a great way to legitimise hatred as a political program. The imputation to blame as main message. Hang on some of you may say, you are painting an entire nation with the same brush and by doing so you are not any better than the ones you pretend to advocate against? Casual racism is a fact and there is nothing casual about it. Why do black job seekers have the lowest rate of employment for example?
Insularity as a modus operandi is easy. Characterized by the telling of a parochial story, its very often fuelled by decades of unconscious bias. A few years ago I was told to go back to my own country when I dared pointing to an Irish driver she had misunderstood how to negotiate a roundabout. A few weeks later at a Hurling GAA match, I attended a fixture where my son got repeatedly targeted and ended on the ground a few times. On one occasion I went to him to check if he was OK. I made the mistake to address him in French and all I could hear in the background were comments that non Irish should REALLY stick to their own games. My son got up , looked at them, took the free and scored.
The Look After our Own Brigade is everywhere and it's international too. Its not limited to the UK, France, US or even Russia. You may have a few specimens in your own country too on the condition that your nation is experiencing a few societal challenges. Most of them have something in common besides the narrative and the little sympathy they have for anything dissimilar.
They are all finger pointers and very rarely solution providers.
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Comments
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #39
I am failing to understand the subtleties of your comment but English being only my second language...... inshallah
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #38
fully agree cowardice on line Jim
Jim Murray
5 years ago #37
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #36
#45 Many thanks Claire L Cardwell we all know how they function yet many people have fallen for it to this day :-(
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #35
#42 Yeah a widespread societal challenge who is mushrooming at a fast pace I am afraid
Liesbeth Leysen, MSc.
5 years ago #34
Liesbeth Leysen, MSc.
5 years ago #33
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #32
thankss Proma \ud83d\udc1d Nautiyal for sharing your insight its always more difficult to deal with when it happens so close to you :-(
Proma Nautiyal
5 years ago #31
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #30
many thanks Bill 😉
Bill Stankiewicz
5 years ago #29
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #28
this is very eloquent CityVP \ud83d\udc1d Manjit albeit a sad state of affairs 🤔
CityVP Manjit
5 years ago #27
Lisa Vanderburg
5 years ago #26
Darn tootin' Pascal Derrien! Funny, I watch the (rhymes with 'Rump') saga unfold in the US with morbid fascination as his proponents try to dispell some of his worst aspects of charactor/behaviour/decisions that make the rest of us squirm. Some still try their intellectual best to overtly defend him - fair enough; as is their right. But some seem to have just given up and loudly tout the party line; those are the ones to watch. How with they see themselves in 10, 20 years? Riveting stuff - ageing has it's benefits!
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #25
Lisa Vanderburg
5 years ago #24
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #23
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #22
dead right Praveen Raj Gullepalli there is so much pollution that is hard to get by on a daily basis with a clear vision and conviction for many who end falling into the traps of neo fascism and antisementism 🤔
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #21
we have the same here but it’s evening radio chat shows it is just appalling Jerry Fletcher 😤
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #20
I am actually colour blind would u believe Jim but I see things .... 🧐
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #19
indeed Ken Boddie it really depends where one is sitting in the pecking order my colored friends who work in low paid jobs would concur on that point 😤
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #18
indeed Chris \ud83d\udc1d Guest Van is the man but Christie Moore is probably more combative on that topic 😉
Jerry Fletcher
5 years ago #17
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #16
for the little history I was meant to give a talk about inclusion and diversity at the 2013 Sept GAA AGM they pulled the plug the week before pretexting lack audience readiness on the topic Don Philpott\u2618\ufe0f 🤔😉
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #15
Merci Monsieur Paul Walters :-)
Paul Walters
5 years ago #14
Ken Boddie
5 years ago #13
Jim Murray
5 years ago #12
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #11
Indeed Ren\u00e9e \ud83d\udc1d Cormier for context the Irish over here claim JFK and others of Irish descent as their own only when they are famous otherwise they tend to refer to the diaspora and the Yanks in particular as ''plastic paddies'' that shows how big is the gap in the popular culture when it comes to globalization a true paradox providing there are more people of Irish descent abroad than Irish born islanders :-)
John Rylance
5 years ago #10
Brexit is a case in point there is nothing I can do about it at present. So I concentrate on the things in my life I have control over. Life is too short to concern myself over things currently I can't influence.
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #9
many thanks Debasish Majumder I hope I am not part of an endangered species that would become very problematic for our sons and daughters yet I am afraid of not being overly confident to have any visibility beyond that generation …. :-(
Debasish Majumder
5 years ago #8
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #7
thanks John it’s really challenging at times to react in a non emotional way and I won’t even mention the word brexit to you 🤔😜
John Rylance
5 years ago #6
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #5
I obviously concur Joyce tier 1 level understanding of the world problems do not generate any long term solutions whatsoever we won't go very far with a self centered semantic 🤔
Joyce 🐝 Bowen Brand Ambassador @ beBee
5 years ago #4
Ali Anani
5 years ago #3
I am thinking of writing a buzz my friend Pascal on the paradox of knowledge ignorance. Sometimes we become limited with what we know and produce solutions that leave out good possibilities. It is slightly different from information bias. Your super buzz reinforces this idea.
Pascal Derrien
5 years ago #2
Thanks Ali , I know we ve been at it for centuries as species but I really feel there is an acceleration in divide the last 30 years. People have become lazy intellectually despite education be more widely available :-(
Ali Anani
5 years ago #1