Some Yes advocates for last month’s referendums on care and the family privately confess they feel so bruised by the personalised abuse they suffered on social media that they have decided to curtail their activism. For obvious reasons, these people do not want to be identified after being singled out for such vicious online attacks that, in some cases, made them fearful for their safety.
According to the handbook of regressive extremism, social justice organisations are the devil incarnate, their hooves and horns disguised by angels’ wings. They have been long-time targets of the far right. Much of the anti-NGO (non-governmental organisation) drivel slopping around the internet is laughable but, when it gets so nasty that it stops people working to support human rights, it poses a worrying threat to society.
One might expect that politicians, many of whom complain about the abuse aimed at themselves, would be wary of potentially giving oxygen to this campaign of vilification. While it is legitimate and even requisite for politicians to interrogate how public money is spent, it has been dismaying to hear echoes of the antipathy to NGOs by extremists with other agendas creeping into our national parliament.
Both during and since the referendums, some No campaigners have accused the National Women’s Council of Ireland of acting as a “proxy” for the Government and have insinuated, without providing evidence, that the organisation spent State money on its pro-referendums campaign. The council issued a statement that it is a registered body with the Standards in Public Office Commission and that it is fully compliant with both the McKenna court judgment of 1995 and the 1997 Electoral........