Ruth Dudley Edwards: Dissenters challenging the establishment consensus deserve to have their voices heard

No one does that more pugnaciously than Kevin. His latest offering, “Immigration and the tyranny of the Human Rights Lawyers”, is a cracker that addresses the straitjacket that profession has got us into, aided by a spread of human rights legislation that takes no account of unintended consequences.

Irish left-liberal journalists, he argues, have slavishly followed the example set by their British peers since the 1970s by preventing discussion on immigration. To raise worries about the effect on society of multiculturalism was racism.

“Overarching all this is the truth that we are subject to the imperial edicts emanating from the European Court of Human Rights, and their enforcers, known as ‘Human Rights Lawyers’. For HRL genuinely believe in the universality of human rights, pointing to the UN Human Rights Declaration of 1948 as vindication.”

And now, “every single European country has shown the belief that mass immigration results in a multicultural paradise is a left-liberal fiction.”

Among the disaster areas, he mentions how “Sweden’s dazzling experiment in multiculturalism has triumphed magnificently, turning the city into Europe’s grenade and rape capital.”

Despite the volume of influential people in the UK saying “you can’t say that”, Ireland was infinitely worse and more deluded when immigration problems were raised. When I talked about dangerous Islamist extremists, I was told triumphantly “Our Muslims aren’t like your Muslims. Ours are lovely.”

And all this repression has led to the dreadful mess confronting Ireland today. Unlike human rights lawyers who, as Kevin puts it, believe that “someone who has just arrived from Mogadishu has the same rights to our healthcare and our schools as do Irish people”, most locals “consider it absurd that immigrants are given medical cards when they must pay to see consultants, or that they can’t get their children into local schools because of the needs of immigrants, or that Irish children might be a minority in an Irish school.”

Naturally, he adds, “such thoughts are very wicked, and people who harbour them must be hunted down and publicly destroyed so that nobody thinks like that again.”

The truth is, as Kevin says bluntly, “We’ve learnt nothing from other European societies, instead depending on the childish abracadabra of we’re Irish. The outcome? Same as everywhere else. ‘Free movement of peoples’ was explicit in the Treaty of Rome. What nobody expected was the collapse of Europe’s border-security, Ryanair plane-fares and the triumph of the zealous new Jesuits of Europe, the Human Rights Lawyers.”

Never a man to understate or show undue optimism: “Their court in Strasbourg is our new Vatican, and in a hundred years’ time, gaping New Zealanders will be able to tour our ruins.”

Because of the shortage of outspoken journalists, I’ve spent a lot of time reading social media. It gives me access to unexpected opinions and insights and people who are like Kevin in the strength of their opinions and sometimes their facility in expressing them forcefully.

As a convert to Zionism and Unionism, it’s encouraging to read advocates for both unpopular positions.

A Facebook friend from Belfast, who is as uncompromising as Jim Allister, provided this contribution to a debate on Israel.

“The similarities between Ulster and Israel are striking.

“Both Irish republican extremists and Hamas extremists use victimhood as cover for terrorist atrocities.

“Both claim the British and Israelis are ‘occupiers’ when the indigenous have been in their respective lands for a lot longer than the Gaelic-Irish or the similarly manufactured 'Palestinians'.

“Both churn out vexatious claims of being 'oppressed' when the terrorists are more brutal to their own people than anybody else.

“Both Irish republican extremists and Hamas extremists use children.

“The big difference is Israel's leaders know their very existence is at stake and Israel has powerful allies whilst Ulster faces treachery from its own British government and an unwillingness to counter terrorist propaganda.”

He should write for Gript.