Has Ireland become too “woke”?
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My first guest in the studio this afternoon has written a very interesting article which has ruffled a few feathers. Has Ireland become too woke? Our next guest argues that Ireland is now the epicentre of woke people.

Joining me is Irish Independent columnist Ian O'Doherty, who wrote the piece, but not for the Irish Independent, interestingly. This piece, Ian, was written for a British audience. An English audience. How dare I? I am a traitor. No, I was in Spiked, and I actually write on a regular basis for Spiked.

as I do for The Spectator, which I take as an honour because it's the oldest English-speaking magazine in the world, right? And it's amazing. And this piece, we'll give it to him in a sec, really twice. People don't mind. I could say one thing in the end, though, and I'd say exactly the same thing in an English publication or an American publication, and people go mad.

When you talk to the English or you talk to the Americans, whereas I can say to the Irish audience and they go, OK, yeah, fair enough. You know, but so there was a. You have to get why people are a little bit upset when you are telling a foreign audience that we're a woke nation. Well, it's not my problem if you're insecure.

to be honest with you, you know. I'm not talking to you personally, you know what I mean? But I mean, if somebody still feels... And I see this is actually one of the reasons why we are so woke. And it's a word I'm actually quite reluctant to use. Well, I was going to actually ask you for your definition of what is woke. Well, I mean, when it comes to woke, what I'm always reminded of is the famous American Supreme Court justice when it came to an obscenity trial about porn. And he said...

I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Right. We all know woke when we see it. The way I would put it is very self-righteous, kind of obnoxious form of moral virtue signaling. You could call it maybe sort of political correctness on steroids. And it's become a very intolerant ideology now.

which completely seeks to crush any dissent and always done in the name of kindness. Like it's one of the things that you'll often see on social media is that the most vicious people, the most viciously woke people who organise pylons and try to organise boycotts and try to get people sacked, they will invariably then have hashtag be kind.

without any sense of irony whatsoever. Now, I do understand the argument as well that woke is a word, as a word, is very much overused and it's not something...

I employ very often. But this point about Ireland, it was the only word that could be used, you know. Do you feel that as a nation, we are more woke, and I use that in air quotes, than any other nation? I think as a media, academic and political complex, we probably are, yes.

And I think what's interesting is that as other countries are moving away from this, I mean, again, using the broad umbrella term woke, I mean, that's been holding the whip hand for the last 10 years in America and in Britain and stuff. I mean, that's kind of going now. If you look at even the Tories now,

in England really going against it. Obviously with Trump coming in in a couple of weeks time that's going to make a big difference and a lot of companies who had brought in all these diversity and equity and inclusion policies they're all moving away from it. As everybody else is moving away from it we're leaning deeper into it and I find it fascinating that I remember a time

As I'm sure you do. I remember telling you, you start out and every single journalist you'd meet, you'd have a row with. And then you'd have a beer with and you'd have a laugh with. And I don't see that anymore. And I don't see that reflected either with an awful lot of people. Now it's basically everybody's kind of gone into their own silo. And if you're not progressive enough, well, then you should be damned for not being progressive enough. As opposed to, I mean, I have opinions that my mates agree with and don't agree with.

just as they do that I agree with and don't agree with. And I'm never going to go to war with them about it. But we've lived, we've become this very absolute of society. You look at things like, say,

The immigration debate. We have this thing now that anybody who is trying to raise reasonable concerns about the untrammeled and undoubtedly unvetted immigrants that are coming in, despite what the GNIB says, anybody who raises concerns about that, you're immediately denounced as a fascist and a racist. Now, and what I've said to a few people who've actually said this to me, I mean, there was one talk I was given and there was no free speech for fascists being shouted at me.

And I said, actually, I've met some real fascists in Eastern Europe. Trust me, I am not a fascist, right? So, but it's this thing of, it's almost cartoonish. We just demonize anybody who doesn't pass a certain sort of moral or political purity test. And this is one of the points I was trying to make in the piece, is that Ireland is a country, and it's something I've said on The Spectator as well a lot, we're just, we tend to be kind of behind the curve a bit.

And then we tend to almost over magnify because we want to be, this is the Irish insecurity that we have. And it's something we're never going to get rid of it probably. Maybe it's a post-colonial thing, but we want, we're desperate to be seen to be the best boys in the class. And you always hear from Irish politicians talking about,

how well the EU leadership looks on them when they go to Brussels because we're leading the way. We're doing this. We're doing that. Look, the reality is nobody cares about Ireland. We're a rock on the edge of Europe in the Atlantic, right?

And it's time we just kind of grew up, accepted that. I would totally disagree with you in terms of, as a nation, we punch way above our weight for the size of the rock in the Atlantic that you're talking about. Oh, we do, but not necessarily politically. Although we do have a certain diplomatic heft, which a lot of, and particularly when it comes to America, and this is, again, this is one of the pieces, one of the points that I was making. We have genuinely...

very good relevant soft power.

in America, which we have squandered completely in the last 12 months with the constant sniping at Donald Trump coming from Simon Harris and from all the other politicians, with Simon Harris posing with a Kamala Harris campaign baseball cap, with Simon Harris calling Trump... And do you think Trump is even aware of that? Well, I'll tell you how aware of it is. J.D. Vance, his vice president, wrote a letter to the Irish ambassador in Washington saying,

threatening sanctions on us if the hate speech laws go through, which if Helen McEntee gets justice, she's going to try and push those through. The Trump administration is extremely aware of us, and this is going to be a major problem as he's imposing tariffs on American companies. Our entire economy is reliant on

In the way that it was in 2008 upon stamp duty, our entire economy is reliant upon big tech companies keeping here as a headquarters. And we are not doing ourselves any favours. And it's interesting that Harris has obviously realised that they stepped on a landmine by putting all their money in with the Democrats. Because Harris admitted in a piece, excuse me,

where he said the Irish are going to have to go on a diplomatic offensive in Washington. I mean, I genuinely don't know if we're going to see the usual Paddy's Day thing in the White House this year. At whose call? At Trump's call, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not calling it. It's too early to call, right? And it's not my place to call it. But I wouldn't be surprised unless there's an awful lot of bridge building

being done between now and then. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump is too busy and it's just done by lesser officials, which would be a massive diplomatic snub. And don't forget, we are just putting ourselves on the outs with our most important economic partner.

Now, you think that our stance on Israel, the closure of the Israeli embassy in Dublin, you believe that's going to affect us very negatively in the States as well? Yeah. I mean, all of these things are related and people tend to look at these issues and they don't see the fact that they're all interconnected. The Israelis, now there's a lot of opposition in Israel for them closing the embassy. A lot of people actually think,

That was a bit premature because Gideon Saar, who's the foreign minister, he's quite a hothead and things like that. But I mean, from Higgins down to Harris, the Israelis have been insulted and insulted by the Irish. And I remember I was amazed. I was at the anniversary, the memorial for the October 7th massacres. I was at the synagogue for the official one there. And what really kind of broke my heart in a way was that

None of the Irish Jews were surprised that there was no government representative there. I was amazed. I thought, like, they're being aid to camp, if nothing else. Nothing, right? Crickets, absolute tumbleweed. They weren't surprised.

because that's what they've become used to. But closing the embassy isn't a message just to us. It's a message to America. And the two small countries that have America's ear the most are Israel and Ireland. But Israel have it more than we do. And in the boardrooms, and I think it was Ivan Yates actually saying, it was either in this station or somewhere else, he said already he's hearing back from boardrooms in America that our very combative approach towards Israel is not going down well.

But we've always had that traditional support and representing the people who have always traditionally supported the Palestinian cause. That hasn't changed. Well, that's not necessarily the case. That only really changed in the 70s. Up until then, I mean, the Irish have always had quite long ties with the Israelis and with Jews in general. I mean, look at Michael Collins and where he stayed when he was on the run. It was with the Jewish community in Dublin.

And that's why a lot of Israelis, and I mean, I make no apologies or no bones, nor should I, about the fact that I love Israel and I love going over there. And one of the things that I find... Even though today, for example, 43 people killed in Gaza. Yeah, it's called a war. If you kidnap people and if you slaughter citizens, you're going to get a war.

A disproportionate war, though. Well, what's disproportionate? Should they have gone in and picked out 1,200 Palestinians and just raped and killed them? Release the hostages and the war stops. This is something the Irish don't seem to get. Release the hostages and the war stops. But Hamas has to go. Have you noticed? Hamas is pretty much gone. Hezbollah is gone. Assad is gone. Release the hostages. Until then, no. And also...

Hamas need to stop using kids as human shields. It's disgusting. All of this is on Hamas. All of this is on Hamas, not the IDF. Let's look at the general election that we had just a couple of weeks ago. Sorry, did I take it? Maybe took you by surprise there, but there you go. The general election a couple of weeks ago, it's going to be as you were, which means people, whether we like to admit it or not, are happy with the way things are being run.

Well, I don't know if happy would necessarily be the word. Well, I don't see any alternative. Well, I think there was probably the best piece of political analysis came from a lady who was interviewed by 601 News on RT when she came out of the polling station in Galway. And she went, I voted for stability.

I don't trust the others. And I think we are, as a nation, conservative with a small c, right? We're not a radically inclined kind of nation. And I think a lot of people kind of looked around at the alternatives and didn't see any massive alternatives or thought that some of the other alternatives were just headbangers and they weren't going to go for them. I do think what's going to be interesting, this was an election too soon for Aintoo. It was just too soon for them.

they can broaden their popularity, if they can stop Potter to basically being the one party spokesperson, they might have a similar sort of disrupting impact that reform are having in English politics. And

And I think a lot of people are looking for something like that. But the thing is, the Irish by nature were fairly easygoing, fairly kind of conservative kind of people. We don't want to get the crazies in. We don't want to let the loopers come in. So it was basically, as that lady in Galway said, it was a vote for stability. It wasn't a massive endorsement of the government.

Do you believe in that it is the political class that are the woke ones as opposed to the population at large? Or do you believe as a nation we're just woke? No, I think it's the political class and I think it's the academic class. It's the NGOs. I mean, a lot of people don't realise there's 8,000 incorporated non-governmental organisations in this country and they have a huge amount of power that goes massively unrecognised. I think most people, if you sit down

And I mean, you spent your career talking to ordinary people, right? I mean, have you seen them become necessarily more woke? I don't really think so. I think some. Some. Some. Some. But I think most people, they just want to go about their day and they don't want to be beaten over the head with the fact that they're not progressive enough as being judged by some blue haired lunatic with a nose ring.

you know, um, and people are sick of it. And we're seeing a kind of a genuine kickback against it all across. It was very much an Anglo centric thing more than, uh,

thing. But we're seeing a kickback against it. And I'm looking forward to the time when we'll see it in Ireland where basically people are prepared to stand up and openly talk about, say, gender identity issues or immigration or race without immediately being shouted down as some sort of a fascist or a bigot or some ism. You know, everybody is guilty of some ism or suffering from some phobia. And

And basically, all I really want and all I cleave to is a return to common sense. OK, but some of the reason there's some kickback, some of the commentary that comes about those topics that you mention is hate filled. It is filled with hate. How do you mean? I'm talking about some of the far right agitators in this country and some of the stuff that they put online is in many ways filled with hate.

Yeah, but I mean, you're always going to get a couple of idiots on Twitter, but they're not representative of anybody. No more than I would like to think. But they think they are. Well, I mean, you know, everybody can think they're Napoleon if they want, or a man can think he's a woman if he wants him in, you know, it's a free country. But when you see people like J.K. Rowling and that being accused of being a Nazi...

You're kind of going, lads, things have gone too far here. Things have just gone where women are now being accused of being bigots because they want to go to the loo with other women and they want to get changed with other women. When that is now being held up as an example of bigotry by those women, you're kind of going, when did we lose all sense of reason here?

I want to read you a couple of messages that have come in on 087 1400 106. There is no way we are more woke than Scandinavia. Get a grip, Ian, says that message. That's actually a good argument. Scandinavia has always been a bit... Although, funny enough...

Sweden now has started to re-migrate the immigrant population. So Scandinavia actually is ahead of the curve on this again because Scandinavia is far less woke than we are because they've realised that their open borders policy has been an absolute disaster and Malmo and Gothenburg are complete no-go zones and the Swedes are taking their country back.

We've just replaced the self-righteous morality policing of the Catholic right wing with wokeness. It'll settle back to the centre again. I've always made that point myself, is that we replace the church with this.

You know, because a lot of Irish people simply don't like necessarily enough to think for themselves. And it's easier to have some sort of an establishment telling you. OK, now just we were talking about Israel a while ago. Huge reaction to your comments on Israel, including Carl saying Ian is essentially supporting ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Hardly.

And if anything, actually, I mean, let's hope Hamas and Fatah don't start going at each other, which they're already starting to do in the West Bank. And what I would say back to Carl or whatever is release the hostages. And then finally, appreciate a lot of his arguments. However, he is certainly pro-Israel in his view. And it's a war. Release the hostages and it's over.

most of the comments are relating to your views on Israel. Funny that. You're not surprised though? No, I'm not. Not in the least. All right, Ian, thanks very much indeed for popping in. That article is on spiked.com, how Ireland became the epicentre of woke and it's directed at an English audience. Ian O'Doherty, thanks as always for popping into the studio.

The Hard Shoulder with Kieran Cudahy. With the MG Hybrid and Electric range. Weekdays from 4 on Newstalk.