People Before Profit: NATO’s Fifth Column in Ireland?

People Before Profit (PBP), Ireland’s left-wing establishment joke party, is one of the many casualties of the Ukrainian conflict. Their problem is their circus acts of shedding crocodile tears for refugees and other victims of war have, in the hot button Ukrainian case, has been usurped and over-shadowed by Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin, who has been threatening nuclear-powered India over the issue, nevermind Fine Gael’s Josepha Madigan, who has been addressing mobs outside Orwell Road’s Russian Embassy. 

Even Catholic priests are hijacking their moralising podiums outside the GPO, where in 1916, PBP and Sinn Féin’s Fintan Warfield would have us believe, James Connolly fought for transgender rights, gay sauna baths and their own very cushy numbers.

PBP have not taken the loss of their anti-war turf, and the considerable revenues they garner from it, lying down. PBP’s Richard Boyd Barrett has been on top of it, and he has put in a stellar act in Leinster House; though his rhetorical whataboutery regarding the Palestinian issue quickly went viral, this son of a famous actress is not sitting on his own acting laurels.

He cannot afford to. With his supposed political opponents now jumping on the bandwagon, there is just too much competition out there for this Blackrock College boy to ignore. Using their Irish Anti-War Movement front, PBP have been busy enticing suckers to their Henrietta Street HQ to make banners and other props as part of their cosplaying street theatre.

PBP organised a protest march (or street theatre) rally to the Saudi Embassy to protest at the war in Yemen and Ukraine, the excuse being that one cannot morally oppose the latter whilst not opposing the former. 

Though critics have pointed out that those two conflicts, horrible as they are, are not directly related to each other as, say, are NATO’s wars in Libya and Syria (which PBP support) and Iraq (which PBP pretended to oppose), or are those on Syria’s Golan Heights (where PBP support the Israeli occupation), and the Palestinian West Bank (where PBP pretend to oppose the Israeli presence) might arguably be, they miss the point.

The PBP protest is about securing their share of the Irish protest turf and nothing else. As PBP are the same group, who walked, alongside their British colleagues, in sex-segregated protests outside the Egyptian Embassy on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

They also advocated for Ireland to take a keenly pro-NATO position and to supply Libya’s slave traders with anti-aircraft weaponry in the initial weeks of the conflict. These NATO fifth columnists are no Gandhis with a brogue, and they are not, no matter how fine their acting abilities, any friends of the Irish, Ukrainian or Arab peoples.PBP are a crucial part of Ireland’s sham anti-war movement that can be switched on and off at Shannon or on the streets of Dublin as needs dictate. These actors successfully emasculated opposition to the Iraqi invasion and, with Sinn Féin and other establishment parties, frothing to pick a war with Russia, their street theatre is currently redundant. Richard Boyd Barrett, John Molyneux and the rest of Boyd Barrett’s British buddies should give the street pounding and loud mouthing a rest.