Demonisation of single, migrant men has bounced from far-right into the mainstream

“It’s the man in your bed, not the man under your bed you should be worried about,” the former State pathologist Marie Cassidy said when asked about the possibility of an Irish serial killer. Something about that line made readers look and read and share again and again.

But we already knew that, didn’t we? Almost nine out of 10 who died in violent circumstances knew their killers, according to Women’s Aid data. Out of 264 women killed since 1996, 170 died in their own homes.

In the effort to depict foreign men as a blob of murderous threats to women, some well-known “patriots” on social media are weaponising the appalling recent deaths of some women for a sinister purpose: to put wings under the “single, unvetted, military-age men”. That’s the notion that male refugees are inherently unsafe to the public and to women in particular. In reality, the nature of violence against women is that women are most at risk from men they know.

This brazen lift from English racial purity merchants is a winner (leaving aside the hilarity of the great Irish “patriots” scavenging from imperialist rhetoric). Last year the claim that a migrant was behind a sexual attack in Finglas – one of many such false reports – had women and children piling into Finglas Garda station asking questions, while outside prominent males called male refugees “rapists”, threatened gardaí with eviction from the station and to “lock down” main routes.

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The suspect in the assault case was white and Irish, said the Garda. The information made no difference.

There was the leaflet, purportedly from the Government, asking that girls stay inside after 6pm due to “new arrivals” in the area with a video of a convoy of buses alongside the claim they were transporting asylum seekers.

The buses were bringing children to a sports event. The leaflet was an obvious forgery. The information made no difference.

Gardaí stated that the increase in asylum seekers had triggered no additional policing requirement in any area; that there had been no significant increase in crime statistics in that context. The information made no difference.

In fact, only a few years before, Garda research had shown that almost one in five people assaulted in the State was a foreign national.

None of it made any difference. The spectre of the single, unvetted, military-age male of unknown nationality has bounced from mad, far-right outlier into the heart of Irish mainstream discourse. Just before Christmas, the six-strong Rural Independent Group piled on with a Dáil motion about “unvetted single males”.

The department’s announcement that the emergency centre in Ballinrobe would not be going to single males as intended but to families was just another in a long list of shelters deliberately described for what they were not: “Not a centre for single males.”

Amid the ongoing protests, a Ballinrobe woman said locals were uncomfortable with the plan “to house 50 men of unknown nationality in the centre of a small town with a creche close by”. A protester called Padraig told Newstalk they were quite aware that “Ireland and Ballinrobe isn’t full, there’s a lot of unused buildings in Ballinrobe. This current building... it’s 25 feet from a creche,” he said and the creche owner had had nothing but calls from parents saying they didn’t want their children to go into that creche. “It’s men [we are protesting against]...” There would be a similar reaction he said, “if there was 50 strange Mayo men put into it”.

So – just men. Strange men. Mayo men. All men then. Has none of these people in scandal-ridden Ireland, having scanned the avalanche of stomach-heaving headlines, reports and books, wondered if small children really are most threatened by strangers rather than family members or authority figures?

Damian Ryan, local Fianna Fáil councillor and protester, repeatedly referred to “the male denomination” as the problem while repeatedly refusing to say why.

“There’s fear and concern out there... Lack of consultation... The male denomination aspect is what has infuriated the community. Fear and anxiety... Maybe it’s justified, maybe it isn’t... Lack of consultation...”

But what exactly had he been protesting about, asked Morning Ireland presenter Gavin Jennings. He stood in solidarity with the community, said the councillor.

So the target of the protests – “the male denomination” – is identified by the community with no evidence to substantiate this perceived threat and the politician stands “in solidarity” against this threat while unable to explain it.

The reaction of Ballsbridge residents to a nursing home being adapted to a 220-bed emergency accommodation centre for asylum seekers included expressions of goodwill but also the notion that “single males”/“unvetted men” might be “holed up” there.

The irony is powerful. For decades women characterised as “feminazis” were accused by some of those ranting, youngish, right-wing males of demonising boys and men. Now in order to fully dehumanise refugees and migrants, the ageing accusers must attack that very thing they got high on defending for so long.

Civilised discussions about policies and controls around immigration are healthy and necessary. Allowing the far right to frame that discussion with its poisonous tropes and language is not. See how far in that direction we have travelled in a year.

It’s happening because good people are meekly accepting the far right frame as one within which they debate and make judgments. Fellow human beings are being dehumanised, and we are being played.