OPINION: Imagine the outrage if Ballymena race targeting happened the Irish in Australia

The scenes from Ballymena this week are among the most worrying I've seen since the Dublin riots; a disintegration of social order precipitated by social media rhetoric. 

The incidents, which have seen police attacked and homes of the immigrant community there burnt out and pelted with bricks, started as a protest after the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl. Two 14-year-old boys appeared in court on Monday charged with attempted rape in relation to the case. The charges were read to the teenagers by a Romanian interpreter. It would appear this passage of justice is not enough for some people and anti-immigrant sentiment has attached itself to the story.

During a TV news interview this week while a Ukrainian woman was speaking about the fear embedded in the town as a result of the violence, a man in the background can be heard chanting, "burn them all out." Immigrants are labelling their front doors with their nationality in the hope that they're not on the hitlist for these racist thugs. How else could you describe masked individuals burning down buildings in the name of cultural hatred. 

I wrote my degree thesis almost a decade ago on the impact of social media on the right to a fair trial. It touched on studies of online 'mobs' that converge on an issue and spread a particular opinion, regardless of facts. On the issue of asylum seekers and foreign nationals in general, that mob has been circling the wagons for years now, north and south of this island, but now they have moved from our timelines to our streets.

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You can see it in the news from Ballymena; the baying mob attacking police and the houses of immigrants, the far-right social media agitators livestreaming, feeding misinformation into the algorithm, anonymous accounts posting 'facts'. It's a circular economy of hate. We've scrolled our way here via unvetted social media platforms where lies are veiled in the 'right to free speech' and neither Government has cut teeth sharp enough to stop it.

There is no community in Ireland, or anywhere for that matter, that wouldn't be outraged by an alleged violent crime committed on anyone, not least a 14-year-old girl. I think of Ashling Murphy in my own county, and the outpouring of anger,, and of course grief, it caused. I remember standing in the churchyard in my own village praying at a vigil for her, but there was an anger in the air too over her killer. However, it didn't lead to people of other nationalities being burned out of their homes simply for being foreign.

Incidents like these kick parents into a protective mode, an angry mode, and when that legitimate outrage is mixed with that toxic social media environment, we end up at Ballymena. We saw it in Dublin too after a little girl was stabbed by a foreign national outside her school. We're moving further and further away from law and order as we have known it; rough justice is here to stay and it's terrifying. 

There is no 'cause' anyone could use to justify what has transpired in Ballymena this week. It's a cliché but two wrongs don't make a right. When residents from minority backgrounds are fleeing their homes and thugs are following them to their temporary location to burn them out there, we are in uncharted territory. When Ashling Murphy was attacked and details of her killer emerged, I didn't march on my neighbours' houses, pitchfork in hand, because they were the same nationality or the same race as the perpetrator. That's what's happening in Ballymena, but those committing it feel they represent a valid cause.

People from this island are quick to forget their shared history of emigration; the millions of people who have left these shores, be that on planes to Australia in recent years, or on coffin ships to the US during the famine.

We glorify every Irish person who ever left this island. We say they built America and England's motorways and became politicians and business leaders all over the world. That's true but we don't mention the ones that ran criminal gangs in New York or ended up in prison for a variety of crimes and were a scourge on their new communities. They don't fit the narrative and don't have a section in the museum. Australia has become a popular destination in recent years but not every Australian is happy with the Irish in their communities. 

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Let's transplant the Ballymena story to Australia and say two Irish teenagers have allegedly committed a serious crime. If Australians then set upon every Irish person in their vicinity at will, burning them out of their homes until they fled, there would be international condemnation and rightly so. The anger here in Ireland would be intense and we would say it's unfair for all Irish people in Australia to be punished for the crimes of two individuals. We'd be right too, so why can't we see it on our own doorstep?

Mechanics, nurses, shopkeepers, binmen, ordinary people, in Ballymena now fear the colour of their skin, their accent, their clothes, their culture will see them attacked. That is the epitome of racism. The law is dealing with the individuals in the case and the justice system must be respected. There can be legitimate arguments on immigration and asylum on both sides of the border, but it should never come to this.