The demonisation of NGOs provides fodder for extremists

• Published date: 05 April 2024
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

According to the handbook of regressive extremism, social justice organisations are the devil incarnate, their hooves and horns disguised by angels’ wings. They have been long-time targets of the far right. Much of the anti-NGO (non-governmental organisation) drivel slopping around the internet is laughable but, when it gets so nasty that it stops people working to support human rights, it poses a worrying threat to society

One might expect that politicians, many of whom complain about the abuse aimed at themselves, would be wary of potentially giving oxygen to this campaign of vilification. While it is legitimate and even requisite for politicians to interrogate how public money is spent, it has been dismaying to hear echoes of the antipathy to NGOs by extremists with other agendas creeping into our national parliament.

Both during and since the referendums, some No campaigners have accused the National Women’s Council of Ireland of acting as a “proxy” for the Government and have insinuated, without providing evidence, that the organisation spent State money on its pro-referendums campaign. The council issued a statement that it is a registered body with the Standards in Public Office Commission and that it is fully compliant with both the McKenna court judgment of 1995 and the 1997 Electoral Act governing expenditure for referendums. The council’s audited accounts published last September recorded its charitable fund-raising income at €1.7 million for the previous 12 months, equating to nearly half of its revenues. Such was the vitriol spewed at council staff and some of its 200-member organisations that it suspended its comments on social media during the campaign.

Still the guilty-by-nods-n-winks have kept coming. The conservative website Gript has been running an online survey, asking: “Should NGOs like NWCI be allowed to spend money they receive from the government on political campaigns?” The clear and incorrect presumption in the question is that NGOs are not already prohibited by law from spending State funding on referendums. This is how misinformation grows legs.

Campaign literature circulated by Lawyers for No, a lobby group that involved Senator Michael McDowell and Clare TD Michael McNamara, stated: “The use of Government-funded NGOs to promote a Yes vote violates the McKenna principles on the conduct of referendums.” As if arguing for gender equality was not the council’s very raison d’être and as if it had not been the one pushing for a...