And Then The Whole Luas Clapped.

Dissecting liberal contempt for Ireland’s working-class youth on r/Ireland

Artwork by @Melville_The_Third

Ireland has a ‘scrote’ problem — at least according to Reddit. Since around 2017, there has been a building near-pathological furore over the rise of the misanthropic ‘scrotes’, particularly in Dublin.

There have been calls for these scrotes to be conscripted for national service, sent to work camps, tortured, raped, beaten, jailed, and sterilized by the good people of r/Ireland. What the fuck is a scrote you ask? here’s the word as defined by r/Ireland users:

format noun

scr·​ote ˈscr-ˌote

: A worthless fucking scumbag that feeds parasitically off of society until they kill themselves doing something stupid and/or criminal. - u/Fragrant_Baby_5906

Examples:

Scrotes have 5 or 6 kids, don't give a fuck about education or manners, most will grow up to be state dependant. - u/Different-Sport7223

Scrotes can be predominantly found grazing outside McDonalds, JD Sports and the surrounding areas of their red bricked flats. They can also be studied indoors at the Canada Goose stand in Brown Thomas, usually with their mothers. -u/Direct-Tomatillo8673

In the context of this weird geriatric circle-jerk ‘scrote’ stands in for the word ‘knacker’ (a word now relatively widely accepted as a disgusting anti-Traveler slur). For Ireland’s progressively-minded message-board denizens, ‘scrote’ is a more acceptable slur to denigrate what they consider to be “feral” working-class children —Think US “thug” or UK “yob”.

The word seems to have exclusively spread on Reddit though judging by pockets of banter overheard in Thomas Street’s trendy neo-local boozers, the term has seeped somewhat into common vernacular. Before reaching Reddit the word featured in the Ross O’Carroll Kelly books, a series satirising South Dublin life created by journalist Paul Howard - anecdotally I remember the word being used by South Dublin private school kids as far back as 2014.

This rabid classism seems to build in parallel with the influx of Ireland’s growing technocratic workforce to Dublin, who butt heads with the communities (affluent and neglected) that were already there. Along with the technocrats come the flat-packed coffee shops, boba spots, and build-to-rents, as Town gets a default Californian facelift. Trad sessions give way to bottomless brunches and Harry Potter quiz nights – A rapidly atomising Dublin becoming a terraformed outpost of Silicon Valley.

Caught in the middle of this rapid gentrification are the native population, presented as feral wildlife that offer no utility to the new Dublin being built over their heads. Hatred of the urban working class in Ireland is nothing new, but among the socially progressive millennials that flock to Dublin’s tech bubble, old hate finds new life.  

Ireland’s liberals are vocal about the rights of nearly every marginalised group but silent on the issue of class. The new cosmopolitan, college-educated Irish workforce sneers at those unable to fill a role within the technocratic social order. Sneering is often paired with platitudes about the loveable foreigners manning the hospitals, ethnic takeaways, and Deliveroo bikes that keep Dublin running. This exposes the performative and ultimately transactional nature of that love. Human dignity is applied at the point of utility, be that delivery of a Pad Thai or a prognosis.

This callous filtering out of ‘low-utility’ people, instead picking and choosing your favourite minorities or social causes and calling yourself progressive reeks of the Californian notion that ethics are an accessory. In this calculation representative diversity is paramount, while solidarity is for optics and social justice is strictly for billboards. This is clear in Los Angeles whose pride flag and progressive slogan covered streets heave with 70’000 homeless people, the highest number of any US city.

It’s important to say that many stories of negative interactions with young people in Dublin are not baseless. Crime, assaults, and theft are frequent in the city, with many directed at immigrant workers. This is evidenced by the map (pictured below) created by Deliveroo drivers, to advise their coworkers to avoid certain areas for fear of assault. But are the young people in these areas just mindlessly violent?

‘Áreas de Risco’ map was first created in 2021 and categorises 22 Dublin regions into low, medium and high danger areas. - Irish Times

Taking Dublin 8 as a sample - featuring as both a “low” and “higher” risk area we can maybe begin to paint a picture of an area of high anti-social behaviour among young people. A report conducted by the Sporting Liberties campaign showed that 8000 children in Dublin 8 have no green area to play on and no indoor facilities - a comparably sized community (50k people) would have 20-24 such areas.

Examining the facilities available in each of the communities considered high-risk is beyond the scope of this essay. Still, we can make an educated guess that similar issues may be at play across the capital if not the entire country. Lack of space, compounded by drug-related crime, gang grooming, inadequate provision of mental health services and proximity to violence create a situation alien to most of Middle Ireland.

In this dearth of usable space to socialise and play, JD Sports, and MacDonalds seem as good a place as any to gather. From the apparent wild west of Dublin’s O’Connell Street to the ‘DMZ’ of the Luas Red Line, Dublin’s neglected working-class youth are left to their own devices - As they wander, they are subjected to the ire of the adults around them, subconsciously reinforcing their contemptible place at the bottom of the pile.

The liberal insistence on speaking about working-class people like a separate species of feral Neanderthals living among us is fascistic, and the “solutions” that come with it are vile. A more insidious idea, however, is that people’s own moral failings and poor decision-making have sealed their fate, rather than any other external factor. These undesirables have actively chosen not to reap the benefits of the neoliberal utopia around them —thinking that echoes ‘single mothers’ debate era snobbery.

Scrote's V's Regular people

Are we headed for trouble?

Scrotes have 5 or 6 kids, don't give a fuck about education or manners, most will grow up to be state dependant. So in 3 generations we will have we could have 25 of them from just one original couple. Where as regular people that work have having fewer kids, 1 maybe 2. In 3 generations we could have 6 of them from one original couple.

So if this is repeated, for every 6 worker's you have to support 25 scrotes. A scrote will cost the taxpayers multiple times of what a regular worker will, welfare, medical, housing, possible legal too. - u/Different-Sport7223

“Well when you put it that way I guess the only way forward is forced sterilisation of mass groups of people, as a form of scrotal eugenics.” - u/Whigget

Of course, the denizens of Reddit are not solely responsible for the rampant classism in Irish society. That’s been there forever, we just tell ourselves we’re not as bad as the Brits and leave it at that. The attitudes espoused in the seemingly infinite threads of users nattering like nosey aul wans at the children of Dublin are nothing new, ‘progressive’ Ireland has just gotten better at hiding them.

Truly progressive politics mean embracing new, sometimes uncomfortable ideas - such as the proposal by The British Psychological Society to make social class a protected characteristic. The walls of hate-filled bile primarily directed at children on r/Ireland should be a wake-up call that something is seriously wrong with our perception of people in poverty. If we want change there has to be a concerted push to rectify decades-old issues in communities - Ireland cannot simply discard its old working-class toys in favour of new ‘baggage-free’ imported ones.

Ultimately, working-class people don’t need to offer you something to exist in your midst. Children especially don’t need to offer you anything to share the city with you. The dreary old pebbledash estates and red brick flats of Ireland’s cities might not come with a fun exotic cuisine but the people in them have every right to be there - if you’re sick of seeing kids wandering aimlessly in the street, cutting bike locks or tearing around on ponies, ask yourself, what else would they be at?