Here I am, what might be termed a liberal Irish journalist, hanging out in the Nazi Bar. It’s not exactly by choice, I hasten to add. Right now, there is an element of convenience to it. Fear of missing out. Circumstances beyond my control.

It wasn’t always like this. At one stage, it was hailed as the hippest place in the global village square. Full of movers and shakers. Noise makers. Revolutionaries. Maybe even people like me.

Then the Nazi Barman came and ruined everything. The man with no sense of humour. He was never cool. Always a clunk. And the more money he made, the weirder and more aggressive he became.

Then he bought what we had thought of as ‘our place’.

So here we are now, at the beginning of 2025, me and my liberal friends. Stuck in the middle of a cesspit. We still have our own corner, just about. Can’t avoid the din of the Nazi stormtrooper chorus. And the Bitcoin grifters and the AI scammers. We complain about it – about them – bitterly. But to no avail.

SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

You won’t believe who I came across last night as I headed down that blood-stained, piss-smelling corridor to relieve myself. An Irish government minister! Plastering the wall with some official government announcement.

“What are you doing here, Minister!?”

He ignored me. Kept plastering away. “Minister, how could you be announcing official Irish State business in the halls of fascism!?”

He remained silent, though his shoulders arched slightly in a ‘not this eejit again’ sort of way. I am nothing if not determined to make my point and tell others how to live their lives. I harangued him. I brought out the full armoury of my historical knowledge.

I informed him how fascism and totalitarianism were born and tempered in the fires of modern technology. How the young Italian fascists were tech bros who loved smashing faces, moving fast in souped-up cars and breaking things. How the Nazis embraced planes, trains, automobiles and radios. So, it was no surprise Tech Nazi Bars were now cropping up all over the place now.

I even forced him to listen to ChatGPT misquote Albert Speer – Hitler’s favourite architect – about the dangers of Big Tech.

He had done a tidy job, our politician. As he turned towards me, he was rubbing his hands in a disposable lemon-scented cloth. Disposing of his hand-refresher on the already filthy floor, he straightened his tie, and I’m sure he was about to say something pithy, when we were both stupefied into silence.

VOTE NAZI!!!!!!!!

The gas chamber music had stopped for once, and as we opened the door a smidge, there was the Nazi Barman, stomping on a table, in full Sieg Heil salute. Surrounded by tech bros, he smiled and nodded at their adulation as they watched him through their surveillance cameras. Always someone looking at you.

“There’s nothing much we can do,” said the Irish Minister as he hurried towards the exit, rightly disgusted by what he saw. “They control everything, the tech bros. And how else will we reach the people?

“Not to mention the jobs that are at stake,” he added.

Adolf Hitler.

THE BITTER END

Such resignation. Such fatalism. We long knew the Nazi Barman was a Nazi. The sickening assumption of white supremacy was only ever below the surface.

But the triumphalist salute was almost too much for a liberal journalist like me. Surely the government could do something?

“See that wall?” the Irish minister said, with one foot out on the street. “See those posters for The European Commission, for Germany, for France, even for the UK …”

Yes Minister but …

“Stuff your ‘buts’, ye whiny git. Look at you! I’m just in and out of this place. You might as well live here. Go back to your liberal mates waiting for you in your Nazi corner and send them this from WB Yeats:
The best lack all conviction. While the worst are full with passionate intensity.”

Off he went into the night. After some pause for reflection, I returned to my mates in the Nazi Bar to complain about the Nazi Bar, global warming, misinformation, AI, and how awful things in general were, and how nobody wanted to make the slightest effort to change the arc of our journey towards the bitter end.

2025 could be a miserable, dangerous year. More reasons to complain, I guess.

Which is what I really enjoy. It’s much more fun than doing things.