How Gerry Adams uses Twitter to Distort Reality
As Gerry Adams releases the inevitable book based on his eccentric Twitter account, here is an excerpt from an essay I wrote in April last year for a Digital Media & Politics class.
It was written for an international audience so excuse the seemingly obvious history lessons…
Gerry Adam’s Twitter account is a masterclass in political communication. Adams is a controversial figure, linked to Ireland’s violent past but also partly credited with bringing about the peace the island currently enjoys. He remains difficult to pin down, all the more so when scrolling through his official Twitter feed.
It is quite unexpectedly surreal and has become a media sensation since he joined up, with pieces about it appearing on Buzzfeed and in The Huffington Post, as well as lots of coverage in local media outlets. The reason for this is that it is difficult to tell whether it is a parody account or not when first reading through the feed. There is a blue verification tick, and there are the occasionally official looking posts about party events, but these are interspersed with various inane tweets filled with emojis, bizarre references to rubber ducks and stories about trampolining naked with his grandchildren’s dog. Henry McDonald explains that through his Twitter feed “he can portray himself as cuddly, mildly eccentric and that most cliched, over-played, exaggerated virtue of all in Irish life, good craic.”
Based on Gerry Adams’s past, this is especially jarring. He was one of the political leaders of the Republican movement throughout the period known as The Troubles in Northern Ireland (roughly from the mid 1960s to the mid 1990s) and despite firm denials to the contrary it is likely that he gave the orders for numerous executions and terrorist attacks by the Irish Republican Army. He has since become a respected politician and is currently the representative (TD) for Louth in the Irish parliament and used to be the MP for West Belfast in the UK’s parliament (though Sinn Féin have always enacted a policy of not sitting in Westminster).
Sinn Féin were the political wing that grew out of the I.R.A., a terrorist group fighting for Irish independence from Britain, though they strained to distance themselves from any violence (to questionable effect). The I.R.A. fought for the independence of Ireland from the United Kingdom, and as the island was partitioned and only the south gained independence they continued to fight in Northern Ireland during the latter part of the 20th Century. Most of the various factions involved in the conflict decommissioned their arms in the 1990s and entered into a peace process, orchestrated by Adams among others.
What is interesting about Gerry Adams himself is that he was always seen as one of the highest ranking members of Sinn Féin throughout the Troubles, despite maintaining that he was never a member of the I.R.A. despite the obvious close links to the terrorist organisation. A far reaching piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in The New Yorker addressed many of Adam’s shady ties to the Republican armed struggle, and poses tough questions about the role Adam’s himself played. When asked about his role in the armed conflict, he has said, “I’m very, very clear about my denial of I.R.A. membership. But I don’t disassociate myself from the I.R.A.”
Whether this is skillful semantics, true on a technicality, or simply an outright lie remains to be decisively proven and it is unlikely that anything resembling the truth will come out until after his death, if at all. Though his links to this terrorist group are clear when laid out all in one place in an article such as Keefe’s, he emerged as one of the main brokers in the Northern Irish Peace process and one of the strongest advocates for a new peaceful Ireland. Trading on this new image, Adams was able to carve out a respectable political career north of the border and has now broadened his sights to the south, perhaps as far as Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, of Ireland.
Sinn Féin is aiming to be the largest party in Ireland after the next round of elections and have emerged as one of the only voices calling for an end to EU imposed austerity in Ireland, alongside Podemos in Spain, the SNP in Scotland and SYRIZA in Greece. It could be argued that a lot of this success is despite rather than because of Adam’s leadership, and indeed it is the younger members of the party who are making the main inroads in the South. But Adams is still the face of the Sinn Féin and as such he has a responsibility over the image he projects and its links to the wider party.
Adam’s increasingly bizarre Twitter presence has certainly had an impact, with supporters feeling embarrassed by their leader’s eccentricity and opponents unsettled by the man they believe to be responsible for numerous killings during the Troubles seemingly able to brush off such persistent rumours with a few well timed rubber ducks and soft toys. Simon Harris TD posted on Twitter, “It’ll take more than Gerry Adams talking about his favourite teddy bears for people to be conned into forgetting his past.” Others have called his sanity into question. Though as Henry McDonald writes, “the only people losing the plot are those who think that, after four decades holding the centre of power … Adams’ tweets are signals that his grip on reality is somehow slipping.”
There is also a begrudging respect emerging, with some commentators linking Adam’s current tactics to those he employed earlier in his career. He was always a master of judging the current mood and exploiting it, successfully taking Sinn Féin to respectability and moving away from the violent tactics of the I.R.A. at a time when it was politically expedient. The tweets soften his bullish image, one that still has the “whiff of cordite” about him, the material used in the bombs used by the I.R.A.. If he is able to drive conversation away from the violent past and have it focus on this new cuddly image he is cultivating for himself then perhaps he can allow Sinn Féin itself to be seen in a new light by the electorate. Despite this, he often makes allusions to his past, even going so far as to joke about his denial of being a member of the Middle Eastern terrorist group ISIS.
Even the timing of his tweeting can be seen as part of a wider strategy. The particularly bizarre posts usually appear at distracting times, such as the announcement that he trampolines with his dog that went viral. This was timed in such a way that it overshadowed the debate over Sinn Féins involvement in discussions over Westminster imposed welfare cuts in Northern Ireland. “So, when the media should have been posing questions on the dichotomy between Sinn Féin opposing spending cuts in the Republic, while simultaneously, alongside their partners in the DUP, imposing them in Northern Ireland, instead the Press and broadcasters were fixated on one nude man and his dog,” as McDonald explained it.
Adam’s himself has addressed the criticism by saying, “I listen to some of those things that are said about my twittering by journalists who have never talked to me in their lives. It becomes a sinister Sinn Fein plan. It’s just me. If people think it’s stupid, they can.” Perhaps this is the most sensible take on the Adams Twitter phenomenon. It is very plausible that this is just him. There is nothing to suggest that being an accomplished political negotiator, a peace-mongering statesman, or a terrorist leader (or a combination of all three) precludes you from having a wacky sense of humour. Of course the decision to allow these tweets to become public is a strategic decision, but why can’t Gerry Adams like rubber ducks and Republicanism?
In any case, the strategy has worked. As a recent Belfast Telegraph article shows, he is already being described as “the Louth TD known for his whimsical style on Twitter,” which is presumably better than being known for presiding over the ‘disappearances’ that Keefe’s New Yorker piece went into such detail about. It remains to be seen what the ultimate effect Adams’ larking around on Twitter will be, but it has already shown to have driven the conversation surrounding him to such an extent that it is now rare to see him mentioned without reference to his social media presence. This is success enough for such a controversial figure.
