Surgeons do not operate in sewers

The meaning of Eoin Hayes.

Just before Christmas I published a critical essay on Say Nothing, both the book and series, at the Baffler. The below piece was written around then, but I sat on it for a few weeks. It’s a little late to the game now, but I think it still holds some relevance.

Eoin Hayes' story is a strange one. It likely would have got little notice if he hadn't won a seat in the recent Irish General Election; his was probably the most unlikely victory in an election that was mostly a case of as-you-were. Barely a week after taking office he was engulfed in controversy, when the media drew increased attention to his work for military technology company Palantir, perhaps the Silicon Valley corporation most deeply embedded in both the US and Israeli war machines. The issue was sharpened by the fact that Hayes held hundreds of thousands of Euro worth of shares. There was an immediate and enormous outcry, given the centrality of Palestinian solidarity to the current Irish left, and political system generally. People felt betrayed, particularly given the fact that he replaced Sinn Féin TD Chris Andrews who, whatever his other faults, is a steadfast supporter of Palestine.

Hayes' stated position on the ongoing genocide in Gaza is decent, laudable even. The Social Democrats have taken early and strong positions against the Israeli government's actions, and there is little suggestion that Hayes is some sort of closet supporter of the slaughter. Nonetheless, the party moved quickly to suspend Hayes, pending an investigation. Many have called for his outright resignation, though that seems unlikely. Some in the centre and on the right have pushed back against his suspension, arguing that Hayes was hard done by, just someone who had a job at a tech company and happened to make some money from it.

If there is any sympathy to be had for Hayes it lies in the fact that ending up in a morally compromised job is not difficult if one grows up with money and education in Ireland. Ireland is a highly educated, English-speaking country with deep connections to centres of power in the US and UK, and a preponderance for industries with variable morality: financial services, tech, management consultancy, pharmaceuticals. This is not to say that everyone who works for all these industries is a bad person, but merely that it's easier to end up doing something immoral than if you grow up in an economy dependent on, say, the manufacture of pencils. Companies recruit from a young age in elite Irish schools and universities, targeting especially – though not exclusively – STEM students. The pull can feel irresistible.

I know little about Hayes’ life, but it's not hard to imagine how this kind of thing happens. You display a creative mind or early skill in programming, combined with a natural affability and a willingness to get along with a wide range of people. You have no difficulty finding an internship during college, probably even a paid one, with a large well-known tech firm. You are willing to work hard, and impress your bosses, who introduce you to a dizzying rolodex of important people. Tech overlords would have us believe that the industry is hard scientific, data-driven, but in reality it runs almost entirely on confidence, bullshit, and personality, areas in which Irish people excel. On graduation you spend some time in the US – San Francisco, New York or D.C. almost certainly – working for another, lesser known, but well-capitalized firm. After a few years you are offered the real job, the one you’ve been driving towards, the one you will regret. This will be for some really, truly rotten corporation, or perhaps a military directly. Your work will contribute to their mission which, if laid out plainly on paper, would seem almost comically evil. But it will not feel like that while you work there. It’s likely you will be doing something that feels in equal parts anodyne and exciting, working with a team of bright, pleasant young people who are broadly socially liberal and mostly kind, on a personal level. You will be treated well by HR, and compensated beyond what you thought was possible only a few years previously. If you had been given that salary at 18 your eyes would have popped out of your head. Then again, if you had been asked to do it at 18, you might have said no, citing your principles. But slowly, slowly, you were brought into the fold.

Much of the controversy has centred around Palantir founder Peter Thiel. Thiel has spent the last number of years spending large sums of money furthering right-wing libertarian causes. But his personal political contributions pale in comparison to Palantir’s actual day-to-day work. The company is deeply involved in providing data mining and target identification systems for the Israeli military. To speak plainly, this is not merely a case of a company that makes money from economic activity in the occupied territories, or refuses to stop sponsoring, say, the Israeli football team. Palantir makes and sells tools that help the Israeli military decide which Palestinians to kill. It is impossible to imagine a corporation more closely connected to the mass death in Gaza.

Hayes worked for the company for two years, amassing thousands of shares alongside his presumably ample salary. The value of those shares was realised at about €200,000. Hayes also lied about when they were sold, first saying that it was before his entry into politics, before admitting that the sale was only completed in July 2024, almost a year into this wretched “war”. There is no other conclusion to reach than that he has blood on his hands.

- Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers, 1812

Given this career trajectory, it seems a little odd that he ended up a member of the Social Democrats, first elected to the council and then the Dáil. But this is not the first time the party has had candidate issues. Our own recently benighted Fianna Fáil Health Minister Stephen Donnelly was one of the party's founders. Years after its founding the party remains somewhat ideologically incoherent, and dependent on an overwhelmingly middle class support base. Having a middle class party of social democracy is of course better than having a middle class party of reaction; there are a lot of middle class people in Ireland and it would be unambiguously better if they voted for a progressive option. But this class position among their voters is matched by that of its elected officials. Hence why a candidate would have a work history more in line with the party's foes than its supporters.

Class traitors exist. Fidel was a lawyer, Che Guevara a doctor. But it takes a strong personality to swim against the tide that carries you, if you let it, to a life that is comfortable, prosperous, and compromised. We are all morally compromised, to some degree, in our consumption habits, in what we do and what we fail to do. The apparatus of oppression outside our borders that undergirds our lives within them is a stain on our character. But there are levels, and there are limits. The sociologist Clifford Geertz once observed that true cleanliness is impossible, but all the same, surgeons do not operate in sewers. In some ways those most vulnerable to the path that Hayes took are not the truly wealthy. They have the insulation of inherited capital to fall back on; their sordid moral compromises are often several generations back. The strivers are the easiest to get on board, being both convinced of the merits of hard work, and terrified of the possibility of social descent. Above all lingers the figure of the Irish house, that thing unattainable to so many. That thing that could be achieved so easily with a few years work in Dubai or for a merchant of death and immiseration.

This is a stunningly bleak moment, socially and politically. We live in a time of reaction, of backlash to the small amounts of power that the previously powerless have been able to accumulate. There is much glee on the right and centre over the fact that so many liberatory projects of the last few years - BLM, MeToo, Bernie, Corbyn, etc. - have been soundly defeated. The powerful have been shown to be virtually above consequences, be they legal, political or otherwise. The controversy over Hayes was, in a sense, almost heartening. A critical mass of people understood that while he had committed no crime in a legal sense, what he had profited from was deeply morally troubling; a sin, if it doesn’t sound too Catholic. Hayes is likely amiable enough, and he may even be possessed of real convictions and a determination to make the world a better place. But like everyone else, he has moral weight. As a citizen of the global north he chose to participate in a machine that destroys lives in order to make his own substantially more comfortable. That must have consequences.