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LAST UPDATE | 9 Feb 2023
AS NIGHT FOLLOWS day, racist violence follows anti-refugee protests. Across Europe, the rise of far-right ideas has seen an increase in attacks on migrants and people of colour. This pattern is being repeated here in a horrifyingly short space of time.
It’s just over two months since the first protests at East Wall. Since Christmas, there has been a wave of protests, including outside centres for asylum seekers and constituency offices of opposition TDs. The threat of violence has been present at many. One protest last Wednesday in Finglas saw a masked man speak from the microphone and declare, “there is no point standing here outside of the garda station, you have to go to where these c***s are staying and burn them out of it”.
Already, we have seen a proliferation of videos depicting violence against migrants and people of colour. On Saturday 28 January, a shelter where homeless migrant men were with living was set upon by people with dogs, sticks and a baseball bat at Ashtown. On Monday 30 January, a building in Sherrard Street was set alight, seemingly because it was wrongly suspected of being planned for use by asylum seekers. On Wednesday 1 February, footage emerged of someone attempting to drive over a pedestrian after asking them “are you an immigrant?” On Thursday 2 February, a group of international students were racially abused and physically attacked at the Broadstone – DIT Luas stop.
If there is no determined resistance to stop them, this will get worse. The consequences are as predictable as they are tragic. Presumably, most people attending the anti-refugee protests would not support violent attacks against refugees. However, there is a minority who are feeling more and more emboldened to unleash their racism into verbal and physical assaults.
Dare to mention the far-right’s involvement on social media, and you will be inundated with outrage from people claiming you are calling them far-right. Of course, most people who oppose refugees are not far-right. Most people who attend the protests are not even far-right but are driven to take part out of rage and despair at the government’s failure to take any real action to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis or to properly resource our health service.
But you’d have to have your head in the sand not to notice that Ireland’s emerging far-right is playing a crucial role here.
The first announcement of a majority of these protests comes from far-right Telegram pages. Instantaneously, identical ‘Tallaght/Mullingar/Drimnagh etc. says No’ graphics appear. This is a far cry from the organic grassroots saying no campaigns against the water charges. So many people have positive memories of those campaigns, of a time when working-class communities came together to fight the system and won. What is happening now is the opposite – people are being pitted against each other so that the real culprits for the crises in housing and health get off the hook.
Self-declared ‘citizen journalists’ like Derek Blighe and Philip Dwyer are often first on the scene of these protests to film them, feeding participants far-right talking points and taking the microphone to speak. Dwyer is a dog-kicking ex-member of the National Party who was expelled after making a grotesque propaganda video at Ashling Murphy’s grave. Their messages are amplified by TheLiberal.ie clickbait site run by Leo Sherlock.
The National Party has been another consistent participant in these protests. If you’re in any doubt about their ideology, it recently quoted Hitler at length on Telegram. Its leader Justin Barrett came to prominence as a leader of the extremist anti-choice Youth Defence, and regularly spoke at international far-right rallies. He wrote a book which calls for an authoritarian form of government with the return of Catholic church domination.
Another party participating in these protests is the Irish Freedom Party. Malachy Steenson, one of the leaders of the protests in East Wall, spoke at their recent conference. Their leader, Herman Kelly is a former press officer for Nigel Farage. He has promoted the far-right “great replacement theory” including claiming during an interview that “the first thing they want to do is kill Irish kids and [they] want to replace them with every nationality who wants to come into our country”.
These connections to the British far-right aren’t unusual. Indeed for people who like to portray themselves as patriots and wrap themselves in the tricolour, their links to British fascism and loyalism are remarkable.
The latest development has seen people engage with, and take guidance from, the leader of the British neo-Nazi group, ‘Patriotic Alternative’, Mark Collett. A former chairman of young BNP, Collett has previously stated his heroes are UDA and LVF leaders, Johnny Adair and Billy Wright.
What is the far-right’s agenda? It is not about housing people or stopping violence against women – issues that they cynically try to abuse to turn people against migrants.
If they were actually concerned about these issues, they would have been active in the very many protests and movements about housing and gender-based violence over the last years – they have been at none. In fact, they oppose a rent freeze and are even against inserting the right to housing into the constitution, because they consider it an infringement of the right of landlords to do what they want with their ‘private property’.
Instead, it is about building a far-right organisation in Ireland from those who attend the protests, winning them to their broader world-view of fighting for the creation of a dictatorial theocratic state where rights for women, LGBTQ+ people, migrants and workers are eradicated. An important next step for them will be next year’s local elections where they will aim to make a breakthrough. In the last week, Ireland First has applied to register as a political party.
The reaction of the government and establishment parties follows the depressingly predictable pattern seen elsewhere in Europe. Instead of boldly challenging the disinformation being spread, they accept the far-right’s framing and pander to it. Thus, the government has doubled down on its discrimination against asylum seekers from anywhere other than Ukraine. It has decided that single men should be simply thrown onto the street with a €20 Dunnes voucher. Its response to protests has been to say they will speed up deportations of asylum seekers.
The consequence of all of this is to simply legitimise the arguments of the far-right and shift the political terrain further to the right.
Even before the emergence of the anti-refugee protests, government politicians were only too happy for something other than their slavish adherence to the free market to be blamed for the ongoing housing crisis. Darragh O’Brien, the Minister responsible for providing housing, suggested “economic migrants” were putting a strain on homeless services.
Successive governments have created the underlying conditions of crises in our communities that have bred the alienation which the far-right is preying upon.
As long as people are blaming asylum seekers for the housing crisis which existed long before the war in Ukraine, they will not be blaming the government. As long as they think the problem is that the state is caring for migrants, they will not be looking at the cosy connections between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the big corporate landlords and private developers. The establishment parties are responsible for the conditions that have enabled the rise of the far-right. They will not be a part of stopping it.
If the government will not stop the far-right, who will?
Ordinary people.
The vast majority are appalled by violence against refugees and horrified by shouts of “get them out” at the temporary homes of traumatised people fleeing war and persecution. For now, those people are mostly passive. They are stunned by what appears to be the sudden emergence of far-right and racist language and mobilisations.
But there is excellent work going on. ‘For all’ groups have sprung up right across the country. These groups are providing meaningful help to asylum seekers who need it and working to integrate them into our communities. They are also having the ‘hard conversations’ – with friends, neighbours and workmates who have genuine questions and fears. All of this is essential.
It needs to be matched with mobilisation. We need to bring out all of those people and the community groups, football clubs, and trade unions that they are a part of. We need to contest control of the streets which the far-right is seeking to achieve.
Monday saw an impressive solidarity protest of 500 called by Le Chéile and United Against Racism. But that is just the start. A broad coalition of trade unionists, progressive parties, anti-racist organisations, cost of living activists and many others is coming together to demand an Ireland For All. We will be marching from Parnell Square at 1.30pm on Saturday 18 February.
We need thousands to be there to give a visible expression of the solidarity and welcome that most people feel. If we succeed, it will give confidence to anti-racists across the country to make the arguments that can win people away from the influence of racist ideas.
This will not be a mobilisation in support of government policy – but against it. Against the neglect of our communities. Against the failure of the government to bring the vacant homes into use. Against the annual crises in our health services which result from under-investment and promotion of private healthcare.
But it will also be a mobilisation against the attempt to scapegoat refugees for these crises. If we accept the lie that they are responsible for our crises, we undermine the fight against those who actually are.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Paul Murphy is a People Before Profit TD for Dublin South West, a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise Trade and Employment, and the party’s spokesperson on Workers’ Rights.
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Hardly a paragraph devoted to how to constructively allay peoples fears of their schools , hospitals , GP surgeries being overwhelmed by the influx of refugees that the country cannot sustain . Not a mention of the thousands of Irish homeless cast adrift for years . Just an op ed piece bashing half a dozen or so individuals and publications . Paul has a solution on how to combat the far right but not a clue on how to resolve the underlying issues . Clueless
@Matt Black: instead of doing exactly what you criticize paul for why don’t you come out with some constructive criticism.kettle black and all that
@Larry Roe: Si lly comment , I’m not paid almost 100,000 a year by the tax payer to try and do that , he is however . He will also likely avoid the horror shows that are our emergency departments , courtesy of his government sponsored private health care . Paid for by the tax paying public . Is it too much to ask him to try and be constructive in the job he was elected to do ?
@Matt Black: Well said
@Matt Black: Who gives a fu€k what Paul earns ? That has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I don’t understand why people are bitter about what other people get paid! Crazy mindset.
@David cotter: The go to answer from people who cannot actually debate any of the issues lol , Don’t trip over those clown shoes lad
@Matt Black: He did say we need to go to the source of the problem, our government. They’ve known about the housing problems for years but do nothing about it, same with health care, homelessness, mental health and everything else. Migrants aren’t to blame for the gov not doing their jobs
@WiseUp: He’s trying to deflect cause he has no answers.
@Larry Roe: he’s not the journalist is he Larry?
@Matt Black: Our services, which have been in crisis for decades certainly are being overwhelmed with the new influx. Surely we should be attacking the government and not the unfortunate refugees? Telling people to stay where they are and be murdered and raped surely isn’t the solution either.
@Benny McHale: but where will they go and where are the services. Look at limerick, for example. 26 kids cannot find a Secondary school place. The hospitals there are at breaking point and no houses. We are a very welcoming country.
@Matt Black: Your fears are unfounded.
@Benny McHale: Is that likely to happen in France or the UK where more are transiting from? Or Georgia and Albania where a huge amount of them originate from which aren’t dangerous countries? Maybe let everyone who arrives stay from now on and see how the country fairs out. We can get Roderic to announce it to the world like he did with his previous announcement about giving applicants their own door accommodation. That turned out very well.
@Matt Black: At least try and make your argument without lies and total misinformation ! Our services are certainly under pressure but not from refugees!!! In truth if it were not for foreign nationals our health service, hospitality and other industries would collapse. And as for our housing crisis. Nothing to do with refugees, more to do with how this place has and is being governed. And who is going to build these houses. We haven’t enough workers here to do it!!!!!
And BTW, I wouldn’t have much time for Mr. Murphy or his politics!! It seems like the noisy extremes of politics in Ireland are living in the same cloud cuckoo land of complete and utter delusion!!!! The sad thing, like Trump and Putin…. Some people actually believe everything they say!!!!!
@Matt Black: ‘GP surgeries overwhelmed by influx of refugees’. 2% of the population are being described as an overwhelming influx???
@Benny McHale: Nail, head, hammer.
Most People at protests are ordinary people expressing dissatisfaction with government immigration policies, they are not “racists” or “far right” activists.
At the last Sunday Independent survey, only 30% said “Ireland has not taken too many refugees”
Protesting against the protestors would just create unnecessary division, deflecting the real issue.
@John Ivory: another poster with no profile….
@Jim Buckley Barrett: sorry I had to create a Facebook to put comments on the Journal but I don’t use Facebook
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Deal with what the man said rather then look for a silly reason to dismiss it.
Nobody gives a toss who you or anyone else is on this forum.
It ain’t the UN.
@John Ivory: No they’re not. The people at these protests are the usual follow-alls that gave out about the Covid restrictions and the vaccine when Waters and O’Doherty told them to. I’ve seen them myself on both occasions, same faces, different placards, draped in (our) Tricolours thinking that they’re patriots. These protesters are anything but ordinary people, if they were Americans they’d be carrying guns and chanting MAGA. They definitely don’t represent us.
@John Ivory: you shouldn’t have to apologise for that, loads of people have their reasons for not putting up their real profiles, sure I’m a prime example, if he wants to put up his real profile than so be it. Indeed, without the constraints of a “real” profile some people give more honest opinions than they would’ve otherwise. We’re not all bots.
@Aileen Lawlor: I think you missed the point Aileen…..
@John Ivory: nah…
@Aileen Lawlor: Thanks for your concern, Aileen. Ireland is a small country. We don’t all live inside the M50. It’s towns and cities are small places. Unfortunately, the numpties that I’m talking about can’t be missed as they strut through town wrapped in the Tricolour, protesting against whatever is in vogue, calling the rest of us names.
@John Ivory: They’re people dissatisfied with the current state of housing and rental prices but unfortunately fall into the trap of punching down to the desperation of refugees rather than looking at the more obvious issue of 150,000+ vacant properties.
@John Ivory: The minute you march alongside a goon spouting racism or waving a triumphant tri-colour in service to “we say no to migrants in our areas” then I’m sorry, but you’ve joined their ranks. There is no other way of looking at it, no matter how much you maintain that you’re ‘merely concerned about GPs and houses.’ The amount of people who have become ‘accidentally racist’ is worrying. The far-right wolf whistles worked a charm it seems.
@SPQH: Agreed, but a majority of the fake profiles are there so that a nasty minority of poorly informed, righteous, bigoted and hateful people can pour invective and vitriol on the vulnerable in society without having to suffer the revulsion of the vast majority.
Still think this ‘far-right’ threat is greatly over-egged. Definitely needs to be watched but it’s still relatively minor. People just want a fair, stricter and proportional immigration system.
Nothing to do with racism it’s to do with 12000 irish people that should be helped first this government don’t care about there own people
@Gavin Delves: Our gov doesn’t care about migrants either otherwise they wouldn’t be moving kids who’ve settled in school to other sides of the country.
@Gavin Delves: The reality is our government doesn’t care about anyone other than the lobbyists and business partners who fund them, it’s nothing to do with nationality. They believe influence in the traditional media and the publics reluctance to change will give them enough support to survive another election or two.
Nobody will be helped until the Irish public are willing to help themselves comes election time.
We take 77,000 Ukrainian migrants
Northern Ireland with a population of 2 million have taken 1000 Ukrainian migrants..
Politicians wonder why people are angry..
You need only to look at the volume and tone of the comments here to be aware of how organised this right wing campaign is.
Right wing, poorly informed people have brought havoc to the UK by slavishly following the likes of Farage. Have no doubt we are headed there too if we cannot stop this.
@Pat Duggan: A recent poll said we’ll over half of people think we’ve took in too many refugees/asylum seekers. I don’t think over half of us have suddenly become far right, considering at the last election, right wing parties probably got 1% or 2% of first preference votes of even that. The lack of discussion on the immigration issue by politicians will push more over to right wing though as they feel their worries aren’t being acknowledged. Leo Varadkar actually said yesterday that he doesn’t want immigration to become a political issue, when has it never not been? We need to have grown up discussions about these things and not throw around words like far right and racism to close down the discussions.
@DK: There is more layers in that survey, for example do people think we have taken in too many because there isn’t sufficient accommodation? That’s a big difference from those that say that Ireland is being taken over and other racist tropes – many of them were saying the same thing when the eastern European countries flocked to our shores in the the early 00′s… and the peoples from Poland, Estonia, Latvia etc have done nothing but enrich our country – and made it better..same with many of the immigrants from African countries.
Our population has never recovered since the famine, we have plenty of room – the issue for me is not the immigrants its the failure of successive government policies on immigration. This includes effective town planning, housing strategy and having a plan. What the IMF forced on this country with austerity, destroying our ability to build, was an economic crime (if such thing exists)
That said, the war in Ukraine is an emergency and deserves an emergency response – and while that is going on Government will probably have to look at economic migrants coming from non-eu states and prioritise Ukraine.
@DK: Extremist parties can go stratospheric given the right (ha ha) circumstances. In Germany – the Nazi party went from 2.5% in 1928 to 35% in 1932.
The reasons were the Depression on the one hand and the inability of bunch of Left-wing parties to do anything effective on the other hand,
@DK: Agree. As a population we are sick and tired, in my view, of having to face the same problems of homelessness and decaying social institutions. All this is due to the austerity imposed since the financial crash 15 years ago. Now’s the time for us to weed out the time-wasters in the HSE, fund and staff schools properly, and for the councils to be in charge of building social housing. The government is elected to do this but doesn’t. So we get houses built with trashy materials that cost both the government and the owners billions to remediate.
This is what is empowering the pieces of human waste matter who burn down places that just ‘might’ be used to house asylum seekers, and assemble outside houses of private citizens to terrorise them into compliance with their vile rhetoric of exclusion.
Thuggish protests and intimidation stirred up by political opportunists is only ok for the causes Paul Murphy supports, then. I seem to recall national surveys that (excluding don’t knows) showed a majority in favour of water charges (even after months of protests and anti charges campaigning there were still significantly more pros than antis). But this single issue campaign kick started the political careers of Murphy and co. I am sure the far right were taking notes. The political establishment has a record of caving in to those who shout loudest, so be very worried for refugees.
@Joan Murray: Spot on. The water campaign was the most stupid thing ever seen in populist politics. Charge for the water silly and collect the rubbish on central taxation. Instead we have the “cant pay, wont pay” gang dumping their rubbish all over the place.
@Nicholas Grubb: Should also have mentioned that we now have Irish Water, way behind the curve, relying on central government funding, instead of having a proper income stream. The results of this are actually far more damaging to our environment, than the unsightly litter dumping as per my comment above. Plus of course the unfairness that 25% of us are paying for our own supplies in any case.
@Nicholas Grubb: I still say that if any of us had wanted to buy shares in IW, it should have been a voluntary act, not a mandatory tax.
The anti-everything brigade provide fertile ground for racism. It’s a small enough step from locking women in a car and roaring at them through a megaphone to roaring at people in a refugee centre.
You should acknowledge that you are part of the problem.
@John Mulligan: Wonder why you failed to mention the people who were charged in connection with the protest involving Burton were found not guilty. Of course this would not suit your agenda. People have a right to protest…It was ordinary people who took to the streets that stopped the Government from interducing water charges and eventually the privatisation of water.
Many normally left wing voters are being attracted to the rightwing – this will benefit the “middle ground” established parties.
Very clever.
@paul kelly: Bizarre.
@paul kelly: Haven’t saw any polls that mention that.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: He may be right though. Could suck up a significant chunk of SF’s support
@Marcus Suridius: Read Fionnan Sheahans article:
“Sinn Féin is suffering in the polls, so credit to Mary Lou McDonald for her party’s solid support of migrants”
Again Paul Murphy is addressing situation of the people who he now perhaps sees as a threat to his seat? labels/ smearing them we are all to look out for the far right man BUT no mention of border controls which is at the heart of this controversy he is still just doubling down.How is it that he hasn’t once mentioned the busloads of JUST Men that we have ALL seen arriving into centres around the country without documents?just like the MSM they haven’t mentioned it once. A standing TD he hasn’t made any impact ..postergate recently was a flop & now his other focus seems 2 be down a rabbit hole of far right agendas.. let’s just keep focus as 2what people want addressed & while we wud all like 2 help the world it’s not feasibly possible we need to look after our CITIZENS 1ST then help others
Nutjobs the whole lot of them, they have a checklist of things they believe it, its like nutjob Bingo and Trump is the enabler. 1. Anti-vax, 2. believe in new world order/lizard people 3. hide behind a flag and think its called patriotism 3. attack the vulnerable 4. have wet dreams about ‘strong’ leaders. The same people have existed in every generation – they get sidelined eventually – and people get embarrassed by their association with them… but unfortunately it usually happens after a seismic event or tragedy.
Once upon a time they thought that they (the single white men children who had phallic envy and mother issues) were the only ones who held this view until they found their other sad mates on Facebook. It is quite depressing, i too believed that we as a nation for the main part were too self effacing to be susceptible to the far-right – that Farage, Trump et al were viewed as clowns – not so it seems.
@Suckma Liathroidi: That’s a very easy thing to paint the majortiy of us who can see that the country simply cannot handle the influx of people we are dealing with at the moment as you describe. The reality is that the people you describe make up a tiny minority of people in this country. The majority of us though, as shown in polls and comments and likes on the journal have genuine concerns but are no where near conspiracy theorists or far right. This kind of head in the sand outlook is achieving the exact opposite of the centrist parties wish and will unfortunately push people towards more hardline parties in future.
It’s concerning the divisions it’s creating in society. The far right types are always there, but they are a minority, however the longer this goes on the more of an opportunity the main parties are gifting them, the govt it’s even acting like it cares, it has long been just dismissing them. We don’t live in a utopia they need to rise to the challenge, or whoever gets in next time around does as I think the current crowd have already lost it.
Amazed to see paul coming out with anything constructive, he must not be feeling well
The dregs of their country, probably criminals, stealing our jobs, not to be trusted, a drain on our resources, a danger to our women and children…
This was how Irish immigrants were described and condemned in the past, so you would think we wouldn’t treat others the same way..
@David Van-Standen: go get a job and maybe even an education ?
@Bala mc blaha: Perhaps you should have read my entire comment in full to see both the context and the historical accuracy, before responding to it.
Are there not questions over the veracity of the IT report on the camp attack?
A donkey bray’s and he is entitled to, Murphy is hard going and it is a blessing to have an Off Button, DELETE, DELETE, DELETE.
Is it not just simply a result of fear and hate? Linking it to ideology gives it too much credit.
Xenophobia runs deep in the Irish psyche.
What I fear is we’ll be left living in fear locked down in our Houses at night while all these new arrivals cause havoc on the streets of our Cities and Town. And we don’t have the resources in the Gardai to control it. An example very close to this was I stayed in Naples about 20 years ago. An City with an absolute gargantuan Influx of illegal African Immigration. We were warned not to go out of the hotel once dark due to rape, robberies and general upease. Scared the living daylights out of me. And the Italian police force are armed. In my view this is where we’re heading. It’s upsetting that it’s come to this and the Ireland I used to know is dead and buried.
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