Riots in Dublin after 3 children stabbed
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jmdrake
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Holy $#@!...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/spor...=The UFC star, in a,in a disused office block.
Conor McGregor: How MMA star became a figurehead for the far-right in Ireland
By Caolán Magee, for CNN
10 minute read
Published 5:29 AM EDT, Tue March 12, 2024
CNN
—
“Ireland, we are at war,” UFC star Conor McGregor declared to his millions of social media followers on November 22, 2023.
It’s not clear precisely what McGregor was referring to, but this post, was viewed more than 19 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was later followed by a series of tweets about immigration which were then circulated amongst Telegram channels, seen by CNN to have links to the far-right.
As far back as 2022, McGregor had expressed his support for people protesting against immigration.
The day after McGregor’s war tweet, a stabbing outside a school in central Dublin left three children and an adult injured. Hours later, rioters with links to the far-right descended on the city.
While local media later reported the alleged attacker was a naturalized Irish citizen who came to Ireland from Algeria in 2003, misinformation alleging the assailant was a foreign national had quickly spread online.
Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that researches online hate and disinformation, told CNN that the far-right has grown in Ireland because of social media platforms such as X and Telegram which are commonly used by extremists.
“The far-right are promoting McGregor as the voice of the people, taking advantage of his platforms to boost their ideology,” O’Connor told CNN, adding that he believes McGregor’s “tweets in the lead up to the riot were a call to action against illegal immigration.”
The Telegram channels that had circulated McGregor’s declaration of war the night before the stabbing claimed asylum seekers posed an innate, existential threat to Ireland’s citizens.
According to the Irish government, around 500 rioters spilled into the streets of Dublin and the rampage quickly turned violent. Police cars, buses and trams were set on fire. Rioters threw fireworks, flares and bottles injuring police officers, while shops were looted causing “tens of millions” of euros in damage.
One protester could be seen on video holding a sign reading “Irish Lives Matter,” while others were heard chanting anti-immigrant slogans, as “get them out” reverberated around the nation’s capital in a night of violence.
Flames rise from a car and a bus, set alight at the junction of Bachelors Walk and the O'Connell Bridge, in Dublin on November 23, 2023, as people took to the streets in protest following the stabbings earlier in the day.
Flames rise from a car and a bus, set alight at the junction of Bachelors Walk and the O'Connell Bridge, in Dublin on November 23, 2023, as people took to the streets in protest following the stabbings earlier in the day. Petery Murphy/AFP/Getty Images
Paul Murphy, a TD – a member of the Irish parliament – from the People Before Profit party, who has had members of the far-right protest outside his home in Dublin for his outspoken support of refugees, told CNN that “in terms of active members of the far-right, there’s between 200 to 300 between all far-right organizations: national, freedom party, Ireland first – form a multitude of micro far-right parties.”
Despite Ireland’s two far-right parties, the Irish National Party and the Irish Freedom Party, respectively received around 0.2% and 0.3% of the vote in the 2020 general election, Murphy said the far-right are a small but growing minority.
This comes after the Garda – as Ireland’s police are known – told CNN there were 231 anti-immigration related public gatherings in 2023.
After the riot on November 23, 2023, police commissioner Drew Harris said, “What is clear is that people have been radicalized through social media,” before describing rioters as “a complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology.”
As riots raged in Dublin, McGregor, posted on X, “You reap what you sow.”
Local media reported this triggered a police investigation into the UFC star and others for allegedly “inciting hatred online.” The Garda told CNN that they would not comment on McGregor’s case.
McGregor also took to social media to suggest that he might run for [Irish] President. The seriousness of his online claim remains unclear, though in a subsequent post McGregor positioned himself as providing “fresh skin in the game.”
“These parties govern themselves vs govern the people … I listen. I support. I adapt. I have no affiliation/bias/favoritism toward any party. They would genuinely be held to account regarding the current sway of public feeling … It would not be me in power as President, people of Ireland. It would be me and you,” said McGregor.
McGregor did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, following the Dublin riot the 35-year-old told the Guardian in a statement that, “We Irish are known for our beautiful hearts, and we have a proud history of not accepting racism.”
Conor McGregor of Ireland walks in the octagon before his lightweight bought against Dustin Poirier during UFC 264 at T-Mobile Arena on July 10, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Conor McGregor of Ireland walks in the octagon before his lightweight bought against Dustin Poirier during UFC 264 at T-Mobile Arena on July 10, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Stacy Revere/Getty Images
‘The Notorious Conor McGregor’
The rise of McGregor is one of the most famous rags-to-riches stories in sports.
A working-class boy from Dublin, McGregor was driven by a desire to become world champion in a sport relatively unknown in Ireland.
As he started winning fights, the MMA octagon became McGregor’s colosseum. He entertained spectators with his precise boxing style and his quick wit charmed an ever-growing fan base.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - MARCH 03: Conor McGregor looks on during the filming of The Ultimate Fighter at UFC APEX on March 03, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
Related article
US Anti-Doping Agency and UFC set to end partnership after Conor McGregor dispute
“The Notorious” Conor McGregor brand was born and, before long, he was the first person in history to hold two UFC belts simultaneously, rising to become the world’s highest paid sport star in 2021, according to Forbes.
Yet McGregor was dogged by accusations of sexual assault, which he has denied, while a string of defeats to Khabib Nurmagomedov, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Dustin Poirier left the fighter with one title victory in the last eight years.
With his fighting career in flux, McGregor has turned his attention to sparring with people on social media, which has touched a nerve in Ireland’s political establishment.
Political analysts and far-right experts have told CNN that McGregor’s unique brand of Irish patriotism that won him supporters as a fighter has mutated into a strand of “far-right” Irish nationalism.
“Far-right figures who do promote ethnonationalism – of Ireland for the Irish – celebrate when McGregor is becoming more aligned with their brand of nationalism,” O’Connor said.
McGregor has become “a vocal anti-immigration influencer and is using his enormous reach and influence to encourage hostility and suspicion of migrants and asylum seekers,” he added.
McGregor has been accused by some Irish politicians of fanning the flames of discontent online, voicing his anger at Ireland’s immigration policy and asking questions that strike at the core of Irish consciousness: does Ireland, a country with its long history of emigration, remain a country that welcomes people seeking refuge?
“I think these tweets are incredibly irresponsible for someone who has ten million followers on Twitter alone to be whipping up this level of poison and hate,” Labour Justice spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin told RTÉ News last year. McGregor has said he’s being made a “scapegoat.”
The former UFC champion appears to have picked his corner, in the fight for Ireland’s soul, but whether he is willingly or unwillingly platforming “far-right” views remains unclear.
“When he first came to prominence in 2012, he got attention by acting like a clown – and people received him well,” Ewan MacKenna, who authored the book “Chaos is a Friend of Mine: The Life and Crimes of Conor McGregor,” told CNN.
“He will become whatever the crowd wants him to be and he molds himself into whatever brings him the most attention, and with politics, it would be similar.”
McGregor has previously claimed he regularly deletes his posts on X for “personal” reasons but has also said: “My statements, widely publicised, stand.”
By Caolán Magee, for CNN
10 minute read
Published 5:29 AM EDT, Tue March 12, 2024
CNN
—
“Ireland, we are at war,” UFC star Conor McGregor declared to his millions of social media followers on November 22, 2023.
It’s not clear precisely what McGregor was referring to, but this post, was viewed more than 19 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was later followed by a series of tweets about immigration which were then circulated amongst Telegram channels, seen by CNN to have links to the far-right.
As far back as 2022, McGregor had expressed his support for people protesting against immigration.
The day after McGregor’s war tweet, a stabbing outside a school in central Dublin left three children and an adult injured. Hours later, rioters with links to the far-right descended on the city.
While local media later reported the alleged attacker was a naturalized Irish citizen who came to Ireland from Algeria in 2003, misinformation alleging the assailant was a foreign national had quickly spread online.
Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that researches online hate and disinformation, told CNN that the far-right has grown in Ireland because of social media platforms such as X and Telegram which are commonly used by extremists.
“The far-right are promoting McGregor as the voice of the people, taking advantage of his platforms to boost their ideology,” O’Connor told CNN, adding that he believes McGregor’s “tweets in the lead up to the riot were a call to action against illegal immigration.”
The Telegram channels that had circulated McGregor’s declaration of war the night before the stabbing claimed asylum seekers posed an innate, existential threat to Ireland’s citizens.
According to the Irish government, around 500 rioters spilled into the streets of Dublin and the rampage quickly turned violent. Police cars, buses and trams were set on fire. Rioters threw fireworks, flares and bottles injuring police officers, while shops were looted causing “tens of millions” of euros in damage.
One protester could be seen on video holding a sign reading “Irish Lives Matter,” while others were heard chanting anti-immigrant slogans, as “get them out” reverberated around the nation’s capital in a night of violence.
Flames rise from a car and a bus, set alight at the junction of Bachelors Walk and the O'Connell Bridge, in Dublin on November 23, 2023, as people took to the streets in protest following the stabbings earlier in the day.
Flames rise from a car and a bus, set alight at the junction of Bachelors Walk and the O'Connell Bridge, in Dublin on November 23, 2023, as people took to the streets in protest following the stabbings earlier in the day. Petery Murphy/AFP/Getty Images
Paul Murphy, a TD – a member of the Irish parliament – from the People Before Profit party, who has had members of the far-right protest outside his home in Dublin for his outspoken support of refugees, told CNN that “in terms of active members of the far-right, there’s between 200 to 300 between all far-right organizations: national, freedom party, Ireland first – form a multitude of micro far-right parties.”
Despite Ireland’s two far-right parties, the Irish National Party and the Irish Freedom Party, respectively received around 0.2% and 0.3% of the vote in the 2020 general election, Murphy said the far-right are a small but growing minority.
This comes after the Garda – as Ireland’s police are known – told CNN there were 231 anti-immigration related public gatherings in 2023.
After the riot on November 23, 2023, police commissioner Drew Harris said, “What is clear is that people have been radicalized through social media,” before describing rioters as “a complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology.”
As riots raged in Dublin, McGregor, posted on X, “You reap what you sow.”
Local media reported this triggered a police investigation into the UFC star and others for allegedly “inciting hatred online.” The Garda told CNN that they would not comment on McGregor’s case.
McGregor also took to social media to suggest that he might run for [Irish] President. The seriousness of his online claim remains unclear, though in a subsequent post McGregor positioned himself as providing “fresh skin in the game.”
“These parties govern themselves vs govern the people … I listen. I support. I adapt. I have no affiliation/bias/favoritism toward any party. They would genuinely be held to account regarding the current sway of public feeling … It would not be me in power as President, people of Ireland. It would be me and you,” said McGregor.
McGregor did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, following the Dublin riot the 35-year-old told the Guardian in a statement that, “We Irish are known for our beautiful hearts, and we have a proud history of not accepting racism.”
Conor McGregor of Ireland walks in the octagon before his lightweight bought against Dustin Poirier during UFC 264 at T-Mobile Arena on July 10, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Conor McGregor of Ireland walks in the octagon before his lightweight bought against Dustin Poirier during UFC 264 at T-Mobile Arena on July 10, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Stacy Revere/Getty Images
‘The Notorious Conor McGregor’
The rise of McGregor is one of the most famous rags-to-riches stories in sports.
A working-class boy from Dublin, McGregor was driven by a desire to become world champion in a sport relatively unknown in Ireland.
As he started winning fights, the MMA octagon became McGregor’s colosseum. He entertained spectators with his precise boxing style and his quick wit charmed an ever-growing fan base.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - MARCH 03: Conor McGregor looks on during the filming of The Ultimate Fighter at UFC APEX on March 03, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
Related article
US Anti-Doping Agency and UFC set to end partnership after Conor McGregor dispute
“The Notorious” Conor McGregor brand was born and, before long, he was the first person in history to hold two UFC belts simultaneously, rising to become the world’s highest paid sport star in 2021, according to Forbes.
Yet McGregor was dogged by accusations of sexual assault, which he has denied, while a string of defeats to Khabib Nurmagomedov, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Dustin Poirier left the fighter with one title victory in the last eight years.
With his fighting career in flux, McGregor has turned his attention to sparring with people on social media, which has touched a nerve in Ireland’s political establishment.
Political analysts and far-right experts have told CNN that McGregor’s unique brand of Irish patriotism that won him supporters as a fighter has mutated into a strand of “far-right” Irish nationalism.
“Far-right figures who do promote ethnonationalism – of Ireland for the Irish – celebrate when McGregor is becoming more aligned with their brand of nationalism,” O’Connor said.
McGregor has become “a vocal anti-immigration influencer and is using his enormous reach and influence to encourage hostility and suspicion of migrants and asylum seekers,” he added.
McGregor has been accused by some Irish politicians of fanning the flames of discontent online, voicing his anger at Ireland’s immigration policy and asking questions that strike at the core of Irish consciousness: does Ireland, a country with its long history of emigration, remain a country that welcomes people seeking refuge?
“I think these tweets are incredibly irresponsible for someone who has ten million followers on Twitter alone to be whipping up this level of poison and hate,” Labour Justice spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin told RTÉ News last year. McGregor has said he’s being made a “scapegoat.”
The former UFC champion appears to have picked his corner, in the fight for Ireland’s soul, but whether he is willingly or unwillingly platforming “far-right” views remains unclear.
“When he first came to prominence in 2012, he got attention by acting like a clown – and people received him well,” Ewan MacKenna, who authored the book “Chaos is a Friend of Mine: The Life and Crimes of Conor McGregor,” told CNN.
“He will become whatever the crowd wants him to be and he molds himself into whatever brings him the most attention, and with politics, it would be similar.”
McGregor has previously claimed he regularly deletes his posts on X for “personal” reasons but has also said: “My statements, widely publicised, stand.”
jmdrake
Member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2007
- Messages
- 51,897
What is apparently behind Ireland's migrant crisis.
https://www.politico.eu/article/bri...-ireland-dublin-aghast-migration-rwanda-plan/
https://www.politico.eu/article/bri...-ireland-dublin-aghast-migration-rwanda-plan/
Britain offloads its refugee crisis to Ireland. Dublin is aghast.
To Irish eyes, post-Brexit Britain’s toughening message to asylum seekers looks like “To Rwanda — or to Ireland.”
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IRELAND-BRITAIN-FRANCE-EU-POLITICS-MIGRANTS
Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented surge in migration from Britain. | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
May 3, 2024 4:00 am CET
By Shawn Pogatchnik
DUBLIN – As Britain ramps up efforts to deter asylum seekers, one politically explosive repercussion is that across the Irish Sea, parts of Dublin are being turned into foul-smelling refugee camps.
It’s a problem linked to Brexit, and it’s likely to worsen as potentially tens of thousands flee the U.K.’s increasingly tough asylum policies by re-entering the EU through its open Irish back door.
Since immigration first became a feature of Irish life amid the Celtic Tiger boom three decades ago, asylum seekers have typically arrived only after spending months or even years attempting to settle in neighboring Britain. For those fleeing war, famine or poverty, the main air links and trafficking routes have always made it easier to reach Britain than Ireland.
Now, with the U.K.’s tough new immigration laws having finally cleared Parliament and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising to start deporting asylum seekers within weeks, Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented surge in migration from Britain.
As asylum seekers flee the Sunak government’s threat to ship them to the East African nation of Rwanda, with limited rights to appeal, many are leaving Britain and entering the Republic of Ireland by crossing the checks-free border with its U.K. neighbor, Northern Ireland.
Spend time chatting with any of the hundreds of single men arriving weekly to Ireland’s International Protection Office and you’ll learn — from Arabs, Africans, Afghans and Indians who sometimes speak with unmistakable touches of regional English accents — that they see Ireland as their last-chance saloon to stay in Europe, now that Britain has withdrawn the welcome mat.
“I don’t want to go back to Nigeria, and I don’t want to go to Rwanda either,” said Christian, a 25-year-old Nigerian who has spent the past five years living in Liverpool and Manchester in the north of England after overstaying a student visa. He worked his way through the full gamut of the British asylum and appeals process and is now looking for an alternative place to build a life. “I wanted to be in Britain. I didn’t know anything about Ireland besides Guinness, but I’m finding out.”
Like an estimated 80 percent of this year’s approximately 7,000 arrivals in Ireland, Christian entered the Republic of Ireland by road from the North, the only corner of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU member. He says he paid a taxi driver £2,400 to drive him and two other Nigerians the 102 miles from Northern Ireland’s capital of Belfast across the border to Dublin — only to learn that others in the asylum queue had made the same trip by public bus for £17.
Open borders
Keeping the Irish border barrier-free despite Brexit has been crucial for Ireland’s economy and the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens who live in Northern Ireland. But it also makes it exceptionally easy for asylum seekers to shift without hindrance from the U.K. to Ireland.
Other routes by sea and air aren’t as simple. Although Britain and Ireland have maintained a Common Travel Area for the past century that gives British and Irish citizens freedom to live and work in each other’s countries, police-operated passport controls still operate on the Irish end of U.K. flights to check the right of non-European Economic Area nationals to enter. Crossing by vehicle or train from Northern Ireland has grown increasingly popular once Irish authorities started tightening rules on letting U.K. asylum seekers on to Ireland-bound aircraft.
Over the past year, Ireland’s Department of Integration and the International Protection Office have struggled to source enough shelter for 100,000 Ukrainian war refugees and at least 30,000 asylum seekers already here, amid a national crisis in housing supply and affordability. A string of derelict properties earmarked for development as asylum centers have been burned down in suspected arson attacks by irate locals. Civil servants toiling to manage the fallout expect pressures to keep building, perhaps to breaking point.
“It’s a madhouse,” said an International Protection Office worker, taking a smoke break outside the office on Mount Street in the Georgian heart of Dublin. Nearby, two groups of men — mostly Somalis to the left, Nigerians to the right — loitered beside rows of tents on sidewalks that had been their home for weeks. “We’ve nowhere to put them all and more keep coming. There’s no end to it.”
Illustrating the disproportionate nature of the challenge, the approximately 7,000 asylum seekers who have already arrived this year in Ireland mirror the nearly 7,000 who have crossed over the same period by small boat from France to England — a country 12 times the population of Ireland. | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
Starting a year ago, a tent city had been allowed to take root outside the International Protection Office, snaking along footpaths and alleys down Mount Street. The shantytown eventually spread past the headquarters of a government party, Fianna Fáil, and was growing ever closer to the local European Commission office and the Government Buildings base of Simon Harris, Ireland’s new prime minister.
But at his weekly Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Harris authorized an operation to remove the Mount Street refugees, chiefly to a commandeered conference center on the city’s outskirts, and to a more remote army-style campground featuring 12-man tents.
At dawn Wednesday, a fleet of buses and taxis took nearly 300 men to those emergency facilities while sanitation staff in hazmat suits cleansed pavements of months of public urination and piled-up garbage. Police erected barriers of 1,000-kilogram concrete blocks where the tents had stood and told refugees they’d face immediate arrest if they tried camping on Mount Street again.
But according to the protection office’s own accounts, that barely dented the problem. The organization’s staff still can’t source shelter for more than 1,500 asylum seekers sleeping rough. Refugee tents remain scattered all over Dublin in parks, shop fronts, alleyways and along the River Liffey that cuts the city in two.
Aggravating the situation, dozens of the Mount Street evacuees have already abandoned their state-supplied communal tents to board buses and return to the city center. And more than 100 newly arrived applicants Thursday were told the state had no available beds anywhere to offer, ensuring that new tents will sprout up in new locations.
Send them back?
It’s all proving too much for Ireland, which wants Britain to take back those with active cases in the U.K.’s own asylum system. Otherwise, officials here warn, cases chiefly inherited from Britain will top 20,000 in Ireland this year alone.
Illustrating the disproportionate nature of the challenge, the approximately 7,000 asylum seekers who have already arrived this year in Ireland mirror the nearly 7,000 who have crossed over the same period by small boat from France to England — a country 12 times the population of Ireland.
Yet Sunak cites France as the reason England should have no sympathy for the Irish. He has ruled out accepting any returnees from Ireland unless France agrees to take back refugees who crossed the English Channel in the first place.
Neither appears likely, even as Harris and his justice minister, Helen McEntee, publicly argue that an unpublished 2020 Brexit-linked memorandum of understanding binds Britain to accept refugees back into its system from Ireland. Britain characterizes that agreement as toothless and non-binding.
Privately, officials in the Department of Justice and prime minister’s office say they don’t expect a single deportation to Britain unless and until Sunak loses the next U.K. general election and Labour, opposed to the Rwanda policy, comes to power.
They note that not a single asylum seeker has been returned to Britain since December 2020, when Britain left the EU on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Before that, when Ireland and Britain both were bound to the same EU asylum rules, such transfers made next to no practical difference for either nation: from 2015 to 2020, Ireland sent 162 migrants back to Britain, while the British dispatched 156 in the other direction.
“There is no realistic prospect of the United Kingdom agreeing to help us given their current political disposition,” said a government official, granted anonymity to discuss plans yet to be signed off by Cabinet.
“If we’re going to get a handle on this situation before it becomes overwhelming, we’ll need to deploy maximum resources into processing cases ourselves as quickly as possible and remove inadmissible cases back to their own countries wherever possible,” the official said.
Nigeria top of the list
Private charter aircraft have already been provisionally booked to carry failed applicants under police guard, the official said, with arrivals from Nigeria a top priority for deportation. While Nigeria is not on Ireland’s official list of “safe” countries, meaning arrivals can be returned to their place of origin, it could be by the end of the year when the flights are earmarked to start, the official said.
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Nigerians are the largest single group currently coming from the U.K, representing a third of all asylum seekers arriving this year in Ireland. The department plans to reassign up to 100 police currently handling asylum claims and refocus them on overseeing deportations once an accelerated legal process permits this.
Immigrant law experts doubt Ireland will be able to return asylum seekers to the U.K. as long as the Rwanda provision remains, since human rights lawyers argue it violates basic elements of the EU’s conventions on refugee rights.
Some government lawmakers in Dublin blame Sunak for treating Ireland’s difficulty as England’s opportunity.
“His immigration policy seems to be ‘To Rwanda or to Ireland.’ That’s not going to bode well for future relations,” said Lisa Chambers, a Fianna Fáil senator.
Jim O’Callaghan, another Fianna Fáil legislator whose Dublin constituency includes the refugee center, offers a different view. He doubts that the Rwanda threat represents anything more than short-term “optics” for the Tories to win votes at the British general election expected this fall.
But if U.K. policies of deterrence do become effective and migrant boats do stop crossing the Channel, O’Callaghan said, this could ultimately benefit Ireland — because most refugees won’t get farther than France.
“In order to get to Ireland, they’ve got to get into Britain,” O’Callaghan said. “If people are going to be deterred from going to the U.K., the likelihood is that they probably then won’t leave the continent.”
To Irish eyes, post-Brexit Britain’s toughening message to asylum seekers looks like “To Rwanda — or to Ireland.”
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IRELAND-BRITAIN-FRANCE-EU-POLITICS-MIGRANTS
Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented surge in migration from Britain. | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
May 3, 2024 4:00 am CET
By Shawn Pogatchnik
DUBLIN – As Britain ramps up efforts to deter asylum seekers, one politically explosive repercussion is that across the Irish Sea, parts of Dublin are being turned into foul-smelling refugee camps.
It’s a problem linked to Brexit, and it’s likely to worsen as potentially tens of thousands flee the U.K.’s increasingly tough asylum policies by re-entering the EU through its open Irish back door.
Since immigration first became a feature of Irish life amid the Celtic Tiger boom three decades ago, asylum seekers have typically arrived only after spending months or even years attempting to settle in neighboring Britain. For those fleeing war, famine or poverty, the main air links and trafficking routes have always made it easier to reach Britain than Ireland.
Now, with the U.K.’s tough new immigration laws having finally cleared Parliament and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising to start deporting asylum seekers within weeks, Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented surge in migration from Britain.
As asylum seekers flee the Sunak government’s threat to ship them to the East African nation of Rwanda, with limited rights to appeal, many are leaving Britain and entering the Republic of Ireland by crossing the checks-free border with its U.K. neighbor, Northern Ireland.
Spend time chatting with any of the hundreds of single men arriving weekly to Ireland’s International Protection Office and you’ll learn — from Arabs, Africans, Afghans and Indians who sometimes speak with unmistakable touches of regional English accents — that they see Ireland as their last-chance saloon to stay in Europe, now that Britain has withdrawn the welcome mat.
“I don’t want to go back to Nigeria, and I don’t want to go to Rwanda either,” said Christian, a 25-year-old Nigerian who has spent the past five years living in Liverpool and Manchester in the north of England after overstaying a student visa. He worked his way through the full gamut of the British asylum and appeals process and is now looking for an alternative place to build a life. “I wanted to be in Britain. I didn’t know anything about Ireland besides Guinness, but I’m finding out.”
Like an estimated 80 percent of this year’s approximately 7,000 arrivals in Ireland, Christian entered the Republic of Ireland by road from the North, the only corner of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU member. He says he paid a taxi driver £2,400 to drive him and two other Nigerians the 102 miles from Northern Ireland’s capital of Belfast across the border to Dublin — only to learn that others in the asylum queue had made the same trip by public bus for £17.
Open borders
Keeping the Irish border barrier-free despite Brexit has been crucial for Ireland’s economy and the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens who live in Northern Ireland. But it also makes it exceptionally easy for asylum seekers to shift without hindrance from the U.K. to Ireland.
Other routes by sea and air aren’t as simple. Although Britain and Ireland have maintained a Common Travel Area for the past century that gives British and Irish citizens freedom to live and work in each other’s countries, police-operated passport controls still operate on the Irish end of U.K. flights to check the right of non-European Economic Area nationals to enter. Crossing by vehicle or train from Northern Ireland has grown increasingly popular once Irish authorities started tightening rules on letting U.K. asylum seekers on to Ireland-bound aircraft.
Over the past year, Ireland’s Department of Integration and the International Protection Office have struggled to source enough shelter for 100,000 Ukrainian war refugees and at least 30,000 asylum seekers already here, amid a national crisis in housing supply and affordability. A string of derelict properties earmarked for development as asylum centers have been burned down in suspected arson attacks by irate locals. Civil servants toiling to manage the fallout expect pressures to keep building, perhaps to breaking point.
“It’s a madhouse,” said an International Protection Office worker, taking a smoke break outside the office on Mount Street in the Georgian heart of Dublin. Nearby, two groups of men — mostly Somalis to the left, Nigerians to the right — loitered beside rows of tents on sidewalks that had been their home for weeks. “We’ve nowhere to put them all and more keep coming. There’s no end to it.”
Illustrating the disproportionate nature of the challenge, the approximately 7,000 asylum seekers who have already arrived this year in Ireland mirror the nearly 7,000 who have crossed over the same period by small boat from France to England — a country 12 times the population of Ireland. | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
Starting a year ago, a tent city had been allowed to take root outside the International Protection Office, snaking along footpaths and alleys down Mount Street. The shantytown eventually spread past the headquarters of a government party, Fianna Fáil, and was growing ever closer to the local European Commission office and the Government Buildings base of Simon Harris, Ireland’s new prime minister.
But at his weekly Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Harris authorized an operation to remove the Mount Street refugees, chiefly to a commandeered conference center on the city’s outskirts, and to a more remote army-style campground featuring 12-man tents.
At dawn Wednesday, a fleet of buses and taxis took nearly 300 men to those emergency facilities while sanitation staff in hazmat suits cleansed pavements of months of public urination and piled-up garbage. Police erected barriers of 1,000-kilogram concrete blocks where the tents had stood and told refugees they’d face immediate arrest if they tried camping on Mount Street again.
But according to the protection office’s own accounts, that barely dented the problem. The organization’s staff still can’t source shelter for more than 1,500 asylum seekers sleeping rough. Refugee tents remain scattered all over Dublin in parks, shop fronts, alleyways and along the River Liffey that cuts the city in two.
Aggravating the situation, dozens of the Mount Street evacuees have already abandoned their state-supplied communal tents to board buses and return to the city center. And more than 100 newly arrived applicants Thursday were told the state had no available beds anywhere to offer, ensuring that new tents will sprout up in new locations.
Send them back?
It’s all proving too much for Ireland, which wants Britain to take back those with active cases in the U.K.’s own asylum system. Otherwise, officials here warn, cases chiefly inherited from Britain will top 20,000 in Ireland this year alone.
Illustrating the disproportionate nature of the challenge, the approximately 7,000 asylum seekers who have already arrived this year in Ireland mirror the nearly 7,000 who have crossed over the same period by small boat from France to England — a country 12 times the population of Ireland.
Yet Sunak cites France as the reason England should have no sympathy for the Irish. He has ruled out accepting any returnees from Ireland unless France agrees to take back refugees who crossed the English Channel in the first place.
Neither appears likely, even as Harris and his justice minister, Helen McEntee, publicly argue that an unpublished 2020 Brexit-linked memorandum of understanding binds Britain to accept refugees back into its system from Ireland. Britain characterizes that agreement as toothless and non-binding.
Privately, officials in the Department of Justice and prime minister’s office say they don’t expect a single deportation to Britain unless and until Sunak loses the next U.K. general election and Labour, opposed to the Rwanda policy, comes to power.
They note that not a single asylum seeker has been returned to Britain since December 2020, when Britain left the EU on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Before that, when Ireland and Britain both were bound to the same EU asylum rules, such transfers made next to no practical difference for either nation: from 2015 to 2020, Ireland sent 162 migrants back to Britain, while the British dispatched 156 in the other direction.
“There is no realistic prospect of the United Kingdom agreeing to help us given their current political disposition,” said a government official, granted anonymity to discuss plans yet to be signed off by Cabinet.
“If we’re going to get a handle on this situation before it becomes overwhelming, we’ll need to deploy maximum resources into processing cases ourselves as quickly as possible and remove inadmissible cases back to their own countries wherever possible,” the official said.
Nigeria top of the list
Private charter aircraft have already been provisionally booked to carry failed applicants under police guard, the official said, with arrivals from Nigeria a top priority for deportation. While Nigeria is not on Ireland’s official list of “safe” countries, meaning arrivals can be returned to their place of origin, it could be by the end of the year when the flights are earmarked to start, the official said.
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Nigerians are the largest single group currently coming from the U.K, representing a third of all asylum seekers arriving this year in Ireland. The department plans to reassign up to 100 police currently handling asylum claims and refocus them on overseeing deportations once an accelerated legal process permits this.
Immigrant law experts doubt Ireland will be able to return asylum seekers to the U.K. as long as the Rwanda provision remains, since human rights lawyers argue it violates basic elements of the EU’s conventions on refugee rights.
Some government lawmakers in Dublin blame Sunak for treating Ireland’s difficulty as England’s opportunity.
“His immigration policy seems to be ‘To Rwanda or to Ireland.’ That’s not going to bode well for future relations,” said Lisa Chambers, a Fianna Fáil senator.
Jim O’Callaghan, another Fianna Fáil legislator whose Dublin constituency includes the refugee center, offers a different view. He doubts that the Rwanda threat represents anything more than short-term “optics” for the Tories to win votes at the British general election expected this fall.
But if U.K. policies of deterrence do become effective and migrant boats do stop crossing the Channel, O’Callaghan said, this could ultimately benefit Ireland — because most refugees won’t get farther than France.
“In order to get to Ireland, they’ve got to get into Britain,” O’Callaghan said. “If people are going to be deterred from going to the U.K., the likelihood is that they probably then won’t leave the continent.”
unknown
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Too bad the IRA was a bunch of communists.
Great pic but so far from reality.
Well, it does seem like theyre trying to do something.
unknown
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Good stuff from Glenn as usual.
Crazy how theyve won the propaganda war in Brazil, successfully equating free speech with fascism.
On a side note, whats up with his gay lisp, seemed super pronounced.
jmdrake
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So....how many European countries much bigger than Ireland did Ukrainian refugees have to pass through first? In fact I isn't that true for just about ANY refugee from ANYWHERE? Why Ireland?
Anti Federalist
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Cause Irish survived as an identity to a greater extent. Duh.
Here's a relevant article that, in my opinion, goes a long way toward explaining the chaos in Ireland. There are similar forces at work all over the western world.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2024/07/20/ongoing-jewish-influence-in-the-transformation-of-ireland/
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2024/07/20/ongoing-jewish-influence-in-the-transformation-of-ireland/
unknown
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Found the account, can't find the actual post.
Anyone remember when pallets of bricks were showing up near rioters.
Some interesting posts:
https://x.com/Resistance20001
Here is a link to the video:
https://files.catbox.moe/tcu8ya.mp4
Anyone remember when pallets of bricks were showing up near rioters.
Some interesting posts:
https://x.com/Resistance20001
Here is a link to the video:
https://files.catbox.moe/tcu8ya.mp4
unknown
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US government brands Dublin riots as terrorism by Irish white supremacists
New report monitoring global terror incidents lists Ireland as one of six countries targeted by white supremacists.
https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-riots-white-identity-terrorism-6589040-Jan2025/
{Patricia Devlin | 10 January 2025}
THE US GOVERNMENT has branded rioting which broke out on the streets of Dublin in 2023 as “white identity terrorism”.
In a new report released by the US Department of State, the violence was blamed on “Irish white supremacists and ultranationalists” spreading “anti-immigrant” disinformation online.
The annual Country Reports on Terrorism, which monitors terror attacks around the world, listed Ireland as one of six countries impacted by “White Identity Terrorism” (WIT) or “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism” (REMVE).
It said the attacks, fuelled by the exploitation of social media platforms by anonymous individuals and online communities, constituted a “growing and transnational threat to the United States and our allies”.
Those involved are “increasingly adept at exploiting social media platforms, online gaming platforms, gaming-adjacent platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications”, according to the report.
"They use these means to recruit new followers, plan and rally ideological support, and disseminate materials that contribute to radicalization and mobilization to violence."
Six countries hit by white identity attacks
Referring to the so-called Dublin riots, it said: “In November, Irish white supremacists and ultranationalists online spread disinformation regarding the nationality of a stabbing suspect arrested after stabbing two adults and three children.
“This anti-immigrant disinformation led to three days of white supremacist rioting in Dublin, injuring police and bystanders.”
Rioting broke out in the Irish capital after three children and a care worker were injured in an attack outside a primary school and creche on Parnell Square East, for which a man has been charged and appeared before the courts.
A Garda car, buses and a Luas tram were set on fire, shops were looted and infrastructure, such as traffic lights, was damaged during the riot.
Of the 28 vehicles damaged that night, 15 were official Garda cars and two belonged to the Dublin Fire Brigade.
Gardaí said 66 premises or places of business were subject to criminal damage.
The US Department of State said the Dublin disorder was one of six “known WIT attacks” in 2023.
Other incidents included a bomb attack on a school in Brazil by a 17 year-old boy wearing a Nazis armband. No-one was injured in the February attack.
The Texas mall shooting, where eight people, including children, were killed by a lone gunman, was also recorded as a WIT attack.
Mauricio Garcia, 33, was shot and killed by a police officer after opening fire in the packed Allen Premium Outlets mall in May 2023.
The report states he was a “neo-Nazi sympathizer” who at the time of the attack was wearing a patch on his chest that included the acronym “rwds”.
Authorities believe the letters stand for “right-wing death squad”, a phrase used in far-right online spaces, it said.
Violent extremists recruiting online
Since 2021, the US has included “all credible information” on WIT in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism.
This includes relevant attacks, the identification of perpetrators and victims, the size and identification of organizations and networks.
It noted how “violent white supremacist, anti-government, accelerationist, and like-minded individuals” promoted violent extremist narratives, recruited new members; raised funds, and shared tactical training – including weapon-making instructions – both online and in-person.
The report said attacks are often carried out by individuals who are part of anonymous online communities but “lack formal ties to traditionally organized groups”.
In a statement to The Journal, the Department of Justice said “it would not be appropriate” to comment on the US government report as a number of cases involving serious criminal charges were still before the courts.
However, a spokesperson added: “The events which took place on the evening of November 23rd, 2023, were the subject of comprehensive debate in the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, including statements by Minister McEntee (7th December 2023) and by the Garda Commissioner (29th November 2023).
“Garda investigations into those events are ongoing and over 50 people have been arrested to date, a number of whom have been charged with serious criminal offences.”
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More "white identity terrorism" in Ireland:
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