In its original form, this was going to be a music review.
On Thursday 23rd, the band Crywank (an awkward name when your friends ask who you’re going to see) were meant to take to the stage at The Button Factory. I had been waiting a while for this show and was looking forward to getting to see how they perform live. Opening the show was their first support, a slow-tempoed, indie group that gained a lot of traction from TikTok called Sign Crushes Motorist. Only about thirty minutes into their set they came to a halt and I was among the few hundred people told to leave and head home. We were confused at first but were informed that the riots that had broken out sometime after 7pm on O’Connell Street at the instigation of far-right racists via social media. Having spent most of my day in town, I hadn’t fully heard about what was going on in the city aside from some murmurings. It would prove to be a sharp learning curve as we made our way through the quickly emptying streets of Temple Bar.
This piece is now instead about the riots, their circumstances, and reactions.
Before we fully get into everything, one thing must be made abundantly clear. These riots in the city centre were an entirely preventable event. The insurmountable and very public institutional failures and socio-political discontent were a clear indication of the approaching possibilities for rising aggression. This was not “unprecedented” or “unforeseeable”. The signs of oncoming riots are so predictable that the Kaiser Chiefs wrote a song about it nearly two decades ago.
There are a number of things that have culminated in the seizure of Dublin by far-right lackeys, degenerates, and regular people caught up in fear mongering ideology. Much of the fault for this event lies in the government’s long-standing and criminally poor ability to correctly react to aggressive assault and harassment by Ireland’s growing extremists. Without more than a gentle berating and a slap on the wrists, the right-wing of Ireland are receiving one unspoken message loud and clear. We will look the other way no matter what you do.
The clearest turning point for right-wing Ireland was in Cork just earlier this year when the far-right extremist party, Ireland First, encouraged protesters to spout their anti-immigration, homophobic and conspirital rhetoric at their obvious enemies, library staff. The slew of vitriolic attacks aimed at one of the most important and fundamentally good public services did not see legal intervention. Despite Garda presence, multiple locations were the target of hateful protest. The moment the inaptly named Guardians of The Peace not only allowed but protected right-wing marchers as they forced themselves into libraries and schools was the moment that they knew there was no limit to what they could do free from repercussion. Sanctionless and empowered by the show of solidarity from right-leaning media groups, these rioters emerged from an echo chamber that is immensely huge, without consequence, and growing at a dangerous rate.
These people will utilise any tragedy to try and justify their means. Time after time again they will be allowed to do this. This is how our current judicial system works under the negligent gaze of Minister Helen McEntee and the government-applauded “hands off” approach.
After school children were attacked by a man wielding a knife on Thursday afternoon, calls to end the influx of unvetted immigrants into Ireland became viciously loud.
The attack at Parnell Square was shocking and tragic and thankfully the attacker was quickly confronted by multiple people in the street, including the Brazilian man who disarmed him, a Deliveroo driver named Caio Benicio. The attacker was later revealed to be a naturalised Irish citizen who has lived here for two decades. The driver, who used his helmet to knock the knife from the attacker’s hand, moved here far more recently and is not a citizen.
The myth of “vetting” is something that many have fixated on. In actuality, in most cases, this is more of a placebo safety net. There is no way to truly guarantee safety from another person and the vetting process only examines their past. It is impossible to account for their future. It must no longer be a part of the process of deciding if another human being is safe to be around in general public life as it gives no accuracy and is often used to demean the status of certain immigrants. The far-right crowd that brutishly tore apart O’Connell Street later that night had much of their argument founded on that myth.
Trying to leave Dublin was a challenge. Though I doubt that this was a well thought through plan, the rioters had accidently stumbled upon the most successful way to bring Dublin to its knees. Without safe access to O’Connell Street, buses were sent back to their depots and the Luas services were completely halted. The reliance on access to this street highlights a huge infrastructural failure as the city was filled with hundreds of people unable to get home.
From Westmoreland Street I saw the rioters standing on the other side of police lines. It was the first glance at the chaos caused in the centre that night. Across the river there was fire, sirens, and smoke and from above us a helicopter shone a light down on the rioters. No one had a clue what public transportation was running and what was not. Continuing through the streets I passed by groups of people in great distress and groups of people who were enjoying a Thursday night out in complete ignorance of the violence just streets from where they were. Communication and awareness became entirely up to chance.
So, did the rioters succeed in what they wanted to do? On paper, no. Their “march” to protect the people of Ireland against the threat of incoming non-nationals actually ended up with many Irish people stranded in town, caused the biggest maternity hospital in Dublin to close access, and caused public property damage in the millions that will inevitably be paid for with taxpayers’ money. As more videos and imagery appear online of looters stealing clothing and charity boxes, it becomes hard to believe that they ever wanted to protect anyone at all and so they become reduced to nothing more than what they are, a scourge on Irish society and puppets to far-right wasters such as Ireland’s national embarrassment, Conor McGregor.
It is up in the air whether our government can follow through on coming down on this ideology. As mentioned previously, it is their gentle treatment of Ireland’s most hateful that has allowed for this to build up. If the Gardaí approached the rioters with the same level of vigour that they sanction illegal evictions with then maybe the aggressors could have been limited to their place on O’ Connell Street before being taken away. Instead, the Guards failed again and again to push the rioters back and they advanced across the river to the quays on the Southside.
As predictable as this riot was, the following steps are clear and a well-versed formula for the cyclical life of dealing with right-wing outbursts. Next, we will see the back peddling of right-wing media and putrid mouthpieces that are responsible for inciting this violence in the first place, as they try to claim that their rightful “march” was co-opted by a mysterious third party who just so happen to also be yelling about how “Ireland is full” and “for the Irish”. We have already seen it with the nauseating right-wing group, Gript Media, who are present at nearly every gathering of Ireland’s worst scum. Allowing this media group to keep going without regulation over the hateful content they are spreading is a huge part of the problem. Even less obviously xenophobic, more “centrist” outlets and programmes such as Newstalk cause the normalisation of this attitude in the public sphere.
For a country who has a long-standing history of migrancy on an international scale, the disgust towards people choosing our country to settle in is hypocritical to the highest degree. One of the uncomfortable but necessary parts of this issue is that the fear many feel towards immigrants is very real and based in some fact. It is true that there have been murders and attacks carried out by non-Irish citizens. It is also true that many murders and attacks have also been carried out by white, Irish citizens. We must analyze how these crimes are reported and where the emphasis lies. The fears of most people become more reasonable when we pay attention to what they are being fed by media sources that are traditionally considered reliable. It is of the utmost importance that this fear is tackled on a pedagogical level to alleviate and correctly redirect the frustration the disenfranchised feel to the true source, government failure.
This means there needs to be less focus on the assumed backgrounds of those involved in the riots, less poking fun at the large number of free legal aid required by those arrested. Immigrants become the easy scapegoats to those already alienated and left behind by society. This is something that the government does not want to correct because it is simply too beneficial to them.
Joining the extreme far-right is not the answer but neither is condemning them. Many of these people will be your co-workers, your neighbours, classmates, and friends. Many of them have already been written off in many aspects of their life. Intolerance should be saved for the extremists who encourage and radicalise those in precarious situations who may be susceptible to having their opinions swayed and movements influenced. They must be cut off at the source which is their organising via the unregulated hellscape of social media.
There must now be a great sense of urgency around stamping this ideology out of Ireland. This can only be achieved via government intervention and investigation into those who utilise social media to quickly spread orders to their followers, without repercussion and with unmediated power. Now is the time for public pressure to push in these areas. This is how we make Ireland safer for Immigrants, people of colour, the queer community, and Irish people from all backgrounds.
