Violence against women is just the latest issue far-right agitators have weaponised to stoke fear of asylum-seekers

Rawlton House, a vacant Victorian school in Dublin’s inner city, was just the latest example of misinformation when it was set ablaze on Monday night amid incorrect rumours that it was mooted to accommodate refugees. Other recent false targets for anti-asylum seeker demonstrations have included schools and a convent.

In Finglas this week, elements of protests turned vicious as innocent passers-by, including a man driving his wife to the hospital, were verbally assaulted. ​

For a long time, fears of “the rise of the far right” have been dismissed as online chatter from a left-leaning political and media elite that was disproportionately obsessed with importing American and British culture wars and talking points.

While it is true that the far right have been successive electoral failures in Ireland, a fair analysis of the ongoing demonstrations would have to concede that something unpleasant is festering, even if it’s just within a small but alarming minority.

It is important to say clearly that there are people in Ireland who are very concerned about migration, who may have even attended some of these demonstrations, who utterly abhor the politics of the far right and are deeply offended to be confused with them. Unfortunately, this can serve the right.

If politicians or commentators wish to identify far-right elements in any demonstration, they leave themselves open to claims that they are patronising and misunderstanding the concerns of the public, unfairly maligning anyone whose core concern could be housing, healthcare or their job as some sort of neo-Nazi.

This generates a nervousness or reluctance to identify smaller far-right elements in demonstrations, even when it’s clear that they are there.

Some may be wondering where all these far-right demonstrators have come from. The answer is most likely the pandemic. There is no doubt that lockdown scepticism exposed some people to internet rabbit holes where more radical or outlandish conspiracy theories were shared.

When platforms like Facebook started to crack down on Covid-19 misinformation, so-called “free speech” platforms like Telegram – where almost anything goes – became warmer and more popular environments for those who felt ostracised for their views.

Telegram is filled with WhatsApp-style chat rooms, which are not as visible or easily monitored as Facebook or Twitter. While these Telegram groups may have started as anti-lockdown conversations, they soon became hotbeds of suspicion – where the greatest hits of modern conspiracy theories were shared and blended.

One of which is the “great replacement theory” – the far-right conspiracy theory that white Europeans are being “replaced” by immigrants, most often meaning immigrants of colour. 

The most troubling thing about the far right is if and how it will intersect with or influence ordinary members of the public, who demonstrate against direct provision because they are worried about housing in their area, or if they can get a GP appointment, or if their town’s tourism industry will ever recover.

Across Ireland, far-right actors usually use the same playbook to shroud their bigotry as “concern” – to try to disguise it as more palatable or even reasonable to the local community.

Now, the favoured tactic is weaponising violence against women. The number of “lone adult males” due to arrive in local asylum-seeker accommodation is often focused on by agitators, who believe that the presence of “unvetted, military-age men” is a fundamental threat to the safety of women and children in the area.

This has already led to one incident in Finglas, where an incident of sexual violence was exploited to create the rumour that it was perpetrated by a refugee. Gardaí were later forced to clarify that the suspect was in fact a white Irish male.

Unfortunately, in the current pressure cooker of increased migration, vanishing accommodation, and general and understandable malaise on issues like health and housing, mistruths that seem to suit deeply-held suspicions can spread just like fire.