Speaker 1: All Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about
Speaker 2: it Happening Here, which is normally focused on the United
Speaker 2: States because that's where we all live. However, we do
Speaker 2: like to cover the rest of the world and the
Speaker 2: ongoing struggle against the global far right movement. And today
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about a place that we don't
Speaker 2: cover often on this show, Ireland. And it's not because
Speaker 2: Ireland doesn't have a problem with the far right, because
Speaker 2: as our guest today is going to talk to us
Speaker 2: about it, most certainly does. And so I would like
Speaker 2: to welcome to the program a great guy, Padre O'Rourke,
Speaker 2: author of Burn Them Out, A History of Fascism and
Speaker 2: the far right in Ireland. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: being on the show.
Speaker 3: No problem, delice to be here. Thanks very much, Robert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's this attitude and I think, as
Speaker 2: you noted in some note use of the long, there's
Speaker 2: a degree to which it's true that Ireland has some
Speaker 2: resistance to the far right that has led to maybe
Speaker 2: it growing slower or taking a little longer to get
Speaker 2: off the ground to the same extent that it has
Speaker 2: in the UK or the US. As a result, of
Speaker 2: kind of the history of Irish Republicanism, but that's not
Speaker 2: comprehensively true across the island, and that that's you know,
Speaker 2: certainly has not stopped it from having some pretty significant problems,
Speaker 2: which we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sadly, as long as fascism has existed, since Mussolini's
Speaker 3: March on Rome and his political rise, we have had
Speaker 3: fascist groups here of one sort or another. We've had
Speaker 3: fascist groups in Ireland that were pro British and politics,
Speaker 3: fascist groups in Ireland that were pro Irish or Irish independents.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously we were neutral during World War Two.
Speaker 3: We weren't occupied by Nazi Germany or anything like that.
Speaker 3: We did have one very big fascist group here in
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties, the Blue Shirts, who were extremely violent
Speaker 3: and got sixty eight members of parliament elected. They were
Speaker 3: the main political opposition. They were kind of the largest
Speaker 3: non governing fascist organization in the world per capita. But
Speaker 3: as you said, Irish republicanism has kind of inoculated us
Speaker 3: against a lot of the far right stuff we'd have
Speaker 3: seen in Britain and Germany and France in the nineties
Speaker 3: because you know, while the conflict was going on in
Speaker 3: the North of Ireland. Basically, if you were an angry
Speaker 3: young man with very strong patriotic feelings who was given
Speaker 3: towards political violence, you would probably end up in the
Speaker 3: Provisional IRA and their politics were very left wing and internationalist.
Speaker 3: I mean I remember going into their political wing Shinfein's
Speaker 3: bookshop in Dublin in the nineteen nineties and it was
Speaker 3: all pictures of you know, yes Er Arafat, and it
Speaker 3: was pictures of Nelson Mandela and like the Zapatistas, and
Speaker 3: you know, it was very much about Irish independence being
Speaker 3: an anti colonial struggle. You do, of course get like
Speaker 3: on the opposite side of that, on kind of the
Speaker 3: loyalist pro British side. In the North, you did get
Speaker 3: as kind of reaction to that, pro British paramilitaries, the
Speaker 3: Ulster Volunteer Force, the UDA, Ulster Defense Association, the Ulster
Speaker 3: Volunteer Force, the UVF. They would have linked up with
Speaker 3: neo Nazi groups like Combat eighteen in England to get guns,
Speaker 3: to get finances, to get their hands on explosives and
Speaker 3: things which were easier to get in England than in
Speaker 3: the North of Ireland. But really we never had a
Speaker 3: party here, either in the north or in the south
Speaker 3: that was as successful as groups like the Front National
Speaker 3: in France or the British National Party in England. Both
Speaker 3: sadly in recent years, certainly in the last ten years,
Speaker 3: the far right are kind of back. They're alive and kicking,
Speaker 3: and they're taken to the streets.
Speaker 2: And so what do you credit that? I mean, it
Speaker 2: seems like there's a mix of things. First off, you
Speaker 2: suddenly do have people immigrating into Ireland from elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the world in significant numbers for you know, the first
Speaker 2: time in quite a while. And then on the other head,
Speaker 2: it sounds like there's also the kind of as we
Speaker 2: see everywhere, all the conscious exporting of far right figures
Speaker 2: in id is into the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, Ireland's greatest export was always people, and you know,
Speaker 3: we a few Irish American communities in you know, Chicago,
Speaker 3: New York, you know, all over Ebi, Irish people in
Speaker 3: Australia and Canada and England, all over the continent. So
Speaker 3: in the early you know, twenty tens, we started like
Speaker 3: there had always been a trickle of migration and people
Speaker 3: coming back and forward, like we had some you know
Speaker 3: Vietnamese refugees here. We had you know, historically we had
Speaker 3: Russian Jews coming here and so on, escaping pilgrims in Zaras, Russia.
Speaker 3: But really the first time that we had very large
Speaker 3: numbers of people coming was in the twenty teens, and
Speaker 3: it was things like the Mediterranean migrant crisis. It was
Speaker 3: people fleeing climate change in Africa, the Syrian civil War,
Speaker 3: Teliban in Afghanistan, and more recently, of course Putant's invasion
Speaker 3: of Ukraine and the fire Heights. Had always been these
Speaker 3: tiny little fringe parties and figures. It was a very
Speaker 3: active anti fascist group here called Anti Fascist Action Ireland.
Speaker 3: And anytime these groups tried to organize or take to
Speaker 3: the streets, they were challenged and they were run off.
Speaker 3: But really what brought them all together Ireland's kind of
Speaker 3: attempt to unite the right was the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 3: because we had one of the strictest COVID lockdowns in Europe.
Speaker 3: You're talking about. Originally you weren't allowed to travel more
Speaker 3: than two kilometers from your home. That's one of the
Speaker 3: quarter miles for you Americans, and basically you could go
Speaker 3: to the store, but other than that, you couldn't you know,
Speaker 3: you couldn't travel very far. And of course everyone was
Speaker 3: locked at home with their with their internet and started
Speaker 3: going down the rabbit hole. And what we saw was
Speaker 3: the anti vaxer COVID conspiracy movement took to the streets
Speaker 3: in Ireland very quickly, and that brought together all of
Speaker 3: the disparate tiny far right and neo fascist factions, the
Speaker 3: closet neo Nazis, the anti vaxers, the fundamentalist Catholics like
Speaker 3: the Society of Saint Pias, the tenth, the sovereign citizen types,
Speaker 3: the people who were on about five G conspiracies and
Speaker 3: chemtrails all got onto the streets, all got active on
Speaker 3: the Irish left and the anti fascist side. We kind
Speaker 3: of dropped the ball because we were following the healthcare
Speaker 3: advice and the cops were quite happy to ignore the
Speaker 3: far right mobilizing on the street. But there were striking
Speaker 3: workers like Debenhams and Clearies who'd been striking before COVID struck,
Speaker 3: and the cops were going up and moving these trade
Speaker 3: unionissan saying, you know, you're breaking the pandemic. So it
Speaker 3: wasn't released even Lee and you know, suddenly, for the
Speaker 3: first time during the pandemic, we were starting to see
Speaker 3: groups of three four hundred far right in Dublin, which
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like much, but I mean last weekend there
Speaker 3: was a march in Dublin City and they had probably
Speaker 3: around five thousand, maybe up to ten thousand people marching,
Speaker 3: and that's something we haven't seen here since the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's such I think an important point. The
Speaker 2: degree to which, because this is a global issue, the
Speaker 2: degree to which everyone else attempting to abide by public
Speaker 2: safety measures during COVID nineteen strengthened the far right because
Speaker 2: they were out in the streets this kind of organizing
Speaker 2: equivalent of getting to steal a march on the enemy.
Speaker 2: It makes sense to me that it was because in
Speaker 2: the US that was interrupted at least by the George
Speaker 2: Floyd uprisings. But in Ireland, you know, it seems like
Speaker 2: there was a much more significant period of time where
Speaker 2: these folks were essentially acting and organizing unopposed, and the
Speaker 2: police were, when they chose to act at all, acting
Speaker 2: against folks on the opposite side of things who were
Speaker 2: organizing during COVID.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was let kind of rum belong to the police.
Speaker 3: The cops didn't really start taking action on any of
Speaker 3: this stuff until I would say it was nearly November
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three when they had this rally called I
Speaker 3: think it was called to the Doll or maybe slightly
Speaker 3: earlier than that. In September twenty twenty three. The Doll
Speaker 3: is the Gaeacord for our Parliament, and basically the dregs
Speaker 3: of the COVID movement kind of came together again. You
Speaker 3: had all these tiny far rice and fascist parties popping up,
Speaker 3: and the best thing of about them is they all
Speaker 3: get into furior fights. They all start arguing with each
Speaker 3: other about who's going to be the leader, and they
Speaker 3: haven't united. But they took to the streets in the autumn,
Speaker 3: in the fall of twenty twenty three, and there was
Speaker 3: one really violent and disgusting riot outside the outside the
Speaker 3: Parliament where the far right were throwing bottles of your
Speaker 3: line at politicians trying to get in, were shouting racial
Speaker 3: abuse at anybody who wasn't white, who was working in
Speaker 3: the building as a cleaner or a parliamentary assistant or anything.
Speaker 3: Any opposition politicians they could see. They were screaming at
Speaker 3: them in imitation of you guys. And January the sixth
Speaker 3: they had built a mock noose and they were using
Speaker 3: it to hang effigies of politicians, and you also had
Speaker 3: police cops being attacked for the first time by the
Speaker 3: far right. Really, there'd been one or two other incidents,
Speaker 3: but it's only when cops started getting attacked by them
Speaker 3: and politicians were being directly their safety was being threatened,
Speaker 3: then the cops start to act, maybe in the last
Speaker 3: eighteen months or so, but it was really closing the
Speaker 3: stable door about five years after the violent fire right
Speaker 3: horse had already bolted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, so I'm kind of thinking here,
Speaker 2: this is part of why you've started to see you know,
Speaker 2: guys like we started this conversation before being recording talking
Speaker 2: about Tucker Carlson coming over to talk to Connor McGregor,
Speaker 2: who's becoming an increasingly large part of this. And I
Speaker 2: wonder if it's if it's maybe these these different kind
Speaker 2: of international folks in the international movement sort of sniffing that,
Speaker 2: you know, they're hoping that the cancer has metastasized, so
Speaker 2: to speak. I mean, is that kind of what you
Speaker 2: how you see it?
Speaker 3: Well, they definitely have an influence here. I mean the politics,
Speaker 3: the talking points, the buzzwords that the far right use
Speaker 3: in Ireland have all been learned from the likes of
Speaker 3: Alec Jones, have all been learned from watching you know,
Speaker 3: crazy stuff on Twitter. And it's all American and British
Speaker 3: farrelight talking points that are being replayed here. Stuff about
Speaker 3: the Clergy Plan, stuff about the Great Replacement and and
Speaker 3: so on. I mean, one hundred years ago was the
Speaker 3: protocols of the Elders of Zion, and now they're just
Speaker 3: spinning the same conspiracy, same talking points again. Like for example,
Speaker 3: one of the things we had here was we had
Speaker 3: a party called the Irish People's Party and some of
Speaker 3: our campaigners were really fundamentalist Latin mass set of Acantas Catholics,
Speaker 3: and they were going down and protesting about drag queen
Speaker 3: story time at Irish libraries. We don't even have drag
Speaker 3: queen story time. These guys have been so inspired by
Speaker 3: what was happening in America and I just went in
Speaker 3: and started taking books off the shelves, you know, and
Speaker 3: anything to do with any LGBT plus team, even basic
Speaker 3: sex education guides for kids. Stuff that's pretty mild and
Speaker 3: perfectly happy to give my own my own kids, and
Speaker 3: I'm not the most woke guy, but it's not ripping
Speaker 3: them up. They'd start taking them out in the library,
Speaker 3: filming themselves, burning books at home. It was really crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: And at that stage again you did get anti anti
Speaker 3: fascist organizing. But what you kind of get is figures
Speaker 3: like Connor McGregor being amplified by the likes of Elon
Speaker 3: Musk being amplified by you know, Tucker Carlson coming over
Speaker 3: interviewing him, or Donald Trump of course inviting him to
Speaker 3: the to the White House, I mean the Prime Minister
Speaker 3: of Ireland as we'd say, Gail, like the teacher Meehall Martin.
Speaker 3: He was invited to the White House on the twelfth
Speaker 3: of March. But the guy that Trump chose to actually
Speaker 3: have there on Patrick's Day itself was of course Connor McGregor.
Speaker 3: And McGregor has links to I wouldn't say far right figures,
Speaker 3: but certainly very populist figures. And McGregor has kind of
Speaker 3: started he's become God pilled and he started rambling on
Speaker 3: about you know, rosary beads and the power of Christ
Speaker 3: and all this kind of stuff, and he doesn't strike
Speaker 3: me as a particularly religious man. And now with the
Speaker 3: head of soccer Carlson, you know, and Elon Muskin others,
Speaker 3: he says he's going to run for president, and we
Speaker 3: have a presidential election coming up here in six months.
Speaker 3: Did you watch the interview, Robert.
Speaker 2: No, No, I haven't yet. I caught some clips of
Speaker 2: it all on social media. Yeah, but I haven't gotten
Speaker 2: to sit through the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It's wild. Bear's absolutely no resemblance like what Connor puts
Speaker 3: across bears no resemblance to what's actually happening in Ireland.
Speaker 3: Like he starts ranting about how the police are so corrupt.
Speaker 3: Element that's true, but he starts talking about how the
Speaker 3: traffic cor the road cops who give you like speeding
Speaker 3: tickets and stuff, they're the most violent and repressive and
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff. And it just so happens
Speaker 3: that Connor McGregor has a string of speeding violations in
Speaker 3: his sports cars. And then Tucker Carlson chips in and says, oh,
Speaker 3: my god, you've got these armed cops and they're they're
Speaker 3: repressing the Irish people, but they're letting these immigrants do whatever.
Speaker 3: My dad was a copier for thirty years. My dad
Speaker 3: was on the border in the nineteen seventies with the
Speaker 3: iron ray shooting at him and he didn't even get
Speaker 3: a gun. Her cops aren't armed. But Carlson is just
Speaker 3: trying this stuff out, being educated about it, and he
Speaker 3: says at the very end of the interview, McGregor says, oh,
Speaker 3: there's there's been a government kind of hit job on me.
Speaker 3: They're planning to bring me down. What he's referring to
Speaker 3: is a civil trial now, not a criminal trial. A
Speaker 3: civil trial that Connor McGregor lost when he was brought
Speaker 3: to court for alleged rape and sexual assault and the
Speaker 3: jury believed he's he's accuser a woman called a hairdresser
Speaker 3: called Nikita Hand, and Connor McGregor was forced to pay
Speaker 3: damages of a quarter of a million euro to her,
Speaker 3: plus costs in the Irish High Court, which are about
Speaker 3: one and a half million euro. Now to you or me,
Speaker 3: that would be you some of money. To Connor McGregor,
Speaker 3: that's nothing. And I have to say, for legal reasons
Speaker 3: he is appealing it. But the reality is that standing
Speaker 3: in the way of any political ambitions, Connor McGregor has,
Speaker 3: and we just had here in the last six hour.
Speaker 3: Last year, we had a lot local election for like
Speaker 3: local councils, a general election, a European parliamentary election, any
Speaker 3: one of those. All he needed to do was put
Speaker 3: up one hundred and fifty quid and he could have stood.
Speaker 3: He will be on the ballot. In fact, under Irish
Speaker 3: electoral law, he could have stood in every single constituency
Speaker 3: in the country and he didn't stand for election. And
Speaker 3: now he's complaining that he's being debarred from the Irish
Speaker 3: presidential race, and he's not. It's just it's an exceptionally
Speaker 3: difficult ballot to get on. You can't just stump up
Speaker 3: the money in America and become a third party candidate
Speaker 3: or a writing candidate or whatever. That doesn't work here.
Speaker 3: You need the support of a large number of democratically
Speaker 3: elected politicians to get there. So I think McGregor's real
Speaker 3: aim is not to get into the presidency, because really
Speaker 3: he can't. He's not even going to be on the ballot.
Speaker 3: But I think he wants to be Ireland's Ireland's answer
Speaker 3: to Tommy Robinson. And I suppose if Tommy Robinson is
Speaker 3: the answer, what the hell was the question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we'll get into that more in a second.
Speaker 2: I do want throw to ads here really quickly, and
Speaker 2: then we'll continue to talk about Connor for a moment
Speaker 2: we're back. So you say he wants to be the
Speaker 2: Irish answer to Tommy Robinson, which is such a like
Speaker 2: aim a higher man like that. It's it's odd to
Speaker 2: me like I had kind of I had kind of
Speaker 2: been worried because we've had so many cases of guys
Speaker 2: in the United States who start out as these absolute
Speaker 2: jokes on the far right and then you just see
Speaker 2: them pick up more and more attention over time, and
Speaker 2: that was kind of my worry with Connor. But but
Speaker 2: you're saying you're kind of concerned more that he's going
Speaker 2: to continue to be like an organizing presence on the
Speaker 2: far right rather than someone who has much of a
Speaker 2: chance of picking up actual like political office.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think with Connor it's it's all about his ego,
Speaker 3: which is probably what you'd expect from an MM star.
Speaker 3: You know, there's going to be an element of you know,
Speaker 3: ego and show voting in kfab and so on. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's interesting and he's interview with Tucker Carlson. He was
Speaker 3: giving out that the Minister of Education, you know, isn't
Speaker 3: a teacher, they're unqualified for the job. And the Irish
Speaker 3: government's Minister for Health isn't a doctor. And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: what qualifies you to be president? Connor? You're a former
Speaker 3: plumber turned for MMA fighter, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, getting hit in the face.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And we've we've had ministers of education who were
Speaker 3: teachers and ministers of health who were doctors who happened
Speaker 3: to be totally awful. The reality is like, we have
Speaker 3: a pr system, We've you know, a very democratic and
Speaker 3: fair process, and we have more than a two party
Speaker 3: system here. But I think, like as emerged during the
Speaker 3: during that civil rate trial which McGregor lost, you know,
Speaker 3: he had to admit to his cocaine use during it,
Speaker 3: he has been sending out kind of fevered I would
Speaker 3: imagine cocaine fever trip tweet saying as President of Ireland,
Speaker 3: I have the power too, And it's like, man, the
Speaker 3: election hasn't even happened yet, he's way ahead of himself.
Speaker 3: He's not going to get in the ballot. He knows
Speaker 3: that he wants to present it. And I mean the
Speaker 3: fact that he's even talking about getting in the ballot
Speaker 3: shows he doesn't understand the constitutional system here, which it's
Speaker 3: not like Britain. We have a written constitution. It's not
Speaker 3: that complex if you know the basics of the law.
Speaker 3: He's never going to get in the ballot, but he
Speaker 3: wants to present it that he's being denied the opportunity
Speaker 3: to stand and unfortunately, what we have around the country
Speaker 3: is an increasingly violent anti immigrant street movement that whenever
Speaker 3: these what we call him here IPASS in International Protection
Speaker 3: Applicant Services, these IPASS or refugee centers. Basically, when these
Speaker 3: are picked as places of accommodation by the government while
Speaker 3: these people's applications for refugee status they have to stay
Speaker 3: somewhere while these are being examined, you tend to get
Speaker 3: large protests in towns, villages, cities all over Ireland. Sometimes
Speaker 3: he's turned quite violent. Sometimes there's been more than thirty
Speaker 3: arson attacks on these centers. And I think what Connor
Speaker 3: McGregor ultimately wants is he wants to be able to
Speaker 3: tour the country attending these protests and having everyone queuing
Speaker 3: up to take selfies with him and telling him what
Speaker 3: a great hero he is, and I think I think
Speaker 3: that's he's ultimately yeah, yeah, that makes sense, and he's
Speaker 3: obviously he's going to grift off the back of it.
Speaker 3: The guy has money already. But it was so funny
Speaker 3: this multime multi millionaire being interviewed by Tucker Carlson saying
Speaker 3: we're going to start fundraising from my campaign. It's like,
Speaker 3: and you have more money than you could ever spend
Speaker 3: on political posters and buyers and adverts, you know.
Speaker 2: So it almost sounds like this is like a retirement
Speaker 2: plan for him, right, Like he's he's he's clearly past
Speaker 2: his prime in terms of the getting hit in the
Speaker 2: face thing for money, and now he's sort of moving
Speaker 2: on to like grifting off of these far right events
Speaker 2: and probably traveling just ahead of a series of riots,
Speaker 2: you know, Like that's that's it seems like what's in
Speaker 2: his future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean we've had some you know, at
Speaker 3: the time of an outbreak of rioting in Dublin anti
Speaker 3: imigrant violence which caused twenty million euros worth of damage
Speaker 3: and you know, trash the city center in November of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, Connor and I'm not saying he directly
Speaker 3: caused it. But he was tweeting at the same time
Speaker 3: Ireland is a war. Yeah, and around the same time
Speaker 3: he was tweeting like any property that's been taken over
Speaker 3: by foreigners evaporated. I think really his plan is to
Speaker 3: kind of if he can represent himself as a political
Speaker 3: martyr figure. He's hoping that it will overshadow the you know,
Speaker 3: his loss in the rape case, and he is of
Speaker 3: course appealing that and claiming he has new evidence and everything.
Speaker 3: But I think really that's what it's about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's talk a little bit about the way
Speaker 2: far right violence has looked in Ireland, like when these
Speaker 2: when these protests have really kicked off, because it seems
Speaker 2: like there's been this kind of fairly significant acceleration in
Speaker 2: the last three or four years in terms of it,
Speaker 2: particularly arsynotacks. And one thing that I was kind of
Speaker 2: struck by in your notes was the degree to which like,
Speaker 2: no one's been arrested for any of these yet.
Speaker 3: No, what happens. These started around twenty eighteen, so maybe
Speaker 3: just before COVID you had one or two of them,
Speaker 3: And my book went to print in December twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: so I stopped counting in December and by then I
Speaker 3: had over thirty arson attacks and there hasn't been a
Speaker 3: single conviction for any of them. So it's when usually
Speaker 3: former hotels that have been closed down with years are
Speaker 3: that the government moves in or some local person moves
Speaker 3: in to renovate them and use them as one of
Speaker 3: these centers. They'll just go up and smoke in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night. And I mean, we have already
Speaker 3: a very significant homeless problem here. I mean there's more
Speaker 3: than ten thousand people homeless in Dublin, both Irish and refugee,
Speaker 3: and I mean that probably sounds small to someone listening
Speaker 3: in a big American city. We thought we had a
Speaker 3: housing crisis when we had two thousand people homeless, and
Speaker 3: we got more than ten almost fifteen thousand people homeless now.
Speaker 3: And some of these the immigrant protesters have actually burnt
Speaker 3: down homeless accommodation designed for Irish homeless people in the
Speaker 3: mistake and belief that it was going to be used
Speaker 3: for refugees. Yeah, so that's their contribution to the housing crisis.
Speaker 3: You've also seen stuff like attacks on politicians' homes. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's just pickets, sometimes it's graffiti. In the case of
Speaker 3: Martin Kenny who's an opposition TD. He'd be from shin
Speaker 3: Fein party. Most of your listeners would probably have heard
Speaker 3: of an Irish Republican kind of left wing Irish Republican party.
Speaker 3: There was a refugee center plan for where he lived
Speaker 3: in Letram, and in fairness to him, he spoke out
Speaker 3: against it and he condemned what he called, quote the
Speaker 3: far right ideology that has been peddled in this country
Speaker 3: about asylum seekers. A week later he was sleeping in
Speaker 3: his house with his wife and kids, and his car
Speaker 3: in the driveway was petrol band was firebanned, and they
Speaker 3: came back a few months later and did it again
Speaker 3: and he was forced to move house. So arson attacks
Speaker 3: and politicians is something we haven't seen here since the
Speaker 3: original fascists around in the thirties as well. And this
Speaker 3: violence again, like as I said, there hasn't been a
Speaker 3: single arrest. And I give you a perfect example. The
Speaker 3: title for the book Burned Them Out is from an
Speaker 3: event that happened in February twenty twenty three. A guy
Speaker 3: stood up in front of a Garda police station here
Speaker 3: in Fingles, which would be a big suburb of Dublin,
Speaker 3: and there was a huge crowd of anti immigrant protesters around.
Speaker 3: One of them was waving a swastika flag, and this
Speaker 3: guy stood up in front of them with a megaphone
Speaker 3: in front of the police station said there is no
Speaker 3: point standing here outside the Garda station. The only way
Speaker 3: to deal with refugees is to burn them out. Go
Speaker 3: where they're fucking staying and burn down fucking cunts out.
Speaker 3: That's a direct quote. And of course, had he been
Speaker 3: threatening that violence against the guardy, had he been threatening
Speaker 3: that violence against a private business or a politician, I
Speaker 3: have no doubt he would have been arrested straight away.
Speaker 3: But this masked guy threatening violence in arson was just
Speaker 3: allowed to walk off, So there you go. They're certainly
Speaker 3: not on the ball. And we've even had during the
Speaker 3: COVID pandemic when there was a cop nearly killed that
Speaker 3: had a firework shot at him during one of these riots.
Speaker 3: The police commissioner in the South of Ireland, who's formerly
Speaker 3: a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a very controversial
Speaker 3: pro British police force that used to be in the North.
Speaker 3: This guy's our new police commissioner down South, and he
Speaker 3: tried to blame Republicans and the Ira for the violence
Speaker 3: and left wing extremists for the violence that was happening,
Speaker 3: and it was so clear that you know, Republicans, Irish
Speaker 3: Republicans have been on the streets opposing these people and
Speaker 3: their marches for years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Like the
Speaker 2: actual organizing of the anti fascist movement in Ireland, how
Speaker 2: is it kind of responded to the mean explosion in
Speaker 2: some cases a literal explosion in far right violence on
Speaker 2: the street, Like are you seeing it kind of reach
Speaker 2: like New Heights or does it kind of seem like
Speaker 2: it's unprepared for the moment that we're hitting, because, like
Speaker 2: I mean, in the United States, it's kind of hard
Speaker 2: to tell because things have changed so much since twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 2: Like a lot of the fascist violence that we're seeing
Speaker 2: is now explicitly from the state, and so there's just
Speaker 2: not a lot of on the ground. There's not the
Speaker 2: same kind of on the ground response to it that
Speaker 2: you were seeing when it was groups like the Proud Boys.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering kind of how things have changed since
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen in that regard in Ireland.
Speaker 3: I suppose, like if you think back as far as
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, Tommy Robinson, friend of the Pod, attempted to
Speaker 3: organize He's Anti Islamic, He's Islamophobic Pigida movement tried to
Speaker 3: launch a branch of it in Dublin and they couldn't
Speaker 3: even get to their rallying point because there were five
Speaker 3: thousand anti fascists on the street. They're against them, Irish Republicans,
Speaker 3: Irish language activists, Muslim community from Dublin were their LGBT
Speaker 3: activists and they couldn't even get to have their events.
Speaker 3: So up until COVID, certainly the anti fascists and groups
Speaker 3: like Antie Fascist Action Ireland were excellent at closing down
Speaker 3: small groups. You have a lot of people who are
Speaker 3: doing online research and exposing these people's sorted histories and
Speaker 3: their international connections. So that's one thing we're pretty good at.
Speaker 3: And what it turns out is that a lot of
Speaker 3: these guys, like one of the main proponents of the
Speaker 3: QAnon conspiracy theory here was a guy called Rowan Croft
Speaker 3: who just happened to be a former British Army soldier.
Speaker 3: So that doesn't fly too well in Ireland from somebody
Speaker 3: standing up saying I'm a great Irish patriot and I'm
Speaker 3: going to stop the foreigners, like, well, hang out a minute.
Speaker 3: When you chose to fight in the military, you chose
Speaker 3: to serve the Queen of England. So you have big
Speaker 3: national groups like Anti Fascist Action, you have groups like
Speaker 3: Anti Imperialist Action Ireland. Thankfully, as these protests have sprung
Speaker 3: up around the country, these far right anti immigrant protests,
Speaker 3: they have always been countered. And I'm thinking of in
Speaker 3: Cork City when the library was being attacked and it
Speaker 3: would actually had to be closed down for a period,
Speaker 3: and it was the first time that the Court Library
Speaker 3: had closed since the British burnt it down during our
Speaker 3: revolution in the nineteen twenties. And you know, you had
Speaker 3: a crowd of maybe one hundred far rights and people
Speaker 3: on the opposite side, the anti fascist scene kept building
Speaker 3: and building until by the end, and I was there
Speaker 3: for some of these protests, we had four or five
Speaker 3: hundred against them, and eventually we decided, right, we're going
Speaker 3: to stand and protect the library. And that happened in
Speaker 3: other places like Limerick, and it happened in Dublin, and
Speaker 3: eventually the far right said, well, we can't even get
Speaker 3: near the library to have our protest. Anymore, and they dissipated.
Speaker 3: One thing that's very interesting here is the optics, and
Speaker 3: sometimes on the lefts and on the anti fascist side
Speaker 3: were not as good at the imagery and the using
Speaker 3: new technology and stuff. And one thing you'll always see is,
Speaker 3: you know when anti fascists are mobilizing in Ireland, and
Speaker 3: you know they'll have often red flags, they'll have the
Speaker 3: Palestinian flag, they'll have Irish left wing republican flags like
Speaker 3: the plow and the stars, but often we don't carry
Speaker 3: our national flag the tricolor as much. And of course
Speaker 3: the far right love fetishizing flags and they have the green,
Speaker 3: white and orange Irish tricolor everywhere. Often of course these
Speaker 3: people are so ignorant they fly it wrong way around
Speaker 3: and it's the orange, white and green, so it's like
Speaker 3: vive lookout Divoir. It's the Ivory Coast flag if you
Speaker 3: have it the wrong way. But it's interesting in some
Speaker 3: of the clashes you'll have anti fascists with the Irish
Speaker 3: flag and fascists with the Irish flag. But I think
Speaker 3: just in terms of optics, it sometimes looks very bad
Speaker 3: when the far right are able to clip out a
Speaker 3: section of the opposing crowd and say, look, they have
Speaker 3: Palestinian flags, they have all other LGBT Pride flags, but
Speaker 3: they're not proud to be Irish. They don't have Irish flags,
Speaker 3: and there could be some Irish flags kipped off of
Speaker 3: the side. So these people in the far right are
Speaker 3: very good at using the history of Irish politics and
Speaker 3: resistance to Britain and using the imagery of that struggle
Speaker 3: and co opping it. And I think it's very important
Speaker 3: that we on the anti fascist side don't surrender any
Speaker 3: of that to them. And I mean the Irish flag
Speaker 3: what it stands for. The green bit is for Catholics
Speaker 3: who want independence, the orange bit is for Protestants who
Speaker 3: wanted to be linked with Britain, and the white was
Speaker 3: for peace and unity. So it's a flag that at
Speaker 3: it's for the essence, you know, talks about respecting a
Speaker 3: religious minority of people from a colonial or or immigrant
Speaker 3: background to arrived here a strangers. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I want to I want to continue this
Speaker 2: discussion and then close things out, but first we've got
Speaker 2: one more ad break.
Speaker 1: To do.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I kind of wanted to end this by
Speaker 2: looking into a little like what are you kind of
Speaker 2: looking for in the future, like in the in the
Speaker 2: kind of the the next year or two in in Ireland,
Speaker 2: like what are you what are you expecting? What do
Speaker 2: you what are you worried to see? Like, yeah, what
Speaker 2: what do you kind of see? Cut moving forward here.
Speaker 3: I think what's tending to happen now is genius out
Speaker 3: of the bottle and far right message is spreading. And
Speaker 3: you had this big far right rally of you know,
Speaker 3: ten thousand and five to ten thousand people at its
Speaker 3: maximum that came down O'Connell Street in Dublin, the main
Speaker 3: street in the capital city. It's not huge by political standards,
Speaker 3: but it is worrying. I think we're going to see
Speaker 3: that grow. And I think on the left sometimes and
Speaker 3: particularly in the trade union movement, we have this idea
Speaker 3: that all this is a flash in the pan and
Speaker 3: will organize a few big rallies and they'll go away.
Speaker 3: They won't. This is like the National Front in Britain.
Speaker 3: You know, these people are going to be around haunting
Speaker 3: Irish politics for least a decade, and then they're never
Speaker 3: going to fully go away. They'll pop back up again.
Speaker 3: I think we're going to continue to see the regional protests,
Speaker 3: and I think as well, we have started seeing the
Speaker 3: Irish government, which is a coalition of two center right parties,
Speaker 3: kind of tighten up their own language on immigration. We're
Speaker 3: starting seeing an increasing number of deportations as well. The
Speaker 3: police really still aren't fully on the ball. They are,
Speaker 3: of course, being given new policing powers by the government
Speaker 3: to deal with violent protests that are being issued with
Speaker 3: things like, you know, new non legal technologies, you know,
Speaker 3: pepper splay and extra equipment and body cameras that they
Speaker 3: wouldn't have had before. But of course the classic thing
Speaker 3: is that these will always be used as much, if
Speaker 3: not more so against the left and the anti fascist
Speaker 3: side than they will be against the racists. Thankfully, these groups,
Speaker 3: you know, they're all in fighting with each other. They
Speaker 3: have tried to do like electoral packs and to plan
Speaker 3: out political strategies, but thankfully they're all so fixated on
Speaker 3: wanting to be the furire that never really works. But
Speaker 3: what I was going to say a minute ago is
Speaker 3: that that ten thousand people, if there were that many
Speaker 3: on the street, not everyone in that is far right.
Speaker 3: You know, Some of the people are from working class
Speaker 3: communities that have been betrayed by the government and have
Speaker 3: been abandoned, and they are starting they've just fallen down
Speaker 3: the rabbit hole. And I can think of an incident.
Speaker 3: I was in the gym a couple of months back
Speaker 3: and just sitting there, and there were a few guys.
Speaker 3: Didn't know they were around chatting. Obviously we were in
Speaker 3: the gym. None of us are in the sauna, none
Speaker 3: of us have many clothes on, and none of these
Speaker 3: guys had like questionable far right tattoos or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But the conversation suddenly started about immigrants and how they
Speaker 3: were bringing crime, and how they were bringing disease and
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff. And I listened to it
Speaker 3: for a minute or two and I just stood up
Speaker 3: and said, lads, everything you are saying about immigrants in
Speaker 3: Ireland now is what was said about Irish people in
Speaker 3: America in the nineteenth century and in England in like
Speaker 3: the seventies and the eighties. So I think it's important
Speaker 3: that even in our workplaces on public transport, when we
Speaker 3: hear it this kind of talk, we call it out
Speaker 3: if it's a friend of ours who's fallen down the
Speaker 3: rabbit hole into these conspiracies. Because that's how their message
Speaker 3: is spreading now. Often when you see people involved in
Speaker 3: some of this anti immigrant rioting, they have no history
Speaker 3: of involvement in far right groups, but it's that message
Speaker 3: has spread beyond those groups thanks to our friends in
Speaker 3: the nerd Reich. And I think if we have a
Speaker 3: work colleague or a brother or somebody who falls into that,
Speaker 3: but we don't abandon them, we don't immediately start calling
Speaker 3: them a Nazi and whatever that, we try to talk
Speaker 3: top them round to it. But look, I suppose the
Speaker 3: thing is there is hope, and everywhere these people have organized,
Speaker 3: there have been anti fascists there to meet them. I
Speaker 3: think we need to get better at planning that in
Speaker 3: a national scale. Of course, on the left you always
Speaker 3: get this factionalism and in fighting. I'm not standing beside him,
Speaker 3: he's tratskis well, I don't like his views in the north.
Speaker 3: Whatever we need to kind of say, as long as
Speaker 3: we're fighting with each other, the fascists are winning. Thankfully,
Speaker 3: none of these people have ever gotten more than two
Speaker 3: percent in an election. They have nobody elected in our
Speaker 3: national parliament. They only have four or five, maybe six
Speaker 3: councilors elected in the entire of the southern part of
Speaker 3: the country and that's out of nine hundred and forty
Speaker 3: nine councilors. But we can't just laugh at them. We
Speaker 3: can't worry the CITA threat because when the Nazis stood
Speaker 3: for election the first time, I think they only got
Speaker 3: two percent of the vote as well, and look how
Speaker 3: that turned out.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and as we've seen in the US, like
Speaker 2: what starts as this tiny, tiny number of freaks and
Speaker 2: weirdos can wind up being a mass movement if it's
Speaker 2: not you know, cauterized, right, Like that's and that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of the challenge in front of Irish anti fascists
Speaker 2: right now is ensuring that that quarterization happens absolutely.
Speaker 3: And I mean, look, if you think of this, you know,
Speaker 3: Elon Musks tip McGregor for president and we're all laughing
Speaker 3: at it now, but you know, it wouldn't be the
Speaker 3: first time that Elon Musk has tipped a reality TV
Speaker 3: star with a questionable sexual and criminal history for high
Speaker 3: office and they got.
Speaker 2: There, right yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Do you want to have anything you want to plug
Speaker 2: here at the end of the episode, I mean your
Speaker 2: book obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, obviously I'm not. I'm not on ex Twitter
Speaker 3: anything like that. I don't have a substack or anything.
Speaker 3: So just the main thing I want to plug is
Speaker 3: my book Burned Them Out, a history of fascism and
Speaker 3: the far right in Ireland. It is published by Bloomsbury
Speaker 3: head of Zeus, so it should be available in any
Speaker 3: to order via any bookshop. Obviously. If you are going
Speaker 3: to support a bookshop, support a small independent one Robert
Speaker 3: and Barnes and Noble. And if you are buying it online,
Speaker 3: obviously buy it from direct from the publishers Bloomsbury. Don't
Speaker 3: buy it off Amazon if you can, because God knows
Speaker 3: Jeff Besis has enough money.
Speaker 2: Yeah certainly, bloody Well, thank you so much. And yeah
Speaker 2: that's that's our episode. Everybody come back tomorrow and we'll
Speaker 2: have another one.
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