By Nikhil Nalam
On the 23rd of November, Dublin experienced the worst unrest the city had seen in decades following the stabbing of three children and an adult woman outside a school by an immigrant. Police cars were set alight, shops were looted, and violent rioters chanting anti-immigration slogans flooded the streets as the hold that far-right politics had taken on long-peaceful Ireland revealed itself. So what exactly sparked such a fiery movement in a country where such beliefs had been dormant for so long?
To some extent, the emergence of extremism in Ireland mirrors the development of similar ideas across the rest of Europe. The continent’s far-right parties, initially united by their opposition to Islam and the EU, have gained new causes to fuel their agenda. Minority rights and the ‘unfair’ sacrifices that governments demand to solve the climate crisis have fueled a culture war that creates evident political polarisation, showcased by the graphs below comparing the votes European centre-left and radical-right parties receive.
In Ireland specifically, the recent appeal of far-right ideology mainly stems from one central issue: immigration and the impact it has on the country’s ongoing housing crisis. Earlier this year, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar estimated that there was a shortage of 250,000 rental properties, with a November report showing that average rent rates had risen by 18% since the last quarter. The government’s setup of transitional shelters for refugees last year created significant hatred towards immigrants. In 2022 alone, Ireland saw 307 anti-immigration protests as the slogan “Ireland is full” – purporting that immigrants were responsible for the country’s housing gap – trended on all social media platforms. In an interview with Euronews, Nial McConnel, leader of the Irish Nationalist Catholic Party, claimed that “no restrictions on immigration” resulted in the “indigenous Irish being racially discriminated against, alleging that migrants receive ‘preferential treatment for social housing’.
The baseless nature of such accusations – considering the fact that these temporary accommodation centres were never going to become private housing – doesn’t seem to matter to the country’s far-right demographic. To them, immigrants provide a scapegoat for the cost-of-living crisis, exacerbated by factors like Russia’s war on Ukraine and post-pandemic recovery, that is currently rocking the entirety of Europe. Furthermore, the current administration’s alleged inefficacy when it comes to managing this crisis is only fueling dissatisfaction. Among the bigoted chants at the unrest a few weeks ago, one was directed at Varadkar, as protestors repeated, “Leo, Leo, Leo, out, out, out”.
While Ireland has long been acclaimed as a country without a major far-right party, unlike many other European states such as Italy, Switzerland, and Hungary, the growing dissatisfaction among these extremists is a harrowing indication that without a proper addressal, this could change. Such narratives need to be countered before they evolve into something even more dangerous.
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