The Far Right in Ireland

The far right in Ireland comprises political groups, loose networks, media projects and content-producing influencers. It is not a homogeneous movement. There are internal contradictions and conflicts. Different groups and individuals often compete over audiences, followers and financial donations. Taking all the moving parts together though, the far right aim to sow division and hate between people, to drive Ireland’s progress backwards and to exert more power over all of us.
Coordinated far right activity remerged in Ireland in the context of austerity following the 2007 financial crash and amid plummeting trust in public institutions and traditional media. Significant losses on the right to same-sex marriage and reproductive health care bookended generations of theocratic social policy, combined with a vacuum left after a successful national water charges movement demobilised, saw emergent strands of far right activism from 2015 on. The objective of far right activity is to shift the centre ground to the right and the right to the far right while disrupting the left and all progressive social movements and campaigns.
Previous attempts to do this have petered out. Groups such as Identify Ireland and Pegida Ireland failed in no small part due to community interventions to highlight and reject hate organising. Other groups like The National Party and The Irish Freedom Party have demonstrated a capacity to maintain an active presence in Ireland, despite repeated electoral failures and cyclical internal divisions.
“The objective of far right activity is to shift the centre ground to the right and the right to the far right while disrupting the left and all progressive social movements and campaigns”
Alongside political groups, there has been a growth of far right ‘influencers’. These influencers, predominately men, maintain high visibility profiles across a range of social media platforms by persistently pushing out content, seeking to build their brand, audiences and payments. Almost all have been kicked off large platforms Facebook and YouTube and have moved to hate-friendly online ‘alt-tech’ spaces like Telegram. The move to unregulated online space by audiences has grown exponentially since the beginning of the pandemic when many people moved online. Far right activity over the last couple of years has targeted numerous communities living in Ireland.
“They’re motivated by deeply conservative and reactionary ideas about race, religion, hierarchy, nationalism, gender roles, and science. Underpinning far right activity are three key foundational concepts, each mutually reinforcing the other.”
What They Believe

Inequality is good
Most people believe inequality and injustice is something to work against, and much-needed work to benefit us all. The far right sees inequality as a natural state of things and a necessary part of the world they want to usher in. Instead of working together to make caring communities, and jobs with fair incomes that can provide stable and secure futures, they take legitimate anger and anxiety about the future and whip it up into hate-filled ideas about who is to blame and use it to harass and exclude people or groups in our communities.

Being ‘pure’ is good
In order to convince people that inequality is normal and needed, the far right work hard to try to create and reinforce in-groups and out-groups among us. Often this involves invoking a fictional mythical past in Ireland – one which never existed- which those on the far right claim they want to return to, and that they themselves embody, as people and groups. Those who disagree are ‘traitors’ or ‘unpure’ or ‘deviants.’ This framework neither seeks or allows for compromise. This paranoid division of people into either ‘pure’ or demonised categories serves a specific function. To normalise any and all blame, hate, vitriol and violence directed towards those of us, or our family members and friends, our co-workers or neighbors targeted by the far right.

Authoritarianism and violence are good
Authoritarianism is used to cultivate personal attitudes and behaviours from those participating in far right movements. Submission to, and uncritical thinking about, leadership is demanded from participants, exemplified in the ‘permanent leadership’ of most far right political organisations in Ireland.
Having commanded the obedience of followers, and have exploited fears and whipped up hate, far right aggression and violence can be targeted upon any specific ‘outgroup’ depending on the specific situation. We see and experience this as physical, verbal or social violence directed towards anyone or group that far right movements deem their targets
Who they target
Far right movements tend to jump opportunistically from issue to issue, but broadly agitate on themes that are core to their worldview.
These include, but are not limited to

Consistent across all these issues is opposition to progressive civil society groups, and community and grassroots campaigns. Individuals and advocacy organisations are regularly targeted for orchestrated abuse and intimidation. Over the last couple of years increasing vitriol and attacks on media workers and journalists.
The far right seeks to undo the progress made in Ireland towards a more equitable society because of a fundamental belief in inequality, their own superiority and a commitment to authoritarian aggression to achieve their goals. Far right harassment of already vulnerable people and marginalised communities occurs online, in our communities and workplaces. Campaigns of abuse against LGBTQ+ people, asylum seekers, religious communities and ethnic minorities range from online insults, threats to safety and life, doxxing (public sharing of addresses and workplaces in an effort to intimidate) to aggressive protests and physical attacks at people’s homes, businesses, workplaces and public events.
How they work
The far right tries to convince, recruit and mobilise people by exploiting feelings and experiences of trauma, hardship, fear and distrust. They present simplistic solutions to complex problems that in no way address the political and economic root causes of inequality and insecurity that eat away at our communities. Far right groups, content producers and activists work to constantly replenish feelings of fear and disgust in their audiences towards targeted groups. This is a deliberate process of dehumanising and vilifying a person or a group that invariably encourages and normalises violence against individuals and communities targeted by the far right.

We see the use of wedge issues to exacerbate existing crises to position themselves as the saviour of the “nation” and the working class simultaneously. This is present in far right attempts to whip up anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment across the country, by jumping into local communities and trying to lead or steer street mobilisations and public meetings.
HACC DIRECTORY
Understand the Far Right with these curated resources