Last night on RTÉ’s Upfront, the intelligence correspondence with the Sunday Times, John Mooney, claimed that amongst opposition to immigration we were “watching the evolution of a new terrorist movement” in Ireland and “across America and Europe as well”.
Mooney offered no evidence for his extraordinary claim, but the timing of his use of a highly-charged word like ‘terrorism’ amidst rising passions on the migrant issue is very interesting – especially given that a similar wild claim was made in recent days by the new Mayor of Derry, whose garbled justification for the use of the term ‘domestic terrorist’ was that it was used to describe those who were ‘mobilising’ and ‘dividing communities’.
These comments were made in the context of public upset about immigration and in the context of scenes from last Thursday night in Newtownmountkennedy, a small village in Co Wicklow, which have now been watched millions of times on social media.
The footage is like something from a charged scene in the film Minority Report: Gardaí in full riot gear against a background of burning pallets on a dark country road, charging at protesters without warning, smacking shields with batons, releasing pepper spray on local people amidst shouting, crying, and confusion.
It was a vivid illustration that the government’s immigration policy is causing chaos and deep-seated anger across the country, particularly in regard to its insistence that migrant centres be forced on small villages – mostly on communities already chaffing at the shameful neglect of successive governments who seem wholly uninterested in rural Ireland except as a dumping ground for a crisis created by the authorities.
Other footage from the night which seems to have mostly gone unnoticed shows the riot squad following the protesters down into the village, shouting at people to ‘get back’, even though Gardaí had now come a kilometre from the protest site at the River Lodge. At one point, people in a housing estate who had come out to see what the commotion was about were roared at by a full-kitted member of the riot squad to “move back from here now” – a direction he said was given under Section 8 of the Public Order Act.
“We live here,” the residents respond. They are then pepper-sprayed, and are heard screaming in pain. It was the closest thing to martial law in modern times I’ve seen in this country. And just like the riot squad’s charge and the use of force to batter people away from their protest site, it had a purpose.
Ireland 📍🇮🇪
Imagine walking outside the door to see this.
It Happened last night in #Newtownmountkennedy #IrelandisFull #IrelandBelongsToTheIrish #IrelandOptsOut pic.twitter.com/F492EHFqbR
— JAM€S (@LionChief101) April 26, 2024
It’s purpose is to terrify and brutalise people involved in peaceful protest so that they will give up their opposition to migrants centres being forced into communities. “Look what happened in Newtown, it’ll happen to you too,” is the message that is being sent to people everywhere. “You’ll be pepper-sprayed, beaten, bullied and demonised, and we’ll force this through anyway. You can’t stand against us.”
Last Friday morning, almost all of the national media dutifully played their part in sending that message. The people of Newtown were a “mob” who “violently attacked” Gardaí, they said. Most media outlets made no use of the video footage from Thursday night which showed two incontrovertible facts:
Firstly, a decision had been made to bring vans of the riot squad down to this small village long before any trouble kicked off. This had been a peaceful protest for weeks. Upping the ante was about forcing through the work on the migrant centre, not a reaction to the behaviour of local people. As the video below clearly shows, the riot squad came piling out of their vans and almost immediately charged at the protesters. Until that charge, witnesses say that there had been just one incident of a teenager throwing part of a pallet at Gardaí. After the riot squad’s indiscriminate pepper-spraying that all changed.
Secondly, the use of pepper spray seemed to far exceed the requirement to do so. My colleague, Fatima Gunning, was pepper-sprayed in the face although she had repeatedly identified herself to the advancing riot squad as a journalist.
For almost two years now, the media, NGOs, and the government have worked hand-in-hand to demonise anyone criticising our chaotic, dangerous immigration policy.
TDs who raised questions of Ministers were shouted down and accused of being a risk to social cohesion; local people in East Wall and Ballymun were labelled racist and far-right – and sneered at by the establishment class who wouldn’t have a migrant centre within an asses roar of their own expensively renovated suburban homes.
Most notably, those left heartbroken by the victims of violent migrant crime had their comments described as “incitement to hatred” by a senior journalist who said that “unhelpful remarks” on the issue should not be reported.
It’s all very well choreographed, in that the media dutifully, repeatedly, faithfully reported the name-calling and the demonization which came from NGOs, TDs, and others to silence opposition. The locals, the Irish people who have lived here for generations, were usually denied access to the airwaves to answer.
It’s a tactic that has often proved successful, of course. No-one likes to be accused of being ‘far-right’, or be painted as a dangerous agitator or a racist person, even though polling repeatedly shows that a huge majority of people believe we have taken in too many migrants.
But, despite all that, over the past year in particular, the government has been reduced to playing ‘whack a mole’ with its own people – using Garda force to batter aside local protesters in village after village, community after community. This cannot be sustained.
It’s important to remember that in the normal course of events, local people do have a say on whether large numbers of men can be brought into an area to be housed in renovated or purpose built accommodation. It’s one of the reasons why planning permission exists, and the suspension of planning permission for asylum purposes is wide open to abuse, as is the decision to throw lavish sums around to developers and hoteliers eager to make a quick buck from an immigration system long bursting at the seams.
But if Simon Harris and Roderic O’Gorman think that they can successfully convince middle Ireland that people like this young woman – visibly upset after seeing her father-in-law hurt by the force of the riot squad in Newtown and left lying on the ground – represents the ‘far-right’, they are wrong. He spent a night and a day in the hospital, she said, adding that she was traumatised by what had happened.
A message for you @SimonHarrisTD 👇 #Newtownmountkennedy #IrelandOptOut pic.twitter.com/3oiTsmH5tZ
— Mandy Gall (@TheMandyGall) April 29, 2024
Mooney claimed that some of the protesters in Newtown had a “complete different game plan” from the ordinary locals. Perhaps he has information that is not known to the rest of us, but his claims, just like the charges of racism before, will be used as another means of attacking, not just the tens of thousands of people now protesting the imposition of migrant centres across the country, but also the silent but seething majority who want a cap on immigration, and want it now.
There will always be a small minority who may throw stones at Gardaí, and issue unacceptable threats to TDs. But the media’s focus on that aspect is used to distract and derail the debate from the real issue at hand: that immigration is out of control and harming the country.
The past two days have revealed – yet again – that the government is in complete disarray on this issue. They don’t appear to know how 80% of asylum claimants enter the country. A report in the Sunday Times indicates that the situation may be about to get even worse: “Thousands more immigrants are entering the state using tourist and student visas to work in the black economy, placing further stress on housing, health, education and public services. The intelligence services suspect the true number of people arriving here is between 50,000 and 70,000 annually,” it says. John Mooney is a co-author.
Against all of that chaos and public upset is the government absolute refusal to put a cap on the number of immigrants entering the country. Instead, its likely they will up the ante by accusing upset protesters and enraged voters of being aligned to terrorists if they keep opposing the tremendous harm being done to small towns, local businesses, and public wellbeing.
But the footage from last week in Newtown speaks for itself. The people who were left terrified, and the people who endured unacceptable force and police brutality, were Irish people whose right to be heard and to be listened to was trampled on by a government determined to force through immigration by the tip of a baton.
The defiant marches, swelling to a crowd of ordinary people which packed the village. that followed on Saturday and Sunday in Newtown are an indication that the government may not succeed.
*This article was amended on 01/05/2024 at 8.30am