Why are Irish taxpayers funding an NGO which has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood?

One of the advocacy NGOs that is regularly referred to as some kind of authority on racism and the far right and what-not is the Irish Network Against Racism.  The group publishes an annual report based on anecdotal online evidence of racism which is also referred to as a source on matters such as “hate crime.”

One of the authors of their report on racism for 2022 is Dr. Lucy Michael, a former employee of the British Home Office. The foreword by Director Shane O’Curry strikes the usual note with wild claims that the Irish state is ignoring “societal racism” and the threat of the far right “at our peril”. 

(Given that we are dealing with one of the gatekeepers of factual accuracy and seeing that Michael herself is one of the self-appointed “disinformation” Tsarinas, I feel obliged to make a pedantic point. O’Curry claims in the report that East Wall was the birthplace of playwright Seán Ó Casey.  It wasn’t.  O’Casey was born on Dorset Street. I trust that this misleading error will be corrected. Fact Check: No charge, comrades.)

The meat of the report claims that there were 600 reports of racism in the state in 2022. Of the 136 reports of “hate speech,” 96 took place online.  The INAR is an enthusiastic supporter of the Hate Speech Bill and even went to the bother of collecting signatures in its favour. 

They also explain why their figures are so radically out of sync with the official Garda statistics. The official Garda report shows that of 389 incidents of possible “hate crime,” not all of which are racially connected, just 11 had been processed as actual crimes by the end of September 2022.  

The INAR explain this – although they do not compare their figure to the Garda one – on the basis that the iReport operated by themselves records subjective complaints about anything from perceived discrimination to “far right activity” and graffiti.  They also record as separate incidents more than one report from the same person.

INAR’s main references to the Gardaí in the report are of a complaining nature; complaining that people do not report incidents to the force; that the Gardaí are irresponsive or even hostile to those who do; and, that the Gardaí themselves are responsible for some of the incidents of discrimination collated by the INAR.  

I think most people would prefer that the Gardaí be left to deal with crimes, including racially motivated actual crimes, than that we be expected to maintain a sort of shadow leftie Special Branch that appears to serve no worthwhile purpose that would justify the large amounts of money it has received from the taxpayer. 

Apart from all of that, I am not sure that monitoring other people’s social media and reporting them to the Gardaí is what taxpayer funding is meant to be spent on.  Few people on the state payroll, which is the de facto status of most employees of advocacy NGOs, get paid to pursue their hobbies or eccentricities on the Man’s tab.

INAR is supported by Pobal who handed over €88,730 in taxpayers’ funding in 2022, with a total income recorded for the organisation of €270,457 in that year. 

The ENAR received €225,780 from Pobal in 2017/2018, which was a big jump from the just over €23,000 which they trousered in 2014. 

The accounts from European Network Against Racism show they are largely dependent on the European Commission and a smorgasbord of wealthy foundations; the Soros Open Society, Sigrid Rausing, and Joseph Rowntree.  

In common with almost every single Irish NGO, donations and membership fees account for a paltry part of ENAR income, just 1.56% in 2022. It ought also be borne in mind that most of their “members” are other taxpayer funded NGOs.  Which of course simply means that public funds are being recycled through the same incestuous network.

However, not only is it apparent that the ENAR and its Irish section are leftist activist groups, but they have attracted criticism for other political connections.

In 2015, Belgian MEP Frederique Ries, who is a member of the ALDE parliamentary grouping that includes Fianna Fáil, questioned whether the EU ought to be funding ENAR on the basis that its Belgian section had been reported to be linked to the extremist Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. 

It turned out that one of the directors of ENAR, Michael Privot, had indeed for many years been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He claims to have left MB only in 2012.  Far from this causing the ENAR to be defunded by the Commission or any outrage on the part of the INAR, they invited him to Dublin in 2016 to speak on “Understanding and Responding to Islamophobia in Ireland”. 

Privot’s association with the Muslim Brotherhood, which shares the same origins as Hamas and is also largely funded by the despotic Qatar state, was again raised at the Parliament in 2021 when his ongoing senior involvement with ENAR was referenced with regard to Privot’s alleged facilitation of the affiliation of MB linked organisations to the ENAR. 

For those who may be unaware, Muslim Brotherhood espouses the extremist Salafist conception of Islam which supports the imposition of Sharia law in all countries where there is a substantial Muslim population. Sharia law negates almost every conception of what even naive lefties understand as European legal traditions. 

Ironically, the Muslim Brotherhood is notable in France for its opposition to the assimilationist multiculturalism favoured by the Pollyanna Left.  Useful idiots, as the same people were to the Communists. 

Would that we had centre right politicians like Frederique Ries in our government who were similarly diligent about who is given state funding to pursue an ideological agenda hostile to anything remotely resembling that of what was once European Christian, or indeed Social, Democracy.