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IN THE LAST six months, far right protests against asylum seekers have become more frequent, with greater numbers attending and have featured increasingly extreme rhetoric.
These activities have, particularly in the last year, started to present a significant challenge for the gardaí who are policing them, as the number of protests in Dublin alone has risen dramatically in the first month of this year compared to last.
The participants in these rallies have included members of already established far right groups, local residents, and what anti-racism demonstrators call “outside agitators” who recruit fellow protestors via social media.
These agitators are often involved in organising and promoting rallies outside of buildings housing asylum seekers through their social media and Telegram accounts, and several stand to make money from their involvement.
Ciarán O’Connor from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue said that far right activists have long been at the forefront of using new technologies to reach their audience, and monetising their content.
“When it comes to crowdfunding platforms, content creator platforms, and streaming platforms with inbuilt monetisation tools – like YouTube’s super chat feature – all of these features have long been used and abused by a broad range of figures.
“Most recently, the various people who are now at the forefront of the current wave of anti-asylum seeker mobilisation in Ireland are finding new ways to monetise their involvement,” O’ Connor stated.
The researcher has previously studied how different online platforms have been used by extremists in the US, and he says Ireland is now seeing similar tactics being deployed, although not generating the same levels of profit at present.
The money at play is currently very small in Ireland – but O’Connor says the American experience shows how larger revenues can be garnered through livestreamed content.
On Wednesday night, during a protest that saw hundreds gathered to protest in Finglas and eventually surrounded the garda station, Philip Dwyer, a self-styled ‘citizen journalist’ who regularly live-streams these events, swapped his usual role behind the camera and took the mic to make a speech.
In his speech, he told the crowd that he was speaking out against “the complete destruction of our society as we know it”, and stated that he wants to see the State “stop the free accommodation, fly them back to wherever the hell they came from”, in reference to migrants.
However, he also touted his Telegram account and his YouTube channel, promising that he is “highlighting the madness in this country” on both platforms.
Dwyer stands to profit from both his YouTube account – which has over 12,000 followers – and his Telegram chat community, which has over 2,000 members. He also links a PayPal account under all of his livestreams.
The Dublin man also makes money from his YouTube livestreams through the platform’s ‘superchat’ feature – which allows viewers to have their comments pinned to the top of the live chat feed under the video for a fee.
The 91-minute livestream Dwyer posted from Tallaght this week – which has over 23,000 views – saw followers donate €197, £20 and five US dollars.
While monetised YouTube livestreams of protests make up one avenue for profit, another comes from Dwyer’s Subscribestar account, where he offers “exclusive digital content” in return for a monthly fee.
There are different subscription fees on Dwyer’s page, ranging from $1 to $50 – it is not clear how many subscribers he has on the platform, but he regularly reposts it to his Telegram account, where he also informs people of future anti-asylum seeker protests.
When Dwyer gave his speech in Finglas he urged the protestors to “remain peaceful”, warning “they want you to react badly, don’t fall into their trap”.
Another man with his face partially covered speaking at the event carried a different message.
“Burn them out of it. There is no point standing here outside of the garda station, you have to go to where these cunts are staying and burn them out if it,” he yelled into the microphone.
“Great to see the people of Finglas rising,” Dwyer tweeted after the protest.
The Tallaght man ran in the national election of 2020 for the National Party in Dublin South West. At the time he stated that he was a Property Manager in the area.
His political message centred around “promoting Irish heritage and culture”.
During his livestream at the Finglas protest, he seemed confident in the reach and influence of the social media platform he has built and profited from.
He encouraged a local man called Leon, who said he’d organised the event, to come on camera, assuring him that Leo Varadkar would be watching.
“We are the frightened people of Finglas,” Leon said. “They are getting shoved in everywhere and they are unvetted,” he added, stating that the protests he is involved in are always “peaceful”.
Dwyer told him that Irish people aren’t violent, “but that doesn’t mean we won’t defend ourselves”.
Like other right-wing influencers, Dwyer regularly shares reports of alleged incidents involving migrants, or the persecution of protestors, often without any evidence.
During his livestream on Wednesday, Dwyer said he’d been informed that Gardaí had “got violent” with protesters attempting to blockade the entrance of a construction site in Macroom where modular homes are being built.
On Thursday, he told his Telegram subscribers that construction workers at the site had “assaulted” a man and woman who were there to protest. One commenter said that they would have knocked one of the workers out, while another suggested going to protest at the homes of the people who owned the construction company.
A video attached to the post showed a man and a woman running up behind a lorry being backed up at the site, yelling “get your hands off me”, “get the law” and “get the photograph lads”, although no one appeared to attack anyone in the footage and no assault complaint has been made to gardaí.
The man filming the incident said “hit me” to one of the construction workers repeatedly, while the worker replied “why would I bother?”.
Gardaí confirmed that they “have attended ongoing protests in the Macroom area” and that “local policing arrangements were put in place to ensure the safety of those present and minimal disruption to other members of the public”.
They are not investigating any assault against protesters at the site. Dwyer has not returned requests from The Journal for comment.
Derek Blighe is a Cork-based far right social media personality who also bills himself as a ‘citizen journalist’.
His following is even bigger than Dwyer’s, as he has over 4,300 Telegram subscribers, and thousands more followers on other social media platforms.
He leads a group called Ireland First, which describes itself as a nationalist party, but has not previously been registered as a formal political party. However, just on Friday, the registrar of political parties in Ireland proposed “to approve the application for registration in the Register of Political Parties of ‘Ireland First’, having its headquarters at Irishtown, Tullaghan, Mullingar, Westmeath, to contest Dáil and Local Elections”.
Blighe travels up and down the country to places where asylum seekers are living, claiming that Ireland is “under a sustained assault” from “unvettable fake refugees”.
He refers to direct provision centres as “plantations”, and “people trafficking centres”, and often alleges that the asylum seeker population in Ireland are disproportionately responsible for rape and sexual assault incidents.
He has led and attended protests in Fermoy, Dublin, Kerry and Wicklow, and he recently turned up at the protests in Lismore, county Waterford.
Blighe has also found a way to monetise these endeavours. On 21 January, he wrote to his Telegram group, “Things are getting hairy out there, we need to upgrade security as our houses and families are now being threatened.
We also need decent film and sound equipment as phones aren’t cutting it long term. Please consider making a small donation to help us to do this work for Ireland.
Blighe linked a PayPal account to the post, as well as his Givesendgo fundraising page, where he has already raised over €4,000.
Aside from telling followers that he needs security and is not safe, he also repeatedly tells them that they are not safe due to the threat he believes asylum seekers pose.
Encouraging people to protest outside of a school in Drimnagh earlier this month on the Mourne Road, which was temporarily used to house asylum seekers while it was closed over the Christmas holidays, Blighe said “Get down to the school tonight, you could have some very dangerous people inside the building”.
He further claimed that school children would be sharing the building with migrants and were therefore at risk of harm. The Department of Integration clarified that this was not the case.
Blighe is also adept at networking with influencers in other spaces. He has previously asked his followers to donate to other people, including Irish content creator Dave Cullen – a man who has 201,000 subscribers on his YouTube account. Cullen makes videos about TV and film on a new YouTube channel, after he was kicked off the platform previously for violating its rules – but he also runs a BitChute channel where he posts videos with titles like ‘Mass Immigration and the deliberate destruction of our nations’.
Cullen is not involved in organising protests, but he evidently shares an audience with Blighe and they advertise each other’s work. Blighe has posted links to Cullen’s PayPal, a site where people can buy mugs from him, and a site where they can donate to him through cryptocurrency, while Cullen has praised Blighe’s “journalism”.
Cullen speaks extensively about ‘the great replacement’, which is an ethno-nationalist theory which claims that an ‘indigenous’ European population is being replaced by non-European immigrants. In one of the videos in which Cullen discusses this theory, he commends the ‘investigative journalism’ of Blighe, Dwyer, and Stephen Kerr of The Irish Inquiry, and claims that they are showing “what is happening” in centres for asylum seekers in Ireland.
Cullen goes on to say that he believes that “our countries are being planted” and that wars are being used as an excuse to “flood” Ireland with refugees. He also states that the birth rate in Ireland is below the “replacement rate”, and that feminism has destroyed the family unit by encouraging women to go into the workplace in “their most fertile years”.
Blighe has been asked by The Journal for comment.
Speaking again about the difference in scale between activities in Ireland and the US, Ciarán O’Connor of the ISD said, “I have seen livestream videos in the US make up to $10,000, and the main way they do that is through the superchat feature.
2) There are more than a few comments, like these ones, advocating for the use of petrol/diesel, i.e. using fire & violence, to deal with asylum seekers. Rhetoric is becoming more hostile, here's evidence.
— Ciarán O'Connor (@ciaranoconnor) January 31, 2023
YT channel owners keep about 70% of these amounts, YT keeps about 30%. pic.twitter.com/0fZWSwT8gn
“In a recent livestream video from outside Citywest in Dublin, I saw people paying to pin comments that said “petrol’ and “diesel” – and what they are suggesting is that is how the protestors should ‘deal’ with the asylum seekers inside. That is highly worrying,” O’Connor said.
Creators keep 70% of the money made through the superchat feature, while YouTube retains a 30% cut.
O’Connor stated that many of the comments by followers of these videos actually violate the platform’s terms of use.
“Anyone is free to use social media platforms, and anyone is free to monetise their content. But they aren’t free to incite violence and hatred, and in doing so violate a platform’s terms of use.”
O’Connor said that another worrying aspect of how these platforms are being utilised is how extremists from one country can fund the work of extremists in others. “These systems are enabling that kind of activity.”
Ireland’s foreign policy is to import the entire world.
@common sense: 2050 were easily a minority. Lefties will come at you for saying this, calling you all sort of names, but they will never say you’re wrong. Look at the trajectory of the decline of the share in population of ethnic Irish. Down and down and down year on year.
@Cole Palmer: I say you’re wrong. So I call on you to back up your prediction of being outnumbered by 2050 – what exactly is your starting point? what are your assumptions about the future? Highlight the variables? Any risks to your forecast that you might want to highlight. I look forward to your response
@Cole Palmer: You’re wrong!
@Kevin Kerr:” Irish could be minority ethnic group here by 2050 – professor
Ireland’s native population could be in a minority by the middle of this century”
That was an Irish Times headline in 2006, when the % of immigrants in Ireland was a lot lower. Now, I fully expect you to spin that into some shixx that sounds good in your own head, seeing as you’re a fan of young male migrants.
@Finian McG: ah yes, a prediction based on unpublished UK research which states that people of Chinese origin will be the largest group. Nearly 20 years later, let me know how this prediction is going
@Kevin Kerr: did you miss the ’2050′ bit you thick eejit?
@Finian McG: no, dopey, my point is that, 20 years into this 44 year prediction, how has the mix changed? Are ethnic Irish on track to become a minority by 2050? No they’re not. There are 60,000 Chinese nationals living in Ireland – 87% of our population is either Irish (77%) or other white (10%)
@Kevin Kerr: we could have 400000 Ukrainians next year
@Kevin Kerr: I never said white, I said ethnic Irish. Our share of the population is dropping year on year. Check the consensus over the past 2 decades. It is a FACT that immigrants of East Asia and Africa breathe at a far higher rate than we do. Are you going to deny this now? The majority of our immigrants are from East Asia and Africa. Therefore if immigration continues the way it is, we will be a minority by the absolute maximum 2050. As soon as you lefties give up on debating this non-debate, you will say ‘so what ?’. I’ve seen it over and over. If you don’t see that as a problem, then I don’t know what to tell you, I give up. You will then go and contradict yourself saying Palestinians should have a right to there own land, which they certainly should.
@Kevin Kerr: ‘How has it changed?’ Are you being serious? According to CSO.ie, 150,000 immigrants came in 2024. That is 3% of the population. I said if immigration continues the way it does, so 150,000 a year until 2050 is 26 x 150,000, which equals 3,900,000. We are not reaching the 2.1 birthdate needed to PRESERVE our population size. So our share of the population will actually decline from 3.85 million. So 3,900,000 immigrants (not including children they have) is higher than our 77% share which will, according to our birthdate, decline from 3,850,000. Just like Japan, who’s Japanese population continues to drop every year from a lower than 2.1 birthrate per woman. Since 2008, Japans population has being decreasing every year. Can’t wait for your reply.
@Cole Palmer: Plus, we had 50,000 immigrants year ending April 2004, we had 89,000 year ending April 2022, we had 141,000 year ending April 2023, 150,000 year ending April 2024. I wonder what the figures will be in April of 2025? I would bet my house that’s its higher than 150,000. In 5 years I would bet my house it will be higher than 200,000…….
@Cole Palmer: so you have picked the year with the record number of immigrants to Ireland and assumed that this will continue until 2050. And of course, you haven’t factored in emigration to give an accurate net migration number. And of course, the emigration and immigration numbers are a mix of ethnic Irish people, and those who are not. So, in summary, your analysis is so full of holes that it makes no sense
@Cole Palmer: and yes, of course I accept that the proportion of “indigenous Irish” has dropped. It is the rate of future drop that I dispute. Sure, even in the UK, where people have been emigrating to since the 1950’s, “white British” make up 76% of the England and Wales population. You’re deluded
@Kevin Kerr: I chose 2024, because it is literally the year we’re in. I didn’t ‘choose the year with highest immigration level’. April, 2025 is on track to be even higher. 10s of thousands of Palestinians will be coming here very soon after they’re forced to evacuate from the atrocity Israel is committing. They know that Irish will mostly accept them because we go around waving their flag. They will want to coke here and nobody will stop them, as they have ‘the right to seek international protection’ anywhere. Palestinians though have a history of being very dangerous wherever they go. They launched a coup on Jordan’s monarchy, they attacked the Lebanon Christian front after Lebanon gave them refuge in 1948, effectively taking over Lebanon which was once majority Christian. Now 70% Muslim.
@Cole Palmer: it was majority Christian in 1975
@Cole Palmer: generally speaking, net inward migration will reflect economic activity, not asylum seeker numbers. So if our economy is booming, workers will come – if it isn’t, they won’t. So to assume that this 150k number will not only be maintained, but will increase over the next 26 years makes no sense. You clearly have no idea how population demographics work
We are tiny open country dependent on foreign investment. By all means work away in the background but we should not be taking unilateral decisions that will damage our economy. Ask yourself, how much extra tax are you willing to pay so we can take a stand over some conflict that has been going on for decades and will continue regardless of Irelands position on the matter. We are full of our own self importance.
@The next small thing: We even have pro Hamas politicians going up for election.
@thomas molloy: lads we need brits again to help us with that’s iner issues…
@A W: Say what?
@thomas molloy: No no we don’t. Why spread lies?
@Ger Whelan: Yes we do.
@Alex: which politician running has been “pro hamas”. I’ve never seen hamas mentioned by any of them in their election manifestos.
When it comes to global matters Ireland is as helpless as a plastic duck bobbing in an ocean .
@Jim Ryan: Ireland’s third-level education system is churning out graduates for US tech and pharma multinationals for years. At this stage we should be asking why Ireland doesn’t have it’s own thriving indigenous tech and pharma industries. It would make us a lot more independent and less prone to whoever happens in US politics. We need to invest in Innovation.
@Finian McG: *whatever happens*
@Jim Ryan: We seem to want to endlessly meddle but without any means of self defence. It’s an interesting approach.
@Finian McG: stay under stone buddies…
@Derick R M: lord help us with historical bs and no actions…
@Finian McG: All your blabbering is just a big lie. You never worked for any of those companies and it shows in your uneducated comments. Keep yourself on welfare.
When it comes to defending our own waters we seem to have to depend on the Bantry Fishermen.what is all this chest puffing Unifil troops in Leabanon.,its an utter joke.!!!!!
@Elizabeth Doyle: unifil makes EU news , protecting Irish waters won’t. We sold the sea to save the farmers
@Elizabeth Doyle: What did the Bantry fishermen do to defend our waters?
Bad opinion, vast majority of people couldn’t care less about foreign policy when it comes down to it. Highly unadvisable for a party to centre it’s campaign on Foreign Policy rather than issues people actually care about.
It’s pretty simple. We need a party which has an explicitly pro-West foreign policy. One which is strongly pro-Ukraine, pro-Israel, anti-China and anti-Iran. One which has the hunger to join NATO and one which supports abolishing neutrality and increasing military spending to 3% of our GDP. Unfortunately, every party in Ireland seems to be bone-headed on foreign policy. Either they are pro-Russia, pro-Hamas or both. Every party wants to suck up to China and every party seems to be obsessed with neutrality. What a joke! Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein and all the other small left-wing parties have terrible foreign policy positions.
have your say