THE ASSAULT OF Roderic O’Gorman while he was canvassing in Dublin is an incident that would have been unheard of before the last general election in 2020.

Ireland has a strong tradition of politicians being accessible to the public, and safety concerns are usually an afterthought when TDs want to meet ordinary people in public.

But over the lifetime of the current Government, an increasing number of elected representatives are facing abuse and threats similar to that experienced by O’Gorman.

In June, councillors Tania Doyle and Janet Horner were attacked in separate incidents while hanging up posters ahead of the local elections.

And the family homes of Taoiseach Simon Harris and Justice Minister Helen McEntee have also been subjected to hoax bomb threats in 2024, while others have been heckled in the street while meeting voters.

It follows a sharpening of rhetoric about politicians, particularly online, where many are routinely subjected to vitriol and misinformation.

O’Gorman is one of those who is most frequently targeted, with social media awash with conspiracy theories and homophobic narratives about him on a daily basis.

Unsurprisingly, the attack on the minister over the weekend was celebrated by many of those who write abusive posts and spread misinformation about him.

As leader of the Green Party and the minister who holds the Integration, Children and Equality portfolios, O’Gorman is a particularly attractive target for ethno-nationalist groups and conspiracy theorists.

For anti-immigrant groups, he is the face of the Government’s laboured attempts to house and integrate asylum seekers in communities across Ireland, because doing so falls under the aegis of the Department of Integration.

One post on X sent the day before he was assaulted called for O’Gorman to be investigated for “awarding lucrative IPAS [International Protection Accommodation Services] contracts” and for “triggering open borders”.

Many falsely allege that O’Gorman ‘invited’ asylum seekers to Ireland by sending a series of posts on X [then Twitter] in February 2021 in eight different languages, including Arabic, Georgian, Albanian, Somalian, about a plan to end Direct Provision.

O’Gorman subsequently explained that he sent the posts in the eight languages – which included English and Irish – because they were the languages most commonly spoken by those already living in the Direct Provision system.

Despite this, the claim has gained traction among anti-immigrant groups and tends to appear regularly in online discussions about O’Gorman, or in social media posts beneath news stories about him.

It leans into the Great Replacement theory, a white nationalist, far-right conspiracy which claims white citizens are being replaced by non-white populations, which is popular among many anti-immigrant groups who are active in Ireland.

O’Gorman is not the only one who is targeted by anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Great Replacement theory, but the Twitter narrative is just one of a number of misinformation talking points that are particular to him.

Another is a narrative around missing and dead children, which implies without any basis that O’Gorman is somehow involved in or has knowledge of the whereabouts of minors who have gone missing from or died while living in State care.

The narrative is based on factual reports that dozens of children have both died in and have gone missing from State care (which is run by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency) in recent years.

It is distinct from legitimate criticism of O’Gorman for this occurring while he has been Minister for Children, and for calls for him to explain how and why this is happening.

Instead, it takes the form of questions under posts about O’Gorman suggesting that he somehow knows where the missing children are, and misleading people into believing that he is involved in a cover-up.

“Children are being used snatched from Tusla and forced into sex slavery,” one post on X from October last year reads, before adding, “It seems the minister for immigration and children has something to hide”.

Other similar social posts have mentioned the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, or blatantly implied that the missing children have something to do with O’Gorman’s sexuality.

In one social media post from earlier this year, an image of O’Gorman kissing his partner after he was elected in 2020 was shared with a caption that homophobically called him “Minister Responsible for Missing Children [and] Child Indoctrination”.

The post also contained an image of O’Gorman beside Peter Tatchell, a human rights and LGBT rights campaigner since the 1970s, who has been criticised for a 1997 letter to the Guardian newspaper about sex between adults and children.

O’Gorman spoke in 2020 about the homophobic abuse he has received linking him to Tatchell because of the picture, and has explained that he was not aware of Tatchell’s views when the photo was taken and that he finds such views “abhorrent”.

He also spoke last year about the more general level of online abuse he is subjected to as a gay person, and how there has been “a definite change in dialogue” about LGBT people in recent years.

As well as specific comments about his sexuality, O’Gorman has also been labelled with a particular misinformation narrative that has taken hold about gay men and, more recently, trans people.

Posts online, including in the aftermath of the assault on him, frequently refer to him as Roderic O’Groomer, a reference to the so-called ‘groomer slur’ that suggests members of the LGBTQ+ community pose a danger to children.

Those pushing this narrative about O’Gorman go further and suggest that he is somehow using his ministerial powers to ‘indoctrinate’ children into identifying as LGBT, even in areas over which he has no control.

Some have suggested he is responsible for libraries stocking LGBT-friendly reading materials for young adults, or for allowing topics like gender identity and homosexual relationships to be taught in schools - both of which have been targeted by far-right and anti-trans groups in recent years.

This type of thinking about O’Gorman has softened him up so much in the eyes of his opponents that even the attack on him was seen through the prism of a conspiracy.

In the house after the assault, which was roundly condemned by politicians and parties across the political spectrum, accounts that frequently post abuse and misinformation about O’Gorman variously claimed that he was making it up to gain sympathy, or that it was not as bad as was being made out.