How to combat the far right in your neighbourhood. Step 1: Don’t counter-protest

In 2019 in Oughterard, Co Galway information began to circulate that an unoccupied hotel was being refurbished for people seeking asylum. Soon there were protests and vigils at the site. In the summer of 2022, marches and protests began against a plan to build modular homes for Ukrainian families in Newbridge, Co Kildare. In July 2022, 20 Ukrainian families were moved into a repurposed hotel in Fermoy. A person local live-streamed their arrival on Facebook and this led to heated online discussion that concluded in protests. Towards the end of 2022, videos began circulating online of asylum seekers arriving at the Travelodge in Ballymun – by early January 2023 hundreds gathered outside the hotel chanting “Get them out”.

In many of these instances some of the original protesters had concerns about planning and services but as the protests built momentum they were dominated by far-right parties and influencers who spread misinformation, lies, racist scaremongering and conspiracy theories about “plantations” and “great replacements”. There were similar protests in other parts of Dublin in late 2022/early 2023. Some of these continue. Most recently, the focus of right wing protesters has shifted to libraries and bookshops that have literature aimed at LGBT+ teenagers, and increasingly they are turning their attention to schools, as they implement a new LGBT+-inclusive sex education programme.

Greater than Fear: A Community Based Response to Tackling Hate and Extremism is a new report written and researched by Helen Lowry (a community worker and former deputy director of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland) with the Hope and Courage Collective (H&CC, formerly called the Far Right Observatory). It provides guidelines for people who feel overwhelmed in the face of such protests in their communities. It outlines the far right’s “playbook” when it comes to fomenting protests, provides case studies from some of the aforementioned towns, and it documents the development of local groups who fostered a sense of community and solidarity with refugees.

If we go out and chant ‘racist’ it’s going to deepen divisions and it’s going to polarise. And we’re not going to have any discussions we need

—  Niamh McDonald

“We could see this playbook being rolled out, a pattern emerging,” says H&CC board member Siobhán O’Donoghue. “We needed to be faster, in the way the extremists are ... The work that the wider Hope and Courage Collective has been doing has been phenomenal in the last few years. But it’s not been documented. Nobody’s telling the story of how these things connect, what we’ve learned, what helps, what hinders ... The community and voluntary sector has been hollowed out in the last 20 years [so] it’s harder for traditional organisations to be in local communities and [also] to have their eye on digital spaces and on national policy.”

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Back in 2017, when I interviewed a number of academics and politicians for a piece on populism, the consensus was that far-right populism had failed to take root in Ireland. What changed? “I think Covid is possibly the biggest explanation,” says H&CC co-ordinator Niamh McDonald. “We all were told to live online. We were locked down. The conspiracy theories started around Covid in WhatsApp groups ... I had the feeling that what happened during the [2008 financial] crash was happening in the lockdown. We didn’t know what was happening. There was no control.” People were dealing with trauma, she says, and so some “grew into those conspiracies, because it was a form of control”.

[ ‘We need guns and men’ - inside the group chat of Ireland’s latest far-right political party ]

“The far right populated that area and knew it was an area they could use and manipulate,” says O’Donoghue. “We see a lot of the agitators coming out of Covid are now the people leading that charge on the ground with the other protests.”

These far-right influencers have become adept at using online platforms, taking international conspiracies and rooting them in local issues. Some post racist memes and disinformation about migrant communities and government policy on Telegram and WhatsApp chats. They live-stream protests to create a sense of urgency and they frequently post in local community Facebook pages. “They’re trying to see what will ‘catch’, what will light the fire,” says McDonald. “It’s quite frenetic. This constant content production is intense. They will turn around and interview a ‘concerned local’ ... So if there’s rumours of a direct provision centre opening and one person has issues [with it], they interview them and claim they speak on behalf of the whole community ... And then they will call a community meeting or, if the pace really ramps up, go straight to protest.”

“The big lesson of Oughterard was you have to control the narrative really fast,” says O’Donoghue. “At the public meeting people were set up to fail. People were saying, ‘Are you calling me a racist for worrying about whether my kid is going to get a place in school?’ ... It exploded after that.”

[ Fintan O’Toole: The far right gives power to the most obnoxious little gits ]

People worried by the rhetoric often don’t know how to respond at this point. The far right are quite adept at making it seem, initially, like the whole community supports the protests. “There’s a certain paralysis,” says McDonald. The first suggestion in Greater than Fear is “start talking”. In Ballymun, there was a swift response from community leaders, she says. “Ballymun understands hate. Whether it comes from heroin dealers or neglect from the State ... January 7th was the first protest and that Monday morning all the community leaders, schools, community workers, all the community leaders were on a WhatsApp group specifically to respond to the far right.”

The H&CC now also has a rapid-response team. Nowadays, if someone gets in touch with them for advice, they start by quickly gathering local community leaders together to talk. Each community should lead the process, says McDonald, and work with the existing community networks. “They will probably have their own audience that they understand how to deliver a message to. So when they’ve learned from the [far right’s] narrative, they know how to have those conversations ... whether it’s at the school gates, whether it’s having a coffee morning, whether it’s the postman, St. Vincent de Paul, the Tidy Towns ... People start feeling their way into being able to talk ... Ireland has one of the highest listenership of local radio so it’s massive in the response to the disinformation. Newbridge were able to use local media to bring a really positive message of what was happening with people seeking asylum.”

They also advise that people “de-escalate not ignite”. This means treating protesting neighbours with empathy and separating those with racist intent from those with questions and fears. “If you listen to people on the protests,” says McDonald, “if we go right back to it, the concerns are really that the current political system is not meeting their needs. They can’t thrive in their communities ... And also, there’s the fear factor. That’s where it becomes quite gendered, as well. As a working-class woman, as a single mum, I understand this. They [say], ‘They’re going to take your home; They’re going to attack you; There’s going to be sexual assault.’ That’s very emotional ... So that’s why we recommend bringing the temperature right down so people can start to talk to one another. The far right thrive on polarising the community so that no one talks to each other.”

If we don’t have a government that’s prepared to address inequality, the growing division, the reality of housing ... what do you think people are going to do?

—  Siobhán O'Donoghue

Another big part of the community-building involves reaching out to the people who are the subject of the protests. “Then they set up integration and support and think about how to bring [refugees] into the community ... It’s not charity, but solidarity, bringing people together – family fun days, community days, where the focus is having a chat or having a cup of tea ... It makes it much easier to be people standing together. And that starts to separate the disinformation and the lies and the chaos of the far right from the reality in the community.”

They also advise against arguing with people about right-wing talking points online or otherwise. “[Social media] is their realm and it’s a place where we lose all the time and it’s not a place where discussions can be had,” says McDonald. “It’s not reality. [Well-meaning people] get mesmerised by looking at them and talking about them ... It’s a complete distraction.”

For this reason, they also think that counter-protests can inflame things, particularly in a local context. “There’s an innate reaction to get out and counter protest,” says McDonald. “But then you’re shouting at your neighbour across the road who you’ll have to meet in the post office. So what do we want to achieve? We want the far right to leave our communities and to separate people from the ideas of the hatred and the extremism. If we go out and chant ‘racist’ it’s going to deepen divisions and it’s going to polarise. And we’re not going to have any discussions we need, to understand why some people feel the need to go on to these protests ... Who do we know in there that can talk to that person? ... Because when the far right leave, which they will do when they don’t get what they want, the communities are left with that.”

Ultimately, the H&CC also believe there are overarching issues that need a political response. “We engaged with political people earlier on this year and we kind of laid out [some] core areas,” says O’Donoghue. “One was there needs to be proper planning and pre-planning of when people are being moved into communities. It’s not consultation, just to be really clear. It’s showing respect to the entire community and the way in which decisions get made about that community in a way that’s upfront and designed to bring people along.”

[ Lismore: Inside a small town’s protests and counter-demonstrations ]

Government also has a responsibility to confront and regulate the social media companies who benefit from engagement around controversial topics, says McDonald. “Ireland has an advantage here, of being able to get in and directly talk to them ... Between the middle of December and the middle of January, we accounted for a million views of six social media influencers’ YouTube channels just on the far-right protesters and the anti-asylum seeker protests alone. And two of those amalgamated 700,000 views. On those two, they had their PayPal links and their fundraising links. YouTube gets [a percentage] of all money that’s fundraised.” A comment has been sought from YouTube.

The H&CC is looking for what they call political bravery from politicians. “You’ve got to address the material needs of people who are struggling,” says O’Donoghue. “If we don’t have a government that’s prepared to address inequality, the growing division, the reality of housing ... what do you think people are going to do? People come in and say ‘Your way of life is threatened’ when you’re already suffering’ ... That’s incendiary. What we realised pretty quickly was that you need to get in fast and get control of the narrative. Listen to people. Tap into the actual genuine care and concern [for people] and build the capacity and leadership in communities.”

"We need guns and men" - inside the group chat of Ireland's new far right party

Listen | 18:36

This episode was first published in March 2023.

Until very recently, some argued that Ireland did not have a significant issue with the far right because of their low electoral success rate. “But look at Britain,” says McDonald. “The far right don’t have to get elected to change the Overton window [a political theory that refers to the range of policies that the public will accept] ... [UKIP] didn’t have to get elected to dominate the media narrative and create chaos”.

“Look at the legitimisation of some of the right-wing independents,” says O’Donoghue. “The legitimisation of ideas that would not have had any currency 10 years ago.”

O’Donoghue has watched far-right figures move from one issue to another, “shopping for anything that whips up fear and division. I was getting it in the neck about 5G around the time of the local election ... They fundamentally want to fuel distrust in the democratic process.”

If the far right have a strength, she says, it’s that they don’t have to worry about the truth of their statements but their weakness is that they have no answers for people’s day-to-day problems. “They don’t offer solutions. They’re not talking about creating housing. They’re not talking about the cost of living.”

What do H&CC think is coming next? “At the moment we’re seeing all these attacks on libraries, and people working in bookshops but we had a strategy meeting yesterday and it’s fast moving to schools [as the new sex education programme is being implemented]. That’s what we’re looking at now.”

Why did the Far Right Observatory change their name to the Hope and Courage Collective? “What we saw in Newbridge and East Wall and all the other places is hope and courage,” says McDonald. “And we wanted to reflect the communities that we’re working with to give confidence to people ... So we talk about community and we don’t focus on them.”

The Hope and Courage Collective’s Greater than Fear report can be accessed here.