As the drumbeat of hate grows, how serious is the far-right threat to the State?
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Amid all the outrage over the recent clashes at Newtownmountkennedy — of politicians being ‘Traitors’ and gardaí being ‘Black and Tans’ — a more worrying narrative was emerging.
The State, far-right agitators proclaimed, was “at war with its own people” — which meant the people were now “at war” with the State.
There was talk online about “burning down” the Dáil.
This toxic swell is being fuelled by far-right figures and parties in Ireland, many claiming to be committed nationalists and republicans — egged on, ironically, by fascists in England, as well as high-profile figures in the US.
The scale of the international involvement in fuelling anti-immigration posts was highlighted last week by the Sky News Data & Forensics Unit, which found that 56% of the posts on X, formerly Twitter, regarding the Co Wicklow town, originated from the US.
Just over 20% were from Ireland and 10% from the UK.
It found that the most popular posts were from notorious US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and English far-right figure Tommy Robinson.
One of the posts that stood out during a trawl by the of X posts on Newtownmountkennedy was of a semi-automatic handgun and a call by the sender for Irish people “to bear arms”.
The sender, a former member of the Defence Forces, is well known in far-right circles and has close links with prominent political figures in the area. He has also recently said on X that he was “ready to kill”.
He has previously come to the attention of the Special Detective Unit, the operational anti-terrorist arm of Garda Security & Intelligence.
This individual and other far-right extremists have also threatened acts of violence against named people on Telegram.
There was a lot of support, including a couple of posts from a candidate in the upcoming local elections from the far-right Irish Freedom Party.
In one post he said the 1st and 2nd amendment of the US constitution [freedom of expression and the right to bear arms] “are required here ASAP”. Some respondents referred to getting specific firearms and one individual posted up an image of five shotgun cartridges.
The sender said that in light of recent events, he had decided to get something “that holds more than 2 cartridges”, apparently referring to a semi-automatic shotgun, which, unlike the standard shotgun, can hold three to nine shells.
It might be tempting to dismiss these people as ‘Walter Mitty’ types or ‘boys with toys’. But it opens up the possibility that one of the people posting, or someone else reading the messages but not necessarily commenting, could decide to go a step further.
Security sources point out that research has tended to indicate that it is this type of person — who is vulnerable to radicalisation and is discontented, and disconnected, with the world — that can pose an unquantifiable danger.
“It is this individual, the lonely person, maybe not too many friends, with significant mental health issues or certain conditions, who gets consumed by the fury in online groups and slowly decides to plan an attack — that’s the person we would worry about,” a security source told the .
“But it is hard to prevent, unless they might pop up in a chat environment.”
It is understood that An Garda Síochána is monitoring in the region of 20 ‘far-right’ prominent individuals in Ireland.
They are broken down into those with significant mental health issues, those who are reckless when drunk and post something they later backtrack from, and, according to one source, a “small number of malign actors with intent”.
It is these “key influencers” that security services are concentrating resources on. They monitor what “traction” they are receiving within the far-right community. It is understood that this involves proactive online and physical surveillance.
A second security source said: “There’s a few of them [the 20] that are real players, but not that many. Most of the time they are fighting among themselves.”
“These guys won’t do anything themselves, but they could radicalise someone else to. This does not mean it’s going to happen, but the way things are going, it’s quite possible.”
A third security source pointed out that there were around 200,000 licensed firearms in this country, including a small number of semi-automatic handguns and rifles.
The events at Newtownmountkennedy last Thursday week illustrate what the State is facing: a local protest which was ongoing for many weeks, which gardaí said they had relatively good engagement with, flared into violence after far-right figures from Dublin came down and “poured petrol over the fire” and riled people up into a confrontation with gardaí.
Garda sources said the acts of violence — the setting on fire of an outhouse, the vandalism of a garda vehicle and the throwing of objects and stones at gardaí — was carried out by these outside agitators.
Government leaders said this was just not a threat to public order. Tánaiste Micheál Martin said attacks on gardaí, the growing “militancy” of certain groups and calls to “overthrow” the Government represented a threat to the security of the State.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee said attacks on gardaí were “an attack on our democracy and our State”.
A number of Garda sources express concern the violence could get worse in the weeks leading up to the local and European Parliament elections on June 7. One experienced source said "dark forces" were trying to create “division in society and conflict with authority”.
The subsequent protests at Netownmountkennedy last Saturday and Sunday week, which undoubtedly attracted a significant number of local people, appeared to be hijacked, at the vanguard at least, with banners regularly seen at far-right protests in Dublin and elsewhere, with talk of ‘plantation’ and ‘send them home’.
Songs struck up at the front of the protest, including ‘Come out ye Black and Tans’, are not something locals protestors sing.
The recent hoax bomb threats to the home of Ms McEntee — which, although false alarms, caused disturbance and fear for her family — all adds to an apparently worsening security environment for politicians in the run-up to the elections.
Ms McEntee has been the subject of intense misogyny and abuse online from these individuals.
Two weeks ago a group of up to a dozen people — mainly men — with their faces masked gathered outside the home of Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman.
They decorated the perimeter of this property with far-right banners include one draped across his driveway gate, declaring: “Minister O’Gorman Hates Children”.
This continued a long-running scurrilous campaign by far-right groups who carry banners and openly jibe at protests at the minister’s sexuality.
The Taoiseach Simon Harris described those actions as "extraordinarily chilling and disturbing".
Ms McEntee said Mr O'Gorman's "privacy and property have been violated in a disgusting and shocking manner". "I’ve spoken to the Garda commissioner. This cannot be tolerated," she said.
Shortly after, Drew Harris said similar protests outside homes could constitute harassment. In an internal guidance note, he reminded gardaí of their powers and said the wearing of balaclavas had “potentially sinister overtures”.
He said members should have "regard to the impact of the protesters' actions and behaviours on householders, their families and other occupants".
It gave some support to frontline gardaí, as did his visit to Newtownmountkennedy after the disorder — but there still appears to be some uncertainty among gardaí about when they can intervene.
Some garda sources said new powers being introduced in Britain — allowing police to arrest protesters who wear face-coverings to threaten others and avoid prosecution — were not available to gardaí here.
Over a week ago, the Taoiseach said he had asked Ms McEntee to examine whether or not it was legal for people to wear masks and balaclavas at protests. The Taoiseach said that if it was legal then the law should be changed and if it was illegal “why is it not being stopped?”.
The Department of Justice declined to tell the what specifically it was doing or had done in relation to this request, but indicated that the necessary legislation was there for gardaí to act and that this was the view of the Garda Commissioner.
Two weeks ago, the Daily Mail on Sunday reported comments on a Irish far-right Telegram group saying that everyone who had served in the government “will be hunted and killed”.
One contributor even hailed Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Breivik — who killed 77 people on uly 22, 2021, including 69 young people at a youth camp — 33 of them under the age of 18.
This individual warned the political establishment to fear for themselves and their children. Footage of the protest at Minister O’Gorman’s house was posted on the Telegram group, with the message ‘On the lads’.
The drumbeat of hate has been increasing for some time now.
Protests outside the homes of Government ministers, and local councillors, are not new. As Health Minister and Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar has had protests outside his Dublin home on several occasions over the years.
The ugly scenes outside Leinster House last September saw individuals wheeling a mocked-up gallows, adorned with photographs of prominent politicians around an effigy hanging from a noose.
One garda source pointed out the DPP ruled out a prosecution against the people involved in that act. Numerous politicians were intimidated and verbally abused on Kildare Street, with Kerry TD Micheal Healy Rae escorted by uniformed gardaí through an angry mob.
Shortly after, Commissioner Harris issued security advice, and extended garda protection, to Government ministers based on the threat from far-right individuals and groups.
“I have been advised by the Garda Commissioner that the threat is higher and the risk to my personal safety is real, and that is the case for other ministers too,” Mr Varadkar said at the time.
Senior garda sources said that the fact that this advice was given and the protection extended reflected the force’s belief that there was a worsening security situation.
Last January, a man was charged with making a threat to kill or cause serious harm to Galway TD and chief whip Hildegarde Naughton.
Two months later, in an unrelated case dating back to March 2021 (and not related to the far-right) a man was sentenced for making a hoax bomb threat at the home of Minister McEntee.
Sinn Féin politicians are regular targets for far-right groups and individuals, with Eoin Ó Broin TD one of the more recent victims.
The weekend of the Newtownmountkennedy protest saw a video circulating online of people passing Mr Varadkar chatting to a friend on the streets of Portobello, in Dublin’s south inner city, as they subjected him to a tirade of nastiness and abuse.
A few days later, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, another regular target of the far-right, put up a photograph on his X account of graffiti sprayed on a wall a few minutes from his house. It said: “Paul Murphy RIP”.
Commenting, Mr Murphy said: “I will not be intimidated. I will continue to oppose those who try to divide people and spready hate.” Then, last Thursday night, a small group of known far-right agitators gathered outside the home of the Taoiseach in Greystones, Co Wicklow, where he lives with this wife and two young children.
Mr Harris said such behaviour “can be intimidating and deeply upsetting” and said people’s homes and their families should be “out of bounds”. He said he had asked gardaí if they needed more powers to deal with such incidents and had been reassured that they had sufficient laws.
One experienced garda source said they were very concerned at what could happen: “Alarm bells have been ringing for some time now in terms of threats to politicians. It could just be a matter of time before we have a Jo Cox incident.”
Ms Cox, aged 41 and mother of two young children, was a Labour Party MP in Britain and campaigner for Syrian refugees and the ‘Remain’ camp during the Brexit referendum when she was repeatedly stabbed and shot by Thomas Mair in June 2016.
Mair was seen by neighbours as a reclusive, nervous individual. He had long links with the US far-right, though apparently not with any fascist groups in his home turf in West Yorkshire.
His trial heard his internet searches revealed a fascination with the Nazis and other white-supremacist creeds.
The garda source said: “Jo Cox wasn’t a Government minister or front bench figure, so a potential target doesn’t have to be someone high profile. We have laws not allowing canvassing or posters near polling stations — that’s an offence — but we don’t have laws protecting politicians outside their homes or their constituency offices.”
But within the world of Garda Security & Intelligence threat levels are based on formal assessments.
Threat levels in Ireland have been assessed for some time as “moderate”, which means an attack is possible but not likely. It’s the second of five threat levels (low, moderate, substantial, severe, critical). It has been at “moderate” since 2016, when it rose from “low” due to the global Islamist threat.
The assessments are typically based on an examination of the “capacity, intent and capability” of the group posing the threat. Security sources explain it is more suited to a structured organisation — and not the splintered, unstructured far-right scene in Ireland.
Security analysts said that while a disorganised, fractured movement might pose a lesser threat, it makes threat assessments more difficult to carry out.
“In Ireland, it is not a structured group with intent, it is individuals and smaller groups, so it’s quite a confused environment,” one source said.
The security advice to the Government last September did mark an apparent escalation of the threat level, but it is understood this was in response to the wider environment in society as opposed to a group with a clear intent to attack politicians.
The understands that the security services are keeping the threat level at “moderate” and that this includes the assessed threat to politicians, or gardaí. There can be slight variations — such as the higher end of moderate — for specific subgroups.
The next threat level above moderate is “substantial” — meaning an attack is a strong possibility — and it is thought the intelligence is not there to support such a big jump.
Within the “moderate” assessment, it is understood that security officials do have “some concerns” at the threat posed by the far-right to politicians and believe the country is in a “very tricky” environment.
This means that making a full assessment of the threat level is not straight forward and is complicated as some of the components that would make for a comprehensive assessment are missing, or not known.
This is because the threat is not from a structured organisation but from a wide number of separate individuals and groups.
“It’s like making an assessment in the dark,” one source explained.
A range of sources said that although there is intimidation and threats to politicians — online, on the street confrontations and in hoax bomb threats — there is no intelligence of “attack planning” or evidence of people “preparing” to commit an act of violence.
“There are extremists there, but they aren’t that large or that organised,” one security source said.
One expert on terrorism largely agreed with this assessment.
"As we come closer to the local and European elections it is likely that we will see continued disruption from the far-right,” John Morrison, Assistant Professor in Criminology at Maynooth University. “As with all threats of this nature there is the potential for this to escalate in terms of severity.”
But he added: “However, it is important to emphasise that this is a small group of individuals and disparate groups who have, to date, not shown the intention and/or capability for this to escalate in terms of severity.”
A number of garda sources believe it is a very difficult area to definitely say what could or could not happen.
“There’s definitely a menace out there and one danger I would see is politicians going out canvassing for the elections and either knocking at the wrong door or being harassed by a group of these people with phones up and abusing them,” one experienced garda source said.
“So, while there might not be evidence there to show these groups are planning to attack someone, they are not organised like that, it could be an unplanned situation, where someone in the group, if a row develops with a politician, suddenly launches an attack.”
The source said they could see this threat impacting on how candidates, particularly female candidates, canvass in their areas.
Speaking to the after the protest at Minister O’Gorman’s house, Aoife Gallagher, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, specialising in disinformation and far-right extremism, said the tactics of the far-right were becoming “increasingly more violent”.
She said the “direction of travel is only becoming more clear” and said it was “scary” to think where it could end.
Also at the time, John O’Brennan, Professor of European politics at Maynooth University, said he feared the violence would get worse during the elections. “Are we really going to wait for a member of the Oireachtas to die before we do anything? I hope not.”
The hostility to immigrants has particularly manifested itself in the surge of arson attacks on accommodation linked to asylum seekers. Gardaí fear this could result in someone — either an occupant or a security guard — being injured or worse.
Last month there were violent attacks on foreign nationals, including one fatal assault. Photographs appeared in the media of Brazilian man, Roberto Gomes dos Santos, who was seriously assaulted in Limerick after he left work and was walking home with his brother.
He said a man approached him, asked them where they were from, and when they replied, the man attacked them with some kind of baseball bat.
Last March, Croatian man Josip Strok was fatally assaulted and his friend David Druzinec was seriously attacked by a group of young men after they apparently heard them speaking Croatian and told them they should be speaking English.
The understands that Garda figures on hate-crime, due to be published this week, will show a significant increase in incidents — though this is thought to be a combination of more incidents and more reporting. It is expected to show a higher proportion of incidents where the victim’s nationality or ethnicity was a factor.
And there are other potential targets like the construction worker in Aughrim, Co Wicklow, who was recently subjected to a tirade of abuse and intimidation and told in no uncertain terms to pack up his tools and leave after a group of people, completely wrongly as it turned out, thought he was working on asylum accommodation.
Videos of that abuse were circulated by the usual far-right actors as examples of local people “having enough” and “standing up”.
More broadly, concerns in relation to immigration and asylum have become a dominant issue in Ireland.
As reported recently in the , a Eurobarometer survey showed that migration and asylum were the second most important issue for Irish people in the forthcoming European Parliament elections — compared to seventh for the average EU citizen.
The survey, conducted last February, showed that 42% of Irish people said it was the most pressing issue (after health at 46%), compared to just 24% for the average EU citizen.
The reaction to Government assertions that around 80% of rising asylum claims are from applicants crossing over from Britain to Northern Ireland and travelling across the border has further pushed the immigration issue towards to the top of the agenda.
Security sources said the far-right have been able to establish a foothold in the political space regarding concerns over immigration levels, the asylum process and border controls.
“The Government ceded territory in this space and the left have labelled all those concerned about immigration as racists or far-right, so it’s become polarised with little space in the middle,” one source said. “The Government is trying to take back some of that territory now as have independents.”
Sources predict the ‘far-right’ vote is splintered with so many candidates standing in both the local and European elections. “Maybe the increased number of independents might help moderate things and soak up the anti-immigrant sentiment,” one source said.
But sources point out that 400 to 500 votes could get far-right candidates elected to local councils. “I think the local elections will be a very interesting barometer of where Irish people are in terms of their political views,” one source said.
The capacity of the security services in Ireland, traditionally cloaked in secrecy, is not irrelevant in this space.
Some sources point out that security services here are thin in numbers, surveillance technology and the legal powers to use them — a matter that has been raised by oversight judges.
Despite calls for major investment “as a matter of urgency” in the Garda Security & Intelligence Service by the Commission on the Future of Policing in its September 2018 report, no “ring-fenced budget” has been provided, no significant staffing increase has happened (albeit no different than much of the organisation) and there is no direct recruitment of specialist expertise.
One security source said: “The State has to be equipped to respond to national security threats and if we are not at the average of what EU countries have — which we aren’t — then we are at a disadvantage.”
“With the election there is more talk from politicians about not being soft and a tougher approach; well, that’s fine, but what’s the capacity and capability to act.”
But sources stress this is not just a matter for law enforcement.
They point to the need for an “overarching Government strategy” on protecting democracy, how to deal with political extremism during election debates and how to debate immigration.
“I think the State has been slow to respond,” one senior security source said. “The threat from the far-right is still relatively small, but they are more emboldened now, so we need to step back and examine where this is heading.”
With the next 18 months packed with elections — local, European, national and presidential — the source said: “This is a critical time for the Irish democratic state.”