Last week, a little before 8 in the evening on a Tuesday, Fergus Power, a local electoral candidate in South Dublin, shared a raw video, 68-seconds long, online. The shot showed a band of young students walking alongside a police officer near the Grand Canal.
Power shared via X, alternatively known as Twitter, “Policemen are required to accompany Irish students past the makeshift residential area erected in part by our governmental felons,” referring to clusters of tents arranged by refugees along the canal recently.
“We are being propelled down a dangerous and ominous path, and it will not bode well for every betrayer of our land,” he added.
His post had all the elements required to become a sensation in the anti-immigration digital world. It contained alarming hints about a potential endangerment of children, condemnation of Government’s ‘betrayers’, along with veiled threats about an impending violent future.
David Atherton, a journalist with a following of 177,000 on the European Conservative website, was one of the first to share Power’s post. Several others, both within Ireland and internationally, quickly joined in. These included Mark Attwood, a right-wing podcaster with 63,000 followers, Carla O’Connor, an adult film actor who is now an anti-immigration activist, and Matt Braynard, a previous employee of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with 143,000 followers.
The claim was propelled further when Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist from the UK with a following of 530,000, echoed it, commenting, “These men in the tents are obviously untrustworthy!”
Simultaneously, Power’s claim started spreading on Facebook, especially amongst several groups aimed to obstruct refugee accommodation in various Irish towns and villages.
Within a few days, Power’s original post attracted almost 180,000 views on X alone. However, there was a fundamental issue. The claim was inaccurate. The schoolchildren’s escort by the police had no correlation with the tent settlement.
Police have always been accompanying large bands of students throughout the city, long before the refugee tents showed up. Their primary aim is to keep the children in a group and prevent them from wandering onto the road.
The Pearse Street Community Policing Unit consistently liaises with local schools and plays a significant role in their activities. This includes activities such as escorting almost a hundred young students on a city-wide school trip, given the multitude of risky crossings and junctions on the way, explained a spokesperson of Garda. School representatives in the city centre confirmed such instances are routine and are not associated with asylum-seeking individuals.
This misinformation circulates rapidly, and this is the crux of the issue, states Supt Liam Geraghty of Garda Press Office. Striving to rectify false narratives, such as children on the canal, is a common undertaking. He expresses, however, that combating such false narratives quickly becomes complicated as the misinformation spreads broadly in just a few hours, making the diffusion of a more accurate account difficult.
What we are witnessing should be correctly identified, which is a rise in far-right terrorism, according to Paul Murphy TD from People Before Profit. He points out that Power has regularly disseminated erroneous news targeting foreign individuals, some of which have gone viral. In one instance in February, Power posted about a “Major Incident Celbridge”, alleging that a seven-year-old girl had been assaulted by three Roma men at a hotel. He then urged followers to rally for a protest.
The Gardaí, however, reported no such occurrence. Instead, they were looking into a case where a child had allegedly suffered physical abuse from an acquaintance. The allegation had no sexual implications. Despite this, a sizable crowd gathered at Celbridge Manor hotel, housing asylum seekers, to protest. The charged protestors shouted calls for “paedophiles” to leave and even to set the building ablaze.
Rioters additionally threw missiles at Gardaí present to safeguard the property and its occupants. In another incident from the previous year, Power posted that a foreign individual had been “caught with a handgun” in Dublin city. In reality, the arrested individual turned out to be a drunk man in possession of a toy gun.
Power, who declined to comment when contacted, is among several far-right activists known for manipulating narratives regarding asylum seekers and crime, effectively causing these misleading stories to spread rapidly and widely. “He is viewed as a primary distributor of untrue details about immigration in the nation,” stated a Garda officer tasked with oversight of far-right groups. According to this officer, when a baseless assertion begins gaining attention, it’s highly likely that Power was among the early spreaders.
Residing in Ballybrack, Power is pursuing a political career in the local elections, where he seeks to represent the region of Killiney-Shankhill as an independent candidate. Official documents reveal that he identifies his profession as “carer”.
Despite his online activities, Power has been implicated in real-world events; the Garda views him as a central provocateur of the Dublin disturbances in November. He responded to a stabbing incident involving young students in Parnell Square by erroneously asserting online that one of the victims had “presumably” passed away.
In a speech delivered under Dáil protection, Paul Murphy, a TD for People Before Profit, insinuated that individuals like Power are usually “on the scene” rapidly whenever a property is speculated to be designated for use as asylum seeker accommodation, and these properties are often set ablaze days later. Murphy declared, “What we’re observing should be referred to by its proper name. We’re witnessing a campaign of far-right terrorism within our country.”
Power’s actions are not limited to cyberspace. Just last month, he was detained by the Garda while protesting with a sign reading “Irish Lives Matter” outside a café; he was arrested on ground of public order offences for refusing to leave the premises. In a video in September, he was seen with a group creating a fake gallows with photos of elected officials attached, later utilized for a protest outside the Dáil.
This month, French officials warned their Irish peers of Russian disinformation infiltrating Ireland, exploiting social divides surrounding controversial topics, notably immigration.
The erroneous information about immigrants in Ireland is largely generated and distributed by Irish citizens, including individuals like Power. Other figures including Derek Blighe and Philip Dwyer are also known for routinely disseminating misinformation. These individuals, many of whom are contesting in the upcoming local or European elections, aim to leverage the increasing anxieties around immigration.
In one instance, Blighe had posted assertions, viewed over 20,000 times, claiming that there was an attempted “foreign man’s” kidnapping of a young girl in Kenmare, Co Kerry, which the Garda clarified as a false representation of a less severe incident reported to them.
Dwyer, self-proclaiming as a citizen journalist and also a European election candidate, is amongst the leading propagators advising that a deserted pub in Ringsend, Dublin would house asylum seekers. This was in direct contradiction with the statement from Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) affirming its use as a temporary shelter for homeless families. Notably, the said building was later the target of an arson attack.
A common narrative can be observed in most of these falsifications. Anti-immigration profiles frequently upload stories of immigrants harming or threatening Irish women or children, without providing any solid proof. The vague stories commonly involve phrases like “hearing reports of” or “people are saying.” These posts are then widely shared on far-right channels on platforms like Telegram, encouraging members to repost them on their public profiles.
In most cases, it is later revealed that these viral stories are either grossly manipulated, exaggerated, or completely fabricated. This was evidenced last year in Finglas when anti-immigration groups falsely claimed that a woman was assaulted and raped by two foreign men which led to heated protests in front of the Finglas Garda station.
The Taoiseach has decried an absurd attack on a Tallaght building that had been designated for asylum seekers. Later, the Gardaí stated that they were investigating an alleged attack on a woman and their main suspect is a white Irish man, as confirmed by multiple sources.
Superintendent Geraghty voiced his frustration at individuals who intentionally generate misinformation in an attempt to undermine valid sources. He referenced false allegations that erupted after the Dublin riots, such as the deployment of the Army in the streets and the use of the PSNI’s riot police against anti-immigration demonstrators in Newtownmountkennedy. He emphatically pointed out the impossibility both physically and legally of such claims, yet observed that people fall for them.
Like all residents of Ireland, there is indeed criminal activity committed by immigrants, sometimes even serious offences. However, Supt Geraghty emphasises that there’s no remarkable uptick in lawbreaking or public disturbances when a high volume of asylum seekers settle in an area.
He’s noted a concerning increase, however, in crimes like arson attacks on international protection accommodations, assaults on asylum seekers, and attacks on elected officials. Geraghty adds a sharp observation that it’s often those who are fast to attribute a rise in crime to these newcomers are the ones contributing to it.
False information is frequently linked to specific locales, which when circulated within local Facebook or WhatsApp groups as truth, it fosters an immediate and localised sense of anxieties and suspicions about incidents that never occurred, according to Mark Malone of the Hope and Courage Collective.
Furthermore, some individuals against immigration manipulate video footage to deliver a biased perspective. An instance of this occurred in January when Michael O’Keeffe, a far-right activist, posted an edited portion of an RTÉ News clip purporting to show a non-Irish national suggesting Irish people joke too much.
Yet, O’Keeffe had taken the woman’s comments out of context by removing the beginning of the clip which clarified that she was discussing racial abuse she had endured. Despite the misinformation, his video has amassed over 1.6 million views and is still online. Mark Malone of the Hope and Courage Collective, describes such tactics as attempts to engender feelings of fear, anger, and disdain.
“Such bogus assertions are often posted on platforms like Twitter with an urgent plea to circulate the same. They typically contain specified locality details that subsequently infiltrate local Facebook or WhatsApp groups as true facts, thereby eliciting a hyperlocal atmosphere of dread and anxiety about events that didn’t transpire. These false narratives predominantly accuse ‘migrants’ or asylum seekers.
According to Malone, the improved quality of social media posts is far from spontaneous. He openly notes the overt wish inside Telegram communities of the Irish far-right to continue fuelling anti-immigration and white supremacist viewpoints. Fraudulent assertions and intentional disinformation are critical mechanisms sought to achieve this.
Upon inciting online fury, campaigners attempt to designate a responsible group, an initiative Malone describes as “the subsequent stage to rallying people on to their communal streets”. He attests to witnessing this sequence repeatedly, mostly initiated by a select few noticeable far-right influencers.
In perpetuating disinformation, anti-immigration candidates take a leaf out of Trump’s game plan, which viewed truth as a flexible idea, as articulated by Dr Eileen Culloty, an expert in disinformation from the Institute for Future Media Democracy and Society at DCU.
While the dispersion of rumours about foreigners or outsiders attacking someone has a long-established history, it is definitely amplified by social media. Dr Culloty expressed elevated concern about the escalation from online extremist dialogues to real-world violence, accentuating episodes such as acts of arson and political attacks. She claims that these developments indicate a worsening situation.