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Paper Short Abstract

On 23 November 2023, Dublin appeared in the international press because of several hours of severe rioting. This unrest was reported on as a nativist uprising against “mass immigration” by the Far Right, whose membership, it was claimed, came from the most socially excluded part of Irish society.

Paper Abstract

On 23 November 2023, Dublin came to the attention of the international press because of several hours of rioting. Sadly (and largely incorrectly) this unrest were reported on the 24-hr news cycle, and almost continuously on X (formerly Twitter) as a sort of nativist uprising against “mass immigration”. The proximate cause of this unrest was a horrific attack on schoolchildren by a man, originally from Algeria, but a resident of Ireland for some two decades. This attack crystallised what had hitherto been considered by most mainstream pundits to be a marginal anti-migrant protest movement, whose poorly attended “rallies” outside of various asylum-seeker accommodations and/or service providers around the country for the last year or so had been very lightly policed by the Gards [Irish Police], despite the presence of known agitators from English Fascist/Nationalist circles at many of these events. This paper examines some of the aftermath of riot, especially those offered by various Irish pundits, Far-Right messaging on X, and more than two decades of on-and-off research in the kinds of neighbourhoods seen as the source of many of the rioters by the author. The paper is a reflection on how the ways that various kinds of marginality, structural and culture, and "hate" intersect in social life and online.