At 5.22pm on Thursday, a voice message from an account called “Kill all immigrants” went into a private, invitee-only Telegram group titled “Enough is Enough”.
“They can’t control us all. Let’s have little groups splintering off, doing what we got to do. Seven o’clock, be in town. Everyone bally up, tool up. And any f**king g**o, foreigner, anyone, just kill them. Just f**king kill them,” the message said.
“Let’s get this on the news, let’s show the f**king media that we’re not a pushover. That no more foreigners are allowed into this poxy country.”
By that stage, less than four hours after a stabbing attack on schoolchildren which left a five-year-old girl with serious injuries, tensions were already building in the city centre.
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Shortly after word of the attack spread online, much of it containing false information, crowds gathered near the scene of the stabbing on Parnell Square East, pushing a line of gardaí back and disrupting the crime scene.
Gardaí dressed in full riot gear attempted to keep the crowds back while masked men kicked their shields and verbally abused them. One black garda attempting to preserve the crime scene came in for particular abuse. Protesters racially abused the officer and told him he was not Irish.
It took less than 45 minutes for news of the stabbing to start circulating on far-right social media channels, often accompanied by the false information that one or more of the victims had died.
This soon morphed into calls for people to take to the streets. On Friday, in the wake of unprecedented violence and rioting in Dublin city centre, some of those posters deleted these calls to action.
“Everyone city centre tonight 7pm no excuses everyone out enough is enough,” said anti-immigration activist Gavin Pepper, who describes himself as a local election candidate, in a now-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter.
Pepper was present at the infamous demonstration outside Leinster House in September which featured a noose, and attended a protest in the city centre in May that ended with a migrant camp on Sandwith Street being set alight.
Just before 6pm Derek Blighe, who registered the anti-immigration party Ireland First earlier this year, posted a video saying “Ireland is at war”.
By this stage, more people were streaming into the city centre, where they brought traffic to a standstill on O’Connell Street. Some made plans to march from the city centre to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s home in south Dublin city, prompting fears the property could be vandalised or worse.
Armed gardaí were put in place to respond, but the march did not materialise.
Gardaí believe that while the initial groups protesting were mostly from the far right, they were soon joined by others with little affiliation who were more interested in looting, vandalism and the opportunity to confront gardaí with no repercussions.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said on Friday the initial disturbances came from people “filled with hate” who were later joined by others “intent on crime and disorder”.
Another garda put it more bluntly: “A smoke signal went up to every thug on TikTok in the city that Dublin was a free-for-all.”
This is when the worst of the violence occurred.
At 7.30pm rioters clashed with gardaí on Cathal Brugha Street, launching fireworks, bottles and other projectiles before smashing the windows of the Holiday Inn hotel.
Shortly after, a Luas tram and a double-decker bus were set on fire and premises on O’Connell Street were looted.
Online, many accounts seemed to revel in the violence, with MMA fighter Conor McGregor tweeting: “You reap what you sow.” Far-right figures abroad gleefully spoke about the Irish “rising up”.
Nick Griffin, former president of the British National Party, falsely told his followers the Irish Army was on the streets with armoured personnel carriers.
Gardaí continued to come under attack but, as public order units streamed in from around the country, they managed to get the situation under control and begin making arrests.
Thirty-four people were arrested in total. None of organisers of the initial protest were detained. However, this may change in the coming days and weeks.
A senior Garda source said investigators are specifically examining social media accounts involved in mobilising the demonstrations under incitement legislation. This work is being undertaken by the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI).
Incitement can be a very difficult offence to prove, as prosecutors must show the accused knew the results of their actions could lead to criminality.
However, there is huge pressure on the Garda to be seen adopting a proactive response towards the far right following the violence. This follows months of taking a more subtle approach for fear of creating martyrs among the movement by arresting some of them in a public fashion.
“There is no failure here,” said Harris in regard to the Garda response.
“I think we have seen an element of radicalisation. We have seen a group of people who take literally a thimbleful of facts, a bathtub of hateful assumptions and then conduct themselves in a way that is riotous and disruptive to our society.”
However, he also said gardaí will have to examine the tactics around policing such events.
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