Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Posts Tagged ‘extreme-right

Man charged over a child-rape, CityWest racist riots; Despicable commentary by government and Sinn Féin representatives, echoed by irresponsible journalists

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Man charged over a child-rape, CityWest racist riots; Despicable commentary by government and Sinn Féin representatives, echoed by irresponsible journalists

Sinn Féin has a lot of influence, and is playing the racist card.

Listen to Matt Carthy TD, SF, Cavan-Monaghan.

Well-spotted by Saoirse McHugh; and well spoken by Eimer McAuley, a journalist.

Politicians defending despicable “legitimate concerns” protests have carried the ball up the pitch for the riots at CityWest

Politicians defending these despicable "legitimate concerns" protests have carried the ball up the pitch for the riots at citywest.Thank God Eimer is there cause none of these people, TDs included, seem to give a shit when it's a white Irish man brutalizing, abusing, or murdering women or children

Saoirse McHugh (@saoirsemc.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T06:48:13.676Z

Saoirse McHugh :

” Politicians defending these despicable “legitimate concerns” protests have carried the ball up the pitch for the riots at citywest. Thank God Eimer is there cause none of these people, TDs included, seem to give a shit when it ‘ s a white Irish man brutalizing, abusing, or murdering women or children”

Cedar Lounge Revolution :
Spot On, Cedar Lounge Revolution

The same message is promoted by irresponsible RTÉ journalists and government politicians such as Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan on news programmes and RTÉ’s Prime Time referencing “legitimate” concerns expressed by residents, contributing to a “consensus” that immigrants are the problem, and tougher deportation policies are needed.

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“Businessman behind smears against Jim Gavin previously spread false claims about rival” – Irish Times report on Kieran Kelly, far-right targeter of Irish presidential candidate

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Far-right activist Maria Steen, who failed to secure a nomination for the 2025 Irish presidential election, agrees she spoke with Kieran Kelly.

The 2025 Irish presidential election is toxic and dirty, and that is going to continue, TrumpSteen or no TrumpSteen.

“When contacted by The Irish Times on Monday, (Kieran Kelly) declined to share any evidence for the claims, saying it would be made available at a later date.

Mr Kelly said online that he had a call this month with Maria Steen, the conservative campaigner trying to enter the presidential election.

Ms Steen confirmed the call during a press conference on Tuesday.

She said: “As you can imagine, I’ve been getting calls from lots of different people who I have never met before and have never spoken to before.

“I had a call with Kieran Kelly. He mentioned nothing about Jim Gavin or any other candidate to me. He talked about, I think, that there’s an organisation called the Wild Geese, of Irish people abroad, who are taking an interest in Irish politics.

“That was the sum total of the phone call. I listened to what he had to say, and that was it.”

  • Cormac McQuinn and Pat Leahy Irish Times, September 23 2025

The left-wing candidate Catherine Connolly needs to promote a positive anti-racist message.


The absence of Steen from the presidential ballot paper is tempting government coalition partners Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to play the racist card in support of their candidates Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys.

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Racism: The socialism of Fools; Racist Cancer Spreading from Ballymena in Ireland

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Introduction :

The writer Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh offers very valuable insights into the June 2025 pogroms spreading from Ballymena in North Antrim to other towns in the 6 County bit of Ireland, notably Larne and Portadown. These vile events are related to similar sewer eruptions in the 26 county bit of Ireland and fit into a global rise of genocidal-racist powers such as Putin’s Russia, Netanyahu’s Israel, and their protectors such as Donald Trump’s USA. The latter is still a capitalist bourgeois democracy – but credible analysts now ask – for how long?

Below Fearghal’ s timely article –  which contains very useful warnings from history : relevant references are made to the Marxist scholars and activists August Bebel, Victor Serge and Ernest Mandel :

We add :

A chilling report of an interview with the DUP Westminster MP for the Upper Bann constituency, Carla Lockhart.

A stark report from the 6 County bit of Ireland headlined “Week of Violence in North “Akin to 1930s Germany”

Racist Cancer Spreading From Ballymena in Ireland, Irish Times, June 14 2025

Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh

Link :


Ballymena; Racism the Socialism of Fools; Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh

I recently discussed three interconnected issues on Raidió na Gaeltachta: reform to the South’s rent caps benefiting landlords and international funds, Trump’s authoritarian militarization of US protests, and the racist attacks in Ballymena/Larne.

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Conor McGregor’s St. Patrick’s Day Spectacle – Two Rapists in the White House

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Karim Zidan at SportsPolitika writes an excellent report on the appearance of Irish rapist-racist boxing superstar Conor McGregor at Donald Trump’s Washington DC White House on St Patrick’s Day 2025.

Link :


McGregor-Trump Rapist-Racist Summit – SportsPolitika

Zidan correctly observes that Irish government leaders Micheál Martin and Simon Harris distanced themselves from the Trump-McGregor Rapist-Racist summit. The socialist-feminist Dáil Deputy Ruth Coppinger (Solidarity-People Before Profit) points out that Martin voluntarily walked into the Trump-McGregor trap by lickspittling the American President at a March 12 White House event.

‘Two rapists in the White House’: TD tells Dáil McGregor’s visit to Trump was an insult to women

Link :
Two Rapists in the White House


Ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday to mark St. Patrick’s Day, former UFC champion Conor McGregor made an appearance at the White House briefing room, where he took questions from the baffled reporters in attendance.

As he stood at the podium alongside press secretary Karoline Leavitt, McGregor warned that “Ireland is at the cusp of potentially losing its Irishness” due to a so-called “illegal immigration racket.”

“It’s high time that America is made aware of what is going on in Ireland,” McGregor said, adding “What is going on in Ireland is a travesty.”

McGregor’s appearance comes less than six months after he was deemed liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a Dublin hotel in 2018. McGregor’s appeal against the jury’s findings is expected to come before the court this week.

Shortly following the verdict, McGregor was removed as the spokesperson for Proper No. Twelve, the Irish whiskey brand he helped create in 2018 before selling the brand three years later. Several retailers in the UK and Ireland have also removed Proper from its shelves, including Tesco.

Yet despite being liable for rape, McGregor was welcomed with open arms to the White House, with Leavitt claiming “we couldn’t think of a better guest to have with us on St Patrick’s Day.” The White House even shared a video of McGregor emerging from the West Wing before saying “Happy Paddy’s Day, America” to the camera.

McGregor’s White House welcome comes as no surprise, given President Donald Trump’s long-standing love for combat sports, particularly the UFC. No other sports organization aligned itself with Trump’s presidency as closely—or worked as hard to support his political rise—as the UFC.

During a meeting with Irish prime minister Micheal Martin last week, Trump said McGregor was his favourite Irish person partly because “he’s got the best tattoos I’ve ever seen”.

And yet, Trump’s fondness for McGregor extend beyond his taste for the fighter’s tattoos. McGregor has also voiced his support for Trump’s presidency and was in attendance at his inauguration in January. The two men also share a political vision marked by resurgent nationalism, isolationism, and a streak of anti-migrant hysteria.

McGregor’s views on migrants came to a head in November 2023, when he helped stoke anti-migrant sentiments that led to one of the most violent riots in Dublin’s history. The riot started after a man stabbed three young children and a care assistant in Dublin. Far-right activists quickly blamed immigration, stoking public rage after the suspect was identified as being originally from Algeria.

McGregor tweeted that Ireland was “at war” in the lead-up to the riots. In the aftermath of the chaos, he followed up by tweeting “you reap what you sow.” He had previously spent weeks stoking anti-migrant sentiments on social media, including endorsing a “task force” to monitor migrants.

McGregor’s anti-migrant stances quickly made him a symbol for the far right throughout Europe. Kampf der Nibelungen, a German neo-Nazi MMA league, shared several of McGregor’s tweets in their Telegram channel, including one where the fighter called for a “task force” for all entrants coming into Ireland and demanded that the Irish government “correct this or you are all finished.” AI generated illustrations of McGregor holding a shotgun and leading an army of angry gun-wielding men waving Irish flags also spread on platforms such as 4chan, Gab, and Twitter.

McGregor’s views also caught the attention of some of Trump’s inner circle, including Elon Musk, who showed interest in the idea of McGregor running for office in Ireland. The 36-year-old has repeatedly stated his intention to run for president of Ireland, calling himself the “only logical choice” to lead the nation. Ironically, the Irish presidency is predominantly a ceremonial role, serving as representative of the Irish state.

And yet, McGregor’s meeting with Trump speaks to the role that combat sports plays in modern politics, with UFC fighters serving as the conduits of conservative values and right-wing policy. It’s yet another example of how Trump’s MAGA ideology aligns with MMA’s ethos—one where success isn’t won through negotiation or diplomacy, but through sheer strength, power, and dominance.

Nevertheless, while McGregor has managed to secure a coveted meeting with Trump, there are few people in Ireland who believe he is speaking on their behalf. Ireland’s Taoiseach Michael Martin tweeted today that “Conor McGregor’s remarks are wrong, and do not reflect the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.” Meanwhile, Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Minister for Defence Simon Harris added that “McGregor doesn’t speak for Ireland.”

“He doesn’t speak for the people of Ireland,” Harris said. “He has no mandate to do such, and my views on him are very clear, well established, previously articulated, long standing and on the public record.”


An Irish Times Report (May 21 2025) carries an “inside story” on the Trump-McGregor White House Rapist-Racist Summit. McGregor’s visiting team included a Dublin City Councillor Philip Sutcliffe, who discussed the chance that the racist-rapist boxer may run for the office of Irish President :

“Many believe all of this is a prelude to McGregor formally entering the race for the Irish presidential election which is due to take place after the summer. McGregor has repeatedly indicated he intends to run, although it is not at all clear if he would obtain the required support to get on the ballot paper.

Sutcliffe says he hopes McGregor will run and that he will have Washington’s full support if he does.

“Not only Washington, he’ll have the backing of Putin. He’s another fan of Conor’s,” he added.

Conspiracy, Proxy War and the Ghost of Stalinism

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We wish to thank Ashley Smith for drawing our attention to this article by Tony McKenna, Counterpunch, March 11 2025.

Link :
Conspiracy Proxy War and the Ghost of Stalinism

In the conflict between Soviet Russia with Joseph Stalin at its head and Nazi Germany, I would have supported Soviet Russia. I suppose you could argue that might make me some kind of Stalinist. After all, I would have been supporting the Stalinist government. Not only that, I may even have hoped the US might provide it with funding to continue to organise its military effort, so you could probably label me an American stooge too. (in fact, the US did supply Soviet Russia with millions of tonnes of food, weapons and equipment during the Second World War).

But a distinction should be made.  What one is supporting most fundamentally in this case is not Stalinism but rather the struggles of the Russian people themselves,[1] their imperilled freedoms at the hands of a brutal, barbaric foreign invasion.   People fighting and dying – not because they had some great love for Stalin – but because they didn’t want to be bombed and maimed and killed at the hands of a foreign power.  Because they didn’t want to live their day-to-day lives under the shadow of foreign occupation.

Of course, one could ignore all this. One could assert, for instance, that the Russian population were simply being manipulated in the interests of the Stalinist government (and vicariously the US itself) and, therefore, it was Stalinism and the US government who were the true objects of international support.  Certainly, the defeat of Germany did bolster the imperial power of the US and Russia.  But were the millions of Russians who fought and died against fascism – were those lives merely the ‘proxies’ of the interests of Stalin and the United States government who supported him?

Such an assertion most would find obscene.  It is obscene because it involves the annihilation of a living content – the struggles and sacrifice of millions of people fighting for their concrete freedoms – in favour of the interests and relationships of a set of given states and governments considered in empty and schematic isolation.

For similar reasons, I support the right of the Ukrainian people to resist foreign occupation. As a necessary corollary, I also support the means by which they might do so – even if that means receiving funding and ammunition from the US and NATO (though if you can suggest some other alternative beyond capitulation at the point of a Russian gun, I really am all ears).

But none of this is the same as saying I support Zelensky, or that I support the US and NATO.  At the most basic philosophical level, it simply means to recognise that freedom – as Kant put it – is ‘an end in itself’.    It has an objective and social reality whether or not the arms the freedom fighters take up are provided by this particular imperial power or that one.  Likewise, freedom has an objective reality whether or not it is being menaced by Russian bombs or Israeli bombs or Nazi bombs.

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“Horror and Disgust” over Donald Trump (convicted rapist) bullying Ukraine President Zelensky in White House – former Polish President Lech Wałesa speaks out – Paul LeBlanc responds

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Former Polish President and Labour Leader Lech Wałesa has denounced a thuggish attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Washington DC White House on Friday February 28. The perpetrators were a convicted rapist – the US President Donald Trump – and the rapist’s sidekick, the US Vice President JD Vance. TV viewers all over the world were shocked by these scenes. One day afterwards, Vance was forced to abandon a skiing holiday by many pro-Ukraine protesters in the New England state of Vermont.

This makes me so happy. Thank you Vermont. This is so deserving to the POS human being vance is. He was beyond rude to a world leader and showed that he had no breadth of the ongoing war in Ukraine. http://www.politicususa.com/p/jd-vance-f…

SlavaUkraini033 (@slavaukraini033.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T03:23:30.548Z

We thank Joan McKiernan for bringing us the Wałesa story, contained in a New York Times article (see below).

First, the historian Paul LeBlanc assesses the Wałesa statement.

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Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, and the Gruesome Twosome of the British Tory Party

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On the western and eastern sides of the Atlantic Ocean a ferocious viper war has erupted.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s favourite attack-dog Elon Musk is trying to remote-control British politics.

Reform leader Nigel Farage’s typically British stiff upper-lip response is described below : it is like the Fawlty Towers episode when Basil Fawlty failed to produce a Waldorf Salad for a tyrannical American diner who had paid the bungling guest-house owner a generous bribe :

Financial Times, January 6 2025

Before long Trump will dispose of Musk, just as Russian strongman Putin bumped off Mr Prigozhin.

Musk might, at some point, jangle some of his loose change in the direction of far-right Irish political operators. The nearest Irish equivalent to Musk’s suggested Nigel Farage – Tommy Robinson marriage is a direct link between the beggar-gombeens of the Dublin Dáil and the convicted kick boxer/rapist Conor McGregor. The Independent Ireland (II) party had to dump a McGregor associate, Phil Sutcliffe, from its candidate list after Nikita Hand won a court victory over the kick-boxing rapist.

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Nightmare News, New Orleans USA – Anti-abortion Louisiana governor Jeff Landry encourages terrorism

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Louisiana’s governor Jeff Landry issued a deadly threat to the people living in the city of New Orleans :

This story – dateline November 13 2023, did not hit international headlines.

By contrast, on January 1 2025, we are in the middle of a breaking story about another mass shooter event in an American city : at least ten people are dead because an assassin opened fire into New Orleans citizens celebrating the new year.

The city of New Orleans uses the Mississippi River as drinking water. Our current governor (Louisiana’s Jeff Landry) begged the state to remove funding from the city of New Orleans to fix the pumps and the decaying sewage and water system UNTIL the District Attorney agrees to prosecute women for abortions.

Must read article by @geauxgabrielle.bsky.social.“IN A HORRIFYING INTERSECTION OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, JEFF LANDRY HAS URGED THE STATE TO WITHHOLD FUNDS BECAUSE OF HIS PERSONAL FEELINGS ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.”👇🏽

Lisa Reyna Loe (@lisaloe.bsky.social) 2024-12-31T22:28:01.068Z

On January 1 2025 conflicting explanations of the mass shooter event are offered :

One correspondent notes :

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Ireland’s November 29 2024 General Election : Racist Warning Signs

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Irish General Election to 34th Dáil; Racist Danger

The June 2024 Euro/ Local results in Ireland produced some alarming results – the racist far-right came from the margins and increased its electoral support. This could be a predictor of the coming General Election result.

Warning signs to anti-racists exist in various opinion surveys. See, for example, these numbers from a recent RedC General Election Opinion Survey) :

Aontú, a right-wing split from Sinn Féin set up by an anti-choice TD from Meath, Peadar Tóibín, is beginning to hoover up right-wing racist votes which were scattered among various mini-Hitlers in the June 2024 European and Local Elections. We can say the same for the Irish Independence party (II). When we note that a majority of independent candidates are part of the racist far-right, a disturbing picture emerges. The numbers are worse in other parts of the Irish state.

Here is the data from an Irish Times Opinion Poll :

Irish General Election November 29 2024 Irish Times Survey Results 15/11/24
First preference voting intentions

DublinRest of LeinsterMunsterConnacht/Ulster
Fianna Fáil16.00%19.00%27.00%13.00%
Fine Gael22.00%29.00%22.00%29.00%
Labour9.00%3.00%2.00%3.00%
Green Party6.00%2.00%1.00%2.00%
Sinn Fein21.00%16.00%19.00%21.00%
People Before Profit/Solidarity4.00%1.00%2.00%1.00%
Social Democrats5.00%5.00%2.00%2.00%
Aontú​2.00%4.00%3.00%2.00%
Independent candidate15.00%21.00%21.00%25.00%


Temptation exists : bending to “understandable” fears. For example an election canvasser from a party with one foot in the left put it to me that some voters are “uncomfortable” because their neighbours come from outside Ireland.

Let’s be clear, harsh, and unambiguous : messages like this pander to the racist view that immigrants are criminals and rapists. There is no evidence backing up claims that people born outside Ireland are any worse than Irish natives. It gives oxygen to the far right shite being whispered around communities.

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Written by tomasoflatharta

Nov 16, 2024 at 12:57 pm

Posted in 26 County State (Ireland), Councillor John Lyons, Dún Laoghaire Welcomes All, Direct Provision - Irish Gombeen State Racism, Dublin 7 for All, Dublin Communities Against Racism (DCAR), Dublin Governments, Dublin’s racist mobs hit the city centre, 23.11.23, Emigration and Immigration, FFFGGG Coalition, Gombeens, Poltroons, Green Party, Gregor Kerr, Hope and Courage Collective, Human Rights, Independent Ireland Party (IIP), Independent Left (Ireland), International Political Analysis, Ireland, Ireland - Emigration and Immigration, Irish General Election February 8 2020, Ivana Bacik TD, Labour Party Leader, Labour Party (Ireland), Left Unity, Mary Lou McDonald TD, Migration in Europe, Niamh McDonald, Opinion Polls, Paul Murphy TD Dublin South-West, People Before Profit, Police Forces in Ireland, Racism, Racket Hall Roscrea Racism January 2024, Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), RISE, Show Racism the Red Card, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats (Ireland), The Irish Times, Wendy Lyon

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Keegan says election candidacy ‘an error of judgement’ – Stardust Tragedy Survivor Steps Back From Racist-Fascist Irish National Party

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https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2024/1107/1479671-antoinette-keegan-election/

Stardust Survivor Antoinette Keegan will not be a 2024 Irish General Election candidate on behalf of the fascist-racist Irish National Party. She has made a good decision.