Ireland Is Burning
28th February 2024
As tensions mount over mass migration and a spate of brutal crimes by immigrants, Ireland is beginning to burn. Nationalist sentiments last seen in the twilight years of British colonial rule are reawakening, as a disenfranchised native population resorts to desperate measures to make their opposition to reckless migration policies heard.
Irish state broadcaster RTE recently reported that, since 2018, 23 buildings linked to planned migrant centres have been badly or completely damaged by fire. Ten of these fires have occurred since November of 2023. After Ross Lake House Hotel in County Galway, which was due to house 70 asylum seekers, burned on 16 December 2023, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar stated, “There is no justification for violence, arson, or vandalism in our Republic. Ever.” Green Party member and Minister for Integration Roderick O’Gorman called the fire “deeply sinister” and “designed to intimidate people seeking international protection here in Ireland.”
Despite the condemnations, the burnings continue. If we accept the government’s position that these are deliberate acts of arson, then we are witnessing a grassroots movement by locals across the nation in resistance to migrant centres being opened in their tight-knit communities. The last example of such a movement was during the Irish War of Independence and the ensuing Civil War which ended British rule and established the Irish Free State. In the period from 1920-1923, 275 Anglo-Irish landlord houses were burned to the ground. The parallels are impossible to ignore. Now, like then, the native population is turning to methods reserved for a disenfranchised people against a hated ruling class. How did this happen?