Ireland

Anti-Corruption Ireland (ACI) is an unregistered political party associated with candidates who ran in the 2020 elections and gained tiny vote shares. The party’s slogan is, “It’s time to take our country back,” and ACI’s principals have pushed white nationalist, anti-immigrant messages including the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. The party is led by self-identified reporter Gemma O’Doherty. O’Doherty’s views are so extreme – she’s rabidly anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ+, and a conspiracy monger – that she has been banned from most mainstream social media, including having been taken off YouTube for “hate speech.”

She once argued that the 2019 Christchurch, N.Z., mosque shootings were a “false flag” operation rather than the act of a violent white supremacist. Another ACI principal and one-time candidate, John Waters, said during a party meeting in January 2020 that “many of the ethnicities that are coming here” have “fertility rates that are two or three times the Irish rate.” He then claimed the “Great Replacement” was happening in Ireland. The party calls for an end to “uncontrolled immigration” and takes up other far-right agendas and conspiracy theories. On its website, ACI promises to “fight against the threat of globalism and Agenda 21,” a voluntary UN effort to improve sustainability.

Starting over a decade ago, American far-right movements have pushed the idea that Agenda 21 is actually a stealth global conspiracy to take over various countries and impose a socialist agenda. ACI falsely claims Agenda 21 “is dismantling our national sovereignty, cultural and natural heritage and endangering our independence.” ACI wants to ban the Open Society Foundations, long a far-right bogeyman for its funding of progressive causes, end the fluoridation of water, and remove “cultural Marxism” from schools.

The use of the term cultural Marxism indicates ACI is well attuned to American white nationalist conspiracy theories, where raging against cultural Marxism, a far-right, often antisemitic “theory” that claims academics and intellectuals are poisoning and subverting Western culture, is commonplace. In April 2020, Waters and O’Doherty launched a legal action against Ireland’s pandemic restrictions, seeking to have parts of the legislation declared null and void. During a court hearing, O’Doherty argued that nearly all people were unaffected by COVID, and that people should be allowed to go outside and “build up a herd immunity.” The case was ultimately dismissed.

Anti-Corruption Ireland has not posted to any of its social media since January 2024. O’Doherty continues to publish articles via a website and blog, as well as The Irish Light, a conspiracy laden newsprint. O’Doherty has used the publication to harass and target individuals who speak against her. This includes, after running a picture of Diego Gilsenan in her paper, claiming that he and 41 others had died as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine. The 18-year-old Gilsenan had been unvaccinated and tragically took his own life in August 2021. When his mother, Edel Campbell, brought a civil case against O’Doherty and the paper for its blatant falsehoods, the publication ran repeated attacks on Campbell. Both Campbell and her lawyer have received threats and harassment as a result.

Comhaltas na nGaedheal (CnG) is the Republic of Ireland’s branch of the Active Club, a group of autonomous but ideologically aligned neo-Nazi workout clubs. Founded by American white nationalist Robert Rundo, the group has chapters throughout North America and Europe.

Little is known about the leadership and membership of CnG as of late 2025. The group uses social media accounts on Telegram, Substack, and X to promote its movement, as well as real-life activism like posting and stickering in public places. The group defines itself as a National Socialist organization that is both “anti-communist” and “anti-capitalist.” “We will issue one simple clarification on our beliefs: nationalism for the spiritual well-being of our people; socialism for the economic wellbeing of our race,” the group wrote on Substack in August of 2024.

They have a limited presence on mainstream social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Pictures of the group’s activity only show four members at one time, though the organization does not give breakdowns of its active members different regions. The group also publishes essays and commentary to a Substack page which it has used to comment on its own actions and the broader Nationalist scene in Ireland. Output on the page has been sporadic, with five posts published over two months in 2024, the year the blog was started, and only a single article in 2025 responding mostly to the presence of an Israeli flag at a July anti-immigrant protest. Far beyond any legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, CnG is clearly peddles overt antisemitism and conspiracy theories, stating that “Israel and Jewry are trying to convince Europeans to self-annihilate by abortion, homosexuality, and replacement immigration.” Language in the blog targets housing for asylum seekers as “Plantation centres,” invoking a narrative of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory unique to Ireland.

Members have networked extensively with other Active Clubs. Pictures shared on Telegram show meetings between CnG and Active Clubs in Estonia and France, with repeated joint activity with Active Club Scotland.

CnG also makes attempts to connect itself to the Irish republican struggle against the United Kingdom. Traditionally in Northern Ireland (NI), far-right loyalists—groups who advocated in favor of NI remaining part of the United Kingdom—have been more connected to neo-Nazi paramilitary groups like Combat 18. In some of its blog posts, CnG uses propaganda imagery from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), a paramilitary group active in NI during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the Irish independence movement of 1916.

The Iona Institute is the more common name used for Lolek, Ltd., a private company established in 2006. Iona refers to the Iona Abbey, a Scottish church based on the isle of Iona, a center of Celtic mythology. David Quinn has led Iona since its founding. He is a former editor of the traditionalist Irish Catholic weekly newspaper and former religious affairs correspondent for the conservative Irish Independent daily newspaper. Quinn has written extensively against “aggressive secularism,” claiming that Christian influence on the state is seen as “illegitimate and somehow undemocratic” while at the same time feminists and socialists don’t “have to operate under similar handicaps.”

The institute is deeply embedded in the anti-LGBTQ+ movement in Europe and is adamantly against same-sex marriage and civil unions. Iona’s representatives have appeared at Agenda Europe summits, a network which has argued that Islam is an inherently violent religion, that feminism is in fact Marxism, and that declining birth rates are threatening Europe, alongside a number of well-known anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion rights campaigners and groups. In 2014, at the Munich Agenda Europe summit, Quinn moderated a discussion on the topic of marriage and “how do we need to defend it in public.” Other speakers came from well-known anti-LGBTQ+ groups, including Brian Brown, who heads the US-based World Congress of Families and is a board member of the similarly anti-LGBTQ+ CitizenGo, which is headquartered out of Spain. Another speaker was Dr. Željka Markić, leader of the Croatian anti-LGBTQ+ and conservative group U ime obitelji. The 2015 Agenda Europe event was held in Dublin, and Quinn participated, though no information is available on his activities.

Iona has criticized pro-LGBTQ+ teaching in schools and pushed discriminatory ideas under the guise of religious freedom, notions originally constructed by American social conservative groups such as the legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, which Iona praises on its website. They are generally skeptical of hate crime laws. Iona argues crime is rising, family breakdown increasing, and other social problems are caused by fewer opposite-sex marriages and a fall in organized religion. Its principals have also questioned climate change. In 2020, Twitter banned proposed ads by Iona about its work. Facebook had done the same earlier for content related to abortion.

In 2021, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights published a report alleging that Iona had received substantial funding originating in Russia to pursue an anti-gender/anti-trans rights agenda. The Fondazione Novae Terrae was identified as the immediate donor to the Iona Institute, after it had in turn benefited from €2.39 million from a Russian-Azerbaijani “laundromat” designed to channel funds to like-minded campaign groups. Iona patrons include the psychiatrist Patricia Casey, columnist Breda O’Brien, Roman Catholic priest and theologian Vincent Twomey, and Anglican bishop the Rt. Rev. Ken Clarke.

The organization balked at being added to GPAHE’s list of extremist organizations in Ireland in 2022, claiming the designation was being used to stifle its opinions. The Iona Institute told the the media that it was exploring legal action, a tactic that has been used to silence critics who categorize the organization’s mission as homophobic or hateful. Targets of threats of legal action for criticizing Institute members include a university newspaper and a drag queen appearing on the state broadcaster.

In 2024, Ireland held a referendum around the definition of family, and changing language in constitutional causes about the role of women in an effort to remove “very old-fashioned, very sexist language.” While polling in support of making changes was high, low voter turnout, confusing wording that ignored the wishes of a citizen assembly, and an invigorated “No” campaign by groups that included the Iona Institute contributed to the measures’ defeat.

The Irish Council for Human Rights (ICHR) was launched in 2020 by two former members of the far-right Renua party, siblings Tracey and Neil O’Mahony. ICHR focuses largely on anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine arguments on its website, spreads disinformation about COVID that has led to its YouTube videos being labeled as such, and it advocates against hate crime laws. Their biggest effort was a crowd-sourced case against Irish pandemic measures. Ms. O’Mahony, who is a barrister, became a key actor among anti-lockdown activists, joined American far-right attacks on Disney for being too “woke,” posted anti-transgender material on Twitter, and is against Ukrainian refugees in Ireland.

Mr. O’Mahony, a former member of the Irish Defence Forces, made headlines when he claimed that young children would be taught about masturbation if sex education was updated in Irish schools. He has questioned the legitimacy of the pandemic and the lockdowns, writing on Twitter that encouraging the wearing of masks is “about control and compliance” and “not reducing infection.” Other ICHR principals have also pushed extremist ideas. For example, Dr. Fiona Flanagan, on the board of advisors, has argued there is “absolutely no robust scientific evidence” that lockdown measures affect the spread of COVID.

Flanagan has suggested that illnesses caused by electromagnetic interference could instead be mistaken for COVID symptoms (similar claims are made by American far-right organizations about harms from electromagnetic interference). Flanagan has also called migration into Ireland “an effective modern plantation of the country.” This is an Irish version of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. The group’s events have been attended by racists and other far-right extremists, including Gemma O’Doherty and John Waters.

ICHR’s website has not posted a news story since 2024, and social media dedicated to the organization likewise has stopped posting since that time. Tracey O’Mahony remains active on her personal social media, particularly on X, where she has over 52,000 followers, and her YouTube channel, which has just under 22,000 subscribers. Her YouTube videos often begin with ICHR’s logo. Videos she releases frequently target subjects like hate speech legislation and asylum seekers. In 2025, a video posted to the social media site X, O’Mahony said expanding the European Union to include countries like Albania and Montenegro meant, “at worst they are planning to replace us entirely.”

Founded in 2016, the National Party (NP) is the largest far-right political party in Ireland. It was co-founded by Justin Barrett and James Reynolds, who served as party president and vice president respectively, and its slogan is “Ireland Belongs to the Irish.” Barrett has an extremely long history in extremist politics. He got his start in the anti-abortion group, Family Solidarity, and later was active with the militant anti-abortion, Youth Defence, from roughly 1992 until 2004, which reportedly physically attacked women’s rights activists and had links with the fascist International Third Position organization. Barrett was arrested and fined (he was 28) as a result of a mini-riot Youth Defence members were involved in at a hospital in Dublin in 1999.

An early influence on Barrett’s ideology was American Christian Right activist Ralph Reed, who apparently told Barrett in a private 1994 meeting that demonstrations and rallies were all well and good, but it was the ability to affect public opinion and results at the ballot box that persuaded people to adopt an agenda. Barrett wrote The National Way Forward in the 1990s and was planning to reissue it around the turn of the millennia, but in 2002 decided not to due to its inflammatory nature. The book called for strict adherence to Catholic doctrine, the creation of a “Catholic Republic,” a total ban on abortion, and restrictions on immigration.

It also linked pedophilia to homosexuality, and decried sex outside marriage. Eventually Barrett engaged with Euroscepticism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and associated with neo-Nazi groups, specifically around 2002 when he was active against Irish affirmation of the EU Treaty of Nice. He also went to meetings in Italy held by the neo-fascist Forza Nuova and in Germany by the National Democratic Party (NPD), widely regarded as antisemitic, racist, and neo-Nazi. At the time, Barrett claimed he didn’t know the nature of these organizations.

In 2016, Barrett said that Ireland should ban Muslims from the country. Barrett ran as an independent candidate for the European Parliament in 2004; his campaign focused on abortion, immigration, and Euroscepticism and incorporated nationalist rhetoric like “putting Ireland first.” Absent from politics for some time after the election, Barrett re-emerged with the launch of the National Party in 2016.

A farmer in Longford in the early 2000s, Reynolds served as chairman of the Longford branch of the Irish Farmers’ Association (1999-2003). He was elected as treasurer of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association in 2016 but was removed from his position after a vote of no confidence was prompted by his National Party activism.

Reynolds appears to have a contentious history in these groups. In 2009, he and other Irish Farmers Association members formed “Farmers for No” to oppose the second Lisbon Treaty referendum, which they claimed would “fast-track Turkey’s application to join the EU,” double the number of farmers, and cause the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy payments to collapse. In 2019, Reynolds appeared in a livestream with Irish anti-immigrant activist and conspiracy theorist Gemma O’Doherty. Reynolds defended O’Doherty when she was suspended from YouTube for hate speech.

The National Party’s platform is anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ+, Eurosceptic, and oddly for a Catholic party, pro-death penalty. The NP has a robust social media presence, with a large chapter presence on Facebook, and a highly active, online and offline, Youth Wing, Oige Naisiunach. Its April 2022 posts on Twitter were focused on anti-immigrant messaging, a call for neutrality in the Ukraine conflict, and to “House the Irish.”

Since an electoral washout in 2021, many longstanding members of the NP left the organization and openly criticized Barrett’s leadership style. Barrett reacted online with a video, criticizing his opponents.

In 2023, the party went through a leadership shake up that would eventually oust Barrett as president. Tumult against his leadership stared shortly before it was reported that €400,000 worth of gold belonging to the party was removed from a vault. The gold bars were being kept in case of the collapse of the fiat economy and were purchased using money donated to the party. Police eventually commented they were aware of the gold’s location, but painted the issue as an internal party matter.

A faction of the party supporting Reynolds as a replacement for Barrett contacted the Electoral Commission to request the Register of Political Parties remove Barrett as an authorized officer and to change the party’s official headquarters.

Barrett would not go quietly. He made his own submissions to the commission and the rest of the year was primarily dedicated to infighting among two factions in the party, each falling behind the Barrett and Reynolds as the respective leader. It was during this time, Barrett started the organization “Clann Eireann.”

As the squabbling played out in the media and in submissions to the Electoral Commission, the National Party won its first seat during a local election. A seat for Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart in Fingal County Council, Dublin, went to Patrick Quinlan. While giving a speech during a rally in Dublin in April 2025, Quinlan told a cheering crowd, “We must stand on a policy of mass remigration.”

Quinlan assumed leadership of the Nationalist Party in Fall 2025. Both Reyonlds and Barrett were removed as party officers from official documentation.

Sinne Na Daoine (SnD) is an anti-immigrant, self-described “watchdog” group founded in September 2023 by former Irish Freedom Party candidate and former Ireland First president, Anthony Casey. The group’s name translates to “We the People,” and began online, sharing information about crime in local areas. Since that time, SnD has moved into offline action and been the subject of scrutiny for potentially encouraging vigilante activity.

Billing itself as a nationwide organization within the Republic of Ireland, it has participated in anti-immigration protests throughout the country. The group has spread conspiracy theories to its followers, including that monks living in a Waterford abbey would be evicted to make space for housing asylum seekers.

Outside of protests, SnD organizes itself into “community patrols” that ostensibly walk the streets of towns and cities in Ireland providing “security,” which they say “deters anti-social behavior.” Patrols walk the streets wearing blue vests that identify them as members of SnD. While the group’s representatives have called the group “non-political,” Casey has used the SnD Telegram channel to promote messages about opposition to digital IDs,

The group offers perks to supporters willing to pay €20, which comes with discounted merchandise (the store currently only lists branded lapel pins and a coffee mug as available for purchase). Payments for membership and official merchandise are completed using Stripe, a major international payment processor.

Members of SnD have not been tied to violent action, though one member, Gerard McNamara, was convicted for beating his father to death.

Seed of Ireland (SOI) is a white nationalist group that is deeply connected to extreme right Catholic groups and carries the slogan “Ireland for the Irish.” SOI disparages immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community on its website, and is particularly anti-Muslim, holding rallies against the “Islamisation of Ireland.” They have a print publication, The Irish Patriot, an online store that accepts payment through Google Pay and Stripe. In July 2020, they held a protest outside of a football stadium where Muslims were allowed to worship. In August 2020, they protested at a church that allowed a Muslim prayer service. SOI is run by Castlefinn sheep farmer Niall McConnell, who describes the group as pro-life Christian nationalists. Though McConnell has run for office, SOI is not a political party, but rather a private, for-profit company with McConnell as its director.

At the August 2020 protest, McConnell accused the priest of allowing “satanists, cultists” into the church. During a 2020 meeting in the EU Parliament, McConnell said that a “Zionist elite” are importing “jihadi Islamists” into Europe. McConnell said this is part of a war on nationalists such as himself and considers it a “holy crusade.” The group was involved in anti-lockdown protests, and in 2020, protested TheJournal.ie, saying it pushed “anti-Irish, Marxist, communist” and “LGBT propaganda.” In January 2022, SOI hosted an online petition to deport the foreign national who allegedly murdered an Offaly teacher.

McConnell has ties to Nick Griffin of the racist British National Party and Britain First founder Jim Dowson, a British loyalist and Christian fundamentalist with a history of providing support to paramilitary organizations allegedly involved in hunting migrants in eastern Europe. In many ways, SOI is simply a project of Dowson’s network, as Dowson hosts its streams, merchandise, and websites. Griffin and Dowson have appeared on livestreams with McConnell, and other regular guests include nuns from the SSPX Resistance in Cork. Dowson has also shared that group’s materials. The SOI website is almost identical to sites that belong to Dowson, such as that of the British Freedom Movement and Knights Templar International, all selling variations of the same merchandise.

The Countess is a transphobic organization dedicated to fighting against Ireland’s legal provisions for transgender people. Named after Countess Constance Georgine Markiewicz, who was the Minister for Labour in the First Dáil and the first female cabinet minister in Europe, The Countess casts itself as a women-and-children safeguarding, gender-critical advocacy group.  The Countess wrote on its website that the organization formed in 2019 or 2020, both years are given at different sections of the website, as a response to the 2015 Gender Recognition Act and the self-identification approach to individual gender identity that became recognized under the law as a result.

In March 2021, the organization officially announced its intention to hold a video conference as a launch. Initially scheduled to speak was Jennifer Bilek, a conspiracy theorist who blames the spread of “transgender ideology” on a select group of Jewish billionaires. When Bilek canceled due to“family commitments,” UK author Helen Joyce took her place. Joyce takes a strikingly similar position to Bilek, blaming a list of organizations and powerful individuals for spreading transgender identity. (So much so that Bilek would later accuse Joyce of plagiarism, a claim she denies.) Regardless of the outcome, both authors are willing to blame transgender people’s existence and fight for civil rights as the product of a small cadre of Jewish billionaires.

In 2022, The Countess was denied entry to the National Women’s Council of Ireland’s (NWCI) annual general meeting (AGM). The NWCI cited a press release from The Countess claiming they would be “staging an action at the AGM of the national women’s council today in protest.” NWCI said it made the decision to refuse entry to the event for The Countess out of a “duty of care towards participants and speakers at our events.”

In response, The Countess members appeared on the Irish public broadcaster’s political discussion radio show Liveline for three days in June 2022, claiming their intention at the AGM was only to “ask questions.” Liveline was widely criticized for doing little to challenge The Countess’ version of events. Dublin Pride decided to end a relationship with public broadcaster RTÉ over the shows, accusing them of “stok[ing] the flames of anti-trans rhetoric.”

When far-right American journalist Andy Ngo publicly criticized Dublin Pride for the decision, The Countess attempted to contact him over the social media platform X (then called Twitter). They later deleted the post, saying they did not want to be associated with Ngo.

The Countess was founded and led by Laoise De Brún, a barrister who previously worked in media. In 2023, she wrote a bill that is promoted by her organization that would prevent transgender women from being housed in women’s prisons. In 2025, De Brún ran in the Seanad elections. She received of the first prefrence vote. She touted her attempts at legislative reform as qualifications for the job.

Since GPAHE released its first report on Ireland in 2022, several of the groups mentioned have disbanded or ceased public activity. We are including those groups below to preserve the research and in case the groups become active again in the future. The entries have been updated to include additional activity since the last report.

Originally called “House the Irish Fairly” when it launched on Facebook in January 2020, within days the group changed its name to “House the Irish First” (HTIF). Spurred by a critical housing shortage in Ireland, in particular Dublin, HTIF seems to have held its first protest in January 2020, when a group of around 50 members picketed a building site in West Dublin. The group claimed that the building had been earmarked for foreign nationals rather than local Irish people, and they wanted half the housing to go to Irish nationals. Leadership of the group is a bit unclear, but Alice Woods was quoted at a protest and is one of the administrators of the Facebook group.

Another Facebook administrator is Sharon O’Brien. From its start, there were concerns expressed about the anti-immigrant nature of the group. Activists and “other residents” at one building protest site complained about the “anti-immigrant tone” of the protest, the group’s Facebook page, and about alleged far-right activists who supported the protest. The group’s activities since the pandemic lockdown began have largely focused on its social media, in particular a Facebook page with over 18,000 followers.

The discussions on the page are mostly geared toward complaining about immigrants taking Irish housing and jobs – not dissimilar to what far-right extremists are saying in other areas in the world. The group’s administrators and moderators on Facebook keep a low profile, but other group members are blatant in their anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. Comments on the page speak of how foreign nationals/refugees/immigrants are taking jobs, money, and housing from Irish people and that the government has forsaken Irish-born people.

Many of the posts are racist, depicting immigrants, and especially Muslim refugees, as criminals or terrorists, and hint at the idea that a “Great Replacement” of the Irish by migrants is purposefully happening. For example, one poster calls migrants “gimmegrants” and says “our country is being devoured & destroyed…by the let-em-all-in woke brigade.” Another recent post says, “Ireland is being deliberately slowly Emasculated…They all endorse the Great Replacement strategy.” Others post, “Irish Lives Matter.”

The HTIF Facebook group is private and cannot be seen by non-members. Several other social media accounts appear to be connected to the larger HTIF movement, including a website, X and Telegram account, but all except the Telegram account have been inactive since the end of 2024. The Telegram account, which has only seven subscribers, has not posted since June 2025. “House the Irish First” remains a common chant at demonstrations and is written on banners and signs. Rather than a single formal group, it is a slogan and rallying cry for the anti-immigrant movement and those who blame immigrants for the housing crisis.

The Irish LGB Alliance (LGBA) was founded in 2020 as an offshoot of the UK LGB Alliance, run by Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Kate Barker, and Eileen Gallagher. LGBA describes its objective as “asserting the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted,” and states that such a right is threatened by “attempts to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender.” Jackson has claimed that lesbians are in danger of extinction due to a disproportionate focus on trans issues in schools, saying, “At school, in university, it is so uncommon, it is the bottom of the heap. Becoming trans is now considered the brave option.”

In August 2021, the UK Charity Commission announced that it would be engaging with the LGB Alliance trustees after the Alliance posted a post stating that “adding the + to LGB gives the green light to paraphilias like bestiality – and more – to all be part of one big happy ‘rainbow family,’” a post which was removed by X (then called Twitter) for violating the platform’s rules. In November 2021, British MP John Nicolson said that the speaker of the House of Commons had referred “abuse and obsessive behavior” from the Alliance to security.

The Alliance had run a fundraising campaign for itself saying, “make a donation to us IN HIS [Nicholson’s] NAME and we will tweet out your message,” subsequently tweeting a number of statements attacking Nicolson, including ones that called him a “rape-enabling politician.” The fundraiser was removed from the JustGiving and GoFundMe crowdfunding platforms for violating their rules. In general, LGBA opposes gender-identity education in schools, medical transition for children reporting gender dysphoria, and gender recognition reform.

The group was described by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights as transphobic in a statement signed by a number of Labour members of parliament. This group was key to the decision by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to exempt the trans community from the UK’s legislation to ban conversion therapy in 2022, something LGBA vocally opposes. Irish LGBTQ+ activists contend that its membership is mostly UK-based, though the Irish LGBA chapter insists “all our committee members are living in Ireland.”

In 2022, the group publicly protested in Ireland gender-neutral bathroom policies. In November 2020, LGB Alliance Ireland faced criticism after calling for schools to ignore the LGBTQ+ youth organization BeLonGTo’s Stand Up Awareness Week, a group generally against anti-bullying educational materials.

There has been no public activity by LGB Alliance Ireland since 2022.

Evolving out of the New Age and holistic health movements, Rise Up Éireann (RUE) came to prominence in February 2021 when they held an anti-lockdown protest in Dublin that descended into chaos. RUE is a font of conspiracy mongering, largely about the COVID pandemic. On Telegram, they describe themselves as “Freedom from the fake virus hoax. COVID only exists on TV, & in The jab, which is a bio weapon, to implement the New World Order, depopulation agenda. RiseUp & stand in Truth & Love. God save Ireland.”

The February 2021 event, which was to feature speakers and acts, including poets and musicians, fell apart when authorities closed the park where it was to be held. Around 500 protesters gathered in the surrounding area where the protest turned violent with fireworks shot at police on Grafton Street, injuring three officers. More than 20 people were later arrested. RUE subsequently lost their Facebook account, the company citing “posts calling for violence or coordinating harm” and COVID conspiracy content.

RUE claims to have no leadership, but reports indicate it was launched by Barbara Barrett, a holistic health practitioner who uses “Shakti Ji” online. The group has spread conspiracies including QAnon and the Great Reset, which claims a global elite is using the coronavirus pandemic to dismantle capitalism, enforce radical social change, and establish a one-world government, a bogeyman since 2020 of American anti-government movements and Donald Trump supporters.

RUE events have featured other far-right extremists, including members of the Irish Yellow Vests and National Party figures. In July 2021, Graham Carey of the Irish Yellow Vests, who has called for people to “wipe the Jews out” for their involvement in the pandemic, spoke at an RUE event.

Since the end of the pandemic health restrictions, RUE has become significantly less prominent as a rallying cry or organizing force inside the Irish far-right, but still uses its reach on social media applications like Telegram, to embrace numerous conspiracy theories.

Claims on social media indicate that numerous RUE accounts were suspended in 2024. The hashtag “Riseupeireann” remains popular across numerous platforms.