Rising fuel costs continue to impact the European Union. Driven by the conflict in Iran and a preexisting cost of living crisis, a swift 20 percent rise in the cost of fuel in Ireland sparked a series of national protests that began on April 7.
In rural and urban centers across the country, taxis, trucks, tractors, and semis slowed highways and streets or blockaded them altogether. Frustrated and fed-up working-class people, worried about the cost of fuel, the cost of housing, and increasingly disenchanted with the Oireachtas (parliament), took to the streets to protest for limits on fuel costs they said they simply cannot afford.
As news of the protests spread, so did support. Additional participants, organized primarily through local WhatsApp messaging groups and Facebook pages, joined across the country, using commercial and personal vehicles to block key infrastructure—Ireland’s only oil refinery, fuel depots, and the entrance to a major port—and main thoroughfares into Dublin.
Farmers, truckers, bus drivers, and taxi operators all began to take up the cause, demanding a cap be placed on the cost of fuel. The blockages led to gas pumps running dry as deliveries were delayed or blocked. By April 11, more than a third of Ireland’s 1,500 service stations had no fuel.
The protests formed as an organic grassroots expression of understandable frustration, but the unrest has attracted the attention of the national and international far right that sees the protests as an attractive medium for pushing anti-immigrant and anti-asylum seeker narratives.
Far-Right Elements Join Protests
Protesters have insisted to the media from the start that their movement was only concerned with fuel prices and little else. This has not stopped Ireland’s far right from attempting to insert their messaging into the widely popular movement.
It would be inaccurate to label the protest as motivated by far-right sentiment, just as it is undeniable that the protests have included individuals and organizations connected to the far right.
In one case, “Athlone Stands Together,” a group of anti-immigrant activists based in the central Irish town of Athlone, has supported and participated in protests related to fuel costs. The same information was shared by multiple community groups, and Athlone Stands Together did not claim to be the organizer. The group is made up of ardent supporters and community organizers, whose social media history indicates that they have participated in protests outside of proposed asylum seeker accommodation centers. Other posts on the site are disparaging toward immigrants and calling for the government to “stop the invasion.”
A post to the Athlone Stands Together Facebook group that detailed streets and times for convoys of supporters to meet during April 7, 2026, protests. (Source: Facebook)
Athlone Stands Together previously participated in protests outside of International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) centers. IPAS centers are often the sites of protests, as the far right uses the issue of immigrant and asylum seeker housing to stoke tensions.
There have also been several notable names from the Irish far right who have attempted to steer the protests toward their pet policy issues.
Reporting by The Journal found a mixed reception for those who wanted to expand the scope of the protests beyond the fuel tax. Individuals inside organizational chat groups on the messaging application WhatsApp were sometimes removed when they attempted to steer the conversation toward immigration. Similarly, when Philip Dwyer, a fixture on the Irish far-right protest scene, arrived at an April 7 fuel protest, he was told that the protest was “about fuel,” not immigration.
Despite the success in keeping the far right out of some aspects of the protests, individuals and groups expressing far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment have made their presence felt on the street.
This included targeting volunteers feeding the homeless. The Muslim Sisters of Éire have had a presence outside Dublin’s General Post Office distributing soup and food to the unhoused for over a decade. On April 10, the group reportedly gave out 300 meals to people in need after navigating through city streets snarled by the blockade’s tractors and trucks. As the food distribution ended, a group approached them, insisting that only certain people “belonged” in Ireland and telling the women perceived as having immigrant backgrounds to “go home.”
“As we were finishing our service, we were approached by a group of five or six individuals carrying Irish flags,” the Sisters of Éire said in a post to their Facebook page. “They began shouting xenophobic rhetoric, telling us this country is ‘only for the Irish,’ that we don’t belong here.”
In what the Sisters described as a “beautiful show of solidarity,” individuals around the post office defended the women. Things escalated and the “situation turned hostile,” as the group’s chairperson and founder was targeted with verbal abuse and told to “go back where she came from.”
“It was clear that because she wears a hijab, her identity as an Irish woman was being questioned,” they said on Facebook, vowing to continue their work helping those in need.
While giving a speech at the Dublin protest, Kildare County Councilor Tom McDonnell used the pulpit to call for the closure of international protection centers with the money saved going to farmers. McDonnell initially achieved notoriety in 2024 for saying Irish women need to “breed” more in reference to a call for increased birth rates.
Speaking to protesters on April 7, McDonnell claimed that Ireland was being “destroyed” by Europe and by the government.
“Our country is at stake here, and we need to look after it and forget about the rest of the world. And all of those IPAS centers ought to be emptied and straight out and that’s where we’re going to get our two and a half billion straight away,” he said on stage.
An unnamed speaker also at the Dublin blockade protest echoed rhetoric that immigration was going to out “breed” the indigenous Irish population, a version of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that assumes a deliberate plot to supplant European and North American countries’ populations with non-white immigrants for a variety of nefarious purposes.
In Ireland, the Great Replacement is branded the “Great Plantation” theory, a reference to the Plantation of Ulster, a British colonial project that imported Scottish people into the north, replacing the native population and stripping the Irish nobility of its influence in the region. Far-right groups frame the influx of migrants as the creation of a “new plantation” and a threat to the native population.
An anti-immigration demonstration held in Dublin during the blockade made some of the blockaders uneasy, as one tractor operator told The Guardian that he and others were “fearing for ourselves, thinking this was going to make the guards [police] turn on everybody.” He maintained the demonstration had “nothing to do with us.”
Former mixed martial arts champion Conor McGregor used the protests as a means of pushing anti-immigrant views, a frequent focus of the Irish native’s public statements and a linchpin of his so-far failed political ambitions.
Offering support for the protest, McGregor lambasted the “disastrous handling of immigration that has overwhelmed the communities and services,” in a recorded video.
In 2025, McGregor attempted to use his celebrity to gain political office in Ireland. After announcing that he intended to run in the Irish presidential election, McGregor was unable to secure the endorsements from sitting members of parliament required to qualify for a nomination for president. The fighter cried foul, claiming the country’s rules were a “straight jacket” keeping him out of office, despite his complete absence of political experience and that he could have run for a lesser office without garnering any endorsements.
International Amplification
The protests have made international headlines as much of the world begins to feel the same fuel crunch that is impacting Ireland. This has drawn attention from the international far right.
Among those attempting to insert a far-right narrative into the issue is British anti-Muslim activist Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. On his Telegram channel, Robinson has included updates on the protests since April 8, often interspersed with footage of violence and crime purported to be committed by immigrants in North America and Europe, including Ireland.
Robinson has repeatedly framed the Irish government as “traitors” for its response to the protests, and on April 16, shared a clip from a livestream with Infowars host Rob Dew that claims Ireland is being “targeted for destruction” through immigration. Robinson’s caption on the video read, “The Irish government recruiting Pakistanis en masse to be Gardaí [police] and rule over the Irish people.”
In a comment to public broadcaster RTÉ News, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said that Robinson was “referring to and relying upon these protests to advance his own political measures,” and blamed “outside actors” for attempting to manipulate the protests “for their own purposes.”
Canadian far-right media commentator and owner of Rebel News, Ezra Levant, traveled to Ireland to report on the protests. He saw the protests as linked to the 2022 Canadian blockade protests that were framed around a narrative of aggrieved truckers during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. While there are similar tactics being used, notably using large industrial vehicles to block roadways and create disruption, the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” protests were initially organized by individuals with connections to fringe separatist political parties and conspiracy theories.
Far-Right Narratives Fuel Violence
The far right is attempting to use the issue to advance its political narratives, chiefly around immigration and asylum seekers, which have been particular flashpoints in the country over the past several years.
False claims about refugee housing have played a central role in escalating violence against refugees and immigrants. Arson attacks, assaults, and riots — including the November 2023 Dublin riot — have been linked to far-right disinformation campaigns. Incidents targeting alleged migrant accommodation sites rose sharply between late 2023 and mid-2024, underscoring the real-world consequences of coordinated online hate towards vulnerable communities.
One of the most significant incidents of xenophobic violence occurred on November 23, 2023, when a stabbing attack involving an Irish citizen of Algerian origin was quickly misrepresented online as an act of Islamist terrorism carried out by an asylum seeker. Despite police stating that there was no known link to terrorism, far-right influencers amplified false narratives across social media. Within hours, the misinformation helped fuel a riot in central Dublin involving an estimated 500 people. The unrest included arson, looting, and assaults on police, leading to 34 arrests.
Similar dynamics have preceded other attacks. In February 2024, a house in Leixlip, County Kildare, was burned down after false claims circulated that it would be used to house refugees. GPAHE’s prior reporting showed that these incidents are not isolated, but rather reflect a recurring pattern in which disinformation campaigns directly trigger acts of violence.
While the threat of protest remains, there has been a short-term resolution put in place by the government. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin announced a €505 million fuel tax cut aimed at reducing the burden on commuters and commercial drivers. This decision effectively ended the protests for the time being.
Fuel Crisis Remains an Avenue for Far-Right Support
Adopting regional and local issues as a means of drawing support has long been a page in the playbook of the far right. Especially in times when citizens feel ignored or indifference from governing institutions, the far right will attempt to add fuel to the fire and inflame existing tensions. Issues like the fuel protests are reinterpreted by foreign far-right figures disconnected from local realities and packaged to boost their narratives targeting immigration and liberal democracy.
The protests equally became a source of fascination for far-right commentators, who wished to view the protest as a new avenue for garnering support. The British media company GB News, often compared to Fox News in the U.S., has hosted numerous members of the far right in coverage criticized for being Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ+. In their reporting of the Irish protests on April 15, GB News anchor Nick Dunning interviewed Eoin Lenihan, an Irish pundit and author whose work is critical of mass migration.
Lenihan called the protests a “profound moment” and a “tear in this carefully constructed democracy” of Ireland, “where truly grassroots voices were heard and this is the first time this was heard in non-IPAS, migrant settlement or non-mass migration, issues.”
The Irish government survived a no-confidence vote triggered by the swift rise in fuel costs and divisive protests, and the protesters themselves have done a reasonable job keeping far-right narratives away from the main focus of their actions. Regardless, the fuel crisis is not localized to Ireland and as costs for commercial and personal vehicles rise in response to global conditions, there is little reason to think that similar protests are not possible in other countries whose far right will engage in the same tactics.
