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Newtownmountkennedy, Ireland – Thousands have taken to the streets in a days-long protest against Ireland’s controversial immigration policies after a brutal Gardaí crackdown left fellow citizens bloodied and pepper sprayed.
The protest is now being viewed as a critical flashpoint for the Irish right wing, whose dissent against migrant resettlement into places like Newtown is now shared by up to 80% of the nation, according to recent polls.
Heavily armored Gardaí officers first moved to shut down the peaceful protest on Thursday, with clashes between police and demonstrators resulting in arrests and baton strikes on young women and children. According to sources, the protest was launched in resistance to a planned migrant plantation, which, if finalized, would see the small Newtownmountkennedy flooded with so-called “asylum-seekers” from the third world.
Shocking footage uploaded to X, formerly Twitter, depicts scenes of violence previously unheard of in Wicklow County, as police with helmets and shields marched to batter those voicing concerns over the government’s open borders policies. During the clashes, a fire broke out near the site of the plantation, which was said to have delayed busloads of racial foreigners currently living at a temporary camp in Dublin’s Mount Street from arriving.
While the police’s actions were markedly denounced on social media, the Gardaí responded by increasing protection around the site, up to and including metal barricades, horse units, and water cannons the following morning. Protestors went undeterred on Friday, however, with many having witnessed for themselves the extent to which the “tyrannical” Irish government was willing to go in order to continue the demographic replacement of its own native citizens.
“A small peaceful protest is ongoing,” said citizen journalist Mick O Keeffe on X, formerly Twitter. “The state has deployed Garda riot squad, mounted unit, water cannons borrowed from the PSNI, and a helicopter.”
“Ireland is under totalitarian rule,” he continued.
Government escalation did not go unanswered, however. Over the weekend, thousands of Irish nationalists, right-wingers, and concerned families gathered in Newtown, reinforcing the protest efforts and quickly outnumbering the opposition.
Carrying Irish flags and banners that read “Ireland is our homeland” and “You beat us with batons, but you will not break us,” the crowds of anti-plantation demonstrators would continue their marches into Sunday, earning applause from local residents and shopkeepers who wanted to “take their town back.”
While the nation of Ireland appeared to throw its support wholly behind Newtown residents, leftists, and elected politicians were quick to lionize the police response and falsely accuse protestors as “outside agitators.” Ireland’s left-leaning The Journal newspaper even downplayed the topic of mass migration as a mere “conspiracy theory.”
“Individuals trespassed, set fires and threw various items at Gardaí,” read a statement by Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Justice, Pa Daly. “We must be unequivocal in both our support for Gardaí and condemnation of criminality. Violence and damage to property are totally unacceptable, as death or serious injury will surely follow.”
Meanwhile, Irish Nationalists applauded the rally in Newtown. In a post to its official social media pages, the newly formed Clann Éireann nationalist party reminded those present that rallying in opposition to the status quo was a right of all native-Irish people, regardless of the town they hailed from.
“With all the outside agitators supposedly involved, you would think the Gardaí would have arrested at least one person who was from outside the area?” Read the statement.
“There are no outsiders at any protest anywhere in Ireland unless they’re not Irish,” it continued.
Irish nationalist Keith Woods pointed to the herculean efforts that the government now needed to take in order to force the unpopular sight of migrants onto its citizens.
“Resistance to government plantation policies have reached the level where this kind of policing is necessary to force migrants on Irish communities,” he said in a post to X/Twitter. “Most Irish people want less immigration, how many of them will support this kind of action by the state?”
Immigration and its woes have become a rising concern in Ireland. According to a recent Amárach Research poll for the Daily Mail, a staggering 79% of Irish citizens believe the number of immigrants arriving in the country is too high. This figure comes against 2% who believe immigration is “too low.” Of those polled, 64% say the current government “isn’t in control of immigration to Ireland,” while only 20% disagree.
The White-Papers Policy Institute, an organization that tracks immigration data and reports its findings, has called Ireland’s current situation “dire,” with new arrivals straining and “testing the patience” of the Irish people. Between April 2022 and April 2023, the WPPI asserts that more than 141,000 immigrants arrived in the Irish state, which has a population of just 3.9 million ethnic Irish.
Native Irish control only 76.5% of the total population in their own homeland, and if drastic political policies are not implemented to stem the tide, WPPI suggests this number could lessen even further in the coming decades.
Ireland’s constant battle with the negative, bloody effects of mass migration policies has already produced a number of highly publicized incidents of dissent. In November, an Algerian national living in Dublin was arrested for a savage knife attack on a group of young children being dismissed from grade school. The horrific attack sparked overnight anti-immigration riots, which saw Gardaí vehicles set on fire, and businesses ransacked by the city’s non-Irish residents.
In early April, a peaceful protest organized by young families against a migrant plantation in Coolock was maliciously targeted by Irish “Antifa.” A scuffle between the two groups—believed to be instigated by the anarchists—produced a misplaced phone, which later revealed systemic collusion between Antifa and numerous mainstream media journalists, including Paul Connolly of Newstalk.
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