Dr Shane Murphy examines the campaign dynamics of right-wing and anti-immigrant candidates.
With counts completed and all seats assigned, the consensus seems to be that this was not a good election for the Irish Far Right, who failed to secure a single seat in the 34th Dail.
Although some have been quick to suggest these results demonstrate that the far right was not so much a political movement as “Lots and lots of shouty videos on social media”, the truth is that the far right were able to dramatically increase their vote share, securing results that, despite not resulting in any seats, would have been unthinkable four years ago.
Some of the more notable candidates for example, including party leaders like Derek Blighe and Hermann Kelly, and sitting councilors like Malachy Steenson and Gavin Pepper, were able to secure vote shares around 5%, keeping them in the running through multiple counts.
Others have pointed out that while Far Right Nationalist parties may not have had success themselves, there are plenty of socially conservative anti-immigration candidates – such as Independent TD’s Mattie McGrath and Carol Nolan – who were comfortably re-elected. Independent Ireland also returned all their sitting TD’s and even managed to increase their representation with the election of Ken O’Flynn in Cork North Central.
Far-right reflections
The response among the Far Right has been mixed, with no clear narrative emerging around which candidates and supporters have been willing to coalesce. Far Right Irish Telegram channel Archiving Irish Diversity Stuff (AIDS) called on followers to avoid “doom-posting” and infighting, instead drawing attention to the many gains the far right had made over the last four years, before “encouragingly” explaining that things will deteriorate so rapidly under another FFG government, that large swathes of the Irish public will become radicalized.
This somewhat accelerationist belief was echoed by Far Right commentator Ferg Power in his election post-mortem, where he initially called on his followers to “Stop all the doom & gloom & negativity”, shortly before writing “This is only the beginning & things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better. I for one cannot wait until the arse falls out of everything & the very ones who screamed “Refugees are welcome here” are having to compete with their new found savage friends for services”.
A video released by Cllr. Gavin Pepper, who was seen as one of the Far Right’s better prospects for securing a seat before being eliminated in the 5th round of counting, largely consisted of him explaining that the majority of abuse he received while campaigning came not from his political opposition on the left, but rather people who supported the national party –“believe it or not, most of the harassment we’ve got has been from within our own constituency, and its friends of the National Party that were doing it”.
Pepper, who chose to run as an independent rather than join the National Alliance, went on to explain that he was threatened, was the subject of misinformation campaigns, and that his wife was screamed at on numerous occasions, before stating he will never join a party like that.
Michael O’Keefe, a Far Right influencer with over 140k followers on X, picked up on this, declaring “The National Alliance is Dead”, and warning members to “Get out of the Alliance while you still can, because anyone involved in that mess is tarred forever”.
Conspiracy theories
Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories were being promoted before the end of election day. Derek Blighe, for example, claimed to be “hearing stories” of people voting without ID’s, and ballots being removed without “voters present”.
Cllr. Gavin Pepper also cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process, calling for a recount before counting had even begun, apparently unhappy with the results of the initial tally.
Phillip Dwyer also sarcastically tweeted that there was “definitely no election interference going on here” after it emerged that he had received just one first preference vote from a box in Newtownmountkennedy, where he had participated in anti-immigration demonstrations in May of this year.
The Hutch factor
The most persistent conspiracy theory, however, had to do with the race in Dublin Central, where Far Right candidate Cllr. Malachy Steenson was running against Gerard “The Monk” Hutch, an Irish criminal whose campaign, and near election, became one of the main focal points of the election.
Even before voting began, Steenson expressed concerns that Hutch would cannibalize the anti-government protest vote that was crucial to his election prospects. This sentiment was visible across Far Right social media spaces in the run up to election day, where clips from a documentary on Gerard Hutch were shared in an effort to paint him as a slum-lord who housed immigrants.
On November 30th, in an interview with Gript.ie, Steenson stated that “I’ve not doubt that Gerard Hutch was put in the race […] to stop me and stop the emerging nationalist movement”, a belief which has since gained some momentum among the Far Right.
This conspiracy theory continued to develop on December 2nd, when X account @TheFlareNews shared an “exclusive report” titled “The Hutch Factor”, which outlined supposed connections between Geoff Ennis – the late father of Daniel Ellis, a former parliamentary assistant of Social Democrat TD Gary Cannon – and Gerard Hutch.
The report alleges that Gannon’s team reached out to a number of prominent figures in the Dublin North Central constituency, encouraging them to run for the explicit purpose of taking votes from Steenson, and that they leaked news of Hutch’s candidacy early to generate media attention. It is also alleged that Hutch’s campaign drew media attention away from the issue of immigration, and that “Gannon played Hutch to his immediate electoral benefit” by castigating him in public.
The report concludes with a section titled “Cui Bono?”, which posits that the establishment benefitted from Hutch’s campaign, to the detriment of Steenson and the people of Ireland.
Flare News
Perhaps more interesting than the allegations made here are the source itself. The Flare News describes itself as “a Europe-wide news outlet providing independent and immediate reports on issues that matter”.
To date, however, its output has exclusively consisted of coverage of the 2024 Irish General Election. The X bio calls on readers to “Follow @TheFlareNews on all major platforms”, although no associated account could be found on Facebook, Youtube or TikTok at the time of writing.
The accounts output also raises questions. “The Hutch Factor” report is shared in seven screenshots across three linked tweets. Although the screenshots have the layout of a print article, including a multi-column layout and page numbers, it is not clear that this story has been shared anywhere – in a digital format or otherwise – outside of these seven screenshots.
At the time of writing, it is unclear who is behind this account, although it is notable that the account shared its first post on November 28th, the same day “Fair Immigration Ireland” abruptly went offline, following an excellent investigation by The Dublin Inquirer’s Shamim Malekmian.
Fair Immigration Ireland was a website that featured information on nationalist candidates running in each constituency, and made efforts to mobilise “digital canvassers” and “keyboard warriors” in advance of the election. It also featured a “concerned parents” tab on its homepage, which led to a list of victims of crimes from across Europe, dating back to the year 2000, in which the perpetrators were alleged to be immigrants.
Malekmian noted that despite clearly being an online canvassing website that electioneered for specific candidates, the website did not meet the Data Protection Commission’s rules regarding easy-to-read privacy policies and transparency regarding ownership. The website also failed to explain how the website processed visitor’s data, meaning it was not GDPR compliant.
Malekmian’s piece, and the revelation that Fair Immigration Ireland appeared to have been run by a Slovenian immigrant, unsurprisingly garnered backlash from the far right, who accused her of doxxing the website owner, and called for her deportation. For them, the investigation into the website which lacked any transparency and was found to be in breach of electoral commission guidelines and Article 13 of GDPR, was just one more example of the “political interference” they believed they’d been fighting against throughout the election cycle.
