How anti-immigrant activists tried to 'weaponise' Carlow incident with misinformation

BreakingNews.ie

6 hours ago

Misinformation around a recent shooting incident at a Carlow shopping centre was "weaponised" by anti-immigrant activists and facilitated by social media algorithms, according to a researcher who monitors far-right activity in Ireland.
On Sunday, June 1st, a 22-year-old man discharged a firearm inside a supermarket at the Fairgreen Shopping Centre, and later died of a self-inflicted gunshot.
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He was the sole fatality in the incident, and the only other injury was a minor leg injury suffered by a girl who fled the scene in the ensuing panic.
Within an hour, misinformation and conspiracy theories were rampant on social media. Far-right activists made a number of claims, including that seven people had been killed in the incident and that it was a terror attack.
An hour and a half after the incident, Derek Blighe, the founder of the nationalist and immigration-focused 'Ireland First' party, posted on X: "Unconfirmed Reports of a mass shooting in Carlow, apparently 7 people including a child have been shot."
He also shared a Facebook comment suggesting a nine-year-old had been shot.
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The Hope and Courage Collective (H&CC) is an organisation that is focused on helping communities to counter "hate and division", as well as far-right mobilisation.
In an interview with BreakingNews.ie, H&CC research and communications lead Mark Malone said: "Claims from the likes of Derek Blighe, from Gavin Lowbridge (who runs the OffGrid Ireland account on Twitter spaces), they were framing the incident as a terrorist shooting related to their own anti-immigrant politics. This was all within a time period that allowed for no verification, and susbsequently what transpired was most of it was utter nonsense."
Mr Malone also mentioned anti-immigrant activist Philp Dwyer, who drove to the scene in Carlow to film.
"It was telling that Philip Dwyer was travelling back from an anti-migrant demonstration in Clonmel, heard there was something happening and landed up in Carlow, he describes himself as a 'citizen journalist'.
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"He was quick on the scene. What he was pitching was 'I don't see any Irish people here, I don't see any white people here', literally after he interviewed a white Irish woman.
"He's repeating these kinds of false narratives, openly lieng to the auidence, anyone can see the contradictions in what he's saying. I guess that's part and parcel of not being accountable to anyone, you can lie, contradict yourself, without consequences.
"It's not like the base or his followers are interested in accuracy or truthfulness, it's more about virality and emotional content. The repetition of frames and narratives they want to push, regardless and completely independent of reality."
He added: "Also telling was his approach to the Fire Service and An Garda Síochána at the scene. He started filming them and asked for information about the injuries, number of fatalities. The people on the ground probably didn't know what the details were at the time, and were reluctant to make any specific statements to a guy who evidently wasn't a journalist, was just some guy standing with a phone demanding information. When they made it clear they could not provide the information, Dwyer quickly moved to just verbally abusing them."
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Mr Malone also pointed out that anti-migrant activists are often spreading misinformation with the aim of creating fear and division so that they can monetise it.
They would see something like what happened in Carlow as an opportunity to insert themselves in public conversation and to push their own narratives.
"Content that creates fear or posits a 'this is what happened' in an emergency situation, spreads fast.
"If you have a blue tick and your account is monetised, you can get money for views on your content.
"Derek Blighe and Philip Dwyer rarely post anything without asking their followers for money.
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"Content that rallies emotions like fear, anger and disgust often leads to people sharing something without critically thinking or examining it.
"This is why we often see false rumours about sexual violence or child abductions as a way of priming people to be afraid of Ipas centres.
"They would see something like what happened in Carlow as an opportunity to insert themselves in public conversation and to push their own narratives.
"There's no clarification or removing posts afterwards, they move quickly from spreading false information, claims that the shooter was a migrant or that it was an Islamic attack, when it became clear that this was an Irish person involved, they just stopped."
An Garda Síochána posted regular updates about the incident, including one which clarified the gunman was a white Irishman.
'Frenzied misinformation'
Mr Malone said this route made sense given the "frenzied misinformation" spreading online, however, he said it is unlikely to make any impact with those who follow the activists.
"There was a small pause before they returned with 'why are they saying it's a white man?'
"In fact it is actually their own cycle of disinformation and propaganda which forced An Garda Síochána to make that statement.
"The number of statements from gardaí that day was rare, but it was needed to limit the spread of this frenzied misinformation online.
"There are pros and cons, it's understandable why gardaí approached it that way given the rapid response of reactionary voices trying to frame it in a particular way. However, regardless of what is put out the far-right will still find ways to weaponise, argue, twist, misrepresent.
"Those that are interested in pushing fear and division will continue to do so, the problem is they're allowed to lie, spread misinformation, be racist, incite violence and fear, without pushback. They're allowed to amass large followings and raise income from social media platforms even when they're clearly breaking the terms and conditions of the platforms themselves."
Mr Malone recently published research into the violence in
Ballymena
, and identified a Facebook group that was actively encouraging people to attack individuals' homes.
He pointed to this as an example of how social companies need to do more to target misinformation that poses real life danger to people.
"We can see that in the context of Ballymena where we reported a Facebook page being used to organise pogroms on a street by street basis, Meta said it did not break their terms and conditions.
"A lack of serious action by the platforms is a huge issue. While individuals need to be held accountable for what they're doing, these companies have billions at their disposal and are taking no action when their platform is contributing to people being burnt out of their houses.
"Look at Facebook in Myanmar, a UN investigation found that Facebook was culpable in the face of a genocide in 2016, almost 10 years later people are being burnt out of their homes in Northern Ireland and it's being openly orchestrated on the platform."
While there was no followup violence caused by the misinformation around the Carlow incident, social media played a big role in the Dublin riots in November 2023.
Mr Malone said incidents like this are inevitable without serious action from the likes of Meta and X.
Recommender systems
The H&CC has long advocated for the removal of recommender systems from social media. These algorithms direct people to emotive content, much of which promotes violence and racism.
"I think there's the inevitability rather than possibility that something bad will happen and that social media platforms will be playing a significant role in that, we're already seeing it.
"That's why we would argue there neeeds to be serious political action around the platforms both in terms of giving clear effect to agreements under the Digital Services Act and the recommender systems.
"Those mistruths that are being created as viral content are not just shown to the followers of the people posting it, the algorithms designed by the companies are there to recognise highly engaging emotional content and to spread it as far and wide as possible.
"That's where anti-immigrant influencers are able to utilise the way the platforms work to spread their content, which has no factual basis to it.
"There is probably a trade off being made given the amount of taxes the companies bring in, but you cannot relegate safety within our communities to the demands of platforms."
He said "greater political will" is needed to address the negative impact of social media companies and their recommender systems.
"Another striking thing is the number of times and the speed at which platforms can get access to the Government in terms of demanding meetings and how often those meetings are held behind closed doors, with ministers or Dáil committees.
"These platforms are supposedly being held accountable, but these meetings are normally held outside of public scrutiny. That needs to end."
Tánaiste Simon Harris and Taoiseach Micheál Martin have spoken out against the prominent use of tricolours at anti-immigrant and far-right demonstrations, which have been become more widespread in Dublin, Cork and towns across the country in recent years.
Mr Malone said this attempt to link far-right ideas with Irish history is imported from similar movements in Europe, the UK and the US.
People wave tricolours at an anti-immigrant protest in Dublin city centre
"Much of what we hear coming from the mouths of the anti-immigrant movement in Ireland are reactionary British ideas with an Irish accent.
"I'm not saying there has not been anti-immigrant sentiment in Ireland before, but it's very clear that the modus operandi, the phrases, the language and discourse, has a much greater relationship with English fascism and British nationalism than it does with any historical Irish nationalism or republicanism that has existed.
"This handing out of flags is well funded and centrally organised, trying to create a specific asthetic, this myth that these movements that have existed since around 2016, and coalesced around Covid, that they have some sort of lineage going back to 1916, they cleary don't.
"In our research of their communications since 2016, they are primarily with British nationalists and English fascists. It's clear to us why the likes of Tommy Robinson and others are retweeting this stuff. They share the same world view, the flag is just a prop to share this false link to 1916.
"In the North, the anti-immigrant activisits are mobilising around the term 'Love Ulster', here it's 'Love Ireland'. The importation of islamaphobia.
"The raison d'etre of these movements is lifted from international spheres. They are even looking to forge alliances with fringe loyalists.
"What we're seeing is some of the key actors in anti-immigrant mobilising have very extreme politics; white supremacy, neo nazi, islamophobia.
"There is a distinction between people who are maybe fearful of difference, that's not an abnormal experience many people have that, but when we see people explicitly pushing white supremacist politics. Not just going to marches but live-streaming, actively organising people in local communities to stoke fear.
"Propogating this myth that there is this link to historical Irish republicanism, part of what we want to do in our work is to smash that myth."
'A small minority with a large megaphone'
Mr Malone said the far-right in Ireland is "still a small minority with a large megaphone provided by social media".
He pointed to the "complete rejection" of anti-immigrant candidates in the recent general election, but warned that moving political discourse further to the right could still occuer.
He said this is something politicians should be aware of, and made particular reference to human rights concerns over recent deportation flights from the State.
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"We've already seen the Minister for Justice doing this macabre tweeting about deportation. The National Party won't be complaining about that.
"We're seeing stories of people being deported after turning up for their regular calls to the Garda station which they're meant to do as part of their terms and conditions, committing no crimes and following up on what they're being asked to do, and yet they're being lifted and put on deportation flights.
"Potentially the desire to shape numbers is affecting how people are being arrested and then deported, that is a concern.
"Even though the organised far-right is very small, the impact it can have on the mainstream parties can be significant. It's the role of all of us to remind them, look at Europe where centre right parties take the clothes of the far-right... they get a hiding at the ballots."