30-07-2025
Capel St stabbing: How misinformation spread across social media
At about 6.30pm on Tuesday evening, a probationary garda on a high-visibility patrol on Capel St, Dublin, was attacked without provocation by a knife-wielding assailant.
Within minutes, misinformation regarding the attacker, who is an Irish citizen, had begun to spread on various social media platforms — a recurring trend in recent times in the fallout from such incidents, with false narratives emerging before facts can be definitively established by official outlets.
6.55pm: An X account, with just 13 followers, posts: 'Garda stabbed by foreigner on Capel Street 10 minutes ago." This post is made in response to an unrelated post from prominent far-right agitator Mick O'Keeffe.
The post has been viewed 1,100 times. It is followed eight minutes later by a post from an account with 15 followers, stating: 'Capel Street 20 minutes ago, copper randomly stabbed by foreigner'. That post has been viewed more than 80,000 times.
7.43pm: Prominent anti-immigration X account Real News Éire posts a video allegedly depicting the assault, stating: "A foreigner has stabbed a Gardai [sic] on Capel Street'. The video has been viewed more than 237,000 times.
8.32pm: Gardaí release a statement, quoting assistant commissioner for the Dublin region Paul Cleary, noting the attack and the fact the attacker had been arrested at the scene.
No details of his nationality or ethnicity is given, a break from the protocol employed with regard to a shooting at a Carlow shopping centre in early June, when gardaí moved within hours to confirm that the shooter in question Evan Fitzgerald — who took his own life during the incident — was both white and Irish.
Revealing such information early is a calculated gambit to quell the spread of misinformation before it can take hold.
8.37pm: Former mixed martial artist Conor McGregor posts on X that an attack has been carried out on a garda 'by one of the Irish Government's new to the parish imports through its human trafficking racket'.
The post has been viewed more than 352,000 times.
Wednesday morning: It emerges that Tuesday evening's attacker is an Irish citizen of Pakistani heritage. Mr Cleary speaks on RTÉ Radio of 'very inaccurate misinformation and disinformation that went out online after this incident very quickly'.
'We have some people with their own agenda trying to use incidents like this to inflame situations for their own ends," he says.
All of the original posts describing the attacker as a non-Irish national remain online.
A post from McGregor on Wednesday afternoon pivoted somewhat in describing the suspected attacker as 'a second-generation migrant of full Pakistani heritage', while stating that 'the stabber and his entire family MUST BE DEPORTED' — a statement viewed more than 218,000 times.
