‘My message to other communities? “Get out, get involved and you will feel much more in control”’
“The far-right use disinformation and false stories designed to generate a moral panic. This has been accelerated hugely by Facebook, especially in local communities…Facebook respond to the vast majority of reporting of hate content by saying it doesn’t break their community standards.” A spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta said: “We have clear policies that prohibits hate speech and incitement to violence.
When Molly Hennessy was facing an angry man with her pro-refugee sign, an asylum seeker, Maxine*, was inside listening to protesters chanting “refugees must go”. She was terrified. “You’re coming from trauma and then you’re here facing another trauma. The next day I had to go to the chemist…and I wasn’t okay. I was scared. I didn’t know who was there last night. I worried they would see me…I kept on praying. ‘God, do you know I am here? I left my home and I am here’.
Last week’s Northside for All rally in support of migrants at nearby Fairview Footbridge was important to them. “I took all the guys who were frightened and said, ‘let’s see another protest, a welcome to refugees’,” says Ali. “That was maybe the best thing they’d seen in Ireland.”I meet Buzz O’Neill, who runs nightlife events, after he speaks at a Drimnagh for All rally in support of refugees and asylum seekers.
Susan Gilshinan works in the school lunch club. She didn’t recognise most protesters but was shocked to see some of her neighbours there. The refugees were gone. Instead staff were being intimidated, she says. In the first few days of term, she says, many people kept their children out of school either because they feared non-existent refugees or the protesters themselves. The refugees themselves “didn’t cause a bit of grief”.
“Last night we were talking to a group of young lads…They were maybe 14 or 15 and they were able to parrot back the talking points of the National Party word for word. When I asked them about politics generally, they had very little knowledge...People who were otherwise insulated and alienated from politics have all of a sudden taken on an intensely political argument from the far-right… I do worry about those types of attitudes remaining in the community.
East Wall Here For All volunteers sort through some donated items for asylum seekers. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
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