Wait, *What’s* Going On In Northern Ireland Now?

We’ve got a lot going on right now here in the United States — but that doesn’t mean we should ignore what’s going on in the rest of the world. Especially when it’s kind of related!

While Trump and Co. try to pretend that the whole city of LA is on fire and there are riots everywhere, when in fact it’s a protest confined to a couple-of-block radius, there are actual riots (and fire!) erupting in Northern Ireland.

On Saturday, two 14-year-old reportedly Romanian boys were arrested in Belfast on suspicion of having sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Absolutely nothing is known about their immigration status or their identity beyond the fact that they required a Romanian translator.

Following this, there were protests in Ballymena, a city of about 24,295 around 50 minutes away from Belfast. The protests quickly turned into violent anti-immigrant riots, and have since spread across the country. About 40 police officers have been injured so far and 14 immigrant families have been whisked away and given temporary housing to shield them from possible attacks.

Residents have been terrified, even going so far as to put up Union Jack flags so that the rioters know they are not immigrants and don’t set their houses on fire. Because yes, they’ve also been setting people’s houses on fire.

For the last several years, there has been a serious uptick in far-right political activity, particularly of the anti-immigrant variety. This is either in spite of or in reaction to the fact that the country as a whole has become more socially and economically liberal in recent decades. Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill was appointed First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, after the left-wing Republican (different kind of Republican!) party won a majority of preference votes and seats in the 2024 election. It was just a little bit of a big deal, given that the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (it’s all opposites!) had always been the majority party.

Is There A NICE TIME Happening In Northern Ireland?

Al-Jazeera has also noted that the “Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey found that 94 percent of respondents in 2024 said they would be willing to accept a person from a minority ethnic group in their area, compared with only 53 percent who said they would feel comfortable in 2005.” So people in Northern Ireland are actually more tolerant than they used to be.

Not much, actually! Northern Ireland does not actually have all that many immigrants and remains the whitest place in all of the United Kingdom. Only 3.4 percent of the country identifies as a non-white minority. In Ballymena, it’s about 6 percent, about half of those people being Roma.

There are a total of 2,637 asylum seekers in Northern Ireland, mostly from Syria. How many in Ballymena? Zero. There are zero asylum-seekers in Ballymena.

As journalist Andrew Madden points out in The Belfast Telegraph, there is no evidence suggesting that there is any kind of influx in undocumented immigrants, at least in part because it is not exactly a convenient area to get to.

“It is unclear what people mean when they refer to ‘undocumented’ people,” Madden wrote. “Are these people arriving in small boats? There have been zero reports of this happening in NI. People arrive in the mainland UK in small boats — they don’t choose to take an extended journey to NI because they aren’t keen on Dover.

“There have been reports of people smugglers exploiting the common travel area with the Republic to gain entry to NI, but these cases are rare,” he continued.

It seems fairly possible that right-wing demagogues and some politicians have simply seen the success other countries, like the US, have had in terms of mobilizing anti-immigrant psychopaths and have decided to try it out themselves.

General racist hysteria, compounded by the fact that ever since the economic crash of 2008, austerity measures have led to there being less affordable housing available and less welfare money to go around. People have blamed this on “illegal immigrants” despite the fact that there just really is not much of an “illegal immigrant” problem in Northern Ireland. Really, they’ve just needed a scapegoat and that is always a convenient one. (Well, for terrible people.) They are basically telling themselves that the reason they can’t get affordable housing is because “illegal immigrants” are taking it all, even though that’s just not really true.

Northern Ireland currently has record low unemployment, but there has been a decline in industrial work in textiles.

I realize we all roll our eyes at “economic anxiety,” and we shouldn’t use it as an excuse for racist bullshit — but there’s no question that people who are anxious and stressed about how they are going to survive are going be more likely to fall for bullshit. It’s simply not conducive to rational thinking.

One thing that has been pointed out in several reports on the riots is that while the vast majority of those participating in them are Protestant Loyalists/Unionists (people who want to remain part of the UK), there are some Catholic Republicans/Nationalists (those who want a unified and independent Ireland) involved as well. This phenomenon was also reported last year during the August 2024 anti-immigrant riots. Creepy racists excitedly posted on Twitter about how Nationalists and Unionists were uniting against all the non-existent “mass immigration.”

“This is incredible,” wrote one absolute creep named Cillian. “Catholics and Protestants are quite literally marching shoulder to shoulder in Belfast, Northern Ireland as they demand an end to Mass Immigration. When these two communities are putting their differences aside and coming together, you know you’ve messed up.”

However! The vast, vast majority of those rioting are Protestants. And there is a strong correlation to where these riots are taking place and areas known to be Loyalist strongholds with a history of paramilitary activity.

“Some working-class unionist areas feel as if they’ve lost out during the peace process,” sociologist John Nagle told Al Jazeera. “I think the sort of grievances about the peace process are being grafted onto the wider concerns about immigration.”

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Well, on the one hand you have a bunch of people from the Democratic Unionist Party looking to make hay out of this, and inflame tensions and anger against “undocumented immigrants” — because that’s good for them. DUP minister Gordon Lyons has come under fire for revealing the locations of immigrant families who had been put in protective housing — which, unsurprisingly, led to the leisure center where many were staying being set on fire.

First Minister Michelle O’Neill has (correctly!) denounced the riots as violent and racist (and called for Lyons to resign, which he has refused), stating that those responsible “bring nothing to our communities but hatred, fear and division.” Even some unionist politicians have come out and denounced the violence, such as DUP North Antrim assembly member Paul Frew, who stated that the violence and mayhem were “drowning out the strong and sincere sympathies for victims of sexual violence.”

Personally, I don’t believe these people give a flying shit about victims of sexual violence (same with Americans who somehow only care about victims of sexual violence if they believe an immigrant or minority is to blame) to begin with. I think they just wanted any excuse to run around being grotesque racists, for funsies.

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