Anti-Migrant Rioters Rampage Through Dublin After Knife Attack on Children

Anti-migrant riots erupted in Dublin on Thursday night in the wake of a stabbing attack outside a school that left three children injured, resulting in what police described as the worst violence witnessed in the Irish capital in decades.

Thirty-four people were arrested amid the disorder, which Irish police commissioner Drew Harris, blamed at a press conference on Friday on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology.” 

The stabbings happened outside a school in central Dublin on Thursday afternoon and left a 5 year old girl and a creche worker in her 30s critically injured, and a 6 year old girl with severe head injuries. The unrest began after news spread of the attack and that the alleged knifeman was of non-Irish origin.

Vehicles were torched and shops were looted as hundreds of rioters clashed with police during the rioting. A number of officers were assaulted, with one seriously injured.

“What we saw last night was an extraordinary outbreak of violence,” Harris told reporters. “These are scenes that we have not seen in decades.”

The riots follow growing activity by Irish far-right networks over the past year, including anti-immigration campaigning over high-profile crimes committed by foreigners. Tensions were already high following the sentencing last week of a Slovak national for the 2022 murder of 23-year-old teacher Ashling Murphy, and the sentencing in October of an Iraqi-born man for the homophobic murders of two men in April 2022.

Those anti-foreigner tensions have been fanned by online influencers such as Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who has been regularly posting to his 10.2 million followers on X/Twitter about the “grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place.”

The night before Thursday’s violence, he had posted: “Ireland, we are at war.” In the wake of the riots, he warned: “We are not backing down, we are only warming up. We are not losing any more of our wom[e]n and children to sick and twisted people who should not even be in Ireland in the first place.”

Alongside the 5 year old girl, the knife attack also left a woman in her 30s, who was a carer for the children, critically injured. The 6-year-old girl with head injuries is due to undergo surgery, while a five-year-old boy was also injured and has since been discharged from hospital. The attack was stopped only after a passing delivery driver, a Brazilian national, intervened, using his bike helmet as a weapon against the knifeman. 

The attacker, who Irish media reported was understood to be a naturalised Irish citizen who had lived in the country for about 20 years, was injured, and remains under guard. Police have seized the man’s laptop and phone and searched his home as they seek for a motive for the attack. They have not ruled out terrorism or mental health reasons.

As word spread on social networks of the attack, and that the knifeman had a foreign background, mobs or rioters, some carrying “Irish Lives Matter” banners, soon mobilised on the streets of central Dublin, attacking and throwing projectiles at police and setting a police car, bus, tram and buildings on fire. 

Footage on social media showed agitators harassing journalists, while messages on chat networks urged rioters to mask themselves, “tool up,” and violently target migrants, as well as police and the home of Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who they blamed for immigration into Ireland.

On Friday, Varadkar condemned the rioters, saying they were motivated by "hate.”

"Those involved brought shame on Dublin, brought shame on Ireland and brought shame on their families and themselves," he said. Varadkar said he was aware of further protests being organised online, and pledged to use the “full resources of the law” to punish the rioters, and tighten hate and incitement laws.

Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee described the violence as “intolerable" and said that a "thuggish and manipulative element must not be allowed to use an appalling tragedy to wreak havoc.”

"We will not tolerate a small number using an appalling incident to spread division," she said.

Harris, the police commissioner, promised a “significant organisation and mobilisation” and a review of the force’s public order tactics to prevent further outbreaks of violence, but insisted that police “could not have anticipated that this would have been the reaction”. 

But groups which monitor the far-right say signs of brewing trouble have been obvious in Ireland for some time, with anti-immigration protesters, citing concerns about crime and housing shortages, carrying out marches and protests outside migrant centres and parliament. A spokesperson for Hope and Courage Collective, a group which monitors and campaigns against the far-right, told VICE News that Irish police had been taking a “light touch” approach to dealing with the far-right, which had now been exposed as a failure.

“There is ample evidence of incitement to hatred by a small core of ideologically committed far right actors… yet no substantive actions,” said the spokesperson. “Lack of action sends a clear green light that this incitement can continue. The inevitable outcome is violence.”

“Whatever happens next the emphasis must be on building safer communities for us all, and not feeding the haters who want nothing more than to create greater distrust, fear and blame.”

Thursday’s stabbing in Dublin was just the latest violent crime to stir up tensions over immigration in Europe, following a deadly brawl at a village dance in Crépol, France at the weekend in which a 16-year-old high school student was killed and eight others injured, two seriously. French far-right politicians have seized on the violence as “anti-white racism,” painting the dead and injured as “innocent victims of the war of civilisations.”