Kurt Mahlburg
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.
Tensions have been running hot in Ireland after a 49-year-old Algerian-Irish man stabbed five people, three of them children, sending a woman and a young child to hospital in a serious condition.
On all sides, reactions to the attack have been immediate and intense.
Crowds of rioters angry at some of the highest levels of immigration in Europe took to the streets of Dublin, torching vehicles and looting stores. Hundreds of police officers were dispatched and the night ended with dozens of arrests.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar responded by announcing plans to fast-track draconian new “hate speech” laws that would go as far as criminalising the saving of memes on a smartphone.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk reacted to Varadkar by scoffing that the country’s leader “hates the Irish people”, while the prestige press on both sides of the Atlantic hyperventilated about a far-right apocalypse.
Even former UFC champion Conor McGregor found himself in the middle of the fight. The night before the stabbings, in response to a report that non-nationals could vote in local elections, McGregor tweeted, “Ireland, we are at war”—words the media later framed as incitement to violence that drove the riots.
However, one of the most bizarre stories to emerge out of the chaos was the news that a graffiti tag reading “Irish Lives Matter” is being treated as a “hate incident” by authorities in west Belfast.
According to the BBC, the message accompanied signage erected in the city stating that the community “will no longer accept the re-housing of illegal immigrants”. Police have asked anyone with information about the origins of either message to come forward.
Even as the words “Irish Lives Matter” are deemed hateful, Irish authorities have greeted with yawns a Limerick councillor’s call for rioters to be “shot in the head”. The councillor behind the remarks, Azad Talukder, is a naturalised Irish citizen originally from Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
As the Limerick Post has reported:
Fianna Fáil councillor Azad Talukder was asked to withdraw comments at a council meeting this week after saying that he would like to see those involved in last Thursday’s violent Dublin riots “shot in the head”…
“I strongly believe that this is not the face of Ireland. This is just some criminals looting the shops. I don’t think they follow any ideological purpose. They come to the streets and just rob. They should get punishment.
“Not even an animal does these kind of thing. It is very shameful and they should get public punishment.
“I’d like to see them shot in the head or bring the public in and beat them until they die,” Cllr Talukder told council members.
So for everyone playing at home, Irish Lives Matter bad, shoot Irish protesters in the head good.
Make that make sense.
While the rioting in Dublin was unquestionably deplorable, the concerns harboured by peace-loving Irish citizens about high rates of immigration deserve to be taken seriously, not simply dismissed as a far-right conspiracy. As even the left-leaning Associated Press has acknowledged in recent days:
Ireland received more than 141,000 immigrants in the twelve months through April, the highest total since 2007, the latest government statistics show. The influx of migrants drove an 11.7% increase in Ireland’s population over the past eleven years, contributing to a steady increase in housing prices.
The challenge is how to restore sanity to a country’s leadership that has been overrun by the woke mind virus.
A disturbing clip making the rounds this week shows a compilation of Irish parliamentary leaders from across the political spectrum singing the praises of intersectionality and demonising — with almost identical phrasing — “straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied men”.
Watch this compilation from Gript Media:
As Mercator editor Michael Cook mused to me as we corresponded on this story, “I can understand why they might hate the British. It’s why they hate their own kind that’s puzzling.”
If only it were all just a bad Irish joke.
