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PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
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Transnational Thursday for September 10, 2026
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The "Ulm 5" are a group of pro-Palestinian activists in Germany. A year ago, they broke into the offices of Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer, and filmed themselves spraying red paint and smashing office equipment. They then called the police on themselves and came quietly when they were arrested. Their trial for destruction of property (to the tune of €1m) and criminal conspiracy is ongoing. Lest you have any doubt about their political affiliations, they have used Hamas iconography in public appearances.
Along with a 25-year-old Brit calling themselves "Crow Tricks" (ugh), the Ulm 5 includes a 32-year-old Irishman, Daniel Tatlow-Devally, whom you can probably tell on the basis of his surname comes from an affluent south Dublin background. Unsurprisingly, back in his home country Tatlow-Devally is being treated as a celebrity and an unjust victim of political persecution. His father claims that the German police are treating him like Hannibal Lecter, while various Irish politicians (not just on the populist left, but even establishment politicians who ought to know better) have characterised the proceedings as a "show trial": a particularly strange characterisation, given that Tatlow-Devally does not deny the charges against him. The Spectator has more information. I have essentially zero – no, negative sympathy for him: he is a canonical example of someone who Fucked Around and is now in the process of Finding Out. Hearing about the supposedly awful conditions he is being kept in, my reaction to that information is the following. I sincerely hope that Germany throw the book at him.
The whole affair seems to have skipped over tragedy directly into farce, and became doubly so on Tuesday evening when Tatlow-Devally's sister Clara appeared on RTÉ News, Ireland's national broadcaster. I have never met this woman, and yet I have met her a thousand times: at a glance, I can tell that she loves Fontaines DC, owns multiple pairs of Doc Marten boots, and owns at least one novel by Sally Rooney (which she may or may not have read). In a group chat of which I'm a member, someone shared a clip from her appearance yesterday, asking us if we noticed anything odd about it (link, the relevant section begins at 36:31; alternative link in case RTÉ Player is geoblocked).
I didn't clock it, but the person who shared the clip pointed out thatClara only ever refers to her brother as "Daniel", avoiding personal pronouns entirely. Because of course this pro-Palestine activist from an affluent south Dublin background calls himself non-binary . Presumably his family thought that being too insistent about his "gender identity" would distract from the larger issue of his court case (read: would make him a laughingstock among the Irish people who support Palestine but think gender ideology is retarded) so sought to avoid drawing attention to it. Nonetheless, his sister obviously wanted to avoid directly "misgendering" him, so the end result was this ludicrously stilted performance.
Someone else in the group chat (who I'll call Alice) is an unabashed supporter of the Palestinian cause (and a literal self-identified communist besides), who has met Daniel Tatlow-Devally at least once prior to his emigration and subsequent arrest. Despite Alice professing her support forgender ideology , she was unimpressed by Tatlow-Devally, noting that, despite his complaining about people "misgendering" him , he persistently referred to Alice's friend "Brenda" as "Barbara" (not the real names used, obviously). I recall that, on a separate occasion, Alice told me about a male person she met at a political protest, who despite professing to be "non-binary" , seemed to behave in a manner entirely consistent with various negative stereotypes about masculinity, in particular a tendency to "mansplain" to women more knowledgeable about a particular issue than he was. I don't know if the person she was talking about was Tatlow-Devally (he surely can't be the only Irish male pro-Palestine activist who calls himself non-binary ), and yet it would certainly be amusing if this was the case.
As silly as this whole circus is, I find it hard to laugh, as I feel too angry. I hate the way people are talking about this case; I hate the way Tatlow-Devally is being lionized in the popular imagination; I hate the way Irish people talk about Gaza; I hate the way Irish people shamelessly recycle centuries-old antisemitic canards and blood libels (then immediately retreat to the motte of "we're just against genocide" when challenged); I hate the way people scoff at me when I point out that there was no famine in Gaza, and that civilian:combatant ratios in the Gaza war are entirely typical of modern conflicts in the Middle East; I hate the way people who call themselves anti-racist can get away with saying the most appalling things about Jews (and they increasingly no longer feel any need to use the "Zionist" euphemism); I hate the way woke Irish people can share memes openly denying the Holocaust on their Facebook pages and receive zero pushback; I hate the way Irish people believe in the most preposterous antisemitic conspiracy theories; I hate the way Irish people will never come out and admit that they support Hamas, and yet will never say anything to criticise the organisation and will go out of their way to amplify its propaganda at every turn; I hate the way people who criticise Israel's "dehumanising" treatment of Palestinians will immediately call me a "Zionist bot" the second I disagree with them or point out that they're misinformed about something; I hate the absurd double standard, in which Irish people who rightly point out that it's unfair to tar every Muslim with the same brush will hold every single Jew personally responsible for everything the Israeli government does.
Increasingly, I just hate this country. There's something very deeply sick about it.
And as strange as it may seem, it makes me feel – isolated. Some of my opinions are unpopular among the Irish intelligentsia, but it isn't that difficult to find Irish people who agree with me that Covid lockdowns were a bad idea; that immigrants from MENA and Eastern Europe commit a disproportionate share of violent crime (and that the Irish news media covers this up); that gender ideology and its associated policies are stupid and present safeguarding risks, and so on. But when it comes to my beliefs that Israel has a right to exist, a right to defend itself, and did not carry out a genocide in Gaza (nor attempt to do so) – I really do feel almost entirely alone. Young woke people won't agree with me on any of these points, nor old-school socialists, nor working-class republicans, nor market conservatives, nor anti-immigration activists, nor nineties liberals, nor even my expat friends from Brazil or Mexico. Hatred of Jews increasingly feels like the only thing that every person in Ireland (regardless of class or creed) can be assumed to agree upon.
This made me think of the video of the happiest man in Birmingham.
I'm not familiar?
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