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This afternoon, an Algerian man who'd been resident in Ireland for years approached a crèche in the Dublin city centre and stabbed a teacher and several children, all of whom have been hospitalised. A man intervened and tackled him to the ground (I've heard unconfirmed reports that he was Brazilian, making this something of a wash from an anti-immigration perspective).
In a remarkable display of striking while the iron is hot, an anti-immigrant group organised a protest outside the Dáil (lower house of parliament) later this afternoon. Protesters clashed with police officers at the scene of the crime. Before long it escalated into a full-scale riot, the likes of which I've never seen before in Dublin. A bus was set on fire, as was at least one police car and a Luas (the light rail system serving Dublin). A Holiday Inn was set on fire. Shops have been smashed up and looted. I had to get a taxi home as the public transport has been suspended. Walking through the streets is eerie, they're largely empty aside from riot cops carrying riot shields very forcefully redirecting me. Helicopters are still circling overhead.
My gut feeling is that this is primarily the work of opportunistic scumbags rioting for the fun of it, for which a fairly small protest which got out of hand was merely the catalyst. On the other hand, I have heard a lot about the alleged "rise of the far right" in Ireland over the course of the last few years, and the fact that it happened so soon after Geert Wilders' election is certainly odd timing.
EDIT: See also @Tollund_Man4's more detailed write-up in the transnational thread.
I think there are a few factors.
A big one is the CIA and State Department. They've traditionally viewed right wing parties in Europe as the enemy, and made efforts to keep them from winning. However they've been incredibly distracted the last few years by the Afghanistan withdrawal, China, and focussing on Ukraine / Russia as well as neighbouring countries in Eastern Europe. Note that the right wing party in Poland just lost.
Pro-Hamas protests have brought longstanding issues with integration of people from poor Muslim countries to the forefront. The excuse from the internationalist types has always been that they just need time, but after 20 years of hearing that people can see the situation has gotten worse, not better.
Another issue is a general economic decline in Europe. Things aren't awful, but they aren't great and there's less faith in the long term outlook. So people aren't feeling as generous as they used to.
how long is this tradition? Are you counting communists as right wing?
With no trace of CIA/State Department meddling, unless you assume that EU is CIA plant.
I mean... isn't it a bit weird how European political junkies have been swearing up and down, for years on end, that the Culture War spats we discuss here are strictly an American thing, and anyone serious finds them absurd here, only for European town halls to start raising the trans flag for the #TransDayOfRemembrance?
To be fair, it doesn't mean the CIA is behind it. My bets are on the UN and WEF.
I wouldn't let intelligence agencies take credit for that.
It's simply the internet, social media, smartphones, the globalization of the English language and the prevalence of American memes. People soak up all kinds of stupidity so long as it's in the water for them, and now that many people have a permanent window upon woke rot open in their palms, they'll naturally absorb it.
The problem I have with this explanation is that I'm yet to see any of this stuff get implemented bottom-up. Compare what's happening to how long it took mainstream parties to kind-of-sort-of start doing something about immigration for fear of giving more votes to populists. I stopped paying attention to electoral politics, but I don't remember any political upset, where some woke youth-oriented party got way more votes than expected, and forced the mainstream to adapt to the new zeitgeist. In fact, this is the very reason why I can understand European normies pooh-poohing concerns about the Culture War, this stuff basically came out of nowhere if you're following a bottom-up model.
That said, I wouldn't put (too much of) it on intelligence agencies either. I agree it's through soaking up culture, but it's not through Tumblr and memes, it's through elite universities, and various get-togethers where the elites mingle.
IMO it doesn't take much bottom-up for these things to happen. It's not just the youth, after all. Everyone has a smartphone, most people and almost all women are consuming social media, and this includes older people well into working age and also those who have great influence over or are decision-makers in organizations that now openly display the symbols of some woke agenda. The youth may be faster to get on board, but not by much - most want to be on the right side of history, and even middle-aged administrators will pick up on which is the right side in CURRENT_YEAR.
In my opinion this would, again, indicate this stuff is not bottom up at all. The bottom has no power to dictate which side is the right one, without overwhelming numbers.
I'd say the Bottom is in agreement with what middle management is doing here. My point is that everyone is more-or-less equally swayed, and that it's not a handful of key players pushing their agenda. There's simply no need for a conspiracy - when many push and nobody openly resists and the masses cheer because all groups consume the same media and absorb the same memes and know what the right thing to do is, then of course town halls are going to fly rainbow flags and whatever else, entirely without a shadowy organization needing to manipulate anyone.
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