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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 saw some news articles online about this in Australia earlier today.
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best 'older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion). There was also no mention that I can recall of the perpetrator being tackled and restrained by a member of the public, and certainly not that he was Brazilian. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the crime was committed by an Irish native.
Except, of course, the second half of all these articles all quote a bunch of Irish politicians and other public figures condemning the riot as the actions of a hateful, far-right mob, or similar words to that effect. Which kind of gives the game away. Do they think by merely mentioning the background of the stabbing perpetrator they will give credance to the 'hateful far-right riot', like invoking a spirit?
It's one of many cases where the news media (at least here in Australia), technically report the story factually accurately, but but omits some details and is framed in such a way to only lead you to one conclusion. They can avoid claims of editorialising by claiming they are merely quoting and reporting on statements made by politicians, which is also true.
The same here, only the tabloids and alternative media specified that the attacker was Algerian; "respectable" outlets like The Journal, the Times and the Independent don't consider his nationality or ethnicity worth mentioning at all. Whenever there's a horrible unprovoked crime like this, you can practically smell the "please let the assailant be Irish" energy emanating from broadsheet journalists and the PMC types on X and Reddit. I saw a comment about the stabbing on the /r/ireland subreddit, some dude said something to the effect of "Imagine hearing about a horrible crime like this and your first instinct is to wonder what colour the attacker's skin is. Despicable." You mean, exactly like you're doing right now?
Some years ago (probably on the old subreddit) I pointed out that this journalistic approach has a limited shelf life. Sooner or later, every reader will cotton on to the fact that whenever the MSM report on a violent crime committed by a white native man, his skin colour will be mentioned prominently (either in the headline or the lede); ergo, if you see an article about a violent crime which doesn't mention the assailant's skin colour or nationality, the only reasonable assumption is that he is black or Arab or Eastern European (optionally Muslim). (See also Scott's post, section IV, about how banning employers from asking interviewees about their criminal record actually decreased the rate at which employers hired black candidates.) They're going to have to come up with a different method for routing around this problem sooner or later. Perhaps five years from now, news articles will read "an assailant stabbed a victim" without mentioning any identity characteristics about either person at all.
Well this is the thing: for modern broadsheet journalists, contempt for the common man is built into their psyche. If you've fully internalised the idea that any uneducated person can become radicalised overnight by exposure to far-right disinformation and "fake news" - well, imagine how much more potent an effect information and real news might have. The average journalist no longer sees their job as one of informing the public but educating it, and if that means selectively leaving the reader in the dark about certain pertinent facts, so be it. (Perhaps I'm being rather rose-tinted about journalistic standards in the past and this is all one big "always has been" meme.) Many journalists seem to think that even informing their readers what the Bad People believe is tantamount to signal-boosting their opinions, so they resort to this circuitous approach of informing the reader that Alice has transphobic™ opinions (or quoting a woke person who thinks Alice has transphobic opinions i.e. "delegated defamation") without actually telling the reader what those opinions are and allowing them to draw their own conclusions as to whether "transphobic" is an accurate characterisation.
Sadly i don't think this will ever happen. Remember, the bottom fraction in terms of intelligence has trouble figuring out that theyv would probably be hungry right now if they hadn't eaten breakfast this morning. They certainly aren't going to intuit chains of reasoning like this.
Eh, this is pretty uncharitable towards the lower half of the population
The "Muslamic ray gun" guy sounded like a low class idiot (which egalitarians gleefully pointed out), but his "stereotypical" view of things turned out to be closer than the people mocking him for his accent gave him credit for. They already have these views. If they keep reading and don't see it, they'll notice.
You also ignore that distrust of the media will lead them to people who will point it out explicitly for anyone too dumb. "Coulter's law" is not some obscure wisdom for >100 IQ nerds. It's one Google search or rightist YouTube video away, for those without the IQ or patience to read it's a real golden age.
(This is the same logic behind "low class conservatives are too dumb to use their smartphone to find out Bud Lights parent company and it's subsidiaries. ". Well, if you went on /r/conservatives there was a copypasta in every thread listing them. Even if they were that dumb -and they aren't- only one person needs to be smart.)
I've found that it's the fully bought in progressive, "right side of history" middle class - who should be higher IQ - who're really hard to convince if they can't find an NYT article stating something. It's them this omission works best on. If they say "X never happens" (about something contentious like say...race or gender) you can have a billion NYPost/whoever articles with proof they will simply shut down the minute they see the URL unless you can show a paper of record also touching the problem. This is why activists hate Jesse Singal so much for that Atlantic article.
A lot of the time the news isn't obscuring knowledge so much as denying it legitimacy. People know the Muslamic ray gun theory. It's just that educated people all just know it's merely another instance of justifying racism by appeal to protecting white women from dehumanized people of color.
But this only lasts so long as the system as a whole is legitimate and isn't under too much strain.
Which Jesse Singal article, the trans kids one?
Yes, he had an article where he touched on trans kids and the detransitioning issue.
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