We are all astute enough to know that being against anti-fascists does not necessarily make you a fascist but writing such nasty, racist threats on the side of a van of an organisation in charge of local housing certainly does.
Of course, there is pressure on housing. It's not due to immigration though. It's due to a lack of regulation; little if any protection for tenants; rampant speculation on the housing market where corporations and businesses buy up houses and drive up prices out of reach of families.
There are no rent controls, no limits on how many houses a person/business can buy, no security of tenure.
The unregulated market coupled with the governments, North and South missing their targets of new-builds causes the shortage. Many houses lie empty all over the island. There were 163,000 empty houses (excluding holiday homes) in the Republic of Ireland in 2022. The Irish government missed the target of new-build social housing in 2025 by 15%. In Northern Ireland the new-build target has recently dropped from 3,000 per annum to 2,300.
Google, for example, owns a portfolio of properties that includes Boland's Quay. 37,000 square metres of office, residential and retail space. Don't forget NAMA and the numerous vulture funds ripping the heart out of local communities.
They call themselves Republicans. I'm sure you have Republican racists just as you have Republican drug dealers or Republican sex offenders or Republican touts. Every demographic, including Republicanism, has it's repugnant element. It's how we deal with that element that counts.
Republicanism has a long proud history of internationalism, as far back as the very first Irish Republicans, the United Irishmen. Don't forget Mary-Ann McCracken worked her entire life to help women and the downtrodden. She campaigned tirelessly against slavery. The racists are happy to have cheap goods from all over the planet but wince if a person comes over. The racists value commodities over people.
I'm not going to turn this into a history lesson but would like to remind the racists that the seven signatories to the Proclamation were human rights driven. Way ahead of their time. Cherishing all children of the nation equally. It's doesn't mean children literally but citizens. Equal rights for all. The leaders of the Rising were to the forefront when it came to fighting for women's rights.
Roger Casement was a beacon of human rights and an exemplary Republican.
James Connolly was a firm internationalist, driven by socialism. The fascists on the other hand are driven by hate and ignorance.
Bobby Sands spoke up for many anti-colonial fights in his poem Rhythm of Time.
"It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.
It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies.
It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
That thought that says ‘I’m right!’"
The Irish far-right invited a loyalist bank robber to speak outside the GPO, a member of the UVF, an organisation which took up arms to murder fellow Irish people purely because they were Catholics. An organisation which bombed Dublin and Monaghan. The loyalist in question describes the Irish language as a foreign language. Amadán gan mhaith mar a deirtear.
No demographic can be held to impossibly high standards. No demographic can possibly be immune from criminality. Let the punishment fit the crime. Let perpetrators be held accountable and not the communities from which they come.
There were riots in Ballymena directly after the arrests of two Romanian teenagers accused of rape. I can't remember any riots when a certain unionist politician was accused of rape. This was never about protecting women. It's pure bigotry.
⏩ Hedley Lamarr is a student of the conflict out of which has developed his strong interest in justice.
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