On a misty summer afternoon, a crowd of people of all ages, men and women, and families with young children gather in a Dublin park to protest against immigration. As the mist turns to rain, a woman steps up to the microphone and welcomes the “sons, daughters and children of Ireland.”

The sight of young people taking part in far-right protests in Ireland is commonplace. Children and teenagers have frequently taken part in protests outside immigration centres or joined nationalist gatherings across the country.

“Younger children – children and teenagers – are being brought to protests by family members,” says artist Aaron Sunderland Carey from Ballymun, a deprived neighbourhood in northwest Dublin. “They may not be there for the ideology, but they are being indoctrinated. It’s really sad to see.”

The riots in England and Wales this month, led by far-right groups, were in many ways similar to the infamous Dublin riots of November 2023, sparked by an attack by a naturalised Irish citizen that left three schoolchildren and their carer injured.

The participation of the country’s youth at the time was remarkable. The Hope and Courage Collective (HCC), a national civil society organization, noted that the core of far-right activists who initiated the riots were later joined by many younger people. While some had come just to watch the spectacle, others appeared to participate in the violence.

For young people from socially disadvantaged families, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and the ensuing housing crisis, the far right appears to be offering solutions. Young people from socially disadvantaged families, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and the ensuing housing crisis, appear to be disproportionately affected by the pandemic and the ensuing housing crisis. From late 2020 to mid-2022, there was a 70% increase in homelessness among 18-24 year olds.

The housing crisis began long before the rise in immigration to Ireland – and yet the far right seeks to shift the blame onto migrants and asylum seekers, accusing the government of favouring newcomers over Irish citizens when it comes to housing.

Sunderland Carey, 23, grew up in Ballymun and now works on community-based art projects with children and young people. He understands how poverty and neglect have fuelled anger. “The community is struggling with unemployment and people feel betrayed by the state,” he says. “People are poor. People are desperate. There are addiction problems. And then there are drug gangs who capitalise on that.”

He believes that while many people at the protests have racist or “anti-woke” views, some young men feel they are taking a stand against what they perceive as government neglect. A 2021 report by the Irish Youth Foundation found that 60% of young people were angry about the impact of Covid on their education and that “the system has failed them”.

“They have a lot of questions but few answers,” Carey said. “They are angry and upset.”

During the pandemic, young people have been online and exposed to a flood of misinformation on social media platforms such as TikTok, X and messaging groups such as Telegram or WhatsApp.

“The far right has been very good at positioning itself and its ideology as a solution for young people,” says Ciarán O’Connor, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). “They have been able to use this kind of populist rhetoric to portray (the housing crisis) as us versus them, good versus evil.”

Most youth services working in deprived areas of Dublin declined to be interviewed for this article for fear of far-right actors. However, one worker on an inner-city project said that children as young as eight were being “groomed” by the far right, taken to protests and taught ethno-nationalist beliefs at home. During the recent Belfast riots, an 11-year-old boy was charged with several offences related to the riots, including throwing incendiary devices.

According to O’Connor, recent content on platforms like TikTok is “part of a years-long effort by far-right or radical right online communities to portray their ideologies as something provocative and appealing to young people.”

Yan Mac Oireachtaigh, 22, joined Óige Náisiúnach, the youth wing of the far-right National Party (NP), in 2019. Motivated by social media, he said he was angry about the previous year’s referendum that gave Ireland’s women the right to abortion. He was appointed leader of Óige Náisiúnach in May 2022 and stood in local elections this year. He did not win a seat on the city council but will stand as an NP candidate in the upcoming general election.

His party, founded in 2016, is ethno-nationalist and calls for a “policy of return migration to secure Ireland as the homeland of the Irish people”. The NP, like other Irish nationalist parties, remains out of the running; in the local elections the party received only 0.3% of the national vote. However, for the first time it did win an elected representative, with Patrick Quinlan winning a seat on Fingal County Council.

The NP attracts younger supporters than other nationalist parties and is the only one with a youth wing. Mac Oireachtaigh describes it as “a community of like-minded young lads” who campaign for the party, go hiking and meet with other far-right groups across Europe. In images reminiscent of far-right US groups such as the Proud Boys, images on Telegram show young men in their teens to early twenties posing shirtless in the Dublin hills.

“These types of male fraternities are a very common strategy of the far right,” explains O’Connor of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “They give a very accessible face to what are essentially white nationalist groups whose activities serve to promote ideologies and ultimately serve to recruit new members and radicalize other people.”

When asked about accusations of racism, Mac Oireachtaigh said: “If defending one’s own people, one’s own nation, one’s own heritage is racist, then so be it.” He claims that the NP is not “white nationalist”, but rejects all immigration and tries to protect the “Irish people” from a “flood of other peoples”.

Because so many young people – and future voters – benefit from what they see online, it is vital that social media companies moderate content. But achieving this is very difficult.

“Hateful content is spreading,” says O’Connor. His analysis of 1,773 X-accounts linked to disinformation and hate speech showed that more than half of them appeared in the three years to 2023 alone.

If Ireland has managed to buck the European right-wing trend – at least for now – the next general election in March 2025 will show whether it will stay that way. Attracting young supporters is a long-term strategy.

“Platforms are being used on a massive scale to stoke hatred, division, polarization and ultimately, I think, undermine democracy,” O’Connor says. “I don’t know where this is going, but I don’t think we’re at the end.”