When a law student from Co. Kildare was stopped this summer on suspicion of transporting a bomb across the Irish border for use by dissident republicans, her solicitor said she had not been aware of what was in the bag and that she had been “manipulated.” Yet the 25-year-old’s arrest highlighted an alarming revival in Irish republicanism – and the role being played by a younger, well-educated, middle-class generation.
During the Troubles, much of Ireland mercifully avoided the pull of radicalism. There was always a certain degree of quiet sympathy for the IRA in predictable sections of the media and academia, but popular support for Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican party, in the 26-county Republic remained negligible throughout the worst years of terrorism.
Today, however, modern disaffection across Ireland is re-igniting bygone tensions. In Dublin, where a housing crisis has left many people unable to afford their own homes, anti-Establishment frustration is growing. As a result, Ireland seems to be succumbing to a wave of “radical chic.”
Ireland’s past troubles are romanticized and then linked to Palestine’s present
It has led to a green-tinted revisionism of the Troubles. A new generation sees nothing wrong with Michelle O’Neill – Sinn Fein’s Northern leader and self-styled “First Minister for all” at Stormont – attending a memorial for the IRA hunger striker Thomas McElwee, who burned to death a 26-year-old mother of three, Yvonne Dunlop, after firebombing her father’s shop in 1976. It might as well be ancient history to them. Young people glibly chant “ooh aah up the ’Ra” (IRA) at music festivals, while folk memories are being irresponsibly conjured up with no thought for where they might lead.
Decades after the Belfast Agreement recognized Northern Ireland as part of the UK for as long as a majority wished it to remain so, Irish dissident republicanism is stirring once more. But this time it is driven by social media and a general sense that to be Irish is to be part of some grand anti-colonialist global struggle. What’s more, Irish republicanism has found a potent new accelerant in the form of pro-Palestinian activism.
The Belfast rap group Kneecap draw explicit parallels between Northern Ireland and Gaza and are lauded by cultural and political institutions. Ireland’s past troubles are romanticized and then linked to Palestine’s present: historical paramilitary campaigns are recast as liberation movements; the IRA and Hamas presented as freedom fighters. On the International Wall in Belfast, a large mural displays the bond between Ireland and Gaza’s causes, with two hands clasped through prison bars, one arm draped in the tricolor, the other in the Palestinian flag. It reads: “Solidarity POWs.”
These ideological beliefs extend deep into Irish sporting and cultural life. Protests are expected when Ireland play Israel at football in the Nations League next month. Sinn Fein and the Social Democrats both tabled motions to stop the fixture. “We will not tolerate the green jersey against Israel,” said Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald. Protestors targeted a frisbee tournament in Limerick for allowing an Israeli team to compete.
By contrast, when Ireland’s cricket team recently played Afghanistan in a One Day International series (the Irish were beaten 4-0) there was strikingly little criticism, despite other nations, including England, refusing to play the country outside inter-national tournaments because of the Taliban’s persecution of women.
It served to highlight the Irish political and media establishment’s obsession with Israel. Noting the silence of Irish human rights and women’s groups over the Afghanistan match, and the absence of “journalistic outrage,” the former justice minister Alan Shatter, himself Jewish, came to the conclusion that without a convenient Jew to “blame or demonize,” his fellow Irish citizens are simply not interested.
Shatter’s religion and beliefs have been used as a tool to dismiss his criticism of Irish nationalism. When he condemned Sinn Fein for praising the terrorist bombmaker Rose Dugdale upon her death in 2024, the response from the republican party was: “Alan Shatter has been cheerleading a genocide [in Gaza] for the last five months. His comments don’t merit a response.”
Cultural institutions are increasingly bowing to pressure from middle-class Irish activism. Last summer, Trinity College Dublin became the first Irish university to sever ties with Israeli institutions. Not only has it divested from companies with links to the Israel Defense Forces, but it has cut all research projects involving Israeli universities and even refused to allow Israeli students to attend Ireland’s oldest university as part of long-standing exchange programs. This was hailed in Dublin as a great triumph for human rights.
One well-known Trinity College graduate, the Irish novelist Sally Rooney, has barred her novels from being translated into Hebrew by Israeli publishers. She, too, draws links between Ireland and Gaza: “Israeli settler colonialist techniques have been inherited and refined from the practices of British and European imperialism,” she said. She openly supports Palestine Action and has stated that if it makes her “a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it.” Ireland has not proscribed the group as a terrorist organization.
Even Eurovision has found itself a victim of this new Irish radicalism. Ireland refused to enter the song contest in May in protest at the participation of Israel, and the Irish state broadcaster chose not to televise the event. Micheal Martin, the Taoiseach, backed the boycott.
Then came the deliciously plausible claim that a new government jet would struggle to land in fog because it had not been fitted with an Israeli-designed safety system. Regardless of whether the claim quite stands up to scrutiny, it has been striking how many commentators in Ireland have not hesitated to defend the decision.
This growing alignment of pro-Palestinian activism with Irish republican sentiment does not just affect foreign policy; it damages what the writer and strategist Eoghan Harris calls “the decent pluralism of Middle Ireland.” It is helping to revive political beliefs that left thousands dead and were thought to have been laid to rest.
Far from standing firm, politicians from all parties are flirting with this radical drift to help secure votes
While Sinn Fein is not benefiting electorally from this phenomenon as much as it might wish, its core messages and slogans are increasingly normalized. And as those with real memories of the violence grow older, a younger generation is being encouraged to sentimentalize the past. Everyone is entitled to remember their dead; the danger, though, is that Irish republicans are simultaneously seeking to erase everyone else’s dead from the narrative, whether victims of 7 October or of IRA terror.
In this febrile environment, there are growing demands for an Irish unity poll, despite the destabilizing effect this would have in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein recently pressed the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Bryant, for an “orderly transition into a unity referendum and constitutional change,” presenting it as if it were a done deal. The implication was that only the final, finer points of detail remained to be sketched out. Some commentators now even suggest that Sinn Fein should boycott the devolved assembly unless the UK agrees to a border poll. Bryant’s response – “I am not starting the poll now, or this week, or this month, or, I will suggest, this year” – will only encourage Sinn Fein to push the matter further.
As for the other political parties in Ireland, far from standing firm against this radical drift, many are flirting with these new forces to help secure votes. Politicians involved with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, parties which had historically built hard constitutional bulwarks against republican violence, have also been guilty of peddling anti-Israel rhetoric. It has pushed the center of gravity further to the left and accelerated the very radicalism these parties once sought to contain. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, if the allegations facing that young woman at the border are any guide.
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