Irish Antifa Project: Jacob Woolf

This is the fourth part of an undercover investigation into the tacit and sometimes overt support for antifascist harassment among elements of the Irish media and political class. We advise you to listen to all leaked audio and read all leaked data in full before reading the below article. All audio can be found on our Youtube. Audio has been edited in parts for legal reasons, as well as to protect the names of third parties.

Jacob Woolf is acting head of the Trinity College Jewish society as well as an activist with People Before Profit’s famously active Trinity branch. He approached our undercover reporters early on in the project, offering to provide intel on the conservative right in Trinity and in particular The Burkean.

In a phone call with our undercover reporter he stated his commitment to pursuing students engaged with the right, both professionally and physically, and promised to send on an extensive folder of harassment material pertaining to the Burkean and its writers.

Over the coming days he shared with us an extensive, heavily sourced document detailing professional employment details, often including LinkedIn profiles, of Burkean writers and associates, with some of these profiles including pictures of named individuals. Each small profile was complete with an individualised template letter to be sent to them and their employers, pressuring them to disavow the publication. 

Woolf passed on this dossier to @IrishAntifa with the understanding that our undercover group had the stated intention of doing these individuals harm, both professionally and physically if necessary.

Woolf also made a number of statements against the ‘Classical Liberal Society’, a student society that was attempting to gain TCD’s Central Societies Committee approval last year. Woolf denounced the society, stating that ‘Classical Liberal’ was just something ‘fascists’ called themselves in order to ‘look normal’. Details of those attempting to set up the society were also included in Mr Woolf’s dossier. 

Woolf went on to describe his connections with various Jewish advocacy groups, detailing an alleged informal relationship an associate of Woolf’s has with a senior member of Trinity College Dublin management. Mr Woolf alleged that this would allow him to get right-wing students expelled if required, something Mr Woolf described as his ‘nuclear option’. It is the opinion of The Burkean that it is highly unlikely that this claim made by Mr Woolf is factual.

In another recorded phone call, Mr Woolf described an impending visit to New York, during which he hoped to procure funding for an Irish ‘anti-semitism watchdog’ from an international Zionist organisation which will remain unnamed for legal reasons. In a later call he stated that he was unsuccessful in this pursuit. 

Woolf also messaged @IrishAntifa ahead on social media, saying he planned to tear down Burkean posters in Trinity College Dublin, giving @IrishAntifa enough detail that our journalists were able to place themselves in a position to attain video footage of the incident at two different angles. 

Mr Woolf also detailed a plan to infiltrate the Burkean. This plan consisted of composing an article and gradually gaining enough trust before he could be added to some sort of private group chat, where he hoped he would be able to attain incriminating material on writers. We can confirm that an article was sent by Woolf using an alias, but was never published due it never reaching our publishing standards.

Following one of our undercover reporters revealing the fact he was a reporter with this publication, Woolf attempted to delete harassment files shared to our writers in a shared Google folder. However the majority of material was saved. 

President of the Classical Liberal Society Con Óg Ó Laoghaire had the following to say:

“Woolf’s perception that classical liberals are what fascists call themselves to look normal highlights a dangerous trend of radicalisation, where if you’re not one of us, you must be one of them.”

As of the time of writing, neither Mr Woolf nor the senior member of TCD management have yet to respond to the Burkean request for comment. It is understood that certain students listed for harassment are considering making a complaint against Mr Woolf within Trinity College Dublin.

Link to audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zQg0IBdYSc