The protest at the Customs House, organised by Health Freedom Ireland and the Yellow Vests, took off largely without a hitch yesterday. I say largely because prior to the event beginning, Antifa activists tried to charge the crowd and stall it from starting.
They had been congregating since around 11.30 am that morning, scouting the Customs House/Connolly Statute before meeting at the SIPTU building, Liberty Hall. It was here that one of our journalists managed to record a video of them “masking up” in preparation to charge the crowd.
It is our understanding that there were already protestors and supporters of the various organisers at the steps of Custom House by this time, though no flare ups occurred.
There was a visible Garda presence by 1 pm with several vans parked beside Liberty Hall and a number of foot patrols on Abbey Street. How the Gardaí did not see a crowd of roughly a dozen masked individuals standing right beside them beggars belief. However it happened, it weighs against the claims by various elements of Antifa that they are persecuted by the State, and lends credence to the accusation that they are the extra-legal foot-soldiers of the regime.
Around 1.30 pm is when a scuffle broke out as masked Antifa instigators attempted to charge the protest. Again, somehow Gardaí did not seem to notice a group of a dozen masked attackers descending on the protest until it was too late.
The initial exchange saw one attacker knocked unconscious and several kicked to the ground, in the ensuing maelstrom there was an attempt to throw several Antifa members into the River Liffey though the rushed intervention of Gardaí averted this fate.
Gardaí managed to separate the groups and attended to the now delirious Antifa member who has since been identified, with some rumours that he was brought to hospital for non-life threatening injuries though these have not been verified. While being attended to by Gardaí, there were chants of “Paedo! Paedo! Paedo!” directed at Antifa.
Members of the far-left later congregated on Butt Bridge and chanted “No Trump, No KKK, no Fascist USA” for some reason. The counter-protest was attended by fewer than forty individuals, while the protest at Custom House eventually reached between two and three thousand protestors.
Following the exchange Gardaí also cordoned off the protest with barricades resulting in them refusing to allow protestors to enter the protest. One man tried to jump the cordon and was arrested by Gardaí. A brief standoff ensued, though the crowd eventually backed up and Gardaí opened the barriers to allow the flow of protestors in. Once the backlog had cleared, Gardaí operated an in/out system on both ends of the Custom House where attendants were searched for weapons.
It was following this that Gardaí discovered and arrested a man caught carrying a large, pen-knife like weapon after a wrestle at the gates erected beside Liberty Hall.
There was no further disturbances during the event, and all six speakers delivered orations to the crowd.
Towards the end, left-wing activists entered the protest and began to live tweet it, for reasons again unknown. Activist Jack Kennedy was allegedly harassed after taking pictures of protestors. Mr. Kennedy alleges he was “wet-willied” by two men and that they tried to snatch his phone. He claimed that he was then advised by Gardaí to leave the event for his own safety, and complained that Gardaí “lacked empathy” but that he did not want to bother wasting time arguing with them. It should be noted that Mr. Kennedy has himself copied and used American slogans on his Twitter such as: “ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards),” that “defund the police” applies to Ireland too, and called to “abolish the police.”
Overall the protest at the Customs House was a rather successful engagement for the Right in Ireland, bucking the trend that only the Left could mobilise for large-scale street protests and, following the charging of Pro-Paedophile activists at Leinster House by elements of the crowd there, has proven that the far-left can no longer rely on their monopoly on street violence to try and push right-wing Nationalists off the streets.
Addendum: Our journalists could not, as hard as they tried, find any evidence of any Germans bussed in from Duesseldorf for the protest, despite the apparent fearmongering by the Irish Times.
See a compilation of the Antifa violence that occurred on the day on our Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBQqYUP01c
I was at the demonstration and I’m not sure why it is called right wing,
There was a good mixture of people there and quite a few European immigrants who, probably because they do not have an extended family around them here in Ireland, brought their children, which was great to see,
There were also black people there as well which again was great because this rejection of lockdown, masks etc has nothing to do anything other than tyranny and the amazingly swift loss of so many basic civil liberties,
Yeah there was a group of masked young men who it seems are there to ensure that those in attendance are allowed exercise their right to protest,
One hundred years ago a small group of young men did the dirty work in the scrap for freedom, and I was glad to have the presence of those masked lads on Saturday as it seems to me that they are in the same tradition essentially, those that will do the necessary dirty work to establish or maintain our basic freedoms,
As your article suggests, the Gardai cannot be relied upon to ensure that the small group of real fascists (Antifa) are kept in their box.
I saw that group myself gathering where you pointed out, and the Gardai could have sorted them out in a heartbeat, if there was the will.
I consider it vital that no group with any agenda other than removal of all the Covid restrictions and laws should be allowed hijack what looked to me like a genuine peoples movement. One speaker who was allowed way too much time at the microphone to talk about homelessness (dreadful and all as that is) eventually got around to mentioning that those in Direct Provision get sorted out way sooner than he was in his own personal story,
That could be true but that’s not what people were there for, people were there to protest the mandating of masks and the whole Covid bullshit situation and so hopefully for the next one the speakers will be kept on point.
We cannot afford to have this movement hijacked by anybody.
I think you’re being a little conservative with the attendance estimate. It was at least 3 people per square metre over an area of 80 metre stretch of a 30 metre wide street. There were also looser crowds aththe periphery. Between 5-10 k would be my estimate.
Big wake up call for all present to read the subsequent coverage.