Far Right Observatory — How Did An Anonymous Antifascist Organisation Receive €225,000 in Charity Funding?

Early last week Gript sleuthy reported on the apparent receipt of €112,500 in state funding by a rather opaque organisation named ‘The Far Right Observatory’.

While the group has been earmarked for €112,500 worth of state funds, this figure at least doubles to €225,000 owing to the tactful use of the Dormant Account Scheme which sees donations matched by private philanthropic sources using money unclaimed in bank accounts.

In the case of the Far Right Observatory, half of this trough comes from the private sector charity Rethink Ireland as part of its Equality Fund. A €3 million slush fund provided by the Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation, The Burkean has previously taken a deep dive last year investigating Rethink’s quiet backing of the BLM propaganda blitz around Dublin, and the money pumped into Irish trans industry.

A Chicago based asset management executive, Kinney outlined his motivations for donating to progressive causes in Ireland in a 2019 interview with the Irish Examiner.

In the US, people still have this image of Ireland as this conservative Catholic country, and they’re amazed to hear of the news that Ireland has a gay prime minister of an ethnic background, but there are underlying problems and we’re trying to play a small part in bringing those problems to light and to see what we can do about them.

Other recipients of money from the Fund include various traveller related NGOs, the Soros-affiliated INAR Ireland, as well as the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland. 

From senior civil servants to tech executives and business consultants, the Rethink boardroom is a veritable who’s who of the Irish elite. With an annual income of €12,993,054 and looking for rapid expansion, Rethink has made itself into one of the country’s largest cash cows for left-wing causes.

While there is already a catalogue of antifascist groups funded by means of woke capital, what makes the ‘Far Right Observatory’ bizarre is the total dearth of online references as to its managers, employees or even annual accounts, with not even a website existing, bar a handful of perfunctory Medium articles, and a promo video on Vimeo.

Using Wayback however, we were able to source an old job advertisement for the roles of Coordinator and a Communications and Monitoring Lead with the job specs and salaries giving an insight of how the Observatory will orientate itself.

Among the groups lending assistance to the Observatory are:

• The Irish Council for Civil Liberties, itself heavily funded by foreign backers most notably the Sigrid Rausing Foundation, bankrolled by the Swedish industrialist family to the tune of €140,000 per annum.
• Migrant Rights Centre, one of Chuck Feeney’s larger open border lobby groups which took in millions over the years from the Irish-American billionaire. 
• Black Pride Ireland, a rather bumbling intersectional agitprop group that caused controversy among left-wing circles over accusations it had purloined thousands in donations.
• TENI and BeLonGTo, two of the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy groups, raking in hundreds of thousands of state and private sector donations annually.
• Union of Students of Ireland: Long an incubator for left-wing activism and living off the €1.25 million it gets from union fees annually, this publication famously clashed swords with USI in 2020 with our undercover work.

The Department of Rural and Community Development was not forthcoming to our inquiries, merely reiterating its trust in the application procedure which sees the state match all donations.

While minimal detail is known about the Observatory, one thing for certain is its lobbying of Irish politicians, and even Mark Zuckerberg himself, on matters of internet censorship, with the organisation publishing that their report was allegedly handed to the Facebook CEO.

Among those whom it appears to have been involved in courting Zuckerberg and co. is the self described libertarian socialist Mark Malone, a regular feature in the left-activist circuit. Slithering his way from NGO to NGO for over a decade, Malone perhaps best typifies the political cynicism incumbent in the industry whereby jaded left-activists find new life in the ecosystem of corporate-enabled activism.

So far it is hard to evaluate the impact of yet another anti-racist NGO the bloc in an already bloated field, bar being just another corporate moneytree for activists to leach off. The Irish NGO complex may have its corporate financiers and street muscle, courtesy of a hot and cold relationship with football hooligans, nevermind its whip hand over Irish policing, but it does lack any real intelligence organs, as seen in other countries where the state security apparatus has fused with the Left.

Regardless, commandeering funds that ought to be directed to genuine charities and community support groups is at best a very immoral act. From counter-extremism institutes being astroturfed into the media spotlight, to blank cheques being written for antiracist NGOs, our ruling apparatus is preparing itself for some sort of post-covid turn to the radical right. Be proud of your enemies, especially with the foreknowledge that no amount of state and corporate funding can likely hold back the wave of political unrest on the way.