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Cork Councillor says far right protestors must be stopped in Cork

Monday, 1 March 2021 08:46

A Cork councillor says far-right anti-lockdown protesters must be stopped from causing another riot in Cork next weekend. 

It's after a demonstration in Dublin on Saturday turned into a riot and led to three Gardai being injured. 

13 people have been charged in relation to the riot, with the Justice Minister Helen McAntee saying more people will also be charged after fireworks and bottles were fired at Gardaí. 

Fine Gael's Damien Boylan says the scenes in Dublin must not be repeated here in Cork. 

"There is in my opinion a few misguided people on the far right, and we know who they are in the main, they don't make a secret of who they are, they are violently nationalist, they're violently racist. They're easy to spot.

"But in the main there's not a lot of them. I don't believe that there is a big gang of these waiting to descend on Cork on Saturday. Now I could be wrong, but I'm asking the Gardai to put the resources on the ground to make sure that there isn't"

Meanwhile Gardaí fear more far-right riots are being planned for St Patrick's Day.

It's believed the incident at the weekend was a way to garner public support for future demonstrations.

A researcher on disinformation says the riot in Dublin was the "culmnation" of months of organising on social media by far-right activists. 

Irish-based social media groups promoting conspiracy theories have been growing rapidly in the last six months.

Disinformation researcher Ciarán O'Connor of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue says social media companies like Facebook and Twitter have failed to act. 

"In a sample of 40 Facebook groups which are typically used to share Covid conspiracy theories, the membership between July and February has jumped from 90% from 68,500 to just over 130,000.

"You can see how quickly people have latched on to misleading information."

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