Small number of far-right actors 'disproportionately influence public debate'

Vivienne Clarke

A report by the Hope and Courage Collective indicates that a relatively small number of far-right actors disproportionately influence public debate through online amplification, visible protests, and repeated narratives.

However, the report 'Ireland in Focus 2025, Mind the Gap', also shows that the majority of people reject far-right narratives, and have real empathy and support across a range of issues, according to executive director of Hope and Courage Collective Edel McGinley.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning, McGinley explained that the report examined how far-right narratives were being “laundered into kind of mainstream politics” and alongside that it looked at public attitudes, sentiment shifts, and community responses.

The report was “quite comprehensive” she said and showed that through “amplification, visible protests, kind of narrative repetition, that there's a small number of far-right actors that are having an oversized impact on the public conversation”

This was happening on social media platforms, particularly X (formerly known as Twitter).

“Some of the findings were surprising to us. We analysed nearly a million kind of narratives across 2024 in comparison to 2025, and what we saw was that 75 per cent of those narratives were driven from outside of Ireland, and were part of a wider kind of global far-right network. So really, Ireland, we were being manipulated in a lot of ways.”

“There's a massive amplification network, the amplification highway, the lack of any moderation on social media platforms, people are acting with impunity.

“There's a lack, really, of regulation in the area. And there's a lack of political leadership, I think.”

The report was a cautionary tale, she said, that some of the fringe ideas were “bleeding” into mainstream politics.

The research did find a positive shift in terms of attitudes towards minority communities, she said. “sixty six percent of people agree that immigrants contribute positively to Irish culture and community. And that's up two percent from 64 percent in 2024, 79 percent believe that working class people are struggling due to systemic inequality, up two percent from 77 percent in 2024.

“And 75 percent support freedom of transgender people to live their lives, up a significant five percent from 70 percent. And you got to take this in context. This is in the context of a background where we've had protests, we've had, we've seen riots, we've seen things on fire, there's been arson. So actually, all of that has moved the public in the opposite direction.”