The leftist President of Ireland has attacked anti-mass migration protesters in the country, accusing them of “sowing hate”.
Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland, has lashed out at the growing number of anti-mass migration protests taking place in the country, attacking those attending the demonstrations for “sowing hate”.
A hardline leftist, Higgins has in the past vocally attacked the takeover of Twitter by the relatively pro-free speech Elon Musk, as well as linking massacres in Africa at the hands of Muslim extremists to climate change rather than radical Islam.
According to a report by the Irish Independent, the president attacked those attending the protests — which have cropped up across the country in response to the tens of thousands of arrivals that have entered the country over the last twelve months — as “building fear”.
“These people who are going around whipping people up and so forth, you didn’t see them previously making a case for housing, or for women’s rights, or for equal rights of any kind,” the President reportedly alleged, denouncing many demonstrators in Hillary Clinton-like terms “unforgivable”, if not deplorable.
“We are in a position now where we have elements who are not interested in solving the long-standing problems within communities or the new arrivals,” he claimed.
“You mustn’t give them the opportunity.”
While Higgins appears keen to attack those attending the growing protests as stirring both “fear” and “hate”, polling released on Sunday appears to indicate the general perspective of the Irish public is radically different.
When asked about the tens of thousands of migrants brought into Ireland — a relatively small country with a population far lower than many individual U.S. states — 56 per cent of respondents said that the island nation had brought in too many last year.
A plurality also appeared to back the protests, with 48 per cent of people saying that the demonstrations were made up predominantly of concerned citizens, compared to 44 per cent who believe they are made up mostly of “far-right agitators”.
The immigration situation is likely to only get worse in Ireland, however, with the authorities in the country now looking at housing foreign migrants in schools as other accommodation options dry up, with around 180,000 refugees and asylum seekers expected to be in the country by the end of this year.
Roderic O’Gorman, Ireland’s so-called integration minister, has also said that he would “like to see” Ireland also allowing in migrants supposedly fleeing climate change if it represented a shift in policy at the international level.
“I think all of Europe is going to have to expect more migration, more inward migration,” he remarked.
“Parts of Europe have experienced very significant amounts in the last decade. By and large Ireland has been receiving relatively small amounts and I think it’s likely that that’s going to change.”