OAN’s Brooke Mallory
6:32 PM – Thursday, November 30, 2023
American conservatives have recently directed their sights to the Emerald Isle, since police in Northern Ireland are classifying anti-immigration signs in Belfast, including a graffiti message that read “Irish Lives Matter,” as a “hate incident.”
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The protests began after five adults and three children were reportedly injured by a knife-wielding foreign national.
The disturbances in Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, come less than a week after anti-immigration protests took place in Dublin, Ireland.
Irish police blamed the protests on “far-right” ideology.
An Algerian man was named as the main suspect in the stabbings of five people, including three children, outside of a Gaelic-speaking, “all-Irish” school earlier that day.
Belfast residents “will no longer accept the re-housing of illegal immigrants,” according to a sign that was put near Tildarg Avenue, the BBC reported. According to the Irish authorities, the billboard allegedly made fun of “other communities” by using an “offensive term.”
“Irish Lives Matter” was also spray-painted on the outside of Belfast’s Kennedy Centre a day later.
Law enforcement was “treating the matter as a hate incident,” according to Andrew Matson, a spokesperson for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
Northern Ireland politicians also weighed in on the issue. One such politician, Gerry Caroll, an MP for People Before Profit, stated that there was “no place in our society for this kind of racist poison” in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.
“If saying ‘Irish lives matter’ in Ireland is a hate crime, that’s the definition of a conquered nation,” conservative commentator Auron Macintyre wrote to X.
The daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, Lara Trump, stated in a Monday interview with NewsNation that the recent events in Ireland are “all the more reason that people are now starting to wake up.” Many Americans have highlighted the immigration debate in Ireland as a platform to raise concerns about the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks.
“I mean, borders matter,” Lara Trump added. “And you know, it’s funny because at one time, the borders of this country did matter to those in charge. Borders of a country like Ireland matter as well. And we have our own unique system and way of doing things; We need to know who’s coming into our country.”
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