Weaponizing Violence Against Women - A Critical Discourse Analysis of Far-Right Disinformation Strategies in Ireland

Explicitly far-right political parties have had relatively little success in Ireland, polling less than 1% of the vote in the 2020 general election and failing to return a single candidate to the 33rd Dáil. Despite this, far-right fringe groups in Ireland are growing in confidence and visibility, both online and offline. 2023 opened with a sharp and substantial upsurge of activity by far-right, and even some fascist, forces in the south of Ireland. According to An Garda Síochána, (Ireland’s police force) there were 307 anti-migrant protests in 2022, and 64 demonstrations in 2023, with many protests targeting libraries, schools, bookshops and refugee accommodation centres. This has been accompanied by repeated attempts to create a moral panic around claims of sexual violence through the dissemination of false information about criminal activities by migrants to fuel offline hostility and violence and encourage anti-immigration mobilisations. This messaging has appropriated sexual and gender based violence to create a fearmongering narrative around single ‘unvetted men of military age’, and their supposed danger to local communities, and in particular, women and children. This paper examines how gender is discursively employed as a strategic tool in far-right disinformation campaigns by offering a critical discourse analysis of the construction of ‘unvetted, military-aged men’ as a ‘symbolic assailant’ (Jones-Brown, 2007) across Irish far-right Telegram channels between December 2022 and December 2023. It will address the weaponisation and co-option of gender politics as a key tactic by extremist and populist groups in the orchestration of a moral panic around immigration and the LGBTQ community, and importantly, how this has manifested offline. Following this, it will identify the contradictions that emerge by contrasting this with the historical treatment of Irish migrant men.