Britain’s liberal excesses have garnered the spotlight recently, as both President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have criticized the country’s approach to thoughtcrime, leaving Prime Minister Keir Starmer flummoxed. Britannia’s future is indeed unenviable, as liberalism has wrought its familiar economic and demographic destruction. British societal resistance is firmly established, though, however doubtful its prospects might be. 

For a look at a genuine liberal horror show, untrammeled and unopposed, one can make the short hop across the Irish Sea.

The latest macabre act played out last month, when a Pakistani migrant, yelling “Allahu Akbar,” stabbed a Garda (police officer) on Dublin’s Capel Street. Fortunately, the officer’s wounds were not life-threatening. The entire incident was caught on film.

Irish institutions reached for a familiar playbook. Gardaí representatives, silent about the actual stabbing and the spiraling crime in Irish communities, warned about misinformation. Coimisiún na Meán, the state media-regulation body, invoked a new online safety code, intended to protect children from explicit content, to block circulation of the video. Significantly, the code does not block pornographic websites, which are readily accessible to Irish internet users of all ages. 

Independent outlet Gript, which does not accept funding from Coimisiún na Meán, decided to publish the video on its social media channels anyway, a risky undertaking in today’s Ireland. “Clearly, a man attacking a Garda while uttering an Islamic prayer and war cry is a matter of public interest,” explained the editorial board. “It speaks to the changing nature of the nation, and the changing composition of the population. It speaks particularly to changes wrought at the very behest of the state and its policymakers. A state which has, also, sought overtly and repeatedly to deny that such changes have had, or even could have, any negative impacts.”

The editors continued, “Coimisiún na Meán is an unelected and unaccountable body. Unlike the politicians that established it, it may not be voted out of office. Its decisions may not be overturned at the ballot box by democratic vote. Its ethos, personnel, and central purpose are all politically attuned to a particular brand of progressive liberalism that prioritises the suppression and rejection of ideas that the state considers – as shorthand – ‘far right.’”

Once they could no longer contain the Garda stabbing story, Irish politicians and journalists furiously promoted the narrative of an increase in violence against people from the Indian subcontinent. Responding to this manufactured crisis, Gardaí spokesmen admitted there was no statistical evidence for an uptick in such crime. A fake-sounding Irish Times subtitle read, “No statistical indication of a rising threat to Indians exists, but that is a hard message to deliver.” 

Had they found the desired numbers, the societal conversation might not have been markedly different. The government’s obfuscations are entirely predictable now, and the gulf between the populace and its representatives appears unbridgeable. 

Journalist and fashionable-opinion gatekeeper Fintan O’Toole proposed that migration critics be compelled to 

conscript all [mixed martial artist and aspiring presidential candidate] Conor McGregor’s ‘Ireland for the Irish’ fans into a standing army of toilet cleaners, social care workers, fruit and vegetable pickers, Deliveroo couriers, security guards, chambermaids, meat factory butchers and kitchen porters. Instead of flipping Vs at dark-skinned people, they could flip burgers for Ireland.

Irish need not have an economics degree to reject these tired tropes. Quality of life is demonstrably worse than in recent memory, though O’Toole’s milieu insists otherwise. “Choosing a situation where people come here to do low-paid jobs and compete for scraps is an economic strategy,” reminds Gript editor John McGuirk. “It is not an economic law that these jobs must be low-paid, or that they must necessarily exist.” 

Former Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar took to X to defend Sweden’s migration policies, a position that has become untenable even for Swedish politicians. Journalist Jason Osborne noted how, symbolically, Irish politicians generally turn off comments on their social media accounts, while their American and British counterparts accept this modest avenue for abuse. The Department of Education and Youth published a curriculum aiming to mold children into “agentic global citizens,” drawing widespread mockery. Unserious people govern in Dublin. 

The need for capable governance is urgent. This summer, house-price inflation reached a 10-year high. Images of long lines to view a single apartment often go viral. Government statistics published earlier this year show one-in-eight Irish 25-year-olds has emigrated, while seven-in-ten still live with their parents. Lavish government expenditure on migrant housing mirrors that in the UK and other parts of Western Europe. The financial industry is also complicit. In a recent article in the Irish Independent, a financial adviser—unapologetically, it seems—touted four-person mortgages and noted they are “particularly gaining traction among the Indian community working in the public sector.” Irish leaders remain unrepentant. 

Supplanting the country’s political class, though, is far from straightforward. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the country’s dominant parties dating from the civil war era a century ago, have largely indistinguishable liberal platforms. The other influential parties—Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats, and the Greens—lie formally on the Left. The rise of Aontú, a party that promotes Catholic social positions, is a welcome addition to the Irish political landscape, but it holds just two seats in the Dáil (parliament). Unprofessionalism, disunity, and sordid characters characterize other sections of the would-be anti-establishment movement, a reality government figures are delighted to exploit.

Political backlash reached a high-water mark last spring, when Irish voters overwhelmingly and unexpectedly rejected two government-sponsored referenda on marriage and motherhood. Any momentum quickly subsided, as voters merely reshuffled seats among the dominant parties in the November general election.  Irish who had grown tired of the country’s rulers and voted “no” on the amendments still opted for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. In a Europe in which anti-establishment populists lead polls and secure substantial vote tallies, but are still blocked from power, formal Irish political resistance is developing far too slowly to matter.

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Frustrated by the cloak of silence and inability to produce political change, some have taken to the streets. Dublin erupted with riots in November 2023, after an Algerian migrant stabbed three children and a school worker outside a primary school, an event that earned international headlines. Protests, traffic obstructions, and occasional arson have coincided with the establishment of IPAS (International Protection Accommodation Service) centers, often in small towns and rural areas, and even in the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht. The government response to these protests has been dismissive at best. 

In trans-Atlantic matters, the government is forced to be more conciliatory. President Trump and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick have criticized the Emerald Isle’s tax-haven status, in which just ten multinational corporations account for 60 percent of Dublin’s corporate tax revenue and 11 percent of the Irish workforce has a U.S. multinational employer. The Trump administration’s new tariff on medicines from Europe promises to impact Ireland, where many multinational pharmaceutical giants are domiciled. Accordingly, the Economist recently removed Ireland from its list of “truly rich” countries, asserting that Irish GDP calculations “are polluted by tax arbitrage.” Taoiseach Micheál Martin attempted damage control during the traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit to Washington in March—and largely avoided unwanted controversy—but it is still unclear to what degree a country so transparently opposed to this U.S. administration’s priorities will be allowed to profit from American corporate activities. 

The Irish house of cards will likely fall, not due to civil protest or the political process, but to external shocks beyond Dublin’s control. Whenever this occurs, it will be richly deserved for the Irish political class, but ordinary Irish citizens—as so often throughout their history—will bear many of the repercussions.