Ireland’s far-right shift: Abortion as a tool for ethno-nationalist agendas
13 August 2024
In May 2018, Ireland voted to legalise abortion through the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. Since then, far-right groups in Ireland largely avoided the issue of abortion, focusing their energies on other targets. However, emboldened by their recent success in the June local elections, where they campaigned on an anti-migrant agenda, anti-abortion dogma has been brought to the fore. Irish far-right[1] groups attended the recent Rally for Life, an all-Ireland anti-abortion protest, and now frame the issue of abortion through an overtly white nationalist lens.
Conservatives left reeling after repeal
In the lead-up to the 2018 referendum, anti-abortion groups presented a compassionate and empathetic argument for pro-life laws. This was typified by the approach taken by The Life Institute, a prominent anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ rights group in Ireland: its campaign around the referendum on legalising abortion was called “Love Both” and made heavy use of images of smiling babies with mothers. Nationalist anti-abortion narratives were confined to promoting Ireland’s unique status as the only country with a constitutional abortion ban, which was something to be “cherished”, or framing abortion as a “British” solution to unwanted pregnancies, which was not needed in Ireland.
This campaign failed definitively, with 66 percent of voters supporting the legalisation of abortion compared to 34 percent against it; voter turnout was around 64 percent, about 20 percentage points higher than the presidential election a few months later. The scale of the loss came as a shock to both sides. Pro-life groups acknowledged that they “(could not) afford to take a single-issue approach” to politics going forward.
The rise of Irish ethnonationalism
Between 2019 and 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-lockdown protests were the dominant narratives in Irish far-right spaces. Post-pandemic, the influx of refugees from the war in Ukraine combined with an overall increase in people seeking asylum in Ireland, compounded by an ongoing housing crisis, were weaponised by the Irish far right to drive their nativist “Ireland is Full” narratives. This has fuelled rising anti-migration protests and violence against asylum seekers over the last 2 years.
For the Irish far right, these newcomers represent a “plantation”, an Irish variant of the ‘Great Replacement’, a conspiracy theory which claims that there is a concerted effort to replace white populations in Europe and America with non-white groups. The Irish far right has successfully leveraged immigration-related issues to achieve levels of public support unseen here for decades.
Ahead of local and European elections in June, Irish far-right parties and candidates campaigned almost exclusively on the platform of housing and migration. Other social issues, including reproductive health care, were not promoted or highlighted significantly; post-election, this changed almost immediately. In a video posted from the count centre the night he was elected as an independent councillor for Dublin Central, Malachy Steenson urged viewers to attend the forthcoming Rally for Life. Tom McDonnell, another newly elected independent councillor in Kildare, immediately upon his election, stated that Irish people were in danger of dying out and that “our” women need to “breed more”.
Ethnonationalism, abortion and reproductive healthcare
For more than a century, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have viewed abortion and other forms of reproductive healthcare as an existential threat to the white race. Abortion as a tool of “white genocide” is a key element of ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theories, which view declining birth rates, access to birth control and abortion as forms of “race suicide”. These concepts were present in the manifestos of both the Christchurch and El Paso mass shooters. Just as Irish ethnonationalists have effectively coopted other elements of the Great Replacement conspiracy, abortion in Ireland is being increasingly framed as a tool of an “Irish ethnocide”.
Figure 1: Tweet from a prominent Irish far-right activist reads: “we need to shine a light on abortion; it’s being completely overlooked as part of the depopulation and the destruction of the Irish family.”
Figure 2: Another prominent Irish online far-right figure equating abortion with the ‘Great Replacement’.
Figure 3: Further comments about how abortion is a plot to replace the Irish people.
Government figures announcing that over 10,000 abortions were carried out in Ireland in 2023, which were released just after the local and European elections, have further fuelled this narrative; so too have reports showing Ireland’s declining birthrate and the expansion of a government scheme to provide free contraception to women under 35. Taken together, these elements have been used to build the narrative that the Irish government is actively promoting the genocide of “indigenous Irish people” through healthcare policy.
The Rally for Life
On Saturday, 8 June 2024, the 8th annual Rally for Life took place in central Dublin. Billed as Ireland’s largest annual pro-life gathering, attendance was estimated at several thousand. The theme of this year’s event was “Abortion Kills Our Future”.
Figure 4: Pre-printed signs from the 2024 Rally for Life, “Abortion kills our Future” are the theme.
Representatives from many Irish far-right groups attended as they have done in previous years, including the National Party, The Irish Freedom Party, and the Irish People’s Party. In both cases, their banners and literature heavily promoted the idea that abortion is a threat to the Irish people’s continued existence.
Figure 5: Anti-abortion literature distributed by the Irish National Party at the Rally for Life 2024.
Figure 6: A banner from the Irish People’s Party unfurled at the Rally for Life “Stop Aborting the Irish People”.
Figure 7: Another tweet stating: “NO IRISH BABIES = NO IRISH FUTURE.”
Speaking at the rally, Niamh Uí Bhriain, spokesperson for The Life Institute and founding member of Youth Defence, a far right-wing Catholic organisation, stated, “Those who push abortion are not aborting your future; they’re aborting their own!”. Independent councillor Malachy Steenson was cheered by the crowd when he said, “Do not be under any illusions we are at war with this state […] and we will prevail.”
While Irish anti-abortion groups have extensive and historic ties to both Christian ethnonationalists in the US and the European far right, they have publicly repudiated far-right ideology. However, it is evident that ethno-nationalist narratives are acceptable in Irish anti-abortion spaces.
The rise of a new Irish anti-abortion movement?
The immediate concern is that far-right groups will be able to effectively use white nationalist positions on reproductive rights to radicalise anti-abortion activists. However, a potentially more serious issue is that they will be able to convert Irish people who already believe in ‘Great Replacement’/’plantation’ conspiracy theories into further extremist positions on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Less than 10 years ago, Irish people voted overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex marriage rights, but since 2022, the country has witnessed a shocking increase in homophobic incidents, at the same time as the Irish far right was heavily engaged in anti-LGBTQI+ campaigns.
However, even among the Irish far-right, there is an acknowledgement that their “pro-life” policies are a “turn-off” for most Irish voters, that they should avoid the topic and instead focus on promoting the “pro-family” policies of Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
Far-right groups in Ireland have gained substantial visibility in recent years. They are using their reach into domestic activist movements to expose broader parts of society to white nationalist propaganda. This mirrors broader trends in the international far right, where supremacist ideologies are introduced into mainstream discourse by instrumentalising locally salient issues such as migration and demographic change. The concern in Ireland is that an emboldened far right will feel increasingly confident and comfortable openly expressing extremist rhetoric both on- and offline, poisoning civic discourse and attempting to recruit for their supremacist causes.
Endnotes
[1] In line with Dutch political scientist and far-right expert Cas Mudde, ISD defines the far-right as groups and individuals exhibiting at least three of the following five features: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, antidemocracy or strong state advocacy.
