Global and Catholic dimensions to anti-migrant far right

Analysing the Belfast riots which started on 10 June, in Solidarity 770, Micheál MacEoin concludes that although migrants had been targetted on social media before these events, it is inconceivable that Loyalist paramilitaries were not involved.

That makes sense. However the turn to anti-immigration protest in Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, is bound to be linked up with far right social media networks which now have a global reach. That global context is also shaping what has happened in Belfast and in Northern Ireland, through the protests of 2024 after the Southport killings, the 2025 ethnic cleansing in Ballymena of Roma residents after an alleged sexual assault, up to the present day.

Encouraging

Observers of the US white nationalist scene noted that its social media channels were encouraging and then approving Belfast’s latest political violence before and after it took place. They noted the social media of Active Clubs, a global network, originating in the US, of younger, fascistic groups who engage in combat sports training in order to be ready for political violence. Speculation followed (on Wired magazine’s website) about the significant role of a possible Active Club in Northern Ireland, calling itself the Ulster Youth Club.

We have no obvious way of verifying this. The Accountability Project, a group which monitors Northern Irish far-right anti-immigrant activity, has said paramilitary figures are active in the networks, but the masked rioters in Belfast in June 2026 were of a younger generation. They most likely they had their own covert communication channels (on Signal or Telegram). The Project did not know if the youth were connected to the paramilitaries.

Networks

In August 2024 the BBC reported that both Loyalists and Nationalists had been brought together in Belfast by and in far right networks. There were elements of the UDA, but also people carrying the Irish flag, who are linked to far right networks in the South. The Belfast Telegraph has reported Catholics at anti-immigration protests and supporters in the city for Clann Éireann (a 2023 split from the far-right National Party, founded 2016; no relation to the 1960s-80s Clann na hÉireann). A narrative that these protests brings Catholics and Protestants together, in for example opposition to Islam, has sometimes been broadcast.

Tentatively we can say: there is a growing anti-immigrant “movement”. It does have the involvement of former Loyalist paramilitaries. It may have the marginal involvement of some far right Nationalists. This movement also seems to be at least inspired by and integrated into the global far right - its most extreme and violent elements - though social media.