Those behind this week’s disorder in Belfast may be driven by racism and ignorance, but they are also serving as a convenient distraction for well-funded far-right figures and the billionaire interests that support them.
Police using water cannon during protests in Northern Ireland this week
The unrest followed a brutal daylight knife attack in which a white man was allegedly assaulted by a black immigrant. The victim survived, reportedly thanks to the quick actions of a bystander with the courage and skill to intervene.
Yet despite a swift arrest and charges being brought soon after, anger rapidly spilled over into attacks on innocent families and children, along with arson targeting homes. Many of those involved appear to feel shut out of opportunity and public support, and directed that resentment at people they see as rivals for already limited resources.
That dynamic, critics argue, plays neatly into the hands of figures such as Elon Musk and other ultra-wealthy power brokers. While cities like Belfast and Southampton are consumed by fury over what they see as the threat of immigration, attention is diverted from a deeper question: how so few people have come to control such extraordinary wealth over the past half-century.
Economic studies suggest that in the decades following the Second World War through to the 1970s, growth was more broadly shared. In the United States, incomes generally rose across the scale rather than being concentrated at the top.
That pattern began to break down in the 1970s and 1980s, as growth slowed and inequality widened once again. By 2024, the richest 1 percent of US households owned more than 30 percent of the nation’s wealth — a level of concentration many compare to the excesses of the 1920s.
In the UK, by 2020 the richest 10 per cent of households held 43 per cent of all wealth.
Here in Ireland, things are even more acute, according to Central Bank statistics. At the end of 2025, the top 10 per cent of Irish households accounted for about half of net wealth in the country, with the poorest 50 percent of households only managing to own well under 10 per cent of national wealth.
Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet and the richest man in history, with a worth of $1.1tn
Internationally, the concentration of wealth among a small number of exceptionally rich people is staggering. Elon Musk, the great champion of white civilisation, is the richest man in history, with a current bank balance of $1.1trillion (€950.2billion) after shares in his SpaceX were publicly offered. Little wonder that Musk seeks distractions from the way he and others have benefited, on a scale that is frankly unimaginable, from the concentration of much of the planet’s wealth in the hands of such a small number of people.
In January 2015, Oxfam warned how one percent of the world’s richest people would soon own more wealth than the rest of the world’s population combined.
That was optimistic. Now, according to the World Inequality Report, just about 60,000 extremely wealthy people (there’d be 20,000 empty seats if they all piled into Croke Park) control three times more wealth than half of all humanity.
Elon Musk is top of that pile, with more free resources at his command than almost any modern, fully functioning country. He’s now king of the new, super-rich global oligarchy that insists on flashing the cash, hateful of previous wealthy elites who adopted various versions of noblesse oblige, of giving back, to justify their wealth and gain acceptance.
MUSK takes the direct and more vicious approach to distract useful idiots, like the Belfast anti-immigrant rioters, from his superlative wealth. He picks on migrants who have been forced to move countries and continents because of war or financial necessity, and blames them for the hardships facing regular people. Classy guy.
Meanwhile, the health system in the North (as in the rest of the UK and here in Ireland) continues to rely on immigrant workers to keep going.
Of the 60,000 people providing health and social care in the North, about 12,000 are immigrants, while overall it’s estimated about 45,000 people from outside Northern Ireland form part of the general workforce.
Neither Elon Musk with his trillion dollars, nor Nigel Farage with his £5million (€5.7million) gift from billionaire Christopher Harborne, will ever appear in those dreary loyalist coronation streets of Belfast with a petrol bomb in their hands destined for the front room of an innocent family trying to build a better life.
Instead, they opt to cast incendiary commentary from a safe distance, from their golden nests and lives of luxury.
Jennie’s Law is welcome, but it should do more
Jennifer Pole, who was stabbed to death in Dublin by her ex-partner Gavin Murphy in 2021
Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan’s proposed law for a public register of people convicted of serious domestic violence against a partner is a major step in the battle against such crime.
The law, to be called Jennie’s Law in honour of Jennifer Poole who was murdered by her ex-partner Gavin Murphy in 2021, follows on a similar provision in England and Wales.
Tragically, Jennifer Poole didn’t know Murphy had a history of violence against a partner.
Jennie’s Law will apply to only the most serious, indictable offences such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sexual assault, despite the reasonable argument that it should include all domestic violence offences, even those dealt with in the District Court.
Why not, given that such crime can escalate over time?
The new law should proceed without delay as women – and it’s mainly women – are entitled to know the true character of the person they’re involved with.
What we’ve learnt from the Rotunda hospital debacle
There are two notable takeaways from Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill’s thundering victory over that damp squib of a revolt at Dublin’s Rotunda maternity hospital.
One is the pitiful absence of confidence among almost all of the opposition, with nobody in Sinn Féin, Labour or the rag-tag bag of theoretical, anti-everything types to the left of them, willing to come out and declare that the minister was right. (The honourable exception was the Soc Dems).
They couldn’t bring themselves to say that consultants who had signed public-only contracts must knuckle down and comply with the terms.
Instead, they criticised the minister for threatening to withhold public money to the Rotunda, they questioned how things had deteriorated so badly and they even said the minister should actually sit down and talk to people whose behaviour fundamentally threatened the entire Sláintecare programme, which enjoys cross-party support in the Dáil. Ms Carroll MacNeill’s overwhelming success in this little skirmish has humiliated the opposition by revealing their complete lack of political integrity on this matter.
Sean Daly, Master of the Rotunda hospital, went on the Today programme on RTÉ radio
Takeaway number two is the interview given by the Master of the Rotunda, Seán Daly, to David McCullagh on RTÉ on Tuesday, which failed utterly if its intention was to obscure the image of a big white flag fluttering over the Dublin hospital.
Now when it comes to interviews of this kind, the fundamental question is: what is intended to be achieved?
Having decided to proceed, the next thing is preparation. After listening twice to the interview with Mr Daly, I still haven’t a baldy-notion why the hospital master submitted himself to questioning by McCullagh at all, given that absolutely nothing was likely to be salvaged from the ruins of the Rotunda’s abject and inevitable surrender – because it’s impossible to defend the indefensible.
As far as actual preparation was concerned, well, there appeared to be very little of that in evidence.
This was best illustrated by McCullagh asking Daly whether the five women who paid for consultant services, which should have been provided free under the public-only contract, will get their money refunded. It appeared the Master hadn’t anticipated this as one of the more obvious questions he would face.
Seán Daly pointed out that the women had received a service, leading (as night follows day) to McCullagh telling him: ‘But they shouldn’t have been charged for it.’
Oops.
Thinking on his feet, Daly said the ‘right thing would be done by these women, don’t worry about that’.
Such pleasant reassurance is heartening but, overall, the interview failed to explain how the Rotunda found itself in a row that it clearly hadn’t a chance of winning in the first place.
