A Stabbing, a Spire, a Riot
After a knife attack outside a Dublin school in November 2023, far-right accounts online falsely cast the assailant as a foreign attacker and urged crowds to gather at the Spire. A riot of roughly 500 people followed, and Irish police began collating the online material to weigh criminal prosecutions.
An attack, then a rumour
Shortly after 1:30 p.m. on 23 November 2023, a man attacked three young children and a woman with a knife outside a primary school on Parnell Square East in central Dublin, RTÉ reported. A five-year-old girl was the most seriously injured and was left fighting for her life, and a teacher who tried to shield the children was also stabbed, according to The Irish Times.
Within hours, false claims about the attacker spread across messaging apps and social platforms. Far-right activists asserted, without evidence, that the assailant was a foreign national — framing him as an “Algerian national” and an “illegal immigrant” — despite no such confirmation, according to the European Digital Media Observatory. Investigators later said the suspect was an Irish citizen who had lived in the country for more than 20 years, RTÉ reported.
A call to the Spire
As the rumours built, a prominent far-right social-media activist put out a call for a protest at the Spire, the landmark monument on O’Connell Street, that evening — a call that was also shared on X and boosted by other accounts, according to the European Digital Media Observatory. At its peak the rioting crowd was estimated at around 500 people, according to a summary of the events compiled on Wikipedia.
The unrest that followed was among the most violent Dublin had seen in years. A bus and a car were set on fire on O’Connell Bridge, a tram and several police vehicles were damaged, and shop windows were smashed and stores looted, Al Jazeera reported. At the height of the response, some 400 officers were deployed, RTÉ reported.
Blame from the top
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said the disorder was driven by extremist agitators rather than by any grievance connected to the stabbing. “We have a complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology,” he said, according to RTÉ. Chief Superintendent Patrick McMenamin said the violence “had nothing whatsoever to do with a serious assault that occurred this afternoon.”
Leo Varadkar, then Ireland’s taoiseach, condemned those involved. “Those involved brought shame on Dublin, brought shame on Ireland,” he said, according to Al Jazeera. Varadkar pledged to tighten Ireland’s laws on hate and incitement.
Collating the evidence
Gardáí opened parallel investigations into the stabbing, the riot and the online activity that preceded it. Members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation were “gathering social media posts, as well as written and voice content from messaging apps, to ground incitement of hatred charges,” according to The Irish Times. At least five prominent far-right online activists were being investigated, with detectives “tracing the graduated increase in threats and calls for violence from Thursday afternoon,” RTÉ reported.
Under Ireland’s incitement-to-hatred law, producing or circulating threatening, abusive or insulting material likely to stir up hatred is an offence carrying a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a fine of up to €12,000, according to RTÉ. The Dublin case has since become a reference point in debates over how quickly online falsehoods can move a crowd from a screen into the street.