IN THE WAKE of an alleged arson attack at a centre for asylum seekers in Drogheda, anti-immigration activists online have labelled the attack a “false flag” operation or a distraction, while one website instead characterised the attack as “calculated resistance” by “local patriots”.

Gardaí are investigating the fire at the Co Louth IPAS centre on Friday as arson. CCTV footage from the building appears to show a man setting the stairs alight.

Firefighters rescued five people, including a baby, from the top floor of the building in the town’s George’s Street area.

The incident quickly became the focus of anti-immigration activists, who have repeatedly criticised asylum seekers for coming to Ireland, as well as the government for accommodating them in recent years.

Attacks on asylum accommodation centres, usually accompanied by online misinformation, have become a recurring pattern.

In separate cases to the Drogheda fire, there have been a number of fires at buildings where asylum seekers were to be housed – or rumoured to be housed – in recent years.

There have been more than 20 such attacks on properties since 2018. Some of these have involved suspected cases of arson, and many occurred after misinformation about the buildings spread online.

In another attack in late 2024, anti-migrant activists welded shut an emergency exit for an accommodation centre for families in International Protection.

Anti-immigration groups were quick to put forward their own version of events on social media following last Friday’s incident. In some wildly speculative cases, they sought to place blame – without proof – on groups as disparate as locals opposed to IPAS centres or asylum seekers to government operatives or gardaí. 

One website that regularly posts anti-immigration narratives ascribed the fire to locals who view “the blaze as justified self-defence”.

“A bold stand unfolded in Drogheda on Friday night, when locals torched an International Protection Accommodation Services Centre on George’s Street, sending a clear message to Dublin’s open-border elite,” an article in TheLiberal.ie reads.

“The targeted strike, executed with fireworks around 8.15pm, emptied the building in minutes and left the facility gutted — exactly the outcome Irish patriots demanded after months of ignored protest.”

There are some factual errors here — the fire was not caused by fireworks and it did not leave the building gutted. TheLiberal.ie is a website that has been factchecked numerous times by The Journal, often for false claims about migrants.

The article describes condemnation of the crime as “sidestepping the real grievance: yet another historic town sacrifices to house unvetted migrants”.

“Friday’s fire was not random vandalism,” the article states. “It was calculated resistance”.

It ends: “More centres await the same fate unless the government chooses Irish people first.”

Many anti-immigration groups took a different view, blaming the fire on different groups, including the residents themselves.

“Smells like an inside job to me,” read one message, which also contained anti-semitic language, in an anti-immigration Telegram group. “Wouldn’t be the first time an invader started a fire in their accommodation.

(Some fringe anti-immigration groups misleadingly call immigrants “invaders”).

However, by far the most common theory spread in these groups was that the alleged arson attack was part of a government conspiracy, with multiple comments saying that it was a “false flag” (a crime committed to frame an enemy) or a “psyop” (meaning “psychological operation”, a term popularly used in conspiracy theorist circles to mean an event orchestrated to influence the population).

“I’m not saying the Irish state are capable of burning the IPAS to justify restrictions on freedom but…” began a post on X by Derek Blighe, a former leader of an anti-immigration party. Blighe has unsuccessfully ran in general and European elections, and posted a photo of himself in blackface makeup on Halloween, the night of the fire.

“This individual in the video is Gardai or Antifa (at the behest) of Gardai or government,” read a comment by another poster which was seen 62,200 times on X. 

• Antifa (short for anti-fascist) refers to a movement that has taken a stand against the far-right. The term appears to have originated in the 1930s as groups took a stand against the rise of Nazism.

Many of these claims were accompanied by arguments that the information put out by the media was contradictory, or didn’t make sense.

In some cases, they had a point — initial reports, which were also uttered by the Minister for Justice, indicated that the fire was likely started by fireworks, leading some people to think that the blaze was an accident, or a prank gone wrong.

Unsubstantiated claims in TheLiberal.ie that the fire was started by an electrical fault muddied the waters further. Initially, its reporting on the fire said Gardaí had ruled out foul play.

“Preliminary reports suggest it may have originated from an electrical fault or unattended appliance,” its piece read, likely adding to the confusion cited by some online commentators. This was later updated to include the minister’s comments on fireworks.

In other cases, social media accounts interrogated spurious and/or easily explainable details as if they pointed toward the whole incident being fabricated.

Many accounts noted differences between CCTV footage that was released and a photo of the aftermath of the fire that was published in newspapers. There was a watercooler in the photo, but not the video, they claimed. And there is a doorway in the video, but not the photo.

However, explanations for these discrepancies are simple: the doorway was out of shot of the photograph, and the watercooler is in the CCTV footage, partly obscured by the stairwell — it was likely moved into a corner where it wasn’t blocking the path after the fire started.

Other spurious claims included that there wasn’t enough CCTV released, that the building hadn’t been entirely burnt out, that the front door wasn’t damaged enough to have been kicked in, or that “they never showed any of the alleged families that got caught up in the fire”.

“How did the clipboard move from one wall to the other?” a post on the verified X account of Patrice Johnson, secretary of the Irish Freedom Party, asked, seemingly finding another discrepancy between the CCTV video and the photo of the scene.

(The clipboard did not move. The CCTV footage shows that there are two of them.)

Johnson also made multiple posts indicating that the alleged arson attack was a “distraction”.

“Just like that…the Irish government have their story to cover up the horrendous attack on a 10 year old Irish girl”, she posted in response to the story.

This narrative spread widely across anti-immigration social media accounts where it found its target in a Drogheda woman who was interviewed about the fire by RTÉ, who said that, “No one deserves to be treated like that. Everyone deserves a safe home.”

“Has anyone seen the woman crying on RTÉ about the firework in the IPAS centre in Drogheda?” read a post on X that included the clip. “I have never seen bigger virtue signalling in my life.”

“More propaganda from RTE,” one comment viewed more than 50,400 times on X read. “This is so fake,” said another, seen more than 59,000 times

“Pure propaganda here from RTE,” said a description on a video posted to Instagram by  TheLiberal.ie featuring the clip. “Drogheda woman says it’s so cruel what happened IPAS centre in Drogheda last night. What is cruel when a migrant raped a 10 year old Irish girl in Citywest?”

(Grammatical mistakes have been left as they are, as the intended meaning is unclear. There is no known connection between the suspected arson in Drogheda and an alleged sexual assault of a young girl in Citywest two weeks earlier, for which a suspect has been arrested).

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