As the drumbeat of hate grows, how serious is the far-right threat to the State?

With elections — local, European, national and presidential — fast coming up in the next 18 months, a relatively small, but more emboldened far-right has made immigration and asylum a dominant issue in Ireland, writes Security Correspondent Cormac O’Keeffe

Around 250 people march from Newtownmountkennedy village to the Garda barrier on the road to Trudder House, a proposed International Protection Applicants migrant centre last month. Photo: Eamonn Farrell/© RollingNews.ie

Amid all the outrage over the recent clashes at Newtownmountkennedy — of politicians being ‘Traitors’ and gardaí being ‘Black and Tans’ — a more worrying narrative was emerging.

The State, far-right agitators proclaimed, was “at war with its own people” — which meant the people were now “at war” with the State.