Irish Anti-Immigration Activists Profit from Viral Hate Videos

Activists against immigration from Ireland are receiving millions of views on their internet content and, in certain cases, making money by disseminating hateful and unlawful content.

An group that works to resist the influence of the extreme right conducted a study and found that during a six-week period this summer, one well-known agitator shared unlawful recordings that were viewed 11. 8 million times.

Under the terms of the International Protection Act 2015, it is illegal to broadcast – including online – material that may identify someone as an applicant to the asylum system.

This is to protect the identity of people who may be in danger in their country of origin.

But a recent analysis by the Hope and Courage Collective (H&CC) – formerly the Far-right Observatory – showed that 39 such videos from four ‘high-profile’ accounts on YouTube and X, formerly Twitter, had combined amassed 14.5 million views over six weeks this July and August.

And 81% of those views 11.8 million – were clocked up on the profile of just one user of X who has around 115,000 followers, Michael O’Keeffe.

As a ‘blue tick’ account, Mr O’Keeffe stands to be paid a share of advertising revenue by X for bringing traffic to the site.

His bio reads: ‘Irish. Banned by Twitter regime. Restored by Elon and X.’ His account was removed by Twitter for spreading hateful content but was restored after Elon Musk bought the platform.

Musk, who regularly amplifies disinformation, has publicly interacted with Mr O’Keeffe on the platform.

Mark Malone of the H&CC, a mainly philanthropy-funded organisation which has received some State funding, told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘You pay your €8 to Musk, and your content gets boosted by the algorithm.’

Mr Malone said the analysed videos – with 11.8 million views – were only the ones that potentially identified IPAs.

‘That doesn’t count all the other content that [Mr O’Keeffe] has churned out over the month. If you want to have lots of views, you need to have content, so now Mick O’Keeffe is recycling content – he’s throwing up videos of school fights or whatever from last year and just churning content out all the time.’

‘There’s an economic incentive if he is monetised. Why not throw up five old videos a day alongside anything new you might find?’ Mr Malone said there is no way to publicly see whether a user is making money from their account but claimed ‘if anybody is’ in the Irish anti-immigration space, it is Mr O’Keeffe.

A behind-the-curtain screenshot posted by Mr O’Keeffe himself on X, in response to a post by Mr Malone on H&CC’s findings, shows he amassed 64 million ‘impressions’ on the platform in the 28 days up to last week – meaning his posts were seen that many times. This represented an 11.3% increase in ‘engagement rate’.

Payout amounts depend on factors such as how many verified users follow an account, but various online calculators suggest that the level of engagement could generate between a few hundred and a thousand euros.

Mr O’Keeffe also receives direct funding from supporters, through platforms such as GoFundMe and BuyMeACoffee – through which donors send ‘coffees’ worth €5.

A source who analyses disinformation and far-right messaging online said Mr O’Keeffe had visibly made ‘€1,455 in the last month or so’, but added: ‘He can also hide whoever buys a coffee so the real figure might be much higher…’

Mr O’Keeffe has made videos of himself confronting people who appear to be foreign. Another repackaged video, from last winter, shows tents in Dublin City covered in snow. ‘Soon, they will be freezing in their tents like last year,’ Mr O’Keeffe writes. ‘Winter is coming.’

Immigration lawyer Albert Llussà, a partner at Daly Lynch Crowe and Morris Solicitors said the publishing of such posts ‘is likely to constitute a criminal offence under Sections 2 and 3 of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989’.

Mr. O'Keeffe commented last week, seemingly oblivious to the regulations already in place: "Now that the hate speech Bill has been discarded, foreigners in Ireland have learnt a very important lesson."

"The Irish people will say anything the feck we want to say." The status quo is about to come to an end. There will be no conquest of this island. Huge deportations are about to occur.

Contacting Mr. O'Keeffe was not successful.