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October-Novemeber 2024 5
asylum seekers. It exploits the fact some
asylum seekers are “fake” and arriving from
“safe” countries to whip up its followers and
create an ‘us against them’ narrative.
The images that come up when you Google
“Gript Migrant” and the associated content
betray, it seems to Village, a strategy by Gript
to question the legitimacy of asylum seekers
without drawing attention to the life-threaten-
ing diffi culties experienced by asylum-seekers,
stoking division.
Gript has embedded tweets from far-right
websites like the Liberal.ie, and promotes far-
right tropes such as a Tiktok video featuring
artist Kevin Sharkey garrulously claiming that
immigrants are a risk to our daughters.
Gript found itself at the centre of a media
storm on 23 November 2023 when, citing offi -
cial sources, it tweeted that the “person of
interest” to gardaí in relation to a horrific knife
attack in Dublin was an Algerian national. It ran
a story to that eff ect a short time later on its
website.
Its Tweet came just hours after the incident,
when information was scarce and many were
seeking context to the tragic events that had
occurred. A follow-up Tweet undermined its
own information, saying that the investigation
was at “a very early stage” and providing
cover, should their information prove to be
incorrect.
However, this second countervailing, cau-
tionary Tweet was only seen by a sixth of those
who saw the first Tweet. Gript.ie’s approach
appears racist. Professor Eugenia Siapera of
UCD told Village: “The way in which sustained
hostile coverage of migration has a potential
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RACIST GRIPT’S
JOHN MCGUIRK
– elling lies nd
sirring up
hred gins
immigrns
NEW: Legal Column
EXCLUSIVE: Dodgy Donegal County Council and its acting director of planning: still at it
EXCLUSIVE: Naming ringleaders of Terenure sex abuse
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| Bailieboro Garda after Maurice McCabe | Y X?
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| Simon Harris’s bluffing | RTÉ needs to look to new models | Vote No, twice
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| Truth on Stakenife, McGuinness, MI5 | Reintroducing wolves | Hare coursing
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| Dunnes Stores dereliction | Profile: Michael McDowell
EDITORIAL
I
n late September, Village lost an appeal
to the Press Council about a cover story
in its February-March 2024 edition,
titled “Racist Gript’s John McGuirk: tell-
ing lies and stirring up hatred against
immigrants”. The article breached Prin-
ciples 1, 2 and 4 of the Press Council’s Code of
Conduct (see p3 for details).
Against the background of that dispositive
decision, we repeat the central views off ered
before, in this editorial.
The reason for this is to avoid others losing
heart at what you can and cannot say about
racism, stirring hatred and the telling of lies in
this democracy.
Gript
Gript.ie’s website claims to be “News, Opinion,
and Analysis — Without the Liberal Filter” and
says that “what we try to be here is open,
honest and brave”. Village argues this is not
typically the case. Gript is often not open or
honest and, though it is sometimes brave, it is
not brave to habitually attack the most
vulnerable.
Village considers that Gript is a racist organ;
and that John McGuirk tells lies and stirs up
hatred. For good measure we believe he is also
a racist.
Racism
John McGuirk’s Racism
Village considers that Gript’s editor McGuirk
has always nurtured his intolerant side and
there is no better man for innocently getting
into a politically incorrect scrap: when Barack
Obama beat war-wounded John McCain for the
US Presidency in 2008, McGuirk tweeted: “We
were that close to having the world run by a
vegetable we got lucky and had it run by a
monkey instead”.
Another unpleasant and ostensibly some-
what racist outing for McGuirk, though he
makes out he was merely illustrating the
hypocrisy of former Sinn Féin leader Gerry
Adams, was a Tweet about a movie: “Before
Django gets notions, remember that Nelson
Mandela, who he never stops comparing him-
self to, is clearly Gerry Adam’s favourite
n*****”. Parking Adam’s [sic] role in the aff air,
McGuirk is clearly someone comfortable play-
ing games with the word n*****, in relation to
one of the world’s greatest men, Mandela.
He once tweeted: “Charlie Bird is really
annoying me with his “OMG these blacks are
so poor” schtick”. And he is currently pursuing
Web Summit’s Paddy Cosgrave for defama-
tion, after Cosgrave rehashed a dozen old
tweets in which McGuirk salaciously ventilated
about drooling over young girls like a “paedo”
and, McGuirk alleges, implied the Gript editor
was a racist.
It is the robust opinion of this magazine that
most of the above constitutes overt racism
from John McGuirk.
But mainly what is relevant, and nasty, is
that Gript, McGuirk’s vehicle, obsesses over,
but only very rarely portrays positively, black
and brown people.
Gript’s Racism
Professor Gavan Titley did a report for Village
on Gript. He noted, for example that, of its
‘popular’ news stories on the day he looked,
seven out of eight stories were about “immi-
gration, asylum-seeking, and people who
migrate and seek asylum”. Gript obsesses
about immigrants and its coverage is perva-
sively negative. For example, here are the top
15 headlines for a Google search under ‘Gript
Nigerian’ on 1 October 2024:
1) Sentences extended for Nigerian traffi ckers
who forced victims into prostitution after
‘voodoo ceremony’;
2) Supreme Court: deportation order against
Nigerian would not interfere with children’s
rights;
3) Gardaí set sights on leader of notorious
Nigerian ‘Black Axe’ gang in Ireland [The next
six entries are all about the ‘Black Axe Gang’];
10) Nigerian Matthew Fadeyi was this week
jailed for raping a woman;
11) “Highly likely” Nigerian who raped elderly
woman also linked to ‘Black Axe’ gang;
12) Adenij i was sentenced to 11 years in
prison, with the fi nal year suspended, in July
2020, for the rape of the 73-year old woman;
13) ‘Religious for ransom’: Booming Church in
Nigeria plagued by kidnappings for ransom;
14) Three Nigerian men have been charged in
Ireland for running a romance scam targeting
women;
15) Spokesman for ACN Ireland Michael Kelly
told Gript that kidnapping for ransom in Nige-
ria has become an “industry”.
It tells us all we need to know about Gript
that not one of the 15 articles appears to con-
sider Nigerians positively, or indeed anything
other than negatively.
Delving into Gript’s archive more generally
shows it is no stranger to incendiary headlines
and articles that demonise migrants and
For the avoidance of all doubt: Village — sill — considers h Grip
is rcis orgn; nd h is edior ells lies nd sirs hred gins
immigrns. For good mesure we believe he is lso rcis
VillageOctNov24.indb 5 03/10/2024 14:27
6 October-Novemeber 2024
racist effect is through the process of social
categorisation, which divides communities
into ingroups and outgroups, assigning differ-
ent attributes and characteristics to each. In
hostile media coverage of migration, all
migrants are categorised as an outgroup”, The
Irish Network against Racism defines racism
as “any action…which has the effect (whether
intentional or not) of undermining anyone’s
enjoyment of their human rights, based on
their actual or perceived ethnic or national
origin or background, where that background
is that of a marginalised or historically subor-
dinated group”. Gript.ie implied the man was
part of an outgroup and undermined the man’s
right to be treated as an equal based on his
perceived Algerian nationality.
Here racism was merging with stirring up
hatred.
Sirring up Hred. John
McGuirk edis Grip, so if Grip
sirs up hred so does he
The reference to Algerian nationality, at a time
when the country was coming to terms with the
horror that was unfolding, was intended to,
and duly did, go viral, especially among a
cohort of Ireland’s well-known racists who, it
is impossible to deny, look to Gript for informa-
tion on occasions like this. These people are in
the business of being stirred-up and hatred is
their currency. It served to incite riots.
The man was, in fact, a naturalised Irish citizen
who came to Ireland from Algeria about 20
years ago. His country of origin was irrelevant
to his actions which appear to have been
rooted in severe mental-health problems.
The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act
1989 states that it is an offence to communi-
cate threatening, abusive or insulting material
that is intended, or likely to, “stir up” hatred
against a group of people because of their
race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or
national origins. It seems probable the Tweet
stirred up racial hatred on the basis of national
origin — to imply the man may have carried out
his crime because of Islamism, that it was a ter-
rorist act. Or perhaps that this Algerian, like so
many of the immigrants of colour who Gript
covers, was more inclined to commit crime
than Irish people are.
Gript purveyed analogous racism and
stirred analogous hatred in a later piece, on 16
April, by ‘The Editors’ who pontificated about
the closing down of a meeting in Brussels: “A
Government that sides with those who
threaten to use force to silence their opposi-
tion...can barely even call itself western.
Indeed, we must consider the reality that the
Mayor of the division of Brussels who ordered
this decision is not of western heritage”.
Ethical journalism only reports the details of
a person because the details are relevant. There
was no relevance to the nationality of the man
who carried out the awful knifing in November
2023, and there was no relevance to the divi-
sional Mayor’s heritage not being western.
A few days later, Gript proudly teased
another McGuirk story ahead of publication.
A now deleted Tweet from McGuirk,
described the story which it ran under his
byline and which featured details of an Alge-
rian’s immigration history, as “quite a tale”,
while reporter Fatima Gunning suggested that
it would “rock A LOT of boats”. In fact it mainly
sank them.
After confirming receipt of confirmation
from the Garda that this new info was in fact
about a different Algerian. Gript reversed fast
but issued a statement threatening to reveal
its Garda sources, suggesting that it may have
been deliberately duped into publishing erro-
neous information.
There was no apology issued to the person
wrongly described in the article though he
spent time under Garda protection for his own
safety and was catastrophically defamed by
being imputed a child stabber. Unsurprisingly
he is now suing Gript for defamation,
Inevitably, while Gript did not explicitly
name the individual, it didn’t take long for far-
right factions online to fill in the blanks. Teeing
up others to identify someone is a recognised
head of defamation.
Parnell St is far from the only instance where
Gript has stirred up hatred. For example, on
26th November 2022 Gript tweeted in the
name of its editors: “Ireland’s migrant policy
is insanity and must be stopped - Gript; the
Editors: what we have seen, this week, is little
less than a political system at open war with
its own people. There is no room for the people
they are importing into the country”.
On 3 March 2024, the Press Council ruled
that “vulgar and aggressive language used by
Gript, as quoted by the Press Ombudsman,
was almost certainly intended, and certainly
likely, to cause grave offence to [the complain-
ant]. The Press Ombudsman had found the
cumulative effect of of such language was
“derogatory and intentionally offensive”.
On April 15 2024 Gript tweeted “NEWTOWN-
MOUNTKENNEDY The country feels like it’s at
boiling point. This cannot continue. The state
cannot keep using the Gardaí to batter through
a deeply, deeply unpopular immigration
policy, writes Niamh Uí Bhrian [who owns 50%
of Gript]”.
Use of inflammatory terms like “discrimi-
nated”, “playing”, “leapfrogged”, “insanity”,
“war”, “boiling point” and “batter” stirs
people up.
Contrasting migrants with “local people”
and “own people” and claiming state policy
favouring migrants is “deeply, deeply unpopu-
lar” trades in hatred.
On 19 January 2024 Fianna Fáil Senator
Malcolm Byrne asked the Press Council why
Gript was accredited by it and claiming we
have to be very concerned about news chan-
nels that stir up hatred; and on 13 March 2024,
Sinn Féin Senator Paul Gavin told the Seanad
“Gript deals with spite, hatred and lies”.
McGuirk’s Lies
So let’s look at a pattern of McGuirk’s mis-
takes, dishonesties and bare lies.
McGuirk lied to Young Fine Gael (YFG) in
2003 that Phoenix magazine wanted to publish
a piece about a salacious juxtaposition of YFG
material with material of a sexual nature by the
group’s equality officer, ensuring the unfortu-
nate young officer’s resignation.
His 2007 USI campaign featured lies that he
was on the boards of the Monaghan Youth Fed-
eration and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group.
In 2009 McGuirk issued a deceitful press
release attacking the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
on behalf of one of his co-members of Libertas,
Caroline Simons, without any knowledge
whatsoever on her part.
In 2013, McGuirk tweeted that following a
profile of him in Phoenix magazine “they [The
Phoenix] paid for a nice holiday for me, from
the lawsuit”. The Phoenix rebutted this: “There
was no lawsuit; The Phoenix has never been
sued by McGuirk”.
During Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum
campaign, McGuirk tweeted a photo of pro-
choice campaigners carrying posters featuring
the 1930s logo of the British Union of Fascists.
The posters had been handed out to unwitting
marchers by anti-abortion activists.
In March 2021, RTÉ had to pay €20,000 to
charity after, in an understandably rare appear-
ance on the station, McGuirk falsely claimed
Éirígí was responsible for the murder of jour-
nalist Lyra McKee.
In May 2021 Gript tweeted: “There has been
significant outrage in the Midlands after a
company run by Eamon Ryan’s nephew won a
contract to run a bike hire service in Offaly, win-
ning out over a local who had already been
doing the job for 11 years”. An incendiary cam-
paign lasted a few hours on Twitter. The story
was a lie and was eventually taken down.
On 16 March 2024, McGuirk posted a chart
on X that “oddly” showed that “the list of cities
with the most homelessness is also the list of
some of the most progressive and liberal cities
in the world”. In fact the chart, headed by
Dublin, was about the best homelessness
services.
We do not need to get into the issue as to
whether Gript, as opposed to McGuirk, tells lies.
Our piece in the spring was about John
McGuirk as much as about Gript.ie. In the opin-
ion of this magazine, Gript and McGuirk are
intertwined: McGuirk is a liar, racist and stirrer
of hatred; Gript is racist and stirs up hatred
with abandon.
VillageOctNov24.indb 6 03/10/2024 14:27
