How Ireland became a cauldron of the culture war

The main protest was against the immigration policy overseen by both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in recent years .

The counter-protest was full of the accoutrements of the neo-religion of woke.

It was a clash of two moral universes, the green, white and gold of the tricolour signalling an affinity with the nation, the multicolours of Pride signalling a preference for the neoliberal cult of self-regard.

But there were certainly smatterings of the far right with Conor McGregor and Vladimir Putin .

There was the working-class Ireland that worries about the destruction of borders, not because it is xenophobic but because it cares about nation and democracy.

And there was the professional-managerial Ireland , that class of people who derive their social power less from national institutions than from the hoarded virtue of the globalist elites.

It is nationhood that makes citizenship real, that gives meaning to democracy itself.