Your Fuel Prices Are Real. The People Stoking Your Rage Might Not Be.
The diesel in your tank costs too much. That's not up for debate. When agricultural diesel jumps from around €0.98 to €1.50 a litre in the space of weeks [1], and pump diesel goes from €1.72 to €2.30 [2], and your government's answer is a 20 cent excise cut that barely dents the difference [3], you have every right to be furious. Farmers, hauliers, contractors: the anger is legitimate. Nobody serious is arguing otherwise.
But here's what keeps nagging at me. In the space of 48 hours, this went from go-slow convoys on motorways to blockading Whitegate, Ireland's only oil refinery [4]. The HSE reported impacts on dialysis patients and cancer treatments [5]. DPD suspended all deliveries nationwide [6]. Dublin Airport was only reachable by back roads [7].
That escalation is worth pausing on. Once anger like this starts shutting down hospitals, airports and fuel depots, it stops being just a fuel story.
Who benefits when Ireland tears itself apart?
This is the question nobody on the WhatsApp groups is asking, and it's the one that matters most.
Ireland in April 2026 carries more strategic weight than its size suggests. Sixteen of the top 20 global tech companies have significant operations here [9]. Roughly a third of transatlantic data flows through Ireland [10]. Around 75% of Northern Hemisphere subsea cables pass near or through Irish waters [11]. On 1 July 2026, Ireland will take over the EU Council Presidency [39].
If you wanted to weaken the European Union at a sensitive moment, Ireland would be an efficient pressure point.
Russia knows this. Irish waters have been subject to repeated Russian maritime surveillance, and in 2021 the vessel Yantar was observed along cable routes off the southwest coast [12]. After the Dublin riots in November 2023, Fiona Hill, the former US National Security Council director for European and Russian affairs, said she expected Moscow to exploit the unrest, warning Ireland to "buckle up and be ready" [13].
Ireland is already a target. This is not speculation.
In 2024, France's Viginum agency warned the Department of Foreign Affairs about a Russian-operated website network called Portal Kombat that was producing fabricated stories targeting Ireland, including invented accounts of violence between immigrants and Irish nationalists [14]. The same network promoted Chay Bowes, an Irish employee of Russian state broadcaster RT [14]. ISD also notes that the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab identified fabricated stories about Northern Ireland spread through fake Facebook accounts and assessed the operation as likely run by a Russian intelligence agency [15].
Iran has targeted Ireland directly too. ISD's analysis of the Storm-2035 operation, drawing on OpenAI and Clemson University research, identified accounts presenting themselves as Belfast-based or interested in Irish reunification [15]. OpenAI said the network used Persian prompts to generate English-language content, and ISD found sloppy artifacts from the wider operation, including hashtags referencing Turkish TV, Turkish days of the week and Swedish football [15].
Between September 2023 and September 2024, the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment found that known Russian networks generated over 6,000 social media posts mentioning Ireland. Chinese networks added another 1,500 [16]. TikTok separately informed the European Commission about 72 covert accounts targeting Irish users with divisive nationalist content [15]. It is already on the list.
The playbook is always the same
Russia doesn't create your problems. It finds them and makes them worse.
France's Yellow Vest protests in 2018 showed the pattern clearly: the Alliance for Securing Democracy's dashboard documented hundreds of Kremlin-linked Twitter accounts pushing the most violent content [17], while Facebook removed more than 100 Russian-linked accounts and pages [18]. The same script ran during the 2022 European energy crisis, when the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found pro-Kremlin networks recycling anti-sanctions protest footage as evidence that Europe was collapsing [19]. In Catalonia, a UK Parliamentary committee heard testimony that 70–80% of retweeting around the independence referendum came from bots, and the Elcano Royal Institute documented a sharp spike in Russian digital activity around the same period [20][23].
The mechanics are always the same. Find the real wound. Pour salt in it. Stand back and film the result.
Now add a second player
That's where it starts to get more complicated. The Trump administration's November 2025 National Security Strategy says the US will prioritise "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations" [24]. Brookings said that amounted to "a policy of constitutional regime change" [25]. The Stimson Center called it "the most chilling part" of the document [26]. The Council on Foreign Relations called it "veiled threats" [27]. ECFR and Carnegie have both argued that this reflects a broader project to empower nationalist forces and weaken the European mainstream [28][29].
That does not mean Washington and Moscow are coordinating. The same outcome suits both regardless. Russia wants a weaker, more divided Europe because a coherent EU constrains Russian power. The Trump administration has signalled hostility to EU regulation, EU political culture, and parts of the European project itself. Trade ties remain deep [31], but the strategic effect is still clear: internal disorder in Europe becomes more useful to outside actors.
So what does this mean for the person on the tractor?
Your protest does not need to be created by the far right to be exploited by the far right. It only needs to be loud, angry, and easy to redirect.
The WhatsApp groups coordinating the protests have already drawn far-right agitators trying to steer the conversation toward immigration. TheJournal.ie, which accessed the groups, reported that admins actively removed them [32]. A farmer at O'Connell Street firmly told far-right figure Philip Dwyer the protests were "about fuel" [32]. But the contamination is real: as the Irish Times noted in profiling the movement, opposition to government generosity towards foreigners had already started to slip into the narrative [8].
And Ireland has seen the model before. Around Newtownmountkennedy, less than 20% of posts came from Irish users, while 56% came from the US and just under 10% came from the UK [40]. During the Coolock unrest, bot-like X accounts that had focused on the UK election abruptly switched to Ireland and pumped out 840 posts about Coolock in days [41]. The same ecosystem brought money, tactical encouragement, and reach: Tommy Robinson asking for footage, Andrew Tate talking publicly about funding the cause, and Tristan Tate sending €4,600 to anti-immigration activists in Dundalk [41].
After the Dublin riots, three signature anti-immigration slogans were used more in the US and UK than in Ireland [43]. Domestic actors then relay and localise that material. ISD found that the Irish Channel, a misinformation hub closely tied to the Irish Freedom Party, mixed anti-immigrant falsehoods with likely AI-generated content and functioned as a media distribution arm for the party [42]. The Far Right Observatory told an Oireachtas committee that it had documented Irish far-right entities using PayPal, Stripe and GoFundMe to raise money around protest activity [44].
The harder threat is the content you cannot trace. Anonymous voice notes are already circulating with unverified claims about government plans and escalation targets [33]. So are the TikTok videos framing your local protest as part of a revolutionary wave, and the accounts that appeared three weeks ago and post nothing but the most inflammatory possible takes.
Coordinated inauthentic accounts often leave recognisable patterns: new profiles, generic or AI-generated avatars, relentless posting, repetitive phrasing, and sudden interest in a divisive topic they had previously ignored [34][35]. Most people cannot spot that manipulation in real time, especially when the message confirms what they already fear.
Ireland has at least improved since the Dublin riots. The National Counter Disinformation Strategy was published on 17 April 2025, and implementation structures began meeting that summer and autumn [37][38]. But that is still a framework, not deep resilience. ISD's first landscape study of Irish mis- and disinformation found that far-right actors had already co-opted the ecosystem and helped move online falsehoods into real-world mobilisation and sometimes violence [45].
The thing they want most is for us to turn on each other
Every minute spent blockading a hospital supply route gives hostile propagandists better material than it gives Irish farmers leverage. Every escalation from legitimate protest to infrastructure shutdown moves the story from "government under democratic pressure" to "society in chaos." That version is what gets amplified by Russian state media and recycled back into Irish social media feeds to justify further escalation [36].
The people who benefit most from Ireland in crisis have never filled a tank here. They have no farm to worry about, no haulage business to save, no family sitting at a kitchen table trying to make the numbers work. They care about Ireland's data centres, its subsea cables, its EU presidency, and its usefulness as a symbol of Western democratic failure.
Your fuel prices are real. Your anger is justified. Push for a real solution. But if an anonymous voice note tells you to blockade a hospital route, if a TikTok account you have never seen before tells you the real enemy is migrants, if some online hero from Britain or America tells you to push harder, stop. Ask who benefits from Ireland looking ungovernable.
It isn't anyone who needs diesel to get to work in the morning.
References
[1] RTÉ, "Rising fertiliser costs lead to warning over food prices" (March 23, 2026) - rte.ie; Farmers Journal, "Green diesel prices climb over three times faster than white" (March 11, 2026) - farmersjournal.ie
[2] RTÉ, "How the Govt's excise cuts are impacting cost of fuels" (March 24, 2026) - rte.ie
[3] RTÉ, "Govt agrees cuts to excise duties on diesel and petrol" (March 23, 2026) - rte.ie
[4] The Irish Times, "'Act of national sabotage': Taoiseach condemns blockade of State's only oil refinery" (April 8, 2026) - irishtimes.com
[5] RTÉ, "Emergency group convenes over fuel protest disruption" (April 9, 2026) - rte.ie
[6] The Irish Times, "Fuel protest blockades could see 'up to 500 forecourts' out of supplies; DPD suspends services" (April 10, 2026) - irishtimes.com
[7] The Irish Times, "Where are the fuel protests and which roads are closed in Dublin and across Ireland?" (April 9, 2026) - irishtimes.com
[8] The Irish Times, "Who are the fuel protesters 'turning O'Connell Street into a car park'?" (April 7, 2026) - irishtimes.com
[9] IDA Ireland, "Tapping Irish Talent to Drive Tech Companies" - idaireland.com
[10] International Trade Administration, "Ireland - Digital Economy" - trade.gov
[11] CSIS, "The Strategic Future of Subsea Cables: Ireland Case Study" (July 2025) - csis.org
[12] Taylor & Francis, "Under the radar: Ireland, maritime security capacity, and the governance of subsea infrastructure" (2023) - tandfonline.com; RTÉ, "Why Irish undersea cables are seen as potential military targets" (November 2024) - rte.ie
[13] The Irish Times, "Russia to 'play up' Dublin riots in attempt to undermine democracy, claims US policy expert" (December 2023) - irishtimes.com
[14] The Irish Times, "France warns Department of Foreign Affairs about Russian disinformation targeting Irish voters" (May 2024) - irishtimes.com
[15] ISD Global, "Foreign actors and foreign influence: An exploratory analysis of international state actors targeting Ireland in 2025" - isdglobal.org
[16] Irish Examiner, "Russian and Chinese 'influence networks' target Ireland in 7,500 social media posts" (2025) - irishexaminer.com
[17] The Moscow Times, "France Investigates Possible Russian Influence on Yellow Vest Riots" (December 2018) - themoscowtimes.com
[18] Ifri, "France's 'yellow vests' and the Russian trolls that encourage them" - ifri.org
[19] ISD Global, "Pro-Kremlin narratives look to stir social unrest in Germany ahead of energy crisis" - isdglobal.org
[20] UK Parliament, "Disinformation and 'fake news': Interim Report" (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee) - parliament.uk
[21] CEPA, "Catalonia: Where There's Trouble There's Russia" (May 2025) - cepa.org
[22] OCCRP, "Catalan Separatists Tailored Public Messaging to Avoid Antagonizing Russia" - occrp.org
[23] Real Instituto Elcano, "The 'combination': an instrument in Russia's information war in Catalonia" - realinstitutoelcano.org
[24] The White House, "National Security Strategy of the United States of America" (November 2025) - whitehouse.gov
[25] Brookings, "Breaking down Trump's 2025 National Security Strategy" (December 2025) - brookings.edu
[26] Stimson Center, "Experts React: Trump Administration's National Security Strategy" (January 2026) - stimson.org
[27] Council on Foreign Relations, "Unpacking a Trump Twist of the National Security Strategy" - cfr.org
[28] European Council on Foreign Relations, "MAGA goes global: Trump's plan for Europe" (May 7, 2025) - ecfr.eu
[29] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "The European Radical Right in the Age of Trump 2.0" (September 2025) - carnegieendowment.org
[30] Pew Research Center, "U.S. Image Declines in Many Nations Amid Low Confidence in Trump" (June 11, 2025) - pewresearch.org
[31] European Commission, "The EU-US trade deal: Restoring stability and predictability" - commission.europa.eu
[32] TheJournal.ie, "'Another few days will have things crippled': Inside the fuel price protest WhatsApp groups" (April 2026) - thejournal.ie
[33] TheJournal.ie, "'They're going to shut everything': Why anonymous voice notes spread during big, uncertain events" (April 2026) - thejournal.ie
[34] EU DisinfoLab, "Visual assessment of CIB in disinformation campaigns" - disinfo.eu
[35] PubMed Central, "Bots and Misinformation Spread on Social Media: Implications for COVID-19" - nih.gov
[36] CEPA, "We're Winning, Say Russia's Disinformation Campaigns" - cepa.org
[37] Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, "Minister O'Donovan welcomes publication of National Counter Disinformation Strategy" (17 April 2025) - gov.ie
[38] Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, "National Counter Disinformation Strategy Implementation" (published 1 October 2025, updated 7 April 2026) - gov.ie
[39] Council of the European Union, "List of presidencies of the Council of the European Union" - consilium.europa.eu
[40] The Irish Times, "Vast majority of anti-immigration posts relating to Wicklow protests came from non-Irish accounts" (May 3, 2024) - irishtimes.com
[41] The Irish Times, "Tommy Robinson and Tristan Tate are among overseas supporters of Irish anti-immigration activists" (August 3, 2024) - irishtimes.com
[42] ISD, "The Irish Channel: Investigating an Irish Misinformation Hub, Political Connections and AI Hallucinations" (October 8, 2024) - isdglobal.org
[43] The Irish Times, "Most 'Ireland is full' and 'Irish lives matter' online posts originate abroad" (December 5, 2023) - irishtimes.com
[44] Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Opening Statement of Niamh McDonald, Coordinator, Far Right Observatory (February 21, 2023) - oireachtas.ie
[45] ISD, "Uisce Faoi Thalamh: Platform Analysis" (November 20, 2023) - isdglobal.org