Last week, X (formerly known as Twitter) rolled out a new feature which allowed users to see which country an account is based in, in an effort by Elon Musk to make his waning social media platform more open and transparent.
This led to a flurry of users checking major profiles on the site, most political, and discovering a shockingly large number were based in countries far from the supposed political agenda they were promoting.
Fans of President Trump’s MAGA movement were left shocked after finding many of their favourite political creators were based in countries such as Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia and more.
So, while old rumours of Russian interference in the American election swirl again, can Ireland sit back and laugh?
If X’s latest feature, and our own history, has made anything clear, it’s that Ireland is not immune to foreign manipulation.
The Irish Patriots and #IRELANDISFULL
In recent times, anti-immigration protests and right-leaning political movements have been growing in Ireland.
Only last month, an incident in Drogheda saw an IPA centre housing women and children, including a baby as young as twenty-days old, being evacuated following a blaze lit from an accelerant thrown into the building by a young man.
Most of these protests start from coordinated grassroots movements that organize logistics and participants online through platforms like X.
Accounts driving these movements use names such as The Real Irish Patriot and feature profile pictures of famous Irish symbols or historical figures such Michael Collins, Eamonn De Valera, the Celtic knot, and the shamrock.
Promoting messages of a need to ‘keep Ireland Irish’ and claiming expertise in ‘true Irishness’, these accounts act as the guardians of Irish culture and society.
However, recent investigations into social analytics on X by both Sky News and the Irish Times have discovered that the majority of accounts posting under such hashtags as #IrelandIsFull and #IrelandBelongsToTheIrish originate outside of Ireland, mainly the US and the UK.
A clear rush of outside influence is being thrown at Ireland for right-leaning movements.
But will we listen to these outside players?
As they say in Irish, Is minic a bhris béal duine a shrón – it’s often a man’s words that broke his nose.
The Nazi Spy sa Ghaeltacht & the Lessons we Learnt
The use of propaganda and social manipulation by foreign agents is far from new in Ireland. While the theory has remained the same, the tools have vastly changed.
Before fake profiles online, propaganda by foreign agents was spread through classic media such as radio and newspapers, and in Ireland, this method was targeted by the Nazis.
In the small Gaeltacht village of Teileann, Donegal, in the short years before World War Two, Professor Ludwig Mühlhausen began collecting information to launch Hitler’s Third Reich onto the Irish people.
In 1935, Dr. Julius Pokorny was removed from the chair of Celtic Studies at the University of Berlin because of his Jewish heritage, and to make way for Dr. Mühlhausen to become the department head and covertly lead the Nazi Party’s propaganda messaging in Ireland.
Mühlhausen soon travelled to the Donegal Gaeltacht under the guise of collecting Irish folklore for an academic project, but his activities in the village of Teileann seemed to involve a bit more than simple story collecting.
Mühlhausen’s ‘Innocent’ Trip to Donegal
Mühlhausen arrived in Teileann, Donegal, in August 1937 and was met with suspicion by the entirety of the village. He stayed with a Mr. Aodh Ó Beirne, a local Seanchaí and fisherman.
Mr. Mühlhausen was the talk of the village during his visit, for his peculiar behaviour and accent. He would often take pictures of the local scenery and key landmarks. Unknown to the locals, rather than innocent holiday photographs, these photos would go on to appear in a Nazi spy manifesto of helpful information for invading soldiers to Ireland.
The professor was adamant on going to the local Céilí every night. These lively gatherings were a simple fun get-together for the locals, but for Mühlhausen, it was a prime intel-gathering moment.
Mr. Gene Eoghan Ó Curraighín met Dr. Mühlhausen at some of these occasions, and despite Mühlhausen’s attempts at remaining undercover, he often let his German patriotism shine through.
Mr. Ó Curraighín recalls the professor discussing Irish farming practices:
“[Mühlhausen] wanted to find out about current affairs in this country. He believed that Irish farming at the time was very outdated and that they had a lot to learn. He said it would be much better for the Irish government to be under the German government. He wanted to find out as much information as he could about the Irish people and how they made their living.” (Translated from Irish).
The professor kept a journal from his visit to the Gaeltacht. In one passage he describes the apparent Irish attitudes to the Nazi Party:
“[In Ireland, there are…] two categories of people: those with a catholic mindset who are fed daily horror stories about ‘persecution of Catholics’ and who blindly believe everything. The second are those who still form their own judgement and do not take everything at face value.”
After six weeks in Teileann, the Professor left for Dublin. Once there, he met with other prominent Nazis in Ireland including Mr. Adolph Mahr, director of the National Museum of Ireland.
Already on high alert for potential threats of invasion, G2, an Irish military unit, was tasked with covertly surveying Nazis in Ireland.
Mr. Séamus Ó Duilearga, the head of the I.F.C who helped arrange Mühlhausen’s trip to Ireland, supplied a report on Mühlhausen to the G2. Within, he says:
“I believe Mühlhausen was an agent of the German espionage in Breath, Belgium…I might add he has – I believe- a sincere regard for Ireland and its people but thinks [it would be] a country better run by Germans.”
Broadcasting our Manipulation through Irish Airwaves
Mühlhausen swiftly returned to Germany where he was promoted by the Nazi Party to be a lieutenant and director of the Hamburg propaganda radio station, named Irland-Redaktion.
Much of the staff at the Irland-Redaktion station adopted ‘Irish’ names for appearances on air, despite many being foreign scholars with no Irish connections.
They used Catholic messaging, anti-British sentiments, and reminders of the pain of the famine, to prove their credibility and sway Irish opinion, just as those online use phrases like #TiochfadhÁrLá and profile pictures of Michael Collins to prove their Irishness.
On the 10th of December 1939, Mühlhausen made the first broadcast of the station in the Irish language to Ireland, opening with:
“It is a pleasure to talk over the air to my Irish friends, as I imagine sitting at the fireside, the aroma of peat in my nostrils.”
While the Irish-language broadcasts were surprisingly tame in antisemitic propaganda, the English language shows were not, especially that of host ‘Patrick Cadogan’.
These broadcasts spouted pro-German propaganda, with extensive antisemitism. The broadcasts to Ireland were Irish translations of Wolfe Tone’s diaries, messages on the virtues of Irish neutrality, lists of Black and Tan atrocities in the 1920s, and war news, spurring Ireland to side with the Nazi’s to defeat our ‘common enemy’ – the British.
One broadcast on Irland-Redaktion featured the lines:
“With a fervent prayer … on Erin’s Green Isle, keep her free from this Jew-instigated war…”.
Mühlhausen managed the station and content for two years, until 1941, when he was promoted to a Senior Officer in the SS and joined the SS Department of Ahnenerbe or Heritage institution, where he worked on proving the Celts were a ‘pure class’ under the distinction of the ‘Aryan race’.
The Desperate Professor’s Cling to Irishness
After surviving the soviet invasion of Berlin, Mühlhausen was captured by American forces and placed in a prisoner of war camp in Naples.
Mühlhausen once again tried to exploit his Irish connections to get him out of imprisonment. He sent a letter to then President Douglas Hyde, as Gaeilge.
Within, Mühlhausen talks about his family who are in hiding and calls on the president to help release him from captivity. Hyde never responded or acknowledged the letter.
Mühlhausen was released in 1949 and returned to Germany, but his academic success and career swiftly declined in a post-war Germany.
He suffered a stroke and died of a heart attack on April 15, 1956.
Some may argue this former staunch Nazi SS officer and Irish propaganda war-machine never received his just punishment.
But if we are to take his wrongdoings and learn the strategies he wielded so expertly, his mask of borrowed Irishness, perhaps we can save ourselves from falling for the manipulative likes of him we see again today online.
The Lessons of Mühlhausen for Far-Right Twitter
Mühlhausen’s attempt to orchestrate the brainwashing of the Irish to Nazism shows that while the tools of propaganda have changed, the methods remain the same.
Put on the paddy cap, learn the fiddle, speak Irish, and twist the foreign thoughts of hatred into sickly sweet Irishness wrapped in a shamrock bow. That’s how these outside forces have tried to change us, from the Nazi’s speaking Irish on the radio eighty years ago, to the masked American online today.
These attempts didn’t work then, and we mustn’t let them work now.
So next time you’re on X, and you see an Irish account post something far-right, perhaps you should check the accounts location, and realise that the biggest threat to Ireland and our culture are not those seeking refuge in our wonderful country, but rather those who seek to divide us with hate to serve their own ambitions.
We are a smart people. Mühlhausen, the Nazi spy, couldn’t fool the people of Donegal, are we going to let some masked American online fool us now?
As they say in Irish, “Ní mar a shíltear a bhítear” – things are not always how they seem
