Last night in Citywest, chaos erupted. A Garda officer was injured. Public property was destroyed, and once again, we witnessed the kind of thuggery that’s becoming disturbingly familiar – violence disguised as protecting women and children.
No one carrying out their duties should ever be at risk of injury or harm. Gardaí, firefighters, emergency responders, and healthcare workers deserve to come home safe. Every time.
But beyond the smashed windows and burning outrage lies something much darker, a grotesque performance of moral concern, where anger is weaponised and the most vulnerable are cynically used as props in someone else’s political theatre.
If this was really about protecting women and children, we’d see these same men standing somewhere else — in the places where real protection actually happens.
Where Are They When It Actually Matters?
Go into the Central Criminal Court any day it’s sitting. You’ll have your pick of Irish white men on trial for the most heinous crimes — child abuse, rape, coercive control, assault. Where are the so-called defenders of “women and children” then? Not outside the courthouse demanding justice. Not fundraising for Women’s Aid. Not volunteering with the Rape Crisis Centres that can’t keep up with calls. Not donating to the National Women’s Council or joining campaigns to make workplaces and communities safer and more equal.
Certainly not in schools teaching young boys that real strength comes from empathy, not violence.
These aren’t men doing the work of safety. They’re opportunists using fear and fury as cover for aggression, pretending to care about women and children’s wellbeing while perpetuating the very cycles of harm that destroy families, relationships, and communities.
If the recent Ballymena riots are anything to go by, where over half of those arrested had domestic violence convictions, then we’re not looking at isolated incidents. We’re looking at patterns. Violence breeds violence. It’s handed down, normalised, and repackaged, generation after generation.
The rage we saw in Citywest isn’t new. It’s the same rage that shows up behind closed doors, in homes where partners are controlled, where children grow up afraid, where fear is used to enforce silence. Now that same rage spills onto the streets, cloaked in false virtue.
Protecting women and children doesn’t happen through riots. It happens through education, accountability, funding, and allyship. It’s men teaching boys what consent and respect look like. It’s communities backing organisations that have been doing this work quietly for decades — Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis Centres, the National Women’s Council.
It’s men calling out other men when they see misogyny, abuse, or harassment. It’s governments listening to survivors, funding prevention, and taking violence against women and children as seriously as it deserves to be taken. Protection isn’t a slogan. It’s a practice.
Everybody deserves to feel safe, in their home, in their workplace, in their community. That includes our frontline workers, who face growing risks simply doing their jobs. What happened in Citywest isn’t the voice of concern, it’s the centuries of unresolved violence and cowardice.
It’s a refusal to do the harder work, the kind that doesn’t trend online, the kind that doesn’t get attention, but the kind that actually saves lives.
If we don’t call this behaviour out for what it is — pure thuggery — we risk raising another generation to believe violence is the answer. It isn’t. It never has been. This isn’t protection. It’s violence…. recycled, repackaged, and sold under a new excuse.
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