These scenes are uniformly bathed in the soft glow of late summer sunlight, and over it all a gentle and melancholy traditional Irish air plays. “What you see there,” he says, pointing upwards at a tractor idling at an intersection, “that’s the real Ireland. “They took this from you.”If you’re familiar with the standard linguistic gestures of the online right, this last line – delivered twice for emphasis – arrives with the dull comic thunk of cliche. In fact – and I suspect this might be the crucial point – you would pretty much have to not be Irish at all. Just as the format of this kind of content is imported from American online discourse, it seems clear that it is not intended for consumption by Irish people.

Source: The Irish Times February 22, 2026 15:00 UTC