Less than three months ago, US Ambassador to Ireland Edward Walsh attended both days of the inaugural IRL Forum organised by Eddie Hobbs. Hobbs reportedly told the Irish Examiner that there was potential for an “Irish Trump” in the ranks of the Independent Ireland party. The newspaper reported that Walsh’s office had contacted Hobbs to facilitate his attendance at the forum. Walsh sat through two days of panel discussions at the event. The US embassy described his attendance as “routine”.

On Monday, the Guardian reported that the US department of state had directed every US embassy across the world to launch co-ordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorsed Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to assist the campaigns. This instruction was signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

It urged embassies and consulates to work alongside the US department of war’s psychological operations unit.

Rubio’s cabled instructions asked embassies to pursue five broad goals, including countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behaviour, elevating local voices who support US interests, and “telling America’s story”. To this end, embassies were instructed to recruit local influencers, academics and community leaders to carry out counterpropaganda messaging so as to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed, according to The Guardian.

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Rubio said foreign propaganda was seeking “to shift blame to the United States, sow divisions among allies, promote alternative world views antithetical to America’s interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms”. Such campaigns posed a “direct threat to US national security and fuel hostility towards American interests”.

Some of those in Ireland, who had attended meetings in Leinster House and the IRL Forum, tweeted their hopes to establish a movement variously characterised as a coalition of pro-life activists, anti-immigration activists, Catholic conservatives and free speech champions. There was crossover between them and those involved in the “spoil the vote” campaign at the last presidential election. Quite a number have been active in seeking US support, recently attending events surrounding St Patrick’s Day in the US and engaging with American pro-life groups.

But events in the White House and the Middle East have cooled their ardour.

Those among them who combined their policy agenda with vocal support for Israel have muted their views in the wake of the US-Israeli war against Iran. Some who were strangely silent about the US-backed slaughter of 70,000 civilians in Gaza, including 25,000 children, and the maiming, starvation and home-destruction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians finally became vocal on social media when heavy-handed Israeli security forces prevented a cardinal from celebrating mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday.

It had been notable how few of the would-be organisers and online supporters of the hoped-for Irish political movement had criticised Trump or the Maga movement before now. Many were careful to say nothing negative about Trump on the basis that he appeared to champion the pro-life movement in the US.

Now, however, cracks are appearing in this so-called “conservative” alliance, nationally and internationally.

[ Israel allows access to Jerusalem church after blocking a Catholic leaderOpens in new window ]

Pope Leo XIV has roundly condemned some of the extreme behaviour of the American and Israeli hawks. Anti-Catholic rhetoric by Maga-supporting US evangelicals has split what was a conservative, pro-life consensus. The anti-Christian excesses of extreme Zionists have caused problems for powerful right-wing US religious movements seeking to ally Christianity, Zionism and “end-time” theology by reference to the Book of Revelations.

The dark side of Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu’s regime is causing problems too. The decision by the Israeli parliament to apply execution by hanging as a punishment for Palestinians found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed acts of terrorism contrasts dramatically with reports that no Israeli settlers community or the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been successfully prosecuted for any of the hundreds of homicides perpetrated on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

The spectacle of Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, celebrating with a bottle of Champagne his achievement in relation to capital punishment of Palestinians was revolting. The damage done to Israel internationally is permanent and incalculable. Likewise, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich openly advocates massive annexation of territory in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Walsh’s diplomatic colleague in Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee, openly encourages expansion of Israel’s borders under the smokescreen of war against Iran. He doesn’t need any encouragement from the US state department to wage a propaganda war against America’s critics.

Walsh, on the other hand, might reflect on his own role in the light of the Rubio cabled instruction. Decent Irish-Americans should speak truth to power before the world is plunged further into slaughter, political chaos and economic disaster by Trump, Vance, Hegseth and Rubio.

© The Irish Times