Guest post by Enrique Tarrio-
On July 15th, between 8:30 and 9:00 PM, Irish activists and citizens started calling me.
Three “foreign-looking individuals” were spotted paying very close attention to the remembrance mural on the Doagh Road in Newtownabbey. Not just walking past and glancing. They were going back and forth. Unusual. Suspicious. The kind of behavior that stands out.
Then at around 2:30 in the morning they came back and paint-bombed the mural with red balloons.
They made off in the direction of the Standard. A silver car that looked like a Fiat 500XL was caught on CCTV.
This is the exact mural that was featured in the Gateway Pundit short documentary Belfast: A New Menace Rising that Barry Ramey and I shot on the ground just weeks ago. The same mural that captured the cultural collision we witnessed with our own eyes.
Local Protestants have already identified the perpetrators. The community is collecting every scrap of CCTV and asking for more footage.
They call it a hate crime against their community. And they’re right.
Lasair Dhearg claimed it themselves on Facebook within hours:
“A racist mural erected by Unionists in Newtownabbey has been paid a visit by Lasair Dhearg activists. The anti-immigration mural, which made headlines in recent months, was paintbombed in the early hours of this morning. Racism, bigotry and sectarianism can not be tolerated and must be destroyed.”
They even posted video of the attack. Same group that poured red paint over the Queen Victoria statue at the Royal Victoria Hospital earlier this year. Same far-left republican socialists who specialize in running around in the dark with their faces covered, throwing paint, then posting about how brave they are on social media.
A racist mural erected by Unionists in Newtownabbey has been paid a visit by Lasair Dhearg activists. The anti-immigration mural, which made headlines in recent months, was paintbombed in the early hours of this morning. Racism, bigotry and sectarianism can not be tolerated 1/2 pic.twitter.com/7Bq2mjqExZ
— Lasair Dhearg (@LasairDhearg) July 16, 2026
The response from the local community came fast and raw:
“so we are calling for the scumbags off Lasair dhearg activities that think there big lads to come and meet us face to face bring as many people as you like or we will come to use and sort this out like men instead of running about in darkness with your faces covered come on ya big girls.
please make sure you sleep with your eyes open you never know who will be standing at the bottom of your bed one night 😉😜”
That’s not a coded threat. That’s a straight invitation to settle it like men.
What Barry Ramey and I Saw on the Ground
When Barry and I landed in Belfast, we didn’t go for the tourist version. We went straight into the communities that are living this every single day.
We walked the streets where the attempted beheading of Stephen Ogilvie happened. We stood at the exact spot on Kinnaird Avenue where a Sudanese asylum seeker tried to cut a man’s head off in front of witnesses. We saw the blood still staining the ground in people’s memories. We talked to the men who intervened with a hurling stick and saved his life. We heard the raw anger, the fear, and the absolute refusal to accept this as the new normal.
We sat with both Loyalists and Nationalists — old enemies who spent decades trying to kill each other during the Troubles. And what we found shocked even us. They were speaking the same language. Not about green and orange. About survival. About their kids. About their streets. About a mass migration experiment that has brought medieval violence to their doorsteps.
One older man told me, “We fought each other for thirty years. Now we’re watching outsiders try to take the whole fucking place.” Another younger guy said, “I don’t care if you’re a Prod or a Taig anymore. If you’re here to destroy what we have, you’re the enemy.”
That unity is real. It’s raw. And it’s growing.
The mural that just got paintbombed was part of that pushback. It was put up in late May after the Ogilvie attack. It showed war graves, a kneeling soldier, and the words “Sorry it was all for nothing.” It was a warning. A reminder. And the PSNI — the Police Service of Northern Ireland — immediately treated its very existence as a “hate incident.”
That’s the two-tier system on full display. A community puts up a mural mourning its dead and warning about the invasion, and the police call it hate. A far-left republican group sneaks out in the middle of the night, throws red paint all over it, and films themselves like heroes.
Barry and I saw this pattern over and over. The people who actually live there are told to shut up, stay quiet, and accept whatever gets dumped on them. When they speak, they’re racists. When they defend their streets, they’re extremists. When they put up a mural, it’s a hate crime.
But when outsiders commit savagery or when left-wing activists vandalize community memorials, the response is softer.
This Isn’t Over!
Lasair Dhearg thought they scored a win last night. They thought throwing paint in the dark made them tough.
The people of Newtownabbey just reminded them what real toughness looks like.
This mural was never just paint on a wall. It was a line in the sand. And the people who live behind that line are done being told to stay quiet while their streets, their culture, and their future get taken from them.
Barry and I left Belfast with one clear message from the people we met: they will not go quietly. They will not kneel. And they will not forget.
Things are heating up.
Watch the full short documentary Belfast: A New Menace Rising right now, only on The Gateway Pundit. See what we saw. Hear the people for yourself. This is the story the mainstream media won’t touch — and it’s only getting hotter.
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