BELFAST. June 2026. Burnt out homes. Terrified families fleeing in the night. We’ve been here before. A knife attack by Hadi Alodid, a Sudanese asylum seeker in Nationalist North Belfast, triggered anti-immigration riots by Union Jack clad mobs. Loyalist-led pogroms are not new, but their target is. Catholic Irish have been replaced by people of colour.

DUBLIN—a city once described by novelist Brendan Behan as holding ‘familiarity without friendship’—now finds its residents asking the haunting question: ‘Why me?’ This comes in the wake of a series of violent attacks targeting members of Ireland’s immigrant communities throughout the summer of 2025.