Tadhg ‘Tehran’ Hickey: The Extremism And Hate Speech Ireland Is Tolerating

Meet Tadhg Hickey, an Irish “comedian” who has become a walking, tweeting case study in how virulent anti-Zionism serves as a thin cloak for old-fashioned antisemitism.

His social media is an open sewer of hate speech, but what makes his case truly alarming is what it reveals about Ireland: a nation seemingly committed to ignoring, and at times enabling, the extremist rhetoric festering within its borders.

Hickey’s playbook is transparent.

He insists he doesn’t hate Jews, only “Zionists.”

But in one infamous video, he “reassures” his audience with a line straight from the propagandist’s handbook:

“We don’t hate you [Israelis] because you’re Jewish,” he says, before adding, “you ignorant duplicitous genocidal scumbags.”

This isn’t just commentary.

While millions of Israelis, including myself, have spent nights in bomb shelters, Hickey openly cheers for the missiles he hopes will kill us:

Make no mistake: his rage isn’t political disagreement; it’s a public call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state:

The ‘Just Anti-Zionist’ Charade and Its Antisemitic Core

To maintain his charade, Hickey desperately tries to redefine Judaism for Jews.

He lectures that Zionism is a malign political force that has hijacked “authentic” Judaism, seemingly indifferent to the fact that the vast majority of world Jewry identifies as Zionist.

To prop up this fiction, he platforms fringe groups like Neturei Karta as the “real” Jews, creating a distorted image for his followers that conveniently aligns with his destructive worldview.

His ignorance is staggering; in another recent post, while the barrages were flying over Israel, Hickey retweeted the claim that “the largest Jewish population outside Israel is in Iran”. It’s unclear, still, whether this was part of his comedy performance.

But the mask frequently slips.

His output – Hickey is a prodigious X user – contains almost the full litany of antisemitic staples.  You know.. The familiar ones, like how:

Images intimating that America is controlled by a shadowy Jewish cabal:

Another favorite part of Hickey’s commentary is making fun of Jews for their “obsession” with the Holocaust.

In a repugnant sketchy entitled Hitler’s Arse (backside), Hickey plays the role of a director (we’re not told he’s Jewish but that he’s American, although every effort seems to have been made to ensure that his religion is not in any doubt).

And he has argued that it is Israel that is driving the rise of global antisemitism. Which is, of course, just another way of blaming Jews for their own hate:

How Iran-Backed Influencers Like Hickey Are Spreading Radicalising Messaging In The West

But what makes Hickey particularly noteworthy isn’t his rabid hatred for Israel and Jews.

It’s the fact that he belongs to a small coterie of Western radical leftists being actively nurtured by the Iranian regime to sow extremist messaging on the continent.

Hickey took a trip to Iran last year – apparently at the behest of the same Iranian regime which spent most of the past two weeks attempting to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. While there, he was recorded cheering “death to Israel.”

Hickey claims that he was unaware of the meanings of the words in Farsi.

However, that explanation rings a little hollow. During the war, he shared another fond memory from his scrapbook – this time posing in a Shahed attack helicopter bearing the insignia of the IRGC (although the helicopter is clearly non-operational, air to ground attack missiles are clearly displayed alongside it).

Even if the cosplaying is amateurish, the message is chilling. “Wish me luck, guys,” he tweeted, sharing the photo:

While the exact nature of Hickey’s ties to the Iranian regime cannot be deciphered definitively, they do occur against the very strange backdrop of a rapprochement between Dublin and the Iranian state.

Ireland opened an embassy in Tehran in 2023 and while Ireland’s then-ambassador was disinvited from the major political party’s annual conference last year, her Iranian counterpart made the guest list.

Hickey has also apparently been making inroads with Hizbullah where he was among one of few Western social media creators invited to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah in February. There, he extolled the excellent “cake” which he was being showered with.

When Nasrallah’s personal bodyguard, Abu Ali, was killed in Iran last week, Hickey (Hickey parrots vocabulary like ‘martyred’ and ‘resistance’ unquestionably), he launched into a posting spree obituary, remembering Abu Ali as a “sweet” and “gentle” man.

When not mingling with Hizbullah and Iran Hickey enjoys peddling gross conspiracy theories about October 7th:

Much as he says that he doesn’t condone Hamas but then asks us to understand the right of the ‘resistance’ to ‘hit back’ and ‘act as freedom fighters,’ he had this to say about how the right-thinking should view the rape of Israeli women on that fateful day:

In his inaugural appearance on George Galloway, Hickey, seeking to butress his denialism and conspiracy theories, told his audience how:

Even Galloway, it should be remarked, looked a little taken aback at the assertion.

The upcoming soundtrack at his wedding? None other than the recent wartime classic: “Boom Boom, Tel Aviv”

Ireland: A Safe Harbor for Hate

Hickey’s extremism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And although he has a history of being deplatformed for promoting hate speech, it would be a mistake, too, to dismiss his influence: his X account boasts a six figure following, many of whom are based on home turf, in Ireland. 

That Hickey’s rhetoric thrives unchecked while across the water Kneecap are taken to task by the government for expressing support for Hizbullah is telling, too. Ireland may be far from unique in playing host to extreme ideologues. But it is failing, significantly, in its obligations under EU law to prosecute it. 

The Union, in fact, is now threatening to sue Ireland for its failure to implement laws “criminalising the public incitement to violence or hatred.”

Hickey’s rhetoric, which includes calling for Israel to be “destroyed” and for evacuated Israelis to be subjected to forced “de-Zionisation” re-education, would trigger prosecution in other EU countries (especially German; Hickey likens Israel to the Nazis on an almost daily basis).

And what’s perhaps equally concerning: the fact that Hickey had already engaged in a long and well-documented history of October 7th denial, anti-Semitism, and promoting violence when he received support from the Irish Arts Council (a government body) for an autobiographical work depicting his struggle with alcoholism.

Hickey is not an anomaly; he is the logical conclusion of a political culture that has lost its moral compass.

He has simply brought the hate that was festering just beneath the surface out into the open for all to see.