Sometimes Northern Ireland is equal parts surreal and depressing. For some reason, McDonald’s at Connswater in Belfast has become a focal point for racist protests as staff and delivery drivers are abused and attacked by mobs under the pretence of ‘protecting women and children from dangerous migrants’.
In today’s Beltel, Allison Morris exposes some of the ring leaders:
A man convicted of the attempted murder of a 14-year-old child is part of a far-right vigilante ‘save our children’ group patrolling Belfast’s streets. Mark Payne was convicted along with two other men of stabbing the schoolboy, who almost died from his injuries. He was further convicted of threatening two teenage girls with a knife after they witnessed the unprovoked attack. Payne is now part of a group of vigilantes, calling themselves East Belfast First Division, who have been ‘patrolling’ the streets. They claim to be protecting women and children from migrants. In recent days the group has been holding protests outside a fast food outlet in east Belfast, questioning delivery drivers. Payne was 22 when he served a sentence for the attempted murder of a child. Earlier this week, he was filmed outside Laganside courthouse, shortly after a man had appeared for racially motivated offences. Payne was pictured alongside convicted loyalist killer Glen Kane being interviewed by convicted armed robber Mark Sinclair, who calls himself ‘Freedom Dad’ and claims to be a citizen journalist. Kane was part of a mob which beat and kicked to death Catholic man Kieran Abram during a sectarian riot in July 1992. He was jailed for nine years after pleading guilty to manslaughter, having initially been charged alongside others with murder. In 2003, Sinclair was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a Scottish court for a number of robberies.
You can see some of the antics at McDonald’s in this video. The job of the police does seem to be made a lot easier by the tendency of these ‘citizen journalists’ to film everything:
There are reports from across Northern Ireland of migrants being hassled and racially abused. Being followed, people demanding to see ‘their papers’, and being denied accommodation and work.
It is all utterly depressing. But I imagine the MP for the area, DUP Leader Gavin Robinson, has a say on the matter, so I checked his Twitter feed this morning. Crickets.
But he did retweet this lovely photo of him with Seamus the wolfhound, so that’s nice.
Meanwhile, questions are being asked about the lack of response from the PSNI to these disturbances, with this cartoon summing up the feelings of many:
To be fair to the cops, there has been an arrest this week. Helped by the fact that the defendant filmed the alleged attack and put it on social media. From the Irish News:
A food delivery driver in Belfast was allegedly threatened and racially abused before footage appeared on TikTok, a court has heard. Neil Pinkerton (37) is accused of targeting the man outside a McDonald’s restaurant in the city and demanding to know his reason for being there. Police claimed he also confronted two members of door staff for speaking to teenage customers during a separate encounter at the weekend. Pinkerton, of Clandeboye Street in the east of the city, faces charges of common assault, disorderly behaviour at Connswater Retail Park and at McDonalds fast-food outlet, attempted crime damage, harassment, possessing Class B drugs and incitement to hatred.
Belfast Magistrates Court heard he is accused of making a threatening and racist approach to the delivery driver at McDonald’s in Connswater Retail Park on Saturday afternoon, asking what he was doing there. A PSNI officer said the victim realised he was being recorded on a mobile phone and asked for the filming to stop before a second man joined in the abuse. Fearing an imminent assault, he got into his car and locked the door for his own safety. “The defendant is alleged to have continued shouting and swearing, and punched the bonnet of the driver’s car,” the officer said.
In a separate incident on the same day, it was claimed that Pinkerton reacted when two door staff at McDonalds initially stopped two teenage girls from entering the premises as part of an anti-social behaviour policy. “He allegedly became aggressive with the door staff, shouting at them, pointing in their faces and implying they are not allowed to speak to females from Northern Ireland,” the constable submitted.
“(Pinkerton) denies that the argument was racially motivated, or that he was hostile,” the barrister said. “He has got deep, anxious feelings about the political situation in the world.” Citing his client’s mental health issues, Mr Madden told the court he was “terrified” at the prospect of being detained. Pinkerton was refused bail, however, and remanded in custody until October 6.
All of this is very dark. The chaos is being exploited by racists, grifters, and the worst elements of society. Step back for a moment and it becomes impossible to ignore the toxic role social media now plays. It isn’t just a mirror of human nastiness; it amplifies and weaponises it. People are being harassed and attacked directly because of what happens online, and it’s no exaggeration to say that deaths are a very real possibility in the future.
And for the perpetrators, and the hangers-on who get swept up in this mob behaviour, the consequences won’t be abstract. We’re talking about long prison sentences, ruined lives, and communities further torn apart, all because social media has become a breeding ground for extremity and rage.
People are becoming ever more unhinged and unmoored from reality. What used to be fringe ideas whispered in back rooms of pubs or printed in crackpot newsletters are now mainstream, turbocharged by algorithms and populist politicians. The dark side of the internet is poisoning society, drip-feeding paranoia, resentment, and delusion into millions of minds. Conspiracy theories metastasise faster than facts can keep up, outrage becomes the default register of conversation, and people retreat into echo chambers where their worst instincts are constantly reinforced.
Now add artificial intelligence into the mix. Deepfakes, synthetic voices, AI-generated “evidence” – all blurring the line between the real and the fabricated. We’re approaching a point where people will no longer trust anything they see or hear, because everything can be manufactured with a few clicks. The very concept of truth starts to collapse when any clip, any document, any photo might be a fake.
We’ve built a machine that rewards extremity and punishes moderation, and because its driving incentives are profit and power, not truth, it will only intensify. If anything, it’s going to get worse. More polarisation, more fractured realities, more people convinced their neighbours are enemies. What once looked like a tool to connect the world increasingly resembles a centrifuge, spinning us apart while nobody seems able, or willing, to switch it off.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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