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Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On Thursday 26th March the Irish national team (representing 26 of Irelands 32 counties) were involved in a very important World Cup Play Off football game with Czechia.

The winner, if it were to have been Ireland, would be in the final of the same playoff series against Denmark on Tuesday night 31st March at Lansdowne Road – Aviva Stadium – but, alas, that team was not to be the Irish. Instead the team played in an unimportant, though contractually obligated, friendly against North Macedonia resulting in an almost predictable 0-0 draw. This was despite Troy Parrot putting the ball in the net late in the first half only, wrongly in my view, to be judged offside. Was the game pointless as many would call it? No, it was not. Though not a competitive game in its true sense of the word it gave the manager of the ‘Republic of Ireland’ team a chance to look at unblooded players as each team appeared to have countless substitutes to choose from! The manager, Heimir Hallgrimsson, can see what depth he has in reserve for what to me looks like a project, a work in progress at least I hope it is! Almost 40,000 fans turned up for this game and I would advise patience. Now back to last Thursday.

To many of the Irish fans who made the journey to the historic city of Prague the game was a disaster, which in my view it was not. Disappointing, yes heartbreaking, yes, disaster, no. the lads had done remarkably well to get to the playoffs in the first place against all the odds. The miraculous antics of Troy Parrot played a major but not the only part in getting us there. Parrot must now be rated among the best strikers in European football as his goal tally for club and country continue to rise. But Troy Parrot aside there were another nine outfield players and a goalkeeper involved in surprising the football world by getting us to Prague which, if we are honest, none of us expected! The result, 4-3 to Czechia on penalties, was bitterly disappointing but not a disaster. We went two goals up courtesy of a penalty scored by Troy Parrot and an own goal by the luckless Matej Kovar. The first was skill, the second luck but that’s football! The fans who made the journey, though disappointed and if my own trips abroad are anything to go by with Man Utd, would have had a great piss up and win or lose this was always the case. Firstly, and hopefully, drunkard celebrations but failing that drowning sorrows in alcohol. This was always the case but times and cultures do change. Somehow though I cannot see the ‘Green Army’ drinking cups of tea after the game!

Czechia pulled back to 2-2 after Ireland gave away an unnecessary penalty then the hosts equalised in the 84th minute. It went to a penalty shoot-out, never a great way to settle a game, and Parrott came coolly to score our first. Penalty taking is a skill as this shoot-out proved. Parrott possesses this skill as his first half penalty was evidence of as the keeper guessed the right way but Troy had no fears because he knew he put enough pace on the ball to beat any keeper. That is the skill, knowing how much pace to put on the ball, whether to shoot on the ground or go for one of the uprights, or straight down the middle, they are all calculations the player must work out with only seconds to do so. Many say penalty taking is luck which is clearly untrue as these shoot-outs went to show. After Parrott, Adam Idah then stepped up and again cooly put the ball into the net as did the experienced Robbie Brady. The Irish goalkeeper, Caoimhin Kelleher, then saved giving the ‘Boys in Green’ the advantage which unfortunately was not taken. The first three Irish penalty takers were composed, particularly Troy Parrott, but the last two through no fault of their own were less calm, it appeared to me watching on television. A lesson can be drawn from this experience, practice penalties because such shoot outs are always a possibility! No doubt Parrot, Brady and Idah practice at club level and this was evident as Troy Parrott showed calm in taking both his penalties.

In normal time this was a game of two halves. The first 45 belonged to Ireland while the second, as I expected, went Czechia’s way. The Irish Manager should have, and he may have tried to do this, prepared the lads for a different opposition team coming out for the second half. Czechia came out from the off and went for the jugular not giving Ireland a chance to settle. Ireland should have done the same, the moment they got possession keep the ball and go for the Czechian weak spots. Instead the ‘Boys in Green’ allowed a resurgent Czechia to come at them and as a consequence were on the back foot for most of the second half. I have seen this happen at Old Trafford back in the day, a visiting team have been shite in the first half, so bad they could not be any worse, then in the second half they come out like men possessed! I had a feeling Czechia were going to do just this, they could not be that bad in the second half as they were in the first. They weren’t and managed to equalise the scoreline the jammy fuckers!! 

Once Ryan Manning made his howler and gave away the penalty it was always on the cards an equaliser would come. If anybody were to ask Manning, why? The chances are the lad could not answer, he wouldn’t know, it happens and there is little the player can do to stop it stupid as the action was. It is just something which happens like jumping up for a header then instinctively using the hands to get the ball, totally illegal and can result in sending off a player who commits this offence if in an area which prevents an opponent scoring a goal. It can also be calculated like Diego Maradona with his ‘hand of God’ against England in the 1986 World Cup Quarter Final game. Another calculated handball was that of Thierry Henry against Ireland in 2009 in a World Cup Playoff. Manning’s handball was not a calculated deliberate move, just an unaccountable instinct.

Late in extra time Irish player, Sammie Szmodics, who had only been on the pitch a couple of minutes was knocked out cold by a challenge from Czechia’s Stepan Chaloupek. The scene was worrying but reports later said he had regained consciousness and was under observation. Notably the infernal VAR was present but made no interference to make judgement on the challenge, once again showing the inconsistency of something no sane football fan wants! Get rid of the fucking infernal nuisance!!

Ireland hit the woodwork twice, the first when Nathan Collins hit the crossbar then Jason Molumby, who had a good game, hit the post. This was pure bad luck for the Irish and had these two efforts been an inch lower or to one side the result would have been put to bed. However it was not to be but fans should take the positives out of the game. The first half we dominated and in the second despite Czechia being rejuvenated Ireland for the most part defended well. 

Supporters should perhaps look on this as a project with the European Championships in 2028 our next target to qualify. Seamus Coleman who has been a great asset at 37 years young will probably play no part in the Euros and young blood should be introduced now. This is not the end of this Irish side, their courage and commitment in getting to Prague proved this. To quote Winston Churchill after the allied victory in North Africa in the Second World War; “This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning”. This Irish team have proved beyond doubt their ability to respond and are still young enough to remain moulded together welcoming younger uncapped players threaded into the team over time. Give this manager time and opportunity and this team will, I believe, come good it is a work in progress.
     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Disaster Or Disappointment? Is This a Work In Progress, A Long-Term Project?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Twenty Nine

 

A Morning Thought @ 3104

Jim Duffy ✍ I ran into a friend of mine from UCD this morning who later became a priest. 

He mentioned that his parish is experiencing the exact same phenomenon so many parishes in Ireland, in Britain, in France, across much of Europe, and in parts of Africa, are experiencing - a notable increase in young people attending Mass.
A proportion come from hardline Atheist families, had not been baptised and underwent adult baptism. Tom had never done an adult baptism until two years ago. He did two just last week, one the week before, four around Christmas. He has adult baptisms almost every week.
 
Interestingly, many of the young people at home and abroad are attracted particularly to the Traditional Latin Mass - the Tridentine rite in the version approved by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Tom finds that mindboggling.
 
I am not a regular mass-goer, though I have not completely broken away from Roman Catholicism. I nearly did, drifted back and then away again, then back again over and over. When I go, I too prefer the TLM. I find it far more emotionally connecting, more spiritual, an oasis of calm that touched the senses. In contrast I find the Paul VI Mass bores the pants off me.
 
That reminds me of when a young British historian doing a programme for the BBC and she was doing a piece about the relaunch of the Catholic hierarchy in England by Pope Pius IX. She decided to attend a TLM, as that would have been the mass of the time, and then do a piece to camera afterwards from the church. She had been brought up a Catholic. In the piece to camera she said the TLM had shocked her. It was so intense, so beautiful. She said she had never experienced anything so spiritual. She and her wife now go to the TLM every Sunday.
 
Pope Francis by his own admission hated the TLM. Then again he admitted he could never understand the appeal of ritual and tradition. He imposed severe restrictions on the TLM's availability. It looks like Pope Leo intends to overturn the restrictions of Francis.
 
So why are so many young people now attracted to Catholicism again? In the case of people brought up as Atheists, it may be the tendency of children to rebel against the mindset of their parents, an ancient psychological phenomenon. People who lived in the 1940s lived through an era of want. In the 1950s, as a reaction against that, the 1950s were an era of consumerism, to give their children a good life and all the things they wanted. To their horror then saw their children in the 1960s renounce that consumerism and the life they had led, and adopt the attitudes of the flower power era. That was just typical generational rebellion against their parents. Such a phenomenon has been recorded all through history.
 
The decision of children of Atheist parents to return to religion may be that same phenomenon - of rebelling against the defining characteristics of their parents.
 
But why are other young people attracted suddenly to religion? One reason why religion held sway in the past was because there was a real personal experience of mortality. People lived in extended families. They saw their parents and grandparents die. With high child mortality they saw siblings die, cousins die, school friends die. They experienced frequent pandemics with massive death rates before vaccines became available. They saw people suffer and die with illnesses that future generations were inoculated against.
 
Generations were haunted by the issue of mortality, and in promises of an afterlife religion often gave people some comfort. However as awareness of mortality died, as people moved from extended families to nuclear families, as illnesses were no longer death sentences, and childhood mortality collapsed, people lived more in the present away from the shadow of death. That meant that the appeal of religion declined.
 
Young people are now being confronted more with the issue of mortality than recent generations. There are high rates of youth suicide. The spectre of war has returned and is everywhere, whether with Putin's war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, or now Trump's war in Iran. They live in a world where the fear of war is real again. That brings home the issue of mortality again. So did the experience of the pandemic - a common phenomenon that just dropped from public awareness until Covid hit. (My great-grandparents, I worked out, lived through five pandemics, so it was something they were used to.)

Add to that, liberals have championed the concept of rampant individualism - summed up by the BBC News slogan "the news YOU want, when YOU want it." We live in a society where "we" is less important than "me". That has left many people feeling isolated in an increasingly individualistic society. Religions, in contrast, are more "we" than "me" and have communal religious ceremonies, meetings, etc. So young people may find religion an antidote to the isolation of modern life.
 
They may also found modern culture superficial, empty, devoted to trivia - the latest fashion, the latest trend, the land fad on the net. Religion's analysis may not always be right. Indeed on sexual matters it is often dead wrong. But it does at least try to offer a broader analysis beyond society's superficiality.
 
Throw together, societal isolation, an empty-headed culture, loneliness, and fears of death with wars, and perhaps it was predictable that religion in this context would stage a comeback. Those who were certain that it was dying and irrelevant must be shell-shocked at the fact that churches are filling up again, and that growing numbers of young people are turning up again.
 
But it is happening. Two years ago the entire city of Paris, long a city with little church-going, suddenly found that churches at Easter were packed that they ran out of consecrated hosts for communion all over the city. That had not happened in living memory before. Some parishes that had slashed the number of masses have been increasing the number of masses again. There are also growing inquiries about people joining the priesthood.
 
It is a striking turn-around.

On a separate point: the move from extended families to nuclear families, and then individuals living alone, something championed by liberals, is the number one cause of the massive housing shortage all over Europe and North America. People who in the past would have lived in nuclear or extended families now face societal pressure to live alone but the housing stock that would facilitate that is not there and arguably never will be.
 
The pressure to live alone, and the mocking of those living in collective family homes, has been a cultural disaster.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Religion Making A Comeback

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 30-March-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Occupied territories courts’ brutality.
⬤ Mr Nobody and his critics.
⬤ Ukraine housing survey.
⬤ Schoolboys tortured to death.
⬤ Russia’s phosphorous munitions.
⬤ Militarisation of Crimean schoolchildren.
⬤ Russia foreign policy analysed.
 High oil prices benefit Russian budget.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Terror behind closed doors: Russia’s abductions, torture and monstrous sentences in occupied Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 27th)

Russia imposes criminal liability for denying previously unknown ‘genocide of the Soviet people’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 27th)

The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Marlen Mustafayev (Crimea Platform, March 27th)

Russia Leads Crimean Children from School Desk to Combat Contract (Crimea Platform, March 27th)

Melitopol IT specialist sentenced to 20 years after Russians torture out a ‘confession’ to ‘terrorist plans’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 26th)

Another 15 children and teenagers brought back from Russian occupation after fear, threats and pressure (Ukrainska Pravda, March 25th)

Russia brings new 5-year sentence against Crimean political prisoner over 2022 social media post (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 25th)

The price of a few cents: Women in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine are being jailed for tiny payments to Ukraine (The Insider, March 25th)

Weekly Update On The Situation In Temporarily Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, March 24th)

Outcomes of the Third Black Sea Security Conference of the International Crimea Platform (Crimea Platform, March 24th)

Russian judge convicted of war crimes over massive sentence against Ukrainian POW for defending his country (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 24th)

Russia tortures two young Melitopol schoolboys to death, passes long sentences against three other lads (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 23rd)

Russian legislation used as weapon against 74-year-old historian and the truth about the Crimean Tatar Deportation (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 23rd)

News from Ukraine

Housing and Residential Conditions of Ukrainians: Survey Results (Cedos, March 27th)

Professional development and educational needs: the second networking event for journalists from relocated media outlets took place in Kyiv (Zmina, March 20th)

Kyiv Register of Damage Forum on supporting people affected by war (Zmina, March 20th)

War-related news from Russia

‘Total chaos’: Russia’s internet blackout (Meduza, 27 March)

Russian losses in war update (Mediazona, 27 March)

The virtual ruble: Why Russia’s digital currency experiment could strengthen the Kremlin’s authoritarian control (The Insider, March 27th)

How Russian school history books reframe Stalin, Gorbachev and war in Ukraine (Meduza, 24 March)

Analysis and comment

Soaring oil prices will benefit Russian budget, but not fix the economy (Meduza, 26 March)

Phosphorus as a Tactic of War (Tribunal for Putin, March 26th)

Anti-war film: Mr Nobody and his critics (The Russian Reader, 24 March)

Impossible Island: Russia’s foreign policy analysed (Posle.Media, March 18th)

International solidarity

Teachers’ union vote to support Ukraine (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 26 March)

ZMINA brings Ukrainian perspective to Democratic Solidarity dialogue in Bolivia (Zmina, March 23rd)

Upcoming events

Wednesday 15 April, 6.0-7:30 pm. Try Me for Treason: Voices Against Putin's War - Part of the Think Human Festival 2026 Actors will perform extracts from speeches made from the dock by Russian oppositionists who have been tried for sabotage for actions taken against the Russo-Ukrainian war Clerici Building, Clerici Learning Studio, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Oxford.


🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.


We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.

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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 189

Seamus Kearney 🎤 'When it comes to Ireland we will always get on better with the cowards, the spies, the traitors rather than the brave. Those who stand against us, the brave, we must discredit, dishonour and then destroy' -  A British soldier with the Intelligence Corp.

Freddie Scapatticci was only back in the North a few weeks when he was spotted by the Second-In- Command (Adjutant) of the IRA's Northern Command. He had been walking through the Kennedy Centre in Andersonstown with a former Blanketman when he recognised Scappaticci and was alarmed to see him back in Belfast.

The Adjutant of Northern Command convened an urgent meeting with his OC, who was Director of military operations in the North, and informed him that Scappaticci had returned from the Free State and in his estimate was a British agent. The OC Northern Command didn't seem perturbed, after all he had dined a number of times with Scappaticci in the family home over the years and had placed his full trust in him, dismissing the earlier signals which had come from elements of the South Armagh Brigade, signals which pointed at Scappaticci being untrustworthy.

However, his Adjutant persisted and had deduced through his own gut instinct and careful analysis that Scappaticci was an agent and had no allegiance to the IRA. His OC thought it a hunch and without sound foundation, but agreed to go along with his Adjutant's suspicion on this occasion as he was viewed in high standing within the upper echelons of the IRA. His Adjutant had looked upon Scappaticci and the ISU with a 'fresh pair of eyes', similar to Brendan Hughes, as both had been imprisoned in the H Blocks and when released were able to look at situations and certain people from a different angle from the 'Old Guard'. Both men had come to the same conclusion - Scappaticci and the Internal Security Unit was rotten.

It was therefore left to the Adjutant of Northern Command to find a way to terminate Scappaticci and 'put him out to graze', thereby limiting the damage which had already been done.

In November 1992 a meeting took place in Belfast between the Adjutant and Freddie Scappaticci. On the basis of a technicality, in which Freddie Scappaticci admitted he spoke to detectives in Castlereagh the previous month, he was formerly dismissed from the IRA. He was informed that he had broken General Army Orders (which covers a multitude of sins), by speaking in Castlereagh and was no longer in the IRA. For his part Scappaticci was aggrieved and felt it unfair as he had only spoken to detectives in relation to his fingerprint on a battery of a scanner, but the Adjutant remained rigid on the issue and concluded the meeting.

To say that Stakeknife was furious would be an understatement. After contacting his military handler and telling him the 'bad news', they both were seething and wanted to kill the IRA' s Adjutant.

The reality was that Scappaticci was no longer at the heart of the IRA and was now crestfallen. Where he went next was another story . . . 

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act XII

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Twenty Eight

 

A Morning Thought @ 3103

Gary Robertson ⚽ With an international break looming all eyes this week turned to the lower leagues in Scotland and a chance for some of the smaller clubs to attract fans desperate to watch meaningful football. 

Sure the “big game” was at Hampden but honestly it was hard to get excited about a 90 min kick about. Ok, it may have served some purpose in the eyes of Steve “the best manager Scotland has ever had” Clarke in so much as he had the opportunity to see if some fringe players deserved a seat to World Cup 2026 (as a Scot I’m still finding it rather surreal that we’re heading for a week in the sun in June) but other than that there was little enthusiasm here at Robertson Towers for this match. Yes I endured it, after all Scottish football correspondent means sometimes I’m going to have to watch matches I'd rather not but I did my duty dear reader and managed to stay awake for the whole 90 mins, partly due to the fact I had dropped the remote and couldn’t be bothered bending down to change channel, the game itself settled by a deflected goal from Japan and Genk's controversial winger Junya Ito. One notable absentee being Kyogo Furuhashi who since leaving Celtic to boost his profile and make it into the Japan team has had mixed fortunes. I wish him well.
 
So to the meaningful matches. Friday night saw Partick Thistle face Ross County and chance to close the gap at the top to two points before St Johnstone met Queen’s Park on Saturday. Thistle took their chance, grabbed it with both hands and despite falling behind in the second minute galvanised themselves into action and ran out comfortable 3-1 winners. Over 3000 packed Firhill which in itself is quite the achievement but such is the draw of a title race. Further down the league, and Raith kept their playoff hopes alive with 3-0 demolition of Ayr United. That said there’s a total of five points between the final playoff spot in fourth and Ayr United in eighth. 

Whilst Dunfermline look comfortable with two games in hand there’s still hope for most and as we’ve said before strange things happen in life, in football. It’s still up for grabs. Further down in League One two pushing for promotion Inverness Caley & Queen of the South met at the Sarens PSG stadium and battled out a 1-1 draw. Veteran Nicky Clark putting the visitors from Dumfries ahead before Millen pulled one back for the hosts. Not a result that suited either, the point perhaps a better outcome for Queens but now leaving Thistle four points clear with their promotion chasing rivals Stenhousemuir yet to play. An opportunity to widen the gap wasted for Caley.
 
Saturday and St Johnstone lined up against one time cup giant killers Queens Park. The script however didn’t go to plan as the visitors took the lead in the 32nd minute when Murray headed home into the bottom left hand corner of net. However the visitors lead wasn’t to last long as Hearts bound McPake blasted home to restore parity. A point apiece, two points dropped by the league leaders who now find their lead at the top cut to 3 points. Twists and turns to come I suspect. Their next match away to Arbroath who themselves are in third fighting for a playoff place. Could be a juicy one. Roll on April 4th.
 
Stenhousemuir with the opportunity to close the League One gap to merely goal difference went into their game on Saturday full of hope and expectation against a struggling East Fife side. By halftime Stenny were 1-0 up and by all accounts looking comfortable. A second two mins after half time and the visitors seemed to have it comfortably won. But just as you think that leg of your accumulator is well and truly done, and remembering you didn’t do the “two goal ahead payout” option, back came East Fife with vengeance and vigour with two goals in two mins to level the score and send your dreams of retiring to Irelands north western shores perhaps Carraig Airt (where my sons grandfather came from) courtesy of Betfred bookmakers to drift out into the wild Atlantic for another week. Again an opportunity lost for the chasing pack and Stenhousemuir a point behind Inverness, Saturday the 11th of April the two meet in a 5-30 kick off (BBC Alba I suspect) top of the table clash. Fun times ahead.

Talking of top of the table clashes and League Twos top two came face to face a chance to open a gap for East Kilbride or for Spartans to overtake their rivals and climb to the summit. Again neither happened as this match also finished in a draw - 1-1. A late John Robertson penalty for Kilbride ensuring the weekend ended “as you were”.

The Premier league returns on Saturday April the fourth with the Rangers hosting Dundee United. Three point there will take them top of the table, for at least 24 hours, before Hearts travel to Livingston and third placed Celtic face Dundee. But first Scotland play another friendly this time against the Ivory Coast. Anyone interested can find it on BBC Scotland or the BBC Iplayer. With one of the most fascinating run-ins in years across all pro leagues in Scotland I just hope no player ends up missing out due to injury.
 
Til next time …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Endurance Test

The Other 98% 💣French General Michel Yakovleff just compared joining Trump's Iran war to "buying cheap tickets for the Titanic" after it already hit the iceberg. And then it got even worse for Trump.

Yakovleff is no random talking head. He's a three-star general, former commander of the legendary French Foreign Legion, and held senior positions within NATO itself. He is one of the most respected military voices in France and regularly weighs in on matters of international security.
 
So when he was asked about Trump's desperate pleas for Europe to join his Iran catastrophe, his answer carried serious weight.

He didn't mince words. He laid out five distinct reasons why every European nation should flatly refuse. And each one is more damaging than the last.

First, Trump doesn't understand how NATO actually works. You don't get to launch your own unilateral bombing campaign and then invite allies to run a separate operation underneath you. That's not how alliances function.
 
If Trump wants NATO involved, NATO takes command. One operation, one flag, one chain of command. "I don't think he understood that," Yakovleff said. That alone is a devastating indictment of a man who claims to be the greatest dealmaker on earth.

Continue @ The Other 98%.

Don't Reinforce Failure

Barry Gilheany ✍ For those not willing to look more deeply being the revelations in the ongoing release of files by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) relating to the late, Uber moneyed paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein . . . 

. . . and for whom their major takeaway is automatic proof of an amorphous conspiracy by ‘global elites’ and their predatory abuses; they uncover, in plain sight, a global policy making programme – but not one run by elected politicians or the ‘deep state’, but an international association of monied oligarchs enjoying a tax-free, lawless lifestyle in the offshore archipelago of dark money and shadow banking. 

A special investigation the UK independent journalistic outfit Byline Times identify four concentric circles of abuse at the heart of the Epstein network: Steve Bannon, the architect of the Alt-Right; Silicon Valley and Epstein’s infiltration of US academia and science – with a particular focus on AI; the disaster capitalism that has roiled the West through the headwinds of Brexit, the chaos of Donald Trump’s first Presidency and the collapse of the rouble after Putin’s fist invasion of Ukraine and Russian aggrandisement.[1] It is the contention of this article that the Epstein Network forms another dimension to the putative techno-fascist order of the Alt-Reich which is the subject of another Byline Times investigative project.[2]

First of all, a brief reprise on the sordid life and times of Jeffrey Esptein who despite the opaqueness surrounding the sources of his wealth, had, as a self-styled ‘financier,’ transformed himself by the early years of the millennium into a permanent fixture of global high society. From the opulent redoubts which his mysteriously acquired wealth enabled him to buy – the Manhattan mansion, the Upper East Side townhouse, the New Mexico hideout, the two private Caribbean islands and the Lolita jet, Epstein was able to construct a world of his own. At its heart was industrialised child rape complete with a bureaucratic edifice of recruiters, handlers, and client lists and with a business culture of silence, loyalty and, for a time, legal immunity. He was a networker par excellence though his modus operandi is not one that would appear on business school curricula. He had fingers in so many pies of elite life. He was, at various junctures, close to the former Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, the successful Northern Ireland peace negotiator Senator George Mitchell and prominent banking figures. He hobnobbed with Silicon Valley bosses Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. He donated to Harvard University and ingratiated with academic figures such as the scientist Stephen Hawking and the linguist Noam Chomsky. He forged relationships in the UK, across Europe, Israel, and the Gulf states. He entertained Woody Allen and met Russian officials. He was interviewed on camera by Donald Trump’s former intellectual muse Steve Bannon in discussion about the future of Western civilisation.[3]

To coin a gory contemporary conspiracy phrase, Epstein knew where the bodies were buried. He knew people and made sure people knew he knew them. Whether through blackmail, flattery, or being powerful networker or fixer, he made himself indispensable to those who moved in his circles. That so many remained in Epstein’s orbit even after his child soliciting conviction in 2008 - such as the sacked UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson - speaks volumes more about those circles than about Epstein himself. Despite the welter of revelations about the operation of his sex trafficking network after his death in prison in 2019, very few of Epstein’s associates have since fallen on their swords (his partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell, Mandelson, and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor). It is truly the modern parable of how systems of power and wealth operate to protect their own.[4]

For Hardeep Matharu, a defining feature of how political and elite power operates is hypernormalisation, and the Epstein scandal is a textbook example of it. He draws upon accounts of daily life and expectations in the former Soviet Union to explain how such perverse normality is reified. Recalling reading during Covid 19 lockdown Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-Hand Time which is a “mosaic” of voices of those who had lived through the collapse of the USSR. One short account stayed with him while watching a Government daily coronavirus: 

We lived our Soviet lives by a unified set of rules that applied to everyone. Someone stands at the podium. He lies, everyone applaud, but everyone knows that he is lying and knows that they know he’s lying. Still, he says all that stuff and enjoys the applause. |[5]

Hardeep recalls Dominic Cummings’ notorious rationale in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street that he had not broken lockdown rules on the grounds that he had driven to Barnard Castle with his wife and child to test his eyesight and his reactions to this “dehumanising” moment. [6] For such contempt from the elites elicits one of two corrosive reactions from the public: either acceptance or switching off from it altogether almost in a state of learned powerlessness and the paralysis of hope that it creates. The contempt that such dehumanisation engenders inevitably corrodes trust in liberal democracy but also a learned helplessness of our capacity to influence and change things.

Similarly, in his 2005 book on the last generation of the Soviet Union, anthropologist Alexei Yurchak argued that everyone knew the Soviet Union was failing, but no one could imagine an alternative, so ordinary people entered into a ‘play’ with those in power, to maintain a pretence of a normal society. Everyone knew it wasn’t real, but it was accepted as such. Yurchak thus argued that the society was in a state of ‘hypernormalisation’[7] This relationship with truth and power could also be applied to that between Irish people and the Roman Catholic Church before the rupture that look place either side of the millennium. The Church’s flock knew through its grapevine of the huge institutional abuses at the heart of Irish Catholicism. They did not believe most of what was being preached from the pulpit. They knew all the hypocrisies and falsehoods but continued as a critical mass to go along with the functions as it was socially and emotionally convenient to do so until this same mass came to its own collective quasi Soviet “Emperor has no clothes” moment.

So what were the building blocks of the Epstein network and its tentacles? Into the cement mixer went Russia, the opportunities offered by cryptocurrency, Steve Bannon and the Alt-Right and Epstein’s alliance with the tech bros of Silicon Valley. The increasing hegemony of techno-fascism has outlived Epstein and may even be his greatest global legacy (next to the continuing trauma and suffering being endured by the over one thousand victims of his global sex trafficking complex) with the realisation of the Alt-Reich in the Project 2025 agenda of Trump 2.0.

Drawing an analogy with Sputnik, the first successful space satellite launch by the USSR in 1957, Jeffrey Epstein opined in 2013 in a conversation with a senior Russian official that Russia could make a similarly technological and cultural impact through “taking the lead in finance”. He argued that, instead of merely replicating Silicon Valley and chasing Microsoft, Apple and Google, Russia could “leapfrog the global community by reinventing the financial system of the 21st century” through new kinds of money and securitisation. Epstein reminded this official that he had, helped craft the derivatives markets in the United States in the 1970s, and that this was a prelude to a “more advanced disruptive securitisation that is now made possible by.” technology”. Russia, Epstein asserted, was “unique in its capability to execute on a grand vision” for:

a new form of money on a worldwide basis …much larger than any single project envisioned by any [government] and at its core not really that difficult to bring to fruition.[8]

Epstein had good reason to believe that he would receive an audience and encouragement at the highest levels in the Kremlin. For his Russian interlocutor was Sergey Belyakov, who had been a senior adviser to Oleg Deripaska, one of Vladimir Putin’s most stalwart oligarchs and international operator, Oleg Deripaska, a close associate of Epstein himself and the now disgraced Peter Mandelson. By 2013, Belyakov has become Russia’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development. In response to a letter in January 2014 from Thorbjorn Jagland, then secretary general of the Council of Europe, relaying his intention to meet Putin in Sochi, Epstein told Jagland to “explain to Putin that there should be a sophisticated Russian version of bitcoin” – a decentralised digital currency, launched in 2009, that operates, as digital currencies do, outside of the central banking system. In Epstein’s words, it would be “the most advanced financial instrument available on a global basis.” This ambition is key to understanding the rest of the crypto network built around Epstein: tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel; and Donald Trump’s one-time White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon.[9]

The key figure, along with the now X owner Elon Musk, in the so-called PayPal Mafia was Peter Thiel, co-founder of data surveillance firm Palantir which, in its critics’ eyes has its fingers in too many sensitive state operations from health data to immigration control. From the outset, Thiel was an enthusiastic advocate of cryptocurrency and its ability to furnish an alternative to government-controlled fiat money. After email and personal discussions involving Epstein, Thiel, fintech entrepreneur Ian Osborne, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, and William Burns, then Deputy Secretary of State in the Obama administration and a subsequent CIA director. Just as Thiel’s interest in cryptocurrencies and data systems like those developed by Palantir, was growing, Epstein joined him with a $40 million investment in Theil’s fintech venture capital firm Valar Ventures – which according to former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, was ‘co-owned’ by Thiel and Epstein as they bought into the Israeli surveillance tech firm Carbyne. A spokesman for Peter Thiel has since denied this, and said Epstein was just a “limited partner.”[10]

Both Epstein’s and Thiel’s political outlooks and strategies also began to synchronise with their financial objectives. Epstein’s correspondence reveals close tracking of Trump-Clinton polling, campaign personnel, and appointments linked to Bitcoin and fintech. In his Republican National Convention speech in 2016, Theil used the platform at the crowning of Trump as Republican Presidential Election candidate to attack “financial bubbles” and praise “new forms of money.” He speculated that Bitcoin could be a “Chinese financial weapon” or a hedge against the US dollar’s reserve status.[11] A more glaring example of monetary and fiscal treason can scarcely be imagined.

As Russia’s interference in that year’s Presidential Election steadily cranked up, Epstein was also arranging lunches at his New York townhouse between Thiel, another Trump backer, Tom Barrack, and Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, a veteran Kremlin operator. Turning his attention to the UK where he was a regular visitor, Jeffrey Epstein, according to the recently released messages and emails, saw the UK’’s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 as a moment of political alignment and a trading opportunity. “Brexit, just the beginning.” he wrote to Peter Thiel; the chaos and uncertainty unleashed by this seismic moment in British politics was something to be sorted financially and leveraged politically.[12]

The next stage in Epstein and his associates’ nefarious project was the funding of and the provision of intellectual heft to the pan-European populist far right. Behind the scenes, Epstein emerged as Steve Bannon’s patron and strategist for the latter’s latest venture ‘Movement’ founded in 2017 by Nigel Farage’s partner, Laure Ferrari (whose name cropped up a few months ago in relation to the purchase of an expensive house in Farage’s Clacton-on-Sea constituency) and allies such as Belgian People’s Party leader Mischael Modrikamen. Its mission was to unite ‘populist and conservative movements in Europe,” defending “national sovereignty” and “effective national borders.” During the turmoil of Theresa May’s government from 2016-19, when she struggled to find an acceptable form of Brexit to the Eurosceptics who had gone from being the minority of obstructive “bastards” in John Major’s premiership to being the kingmakers in a sundered Conservative party, Bannon told Epstein in 2018 that he was meeting then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the Conservatives’ European Research Group, MP Jacob Rees-Mogg to urge them to topple May. When this objective was duly achieved in 2019 when Theresa May was replaced by Johnston as PM, Bannon exultantly proclaimed “May gone… We really did crush them … We’re rolling.”[13]

Not content with his foray into Britain’s Uncivil Brexit wars, Bannon was also texting Epstein about his wider European ambitions claiming that he was now advisor to the French Front National; Mathew Silvini’s Legia Nord in Italy; the German AfD; the Swiss People’s Party; Hungarian PM Victor Orban; Land and Freedom and Nigel Farage. He was expressing optimism that in the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2019, “we [the pan European populist front] can go from 92 seats to 200 – shut down any crypto legislation or anything else we want”. Bannon was certainly quite the evangelist for crypto, agreeing that “crypto is the currency, blockchain is the equivalent of internet 2.0.”[14]

In the aftermath of Epstein’s conviction and death; the UK’s Hard Brexit departure from the EU and the emergence of yet another political vehicle for Nigel Farage in the shape of Reform UK, Russia’s cultivation of right-wing populist parties in Europe continued and cryptocurrencies continued to be a covert way of funding them, with Reform UK deeply enmeshed in the swirl of controversy around this subversion of the global financial system. Nathan Gill, former MEP, and leader of Reform in Wales who was sent to prison for twelve years for taking pro-Russian bribes to make Kremlin favoured speeches in the European Parliament was en route, at the time of his arrest in September 2021, to speak at a Kremlin-backed forum on Russia’s DEG e-voting system. He was scheduled to give a presentation entitled “The Same Technology That Gives Us Crypto Currencies Also Will Change The Way Vote,” explicitly harnessing blockchain to election infrastructure. [15]A more blatant attempt to subvert the machinery of liberal democracy can scarcely be comprehended.

Reform’s predilection for this mode of financing has recently risen high on the political agenda with the decision by Keir Starmer this month to announce a temporary moratorium on crypto donation after an investigation by a senior civil servant. This action has been taken in response to two major donations in crypto to the coffers of Reform by the Thailand-based British investor Christopher Harborne; the first worth £12 million in May 2025 and another amounting to £3 million in November 2025. These transactions occur outside of full Financial Conduct Authority - just the type of opaque funding stream anti-corruption experts have warned about.

In his analysis of the rise of the Alt-Reich, Nafeez Ahmed reveals how the far right has grown since the 1930s from a fringe pariah into a mainstream force operating in the heartlands of Western power, where it is poised to subvert liberal democracy from within.[16] The diverse strands within this modern manifestation of the far right coalesce around two key narratives: The Great Replacement Theory and Cultural Marxism; both rooted in antisemitic conspiracy theories that directly descend from Nazism. They now increasingly animate even mainstream political leaders (think of the shifts in the Overton Window around immigration, social cohesion, and integration) and as they intertwine with technology, they are spawning new and bizarre authoritarian visions, which refract the fascist ideologies of the 1930s in a new ‘postmodern’ light.[17]

Although loose and uncoordinated, the proliferating ties between these different political groups and networks across the US, Europe and the UK, are being supercharged through social media and the ‘dark web’ through masculinist personalities like Andrew Tate and Jordan Petersen, and legitimised through respected academic institutions and opaque think tanks. Ahmed traces a network of lobby groups – funded by elites who have accumulated their wealth from extractive industries, finance and technology and explores how that wealth has been channelled to a core transatlantic network of movers and shakers who, by weaponising data and information have created the Alt-Reich.[18]

The rise of the techno-authoritarian far right is not the product of a unified, single plan, but has emerged from multiple converging plans being promulgated by overlapping interests: the political party flank consisting of far right and right wing parties in different nations and regions; the technology oligarchy flank encompassing tech investors, entrepreneurs and platforms; the secretive eugenics intelligentsia flank and the public intellectual flank normalising hard-line attitudes towards ethnic, religious and gender minorities.[19]. The ultimate vision, according to Ahmed, of the Alt-Reich, is the destruction of the entire liberal project and its replacement by new authoritarian, command-and-control political structures modelled on Silicon Valley conglomerates to maintain and perpetuate elite power.[20]

So how does the Epstein network fit into the Alt-Reich set up bearing in mind that the first releases of the Epstein Files post date the book by Hafeez Ahmed of that name? The central figure in the developing techno autocracy that is the USA looks to be Vice President JD Vance. His Ohio Senate run was heavily bankrolled by Peter Thiel who echoes his grievances about the ‘deep state.’ He is the most articulate advocate of national conservatism inside Trump’s second administration and gives the MAGA movement considerable intellectual muscle. [21] In Ahmed’s unravelling of the creeping techno authoritarianism enveloping the US, he sees the boosting of crypto as a tool to devalue major currencies like the dollar, euro and sterling and as part of the vision of dismantling the so-called liberal administrative state and empowering unhindered techno-capital.[22] Vance’s ascent solidifies Thiel’s worldview in America’s executive branch: a political model that treats technology, from surveillance companies such as Palantir, to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as instruments of state power and civilisational competition rather than neutral infrastructure that serves the public.[23]

Future release of the Epstein data trove may shed future light on the obscene nexus between his global sex trafficking operation and his undermining of global democratic order by his financing of bad actors and his contribution to the authoritarian, anti-democratic technocracy whose creeping totalitarianism threatens humanity. The ideological aversion to regulation in Silicon Valley and the dark, unaccountable influence of crypto-politics in our democratic processes stand out as one of his most damaging legacies.

References  

[1] Peter Jukes, The Sleep of Reason; The Lightbulb of Brutal Clarity. Byline Times, Darkness Visible March 2026 pp.30-231

[2] Nafeez Ahmed (2025) Alt Reich. London: Byline Times

[3] James Bloodworth, Who Was Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein Files lay bare how power always protects its own. Byline Times Darkness Visible March 2026 pp32-33

[4] Ibid

[5] Hardeep Mathuru, Power Protects Itself Through Powerlessness Byline Times Darkness Visible March 2026 pp.34-35.

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid, p.35

[8] Peter Jukes ‘Brexit, Just the Beginning.’ Jeffrey Epstein’s Crypto-Politics of Disruption Byline Times pp. 43-45

[9] Ibid, pp.43-44

[10] Ibid, p.44

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid, pp.44-45

[13] Ibid, p.45

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid

[16] Ahmed, p.3

[17] Ibid, p.10

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid, pp.416-17

[20] Ibid, p.418

[21] Jukes, p.45

[22] Ahmed, pp. 353-54

[23] Jukes, p.45

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

How To Win Friends, Influence People And Blackmail The World 🪶 The Convergence Between The Epstein Network And Techno-Fascism

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