This Clare Daly don’t mind talking her shit to her fellow EU parliament colleagues
She is not only an Putin apologist but an Assad apologist as well.
Ireland is not a member of NATO and has been neutral since the 1930s but they have turned on her for this dumb shit...
How Clare Daly and Mick Wallace became stars of authoritarian state media
A new Irish Times investigation shows the MEPs’ outsized profile in regime-controlled media
When Dublin MEP Clare Daly stood up to denounce sanctions on Russia last week in the European Parliament and say that the EU’s response makes her “absolutely sick”, within a day the clip was being played on Russian state television.
The speech was broadcast on the country’s two most popular channels, the state-controlled Rossiya-1 and Channel One, where a presenter and a guest discussed it as evidence that western politicians were coming around to the Kremlin point of view on the Ukraine invasion.
“This is a very important precedent which suggests that many politicians in Europe don’t want to participate in this information campaign which demonises our country,” remarked the guest, Nikita Danyuk of a Russian strategic studies institute.
It’s an example of how Daly and her close political ally Mick Wallace have become staples of state-controlled media in the Russian, Chinese, and Arabic languages since they were elected to the European Parliament, coverage in which they are presented as important international figures who confirm regime positions.
A 10-month investigation by The Irish Times to track the international footprint of the two MEPs has revealed their outsized profile in the state-controlled media operations of various authoritarian regimes.
While their activities may not always make waves in their own home constituencies of Dublin and Ireland South, in the past year their mere tweets have repeatedly made headlines internationally, from Russia Today to Iranian state news.
Their speeches have gone viral multiple times in China, boosted by Chinese government officials: since the invasion of Ukraine, speeches by Daly in the European Parliament have been posted at least four times by official Chinese foreign ministry accounts on Twitter.
Since January 2021 the two have received far more coverage in Chinese-language media than Ireland’s top political leaders or even Irish celebrities and sports stars like Conor McGregor and Rory McIlroy, according to news database LexisNexis, becoming so familiar to viewers that Wallace was given a nickname in Chinese: “Golden Lion King.”
Last month the two appeared in a very different place: in Lithuania, where they travelled to meet and speak in support of a man convicted of spying for Russia – even appearing on his chat show.
A new Irish Times investigation shows the MEPs’ outsized profile in regime-controlled media
www.irishtimes.com
thehill.com
