Bonfire season in Northern Ireland is a centuries-old tradition. Enormous towers of wooden pallets, decorated with the symbols of whoever you oppose, lit on fire at night. Catholics burn Union Jacks and pictures of the King. Protestants burn Irish tricolours. Politicians, royals, and foreign flags all get their turn.
Jewish symbols have appeared on bonfires. So have Israeli flags. It is, Ezra Levant noted on Monday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, essentially a free-speech zone that has existed for hundreds of years.
This year, a bonfire in Moygashel, County Tyrone displayed a replica mosque. The words on it read: “Secure our borders. End the threat of radical Islam.” The Arabic lettering, Ezra noted, referenced fascism — a deliberate attempt to distinguish radical Islam from the broader religion.
The man who built it is now in jail.
Brian Conrad Neil, 56, was arrested, refused bail, and appeared in the dock of Dungannon Magistrates’ Court in handcuffs. He has been charged with incitement to hatred. District Judge Barney McElholm declared that those who placed the replica mosque on the bonfire had “an agenda full of hate and bigotry towards others.”
The bail refusal was particularly striking to Ezra.
“Everyone gets bail, especially in Ireland,” he said. “Accused murderers sometimes get bail — but not a lad who put a fake mosque on a bonfire.” The two reasons to deny bail, he noted, are flight risk and ongoing danger to the community. Neither applies to a man who built a parade float.
The double standard is hard to miss.
Hellbound and Down 