Chameleon Magazine

They’re not lighting fires because they love chaos — the Irish are lighting them because they’re sick of being told fairy tales while standing barefoot in airport queues designed by politician to suck the moral soul right from your body. 

🧨 The Great Lie Bonfire (Brought to You by “Leadership”)

Let’s stop pretending this outrage came from nowhere. For years, the public’s been spoon‑fed tidy stories about “people fleeing war” — stories repeated so often they’ve become policy wallpaper. Ask for details and you’re told you’re heartless. Ask for proof and you’re called dangerous. Meanwhile, communities watch hotels quietly rebranded as “temporary accommodation” with zero consultation, zero transparency, and zero trust left in the tank.

So when buildings burn, officials clutch pearls and say they’re shocked. Shocked! As if they haven’t spent years torching credibility. This isn’t about compassion vs cruelty — it’s about credibility. People are furious because it looks like the only requirement to cross borders now is a sentence: “They don’t like me.” Say it confidently enough and the doors swing open.

Contrast that with the average citizen trying to leave the country for a holiday. Passport renewal purgatory. Forms, fees, photos, fingerprints, queues that snake through terminals like a social experiment in endurance. Five-hour waits. Bag searches. Body scans. Treated like a suspect for daring to take a week off — by the same system that insists borders are both sacred and optional, depending on who you are.

Now we’re supposed to condemn the arsonists? No — we’re furious because these aren’t just hotels. They’ve become publicly funded holding bays for people we’re told are “vulnerable,” while our own citizens queue for housing, healthcare, and basic rights.

These sites are dropped into towns with no warning, no debate, and no vote — just press releases and pre-approved talking points. We’re told they’re fleeing unbearable hardship, but the second things get “too hot to handle,” they flee again — this time into countries like ours, expecting full support on arrival.

So here we are: paying taxes not for hospitals or public transport, but for ghost hotels filled with strangers we can’t question without being smeared. It’s not compassion. It’s a slow-motion betrayal.

Burning buildings is reckless, dangerous, and wrong. But pretending it’s just “far-right thuggery” is the laziest analysis available. It’s rage born from a feeling that the rules are brutal for the compliant and flexible for everyone else — and that the people running the show neither listen nor explain.

🔥 Challenges 🔥

How long do you expect people to play by the rules when the rules look like a practical joke? When honesty is labelled hate and questions are treated like crimes? When citizens queue and comply while being told they’re selfish for noticing the double standard?