Who is funding the fuel protest's online campaign?

As petrol stations start to run dry, and cities are gridlocked by trucks and tractors, I am reminded of the two cardinal rules of mass political mobilisation; it does not scale "spontaneously", and, once that fire is lit, there is no controlling what it burns.

The spontaneity myth

I say this as a campaigner; political organising does not reach scale spontaneously.

This does not mean that the energy behind it is fake; nor does it mean that the scale of a protest is some measure of reasonableness. But anger and frustration alone does not lead to collective action; that takes both work and infrastructure.

And the infrastructure of the fuel protests grinding Ireland to a halt today is Meta.

Paid ads promote a shift to WhatsApp

Facebook pages like "The People of Ireland Against Fuel Prices Protests" have been posting information to their 56k followers on times and locations of protests for the last few days.

They have also been running paid ads, according to the Meta ad library, with at least one active paid ad running today.

That ad is focused on shifting organising to existing local WhatsApp groups, and encourages supporters to set up and grow their own groups.

This is a smart move; Meta is unpredictable, and pages can be shut down (I suspect this page could be shut down if the actions of the blockade are deemed illegal and this page becomes connected to that activity; or indeed Meta could decide it has broken platform rules if the narrative on the protests turns toxic).

WhatsApp is a tried and tested platform for political organising; it is already on most people's phones, it can handle large groups, groups don't get shut down, and it offers all manner of posting permission configurations. It is also owned by Meta.

We don't know the scale of paid ads thanks to Meta's "ad ban"

We happened to catch this one ad while it was running; but we have no way of knowing what other ads this page pushed, or if others are running them too.

Paying platforms to reach your supporters is not new in political campaigning; but it is the kind of thing that we have spent the last decade campaigning to make transparent.

Last year the EU introduced new rules to force this transparency - and Meta responded by shutting down its political ad library. The rules mean that Meta should have allowed us to see all ads this page put money behind, not just the currently active ones.

It also would have allowed us to search the archive and find ads by other pages.

Instead Meta shut that archive down because it said that it had "banned" political ads, something that we (and many others) said at the time was a total cop out.

Meta “bans” political ads in the EU

Last night - a Friday night, in July - Meta announced that it would “no longer allow political, electoral and social issue ads on our platforms in the EU in response to new regulation”. The first thing I thought of when I read this was that scene from The Office

The BriefingLiz Carolan

But we do know who paid for this ad

Thanks to the EU rules, however, we can see who the advertiser said put money behind ads as long as we catch them in time. This one said it was paid for by "thetowtruck.ie"

Oh great, here comes MAGA

Once a fire gets started, it is damn near impossible to control where it spreads. The same is true of political movements.

In perhaps the least surprising thing to happen in 2026, the protest is being picked up by the usual suspects on X and carried to a global audience, especially now there is the hook of the military rolling in. (Just to clarify, authorities have said that action is against the blockades on infrastructure that gets us our fuel, food, water and animal feed, not street protests).

Here was Tommy Robinson a few hours ago in a feat of political gymnastics linking the issue to (but of course) "defending borders".

Here is a MAGA influencer with 1.7 million X followers amplifying more Robinson content:

Posts like that one prompted the Army to issue a fact check on X; the video is (but of course) old and unrelated.

At least there is some decent comedy being made out of the absolute state of all of this - this one "Army v Farmy" courtesy of @TheRyanCarrick

We'll see more of this

I have started a Polymarket stake on how long before Elon Musk chimes in.

{JK - I did not - please do not use these sites, you will all loose your money}