We are the Irish Paddystinians

Protest in solidarity with Palestinians, Shannon airport Sept. 2024 (Emilija Jefremova/Reuters)

Irish pro-Palestine activists embrace ‘Paddystinian’ term as badge of honor

(Ireland Correspondent Rory Carroll, The Guardian, May 25, 2025)

Irish Lex (@wanderrlex,Instagram)

Believed to have originated as an insult by [Jewish Zionist] Israel supporters, neologism is now used to campaign against war in Gaza.

The term was coined to disparage Ireland’s solidarity with Palestine but has been adopted as a badge of honor that now adorns T-shirts, hoodies, pins, and social media bios: Welcome to Paddystine, home of the Paddystinians.

Irish activists have embraced the neologism as a galvanizing term to campaign against Zionist Israel’s war on Gaza and to pressure the Irish government to do more to [intervene to] end the conflict.

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The belief that it was originally intended as an insult by Israel supporters has fueled its spread on TikTok and other platforms where Irish people proclaim themselves “Paddystinians” and also, in a repurposing of the old-fashioned female name Biddy, “Biddystinians.”

“It was being used as a negative,” Ross McGann, who has nearly 40,000 followers on TikTok, said this week. “Once I heard that I thought: ‘Nah, we can flip this around.’ It’s a very Irish thing to do – you take an insult and you flip it back.” More