THE son of former Taoiseach John Bruton was, up until recently, involved with a right-wing, anti-Semitic group led by a convicted Holocaust denier.
An Irish Mail on Sunday investigation into Matthew Bruton, 39, confirms his involvement with SSPX Resistance – an extreme Catholic splinter group under investigation by gardaà for hate speech.
For years, the SSPX Resistance – and associated social media accounts under the Irish Catholic Resistance banner – have disseminated extreme anti-Jewish, racist and homophobic material online. On its social media platforms the group describes itself as: ‘Catholic faithful who resist Vatican II and the New World Order in Ireland’.
Those accounts were emptied of content on Thursday, shortly after the MoS hand-delivered a letter detailing his son’s links to the group to John Bruton’s Co. Meath home.
The Irish SSPX (Society of Saint Pius X) Resistance group, which operates from a priory on a west Cork farm, is spiritually led by Italian priest Fr Giacomo Ballini.
The group’s global leader, Bishop Richard Williamson, has repeatedly attended events in Ireland at which he has denied the Holocaust.
Williamson has twice been excommunicated by the Vatican and convicted of Holocaust denial in Germany.
Since the pandemic began, the group has also branded Covid a hoax, blamed the virus on Jews and held an exorcism of the Dáil in protest over Government lockdown policies. At their most extreme, the ICR social media posts have advocated the execution of homosexuals and abortionists.
Digital records, photographs, voice recordings and video evidence obtained by the MoS confirm that Matthew Bruton has been associated with the ICR social media channels for years.
In a 2018 meeting in Tralee, Matthew Bruton asked Bishop Williamson how best to support the resistance, just five minutes after Williamson had denied that six million Jews had been gassed by Hitler. The group’s YouTube account also included – until this week – a mass with Father François Chazal, which was attended and streamed by Matthew Bruton.
Fr Chazal is the author of a book – The Fear Of The Jews – which is being distributed by the ICR.
When confronted with this evidence by the MoS this week, Matthew Bruton, a one-time chairman of Young Fine Gael, confirmed that he had uploaded a Resistance bulletin from Fr Ballini to his Google Drive account.
A link to the document on Matthew Bruton’s personal Google Drive was then circulated to followers on a global chatroom.
Matthew, once mooted as a likely Dáil candidate to replace his father, also confirmed that he had been trusted with a stream key that allowed him to live-stream content to the ICR YouTube account.
He also confirmed his presence at the 2018 conference in Tralee. Questioned about this – and Bishop Williamson’s conviction for Holocaust denial – Matthew Bruton displayed a knowledge of hatespeech laws.
‘He was convicted in Germany, where it’s illegal in Germany. It’s not illegal here,’ he said.
Matthew Bruton added that he had previously ‘been involved in organising stuff for Fr Ballini and other people’ but was not doing so anymore. He refused to specify when and why he stopped. In a lengthy conversation that lasted more than two hours on Monday, he also demonstrated knowledge of the extreme anti-semitic, racist and homophobic material on Resistance social media platforms.
But he repeatedly refused to condemn this material despite being asked more than half a dozen times.
‘So far as you have shown me, I have appeared in a video and my email was used to share a link. Now that doesn’t, to be fair, make me a public figure,’ he said.
‘I’m just a normal guy who attends Mass and, yes, I published – or I linked – I shared a link and I was at that Mass where I also videoed. I won’t deny that. I’ve told you already that I have been to Fr Ballini’s Masses before.
‘I’ve told you that I’m not involved in Fr Ballini’s Masses anymore and that’s it. I don’t feel that because I’ve done that, that somehow I’m a public figure under obligation to give account for what I believe.’
This refusal to comment changed only on Thursday, after the MoS delivered a letter to John Bruton’s home outlining his son’s activities.
At this point, the ICR social media accounts were emptied of content and Matthew’s archive consultancy business – Boyne Archives – was taken offline.
Matthew then issued a statement saying he did not condone the extreme views contained in the social media accounts. ‘For clarity, I do not hold any anti-Semitic, racist or homophobic views nor do I condone any such views expressed by others,’ the statement reads. ‘My involvement with this group came about only because of my religious beliefs as a traditional Catholic.’
John Bruton, a former EU ambassador to the United States, is a patron of the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland (HETI) – a charity that aims to combat prejudice and racism in education.
As Taoiseach in 1995, Mr Bruton apologised on behalf of the Irish Government for the manner in which Ireland failed Jews fleeing persecution in the past.
‘We in Ireland have not been immune from the bigotry and the indifference which manifested itself in Europe this century,’ he said.
‘Tonight, on behalf of the Irish Government and people, I honour the memory of those millions of European Jews who died in the Holocaust. I also recall the gypsies and the homosexual community who were marked down for extermination, and all those who were persecuted for resisting the Nazi tyranny.’ This week John Bruton told the MoS that his love for his son does not mean he endorses ‘the views of any groups he may have been associated with’.
‘Matthew Bruton is our son, and Finola and I love and care for him, and will always do so.
‘He is also a private citizen,’ Mr Bruton said.
‘Our love and care for him cannot be construed as endorsing the views of any groups he may have been associated with.
‘These groups do not implicate or involve me, or other members of our family, in any way.’
Mr Bruton added that he fully supports the aims of the HETI and said he wholeheartedly ‘adhered to statements I made as Taoiseach on the lack of welcome received by many Jewish people, fleeing persecution elsewhere in Europe, in Ireland in the 1930s’.
‘I do not endorse any group holding any anti-Semitic, homophobic or racist views,’ the former Taoiseach concluded. This weekend Fr Ballini, who held an exorcism of the Dáil over Christmas to object to Covid lockdown measures, told the MoS that the SSPX Resistance ‘is not an organised institution as a religious order or congregation with a hierarchy and superiors as such’.
Instead he said the group was composed of ‘lay people, priests and bishops’ who object to the Second Vatican Council.
‘We share all what pertains to the Catholic Faith, but we do not all necessarily share other views that are not directly connected to the Catholic Faith. As friends we help each other when in need,’ he said.
Fr Ballini denied any involvement in social media and confirmed that Matthew Bruton had stopped coming to Resistance Masses.
‘Concerning Mr Matthew Bruton, I can say that he is not associated with me or my activity. This means simply that he does not attend any Mass that I celebrate and it has been so for months.
‘I have nothing to do with any social media and if you find me on any of them it is only because others mention me, probably without even asking.’
Last night, the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland confirmed that it had sent a video of Bishop Williamson speaking at Fr Ballini’s Cork priory to gardaÃ.
In the video, Bishop Williamson said Covid-19 ‘is possibly the creation of the Jews’ and that ‘it was designed with this purpose to bring society to a grinding halt’.
He also claimed Jewish people were ‘manipulating stock market crashes in a bid to start World War III’ and ‘people at the top of the Jewish race are in direct contact with Satan’.
Jewish Council spokesman Maurice Cohen said the matter was now an active Garda investigation, which precluded him from commenting further.
But on foot of a new report on anti-Semitism in Ireland, published this week, the council is calling on the Government to take immediate measures.
‘The Government appears to have begun to address this with a new Bill on racism, hate speech etc. However, the council strongly believes that this still does not tie down anti-Semitism which, like a virus, morphs and mutates from time to time,’ said Mr Cohen.
Asked about the activities of the ICR, the HETI – where John Bruton remains a patron – said social media companies ‘have a great responsibility to look at the content that is communicated through them’.
‘Telegram has, unfortunately, become the platform of choice for many people on the far-right who spread misinformation and hate speech,’ a spokesman said.
‘HETI is convinced that education – such as the education programmes we are promoting at schools and universities – are the best way of countering this kind of misinformation that is deliberately spread by former Bishop Williamson and his organisation.’
Rosaries, some extreme views and a digital trail
MATTHEW BRUTON did not use his own name when broadcasting a regular rendition of the rosary online – which frequently featured anti-‘new world order’ dedications.
Instead he used a Facebook account created in the name of Patrick Murphy – to which he was the main contributor.
That Facebook account described ‘Patrick’ as the ‘admin of the Irish Catholic Resistance group page’.
The group page used the same logo and imagery as the Patrick Murphy Facebook account – a photo of a stained-glass window of St Patrick from a US cathedral – to promote its aims.
This branding is also repeated on other ICR platforms including a Twitter account (suspended for breaking the rules), a Telegram account, a YouTube account and on other platforms.
Mostly Matthew Bruton used the Patrick Murphy Facebook account to broadcast lockdown rosaries in his own distinctive voice. At times, he seemingly inadvertently recorded and broadcast himself having conversations in which others called him Matthew and in which he spoke of his mother and sister and identified his family as prominent in the Dunboyne area – where the Brutons live.
Anti-lockdown and anti-new world order views are hinted at in many of the dedications Matthew gives to the rosaries. These dedications display an awareness of the need to couch more extreme views on certain social media platforms.
‘After a long and dark year of globalism we’re going to pray for the enlightenment of our fellow man and the poor people out there who are deceived by the lies of the evil people in control of our world at the moment,’ he broadcast on May 11, 2020.
‘We’re going to pray also for the converan sion of people – of those evil people, those Satanists and people of other ethnicities that we shall not name because we are broadcasting in more politically correct forums as well,’ the dedication concludes.
Some of the rosaries on the Patrick Murphy Facebook account point users to the ICR YouTube account. The YouTube account displays openly anti-Semitic material including a recording of a 2018 Tralee conference by the twice excommunicated SSPX Resistance leader Bishop Robert Williamson, who has also been convicted of
Holocaust denial in Germany. During this recording, Bishop Williamson once again denies the Holocaust took place and minutes later opens the floor to questions.
The first person to ask a question – about how best to support the Resistance – is Matthew Bruton. The recording demonstrates that he is on first-name terms with Bishop Williamson.
Also on the YouTube account is a Tridentine Mass and subsequent update on Resistance activities by Fr Francois Chazal – the author of anti-Semitic book being distributed by the ICR (enquiries about the book to the Resistance email account are answered by someone calling themselves Patrick). The recording of this August 2018 event with Fr Chazal clearly shows Matthew Bruton adjusting the video camera and microphone as he streams the Mass to the Resistance YouTube account.
Matthew Bruton has told the MoS that he was trusted with a streaming key that allowed him to stream to the Resistance
YouTube account. The Mass with Fr Chazal was promoted in advance on an SSPX Resistance chatroom called cathinfo.com, by a user calling himself St Patrick.
This user, St Patrick, first joined cathinfo in March 2017 and in an early cathinfo.com post identified himself as an Irish archivist – the same job that Matthew Bruton has.
The most concrete evidence linking Matthew Bruton to the cathinfo.com St Patrick account came on April 8, 2018. In a post entitled ‘Irish Resistance bulletin’ St Patrick wrote that ‘Fr Ballini has given me permission to put online the bulletin of the priory of St Finbarr, West Cork Ireland’. The priory referred to is the Cork HQ of the SSPX Resistance in Ireland run by Italian priest Fr Giacomo Ballini.
The link provided by St Patrick on cathinfo.com led directly to Matthew Bruton’s Google Drive account and a document uploaded from his personal gmail address.
