{"id":544150,"date":"2026-07-11T08:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/544150\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T08:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:17:16","slug":"the-whistleblower-inside-paddy-cosgrave-of-web-summits-new-left-wing-bookshop-and-cafe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/544150\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whistleblower: Inside Paddy Cosgrave of Web Summit\u2019s new left-wing bookshop and cafe \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, Web Summit<\/a> chief executive Paddy Cosgrave<\/a> teased his followers with details of a new business venture on the social media platform X. <\/p>\n

The post read: \u201cThe Whistleblower bookshop and cafe is nearing completion. Coffee will be free for whistleblowers and \u20ac10 for centrist dads.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fast-forward a number of months and The Whistleblower cafe and bookshop is operating from its Georgian premises on 30 South Anne Street, Dublin 2. <\/p>\n

Coffee is priced at a reasonable \u20ac3 and tote-bags cost \u20ac8, while many of the extensive selection of non-fiction and fiction political philosophy books sit at around the \u20ac15 mark. The premises is open from 11am to 5pm daily. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a podcast studio, rooms for hosting events and workshops, as well as offices. <\/p>\n

Inside, the walls are dark green, and bright red acts as an accent colour, with doors and skirting boards painted in the same vivid crimson. The interiors are every bit as tongue-in-cheek as Cosgrave\u2019s original social media post. <\/p>\n

There are striking posters with quotes from Chinese socialist thinkers and politicians hanging in rooms with titles such as the Politburo Boardroom and the People\u2019s Hall. <\/p>\n

Other rooms are named after China\u2019s current leader Xi Jinping and Zhou Enlai, first premier of the People\u2019s Republic of China, as well as Deng Xiaoping, leader from 1978 to 1989. Deng pioneered the Reform and Opening-up era in China, and was leader during the implementation of the controversial one-child policy and the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the design, bookshop manager Art O\u2019Connor says: \u201cI think it would be a mistake to assume a kind of unqualified endorsement of everything associated with the symbolism of some of the design elements of the shop. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Deng Xiaoping reading room in The Whistleblower. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times \"TheThe People’s Hall in The Whistleblower. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s Soviet constructivism, there\u2019s CCP poster art, and yeah, it is intended to provoke people, but not to idly provoke them. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not supposed to shock or annoy anyone, it\u2019s supposed to get people to start thinking critically about our own democracy, where power resides, how our kind of media institutions operate, the wealth inequality.\u201d <\/p>\n

The rooms are named after \u201cmajor thinkers and revolutionaries\u201d, says the bookshop manager and writer. <\/p>\n

Among them are Cuban leader Fidel Castro; 19th century communist and women\u2019s rights activist Clara Zetkin; Marxist and Pan-Africanist revolutionary Thomas Sankara, who ruled Burkina Faso until his assassination in 1987; and Black Panther Assata Shakur, whose life served as inspiration for the Oscar-winning film One Battle After Another. <\/p>\n

Shortly before opening in May, The Whistleblower was visited by the Chinese ambassador to Ireland, Zhao Xiyuan, who Cosgrave described as the cafe\u2019s \u201cfirst government official\u201d in a post on X. The ambassador was pictured with O\u2019Connor. <\/p>\n

According to the manager, the naming convention throughout the premises is \u201cintended to be provocative\u201d. Although all those name-checked might all be in the broadly \u201cleftist tradition\u201d, it is unlikely that all the figures would be in agreement.<\/p>\n

\"ArtArt O\u2019Connor in The Whistleblower. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times \"FidelFidel Castro features in The Whistleblower. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

When it comes to the room names, O\u2019Connor also says \u201cthere is no ideological uniformity across the board\u201d and that \u201cthere has been no kind of adverse reaction or response so far\u201d. <\/p>\n

He stresses that the naming of rooms after various political thinkers is not an uncritical celebration of these figures. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not intended as an unqualified endorsement of any one figure, but it is trying to get people to think. It also represents something other than the kind of hegemonic US imperialist system that we\u2019re all sort of looking at in disgust and sort of shocked awe at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

When describing The Whistleblower, he says: \u201cIt\u2019s a bookshop and event space that engages with a leftist political tradition. It\u2019s here to sustain forms of intellectual and social life, not to maximise financial returns in this space in the centre of Dublin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither is it a non-profit or charity, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is ultimately a commercial space but nobody ever founded an independent bookshop under any kind of crass commercial impulse, because it would be really stupid. It\u2019s not a good way to make money. The margins are tiny. It takes years to break even, even if you\u2019re really good. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Whistleblower is billed as an independent left-wing bookshop as well as a space for artists and writers. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times \"TheThe Whistleblower’s room names have the potential to provoke debate. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not meant to be non-profit. Potentially, it could be a very successful and profitable bookshop,\u201d says O\u2019Connor, who has experience working in famous bookshops such as Shakespeare and Company in Paris and Atlantis Books in Oia, Santorini, Greece. <\/p>\n

The Whistleblower may not be a profitable venture just yet but Cosgrave, the founder of the bookshop, and now returned chief executive of Web Summit<\/a>, saw profits and revenues surge at that company in 2024 after reprising his role there. <\/p>\n

The businessman had stepped back from Web Summit in October 2023 after backlash to his posts on social media about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Several big multinational companies pulled out of the annual event.<\/p>\n

Consolidated accounts published in late 2025<\/a> for the group behind Web Summit and its sister brands, including Collision and the Rise tech conference in Hong Kong, revealed it bounced back to an after-tax profit of \u20ac3.7 million in 2024 from a \u20ac6.7 million loss in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am Art O\u2019Connor, not Paddy Cosgrave, so I know he owns The Whistleblower. So he clearly was interested in creating a space that would house that kind of discourse, but is that philanthropic, is that what you would call it? I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s the word for it,\u201d O\u2019Connor says. <\/p>\n

The first time O\u2019Connor says he encountered Cosgrave was when he was being interviewed to be bookshop manager. When asked where does business and art intersect for The Whistleblower, O\u2019Connor says: \u201cYou mean like where Paddy\u2019s money comes from to fund this? I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

\u201cI know next to nothing about Web Summit. I moved back from Greece to take this job. I have lived outside of Ireland for most of the last 20 years, in Berlin and Paris, Athens and Santorini and Canada for a while. So it wasn\u2019t on my radar to be honest. <\/p>\n

\u201cPaddy owns it, but I manage it. He doesn\u2019t have any curatorial input. I ask his advice about events and stuff sometimes, because he has like colossal experience in that area, but no, there\u2019s no input really from him.\u201d <\/p>\n

Paddy Cosgrave was contacted by The Irish Times for comment but was told he was unavailable. <\/p>\n

Political news website The Ditch, which was also founded by Cosgrave along with Eoghan McNeill, Roman Shortall and Chay Bowes in April 2021, was an early supporter of the bookshop, although O\u2019Connor says that The Whistleblower is \u201cnot legally partnered in any way\u201d with The Ditch. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously they are really helping us and they have a big following. So we\u2019ve done a bunch of events with them.\u201d <\/p>\n

One such recent event, on June 9th, included a live podcast hosted by the outlet titled \u201cThe Ditch Live at The Whistleblower: Away from the mainstream, towards an alternative media\u201d. The event\u2019s line-up included journalist Aoife Moore, political geographer Rory Rowan, activist Jenny Maguire and economist Ois\u00edn Gilmore. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Whistleblower will host debates. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the appeal for some of the people doing events is that The Ditch is involved, especially sort of investigative journalists that we have invited, they admire what The Ditch is doing, but no, we\u2019re separate entities,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor believes the shop will attract people with a diverse range of political opinions, especially as debate can take place there in-person as opposed to over the internet. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of digital or a lot of online political discourse involves just like the exchange of angry little anechoic, pre-digested, frequently now AI-assisted, vaguely intersecting monologues from behind screens, where people don\u2019t really engage with each other,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. <\/p>\n

He says that the location, just a stone\u2019s throw from Grafton Street, \u201cis such a gift\u201d and will help The Whistleblower cast its net as wide as possible regarding the clientele who will frequent the bookshop and attend events there. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur location is just amazing. It kind of inclines against the echo chamber thing that you sometimes get with the leftist bookshop, because so many people come in here who aren\u2019t looking for this. They haven\u2019t had to go out of their way to find it, so we had quite a diverse group of people at the last event and people who definitely wouldn\u2019t all be politically compatible with each other, and that\u2019s nice to see, like it can be a space of debate as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late last year, Web Summit chief executive Paddy Cosgrave teased his followers with details of a new business…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,13109,615,4507,61,60,3411,52020,74758,606,12139],"class_list":["post-544150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-coffee","tag-dublin","tag-dublin-2","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-israel-hamas-conflict","tag-paddy-cosgrave","tag-web-summit","tag-x","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}