Conor McGregor: How MMA star became a figurehead for the far-right in Ireland

How Ireland’s far-right is using Conor McGregor to boost its ideology after MMA star’s ‘We are at War’ X post.

“Ireland, we are at war,” UFC star Conor McGregor declared to his millions of social media followers on November 22, 2023. It’s not clear precisely what McGregor was referring to, but this post, was viewed more than 19 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was later followed by a series of tweets about immigration which were then circulated amongst Telegram channels, seen by CNN to have links to the far-right. As far back as 2022, McGregor had expressed his support for people protesting against immigration. The day after McGregor’s war tweet, a stabbing outside a school in central Dublin left three children and an adult injured. Hours later, rioters with links to the far-right descended on the city. While local media later reported the alleged attacker was a naturalized Irish citizen who came to Ireland from Algeria in 2003, misinformation alleging the assailant was a foreign national had quickly spread online. Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that researches online hate and disinformation, told CNN that the far-right has grown in Ireland because of social media platforms such as X and Telegram which are commonly used by extremists.