Like a reduction candle from Poundland, Conor McGregor’s Irish presidential marketing campaign burned shortly however left a fetid scent behind. Yesterday morning, 15 September, the MMA fighter who was discovered accountable for rape tapped out early, in his regular trend. It was “the straitjacket of an outdated Structure” that received him in the long run, he claimed.
Not fairly. McGregor failed even to succeed in the poll card after only a few members of the Irish parliament, and no native authority, endorsed him – a constitutional requirement for all candidates. He had not put himself ahead to talk on the first councils, as all different respectable candidates had, and he withdrew earlier than he needed to current his case in a discussion board the place he would fairly simply have been interrogated by Dublin Metropolis Council.
Nonetheless, the stink lingers. McGregor managed to attain rather a lot in his quick time working for president in Eire. This was evidenced within the research launched by the European Digital Media Observatory Eire yesterday, which examined 127 posts from his X account between January and September 2025 – the interval during which McGregor was trumpeting about his bid for Áras an Uachtaráin. On this quick, noisome window, he managed to achieve 108 million views on his posts – 58 per cent of which contained false claims in regards to the Irish presidency, Structure, or historical past. An extra 28 per cent included ethnonationalist rhetoric, whereas others attacked authorities figures as “traitors” or enemies of the individuals. No less than six of his posts implied political violence, focusing on migrants and public officers.
His marketing campaign, nevertheless, reached past Eire. He even gained assist from among the strongest figures in worldwide politics. In March 2025, Donald Trump welcomed McGregor to the White Home as a visitor of honour on Eire’s most sacred nationwide vacation, St Patrick’s Day. Fairly notably too, McGregor pre-empted his withdrawal, telling Tucker Carlson in an interview in April that if he weren’t on the poll, “it can change into extra evident… that we’re not a democratic nation”. That interview has since amassed over 1.8 million views on YouTube alone. On the day McGregor formally declared his candidacy, 4 September, Elon Musk adopted him on X. Days later, Musk accused the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, of “tyrannically blocking the need of the individuals of Eire” by allegedly thwarting McGregor’s candidacy.
However anybody who has adopted this marketing campaign can see that this was the intention all alongside. In his launch video, delivered in a newly affected American twang, McGregor learn stiffly from a cue card positioned simply off-camera, invoking Eire’s “founding fathers” and declaring that he spoke “within the identify of God”. The efficiency concluded with the Trinitarian components, as he traced the signal of the cross: “Within the identify of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
He had performed his Trumpian homework. Like many lately disgraced political hopefuls, McGregor has currently turned to God – although not the modest, personal, Irish Catholic one. He now kneels on the altar of a God in a purple Maga hat, one who treats Christianity like an all-you-can-eat buffet, choosing over the juiciest, most indulgent morsels to sanctify the darker appetites of his ambition.
McGregor has totally assumed the persona of a fiftieth-generation Irish-American, styling himself in his resignation letter as no unusual Irishman would – a “very passionate Gael”. He claimed to have carried out a whistle-stop tour “throughout the size and breadth of our nice island” through the 11 days of his official marketing campaign, seeking the “forgotten Irish who really feel deserted and ignored by Institution woke politics”. (The brevity of that tour suggests he struggled to search out very many.) 5 sentences in, and he had already diverted his consideration to his current New York journey, the place he needed everybody listening to know, he had “rightfully commemorated the tragic terror assaults on 9/11”.
Unsurprisingly, he now plans to stay in America, neglecting to say that that is largely as a result of he’s loathed throughout Eire’s political spectrum. He’s considered a sexually violent racist, a Zionist (an virtually unforgivable stance in Eire throughout social gathering traces), a nationalist populist, a reckless driver, and the type of man who sucker-punches an previous fellow in a pub for refusing a glass of whiskey. And if all that weren’t sufficient, few have forgotten his swift capitulation within the 2018 combat in opposition to Khabib Nurmagomedov.
However as McGregor charts his American future – at the very least for the seven years that may have been consumed by an Irish presidential time period – below the searing glare of the Maga solar, he leaves a gaping gap in Irish politics. It’s a emptiness much less outlined by what McGregor introduced than by what he revealed: a style for grievance, spectacle and rage that another person will likely be fast to use. As a lot as Eire’s Socialists could disdain to confess it, the presence of the acute right-wing (ERW) is on the rise. Its most distinguished manifestation could also be on-line, however avenue protests and anti-immigrant violence present no indicators of abating. Since November 2022, there have been 19 notable protest occasions, spanning Dublin, Cork, Galway, and smaller cities corresponding to Kill, Fermoy and Rosslare Harbour.
This summer time in west Dublin, a gaggle of youngsters accosted, beat, and partially stripped an Indian man, who was then filmed staggering and bleeding. Days later, a gang attacked one other Indian man within the close by suburb of Clondalkin, hanging him throughout the face, chest, again, and legs, leaving him with a fracture, gashes, and a number of bruises. Shortly afterward, two male passengers assaulted an Indian taxi driver within the north Dublin suburb of Ballymun, hitting him within the face with a bottle whereas shouting, “Return to your nation.” In yet one more incident, boys in a County Waterford housing property allegedly punched a six-year-old lady within the face, struck her genital space with a bicycle, and taunted her: “Return to India.”
And if politics within the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy and Finland can train us something, it’s that every one these actions want is a single electable determine for this sort of rhetoric to succeed in the very best ranges of workplace. Whereas Eire is presently an anomaly in Western Europe, with no far-right – and even hard-right – illustration, all it could take is somebody with a barely cleaner rap sheet than McGregor for incensed voters to throw their assist behind them. Regardless of our historical past, we’re in no way immune, irrespective of how a lot we may need we had been.
This presidential election is unlikely to current that chance – all three candidates have lengthy, well-respected political careers, representing the left, the centre-right, and the marginally extra right-of-centre. But when Reform UK is something to go by, rallying the assist of the “forgotten” voter “who feels deserted and ignored by Institution woke politics” might not be significantly troublesome. And so, the query now will not be what turns into of McGregor, however what fills the area he so briefly occupied.
[See also: Tommy Robinson’s day of rage]