Trump’s show of support for Conor McGregor is making fertile ground for Ireland’s far right

By Justine McCarthy – The Guardian:

The fighter won’t be Irish president any time soon, but the Trumpocracy seems to think it can shift the country’s politics by endorsing him

Middle Ireland feels grievously insulted by the US president. On St Patrick’s Day, when the globe traditionally turns green, Donald Trump’s official guest at the White House was not the taoiseach bearing a bowl of shamrock, but an unelected stooge recently found by a civil court jury liable for the rape of a woman in a Dublin hotel. Fear and loathing of the mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, who is facing civil trial in the US for alleged sexual assault of another woman in Florida, is one of middle Ireland’s most unifying forces.

“We couldn’t think of a better guest to have with us on St Patrick’s Day,” gushed Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt on 17 March, rubbing salt in the wound. McGregor was given access to the Pentagon, met the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz. In the Oval Office, McGregor and his family posed for photographs with the US president, a man also found liable for sexual assault. Prominent in the photographs was Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual and Trump’s unelected jobs slasher. McGregor presented Musk with a box of his own brand cigars. Four days later, the Dubliner, self-styled “the notorious”, announced he intends to contest the Irish presidential election later this year.

McGregor’s declaration got far less attention in his own country than it did internationally. The former fighter is not expected to even make it to the starting line because of a constitutional requirement for candidates to secure nominations from either 20 members of parliament or four entire local authorities. It is exceedingly unlikely he can obtain the backing to compete in the race to succeed Michael D Higgins, the poet and former anti-war activist who has been the much loved president for the past 14 years.

So far, the centre still holds in Ireland. Last November’s election returned the same two centrist parties to government that have dominated since the state’s foundation. Yet the centre has its wobbles. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Trumpocracy appears to believe it can shift the tectonic plates by endorsing McGregor.

Middle Ireland is politically middle of the road and is not to be confused with middle-class Ireland because frustration with perceived liberal political-correctness-gone-mad over gender equality, transgender rights and immigration transcends social strata. Despite ranking as one of the world’s wealthiest countries, Ireland is in the throes of a protracted homelessness crisis, with rocketing house prices and creaking public infrastructure. Having reinvented itself since the 1990s from grim Catholic orthodoxy into tolerant modernity by passing referendums providing for divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion, there is a sense among some that the change has been too rapid.