On Tuesday night, the Black Forge Inn in Walkinstown, Dublin, hosted a who’s who of the Irish far right. They had arrived to see the pub’s owner, mixed martial arts star turned anti-immigration campaigner Conor McGregor, who was there with the conservative US media figure Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host.
Alongside the ordinary punters, political candidates from various anti-immigration parties rubbed shoulders with prominent social-media activists as they sank pints from the free bar and tried to grab selfies with their host.
The get-together presented an image of a unified Irish far-right, gathered to pay homage to McGregor who has indicated he will contest the upcoming presidential elections on an anti-immigration platform.
[ Conor McGregor hosts Tucker Carlson on Dublin tour for ‘great cause, great chat’Opens in new window ]
However, behind the festivities is a deeply divided movement, riven by personality clashes and arguments over how to achieve the political breakthrough that has eluded the far right to date.
“The first item on the agenda of any Irish organisation is the split,” the writer Brendan Behan famously quipped. The adage has historically been applied to left-wing, republican parties. But today it is perhaps more applicable to Ireland’s small but growing far-right movement.
The infighting and factionalism began in earnest after anti-immigration and right-wing parties failed to achieve significant success in last year’s local and general elections. Leadership heaves and exoduses for rival groups soon followed.
Most of these disputes have centred on a single issue. Should parties dial back their more extreme positions and attempt to appeal to the mainstream? Or should they lean in to the outright white nationalism that has taken root in other countries?
Given recent failures, some factions have even questioned the point of electoral politics at all and favour an emphasis on so-called street activism.
McGregor himself has also become a point of contention. His international fame and the apparent backing from the Trump administration of his presidential candidacy have led some on the far right to hail him as the saviour of their movement.
Others, however, view him as toxic to the brand, given the recent finding of a High Court jury in a civil action that he raped Dublin woman Nikita Hand in a hotel in 2018. Hand was awarded almost €250,000 in damages over the assault.
[ ‘I know what happened in that room’: the full story of the Conor McGregor caseOpens in new window ]
They also see McGregor as an electoral dead end; he stands little chance of getting on the ballot paper for the presidential election, never mind winning the vote.
The first sign of major discord within the far-right movement came shortly after November’s general election. During the campaign three groups, Ireland First, the National Party and the Irish People, along with several independents, ran under the banner of the National Alliance.
The goal was to organise candidates in a way that would avoid a split in the anti-immigrant vote. It was not successful; none of its members were elected despite public anger over the Government’s handling of record immigration numbers.
In February, the National Party announced the alliance was defunct, citing among other issues “unexpected ideological and political differences”, a lack of discipline on messaging and a lack of dedication “to serious organised politics”.
Further splits followed soon after when Glen Moore, who was elected to South Dublin County Council in June, resigned from the Irish Freedom Party, resulting in an unseemly public spat with leader Hermann Kelly.
“The leader has lost his way, alienated members, and failed to uphold any integrity,” Moore said.
In turn, Kelly accused Moore of failing to attend council meetings or pay his membership dues. “We will find better quality members and representatives,” he said.
Moore responded that, as a part-time councillor, he was not able to attend all meetings.
The row was particularly damaging as Moore was the party’s first and only elected representative since its founding in 2018.
The incident was the most public example of the infighting that has dogged the Irish Freedom Party in recent months, with many members expressing frustration with Kelly’s leadership. Much of this discord stems from Kelly’s moves to distance the party from its more extreme supporters.
“Nazis and nutters can go elsewhere,” he has said.
This is set to come to a head at the party ardfheis later this month when a group of senior members will propose to replace Kelly with a three-person leadership committee.
Kelly defended his leadership when contacted by The Irish Times this week, saying the party is welcoming new members “every week”.
“We won’t have extremists in our party so we moved to remove certain members before Christmas,” he said.
Other high-profile departures from the party include Anthony Casey, a former court registrar who failed to win a Dáil seat in Kildare last November. Casey, who posed for photographs with McGregor in the Black Forge pub on Tuesday night, recently became president of Ireland First, a party founded in 2023 that has recently taken in an influx of activists frustrated with the inaction of other far-right parties.
People are vying for power. There has been a lot of moving around and chopping and changing among far-right populist parties in recent months
— Ciaran O’Connor
He is currently attempting to get McGregor to host a music session in his pub as part of an anti-immigration protest scheduled for later this month.
Ireland First was founded by Derek Blighe and Philip Dwyer, two prominent far-right activists with large social media followings. Dwyer departed the party last year after failing to win a seat in the local and European elections.
Around the time of Casey’s takeover, Blighe moved from the role of president to chairman before last week announcing he was resigning his party membership altogether.
On the surface, it appeared he split with the party on good terms. Blighe said he was stepping back to focus on his family and the party wished him good luck. In the background, party members have expressed annoyance with Blighe’s leadership and the party’s failure to return a candidate in the local and general elections.
Casey brings with him an organisation he founded last year called Sinne Na Daoine, which has recently been carrying out “patrols” in towns and villages to “protect communities”.
Ireland First received some good news last month, when Kildare county councillor Tom McDonnell announced he was joining the party, giving it its first elected representative. On joining, McDonnell, who was also in the Black Forge on Tuesday, was quickly appointed to the party’s executive.
However, when contacted on Wednesday, he refused to say if he was still a party member. When pressed, he hung up the phone.
The most high-profile split in the movement dates to 2023 when senior members of the National Party attempted to oust Justin Barrett as leader.
The heave stemmed from annoyance over Barrett’s public adoption of increasingly extreme positions, including praising Adolf Hitler, which many members believed were alienating voters who might otherwise be attracted to the National Party’s anti-immigrant messaging.
The Standards in Public Office Commission, the public ethics watchdog, last year declined to rule on whether Barrett was in charge and, according to the register of political parties, he remains the party’s leader.
However, in reality, Barrett now has little to do with the National Party. He has set up a new organisation called Clann Éireann, as well as a masked “protection unit” called An Sciath Náisiúnta (The National Shield).
“Democracy has failed. No more will we negotiate our existence with our intractable enemies, nor accept the rules they use to bind us,” Barrett posted on his website after the split.
Infighting and division “is a constant issue” for far-right political movements both in Ireland and abroad, said Ciaran O’Connor, senior researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue which monitors extremist movements.
“People are vying for power,” he said. “Even more than normal, [in Ireland] there has been a lot of moving around and chopping and changing among far-right populist parties in recent months.”
Much of the discord relates to “leadership styles,” he said.
“In the case of the National Party, it was because the leader was seen as too extreme and no longer just posting ironically about his admiration for Hitler and national socialism,” said O’Connor.
“On the flipside, with the Irish Freedom Party you have a more radicalised membership and a leader who was trying to be a bit more inclusive, at least in the context of the far right.”
