Conor McGregor Posts Under Police Investigation After Raging Against Government Over Knife Attack: Report
Mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor has made a career — and a fortune — by hitting hard when he had to.
Now, McGregor’s own Irish government is reportedly investigating the fighter’s hard-hitting social media posts about last week’s knife attack in Ireland that left three young children and a teacher’s aide wounded.
McGregor is clearly hitting too hard for the people in power.
According to The Times, the London-based British newspaper, McGregor’s comments “are being assessed by the gardai, the Irish police, as part of an inquiry into the dissemination of online hate speech. The inquiry is being led by Justin Kelly, an assistant garda commissioner.”
The attacker in Thursday’s bloodshed has not been officially identified, though reports that he is an Algerian immigrant, who has lived in Ireland for 20 years, led to a wave of rioting in the Irish capital.
McGregor publicly distanced himself from the violence in a social media post but has unleashed a steady stream of criticism of the Irish government’s handling of a flood of immigration swamping the country.
In a January article, the left-wing U.K. Guardian newspaper reported that public anger is rising as Ireland “is facing a dual crisis. Many Irish people cannot afford to rent or buy homes, leading to overcrowding, homelessness and anger. Simultaneously, the system to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees is near collapse.”
“The state is housing about 73,000 migrants, comprising 54,000 Ukrainians and 19,000 international protection applicants. A year ago the total number was 7,500. Hotels, emergency shelters and other improvised accommodation centres are full. Last week the minister for integration, Roderic O’Gorman, said in effect there was no room for fresh influxes. The UN refugee agency said Ireland’s asylum system appeared to be ‘unravelling.’“
In the wake of the Thursday knife attack, McGregor called out Drew Harris, commissioner of the Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police force, for appearing to focus too much on the rioters in Dublin rather than the cause of the rioting.
He also slammed Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar over a particularly insipid social media post that Varadkar published about the release of a 4-year-old girl taken hostage by Hamas terrorists in Israel during the Oct. 7 slaughter that spawned the current Israel-Hamas war.
Varadkar wrote that the girl was an “innocent child who was lost and now has been found and returned.”
That peculiar description of the helpless victim of a kidnapping committed by savages on a day of mass murder drew scorn from McGregor, who likened the apparently willful blindness to the treatment of the Irish immigration crisis by the country’s media and government.
She was abducted by an evil terrorist organization. What is with you and your government and your paid for media affiliates constantly down playing / attempting to repress horrific acts that happen to children. You are a disgrace. The day after a stabbing of children in Ireland,… https://t.co/YKyviZDLfW
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) November 26, 2023
“She was abducted by an evil terrorist organization,” McGregor wrote. “What is with you and your government and your paid for media affiliates constantly down playing / attempting to repress horrific acts that happen to children. You are a disgrace. The day after a stabbing of children in Ireland, NOT ONE PAPER HAD IT ON THEIR FRONT COVER. We will not forget.”
In another social media post, McGregor wrote, “One of the most horrific crimes this nation ever seen has occurred, we do not care anymore what you sad cases have got to say. In a war you are nothing. We are not backing down, we are only warming up. There will be no backing down until real change is implemented for the safety of our nation. We are not losing any more of our woman and children to sick and twisted people who should not even be in Ireland in the first place. Call it what you want. We do not care. May God help us all. Ireland for victory.”
All of those are strong words — and McGregor has published many other equally strong posts on social media regarding his country’s immigration crisis.
He has also called out other Irish officials by name.
Incensed over the murder of an Irish school teacher by a Slovakian immigrant, for instance, he published a post demanding to know “What are we doing/what have we done to ensure this situation doesn’t happen again.” That was addressed to Micheál Martin, Ireland’s minister of foreign affairs.
So, he’s furious with the government, which would no doubt love to paint him as a viciously anti-immigrant bigot, but that will be tough to square with McGregor’s public praise of the Brazilian immigrant who stopped Thursday’s knife attack.
McGregor, who owns a restaurant called the Black Forge Inn outside Dublin, wrote that the man is “forever free to eat at my establishment.” Not exactly the words of a raving xenophobe.
In short, McGregor is one of Ireland’s most famous names, and he’s clearly unafraid to take on the country’s political establishment in some of the most public manners possible. He’s even being talked about as a potential candidate for national political office.
And now, amazingly enough, comes a report from an establishment news outlet that his posts “are being assessed” as part of “an inquiry into the dissemination of online hate speech.”
From all appearances, it seems the only “hate” here is from those in power, who hate to be questioned, who hate to be challenged, and who hate having citizens unafraid to stand up for themselves.
If that doesn’t sound familiar to Americans, it should.
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