“Ireland, We are at War”: Conor McGregor, Crisis Populism, & Transnational Flows of Digital Discontent

The looting and violent protests that occurred on the streets of Dublin on 23 November 2023 have been rightly understood as indexing prevailing tensions within the state. The street violence emerged in the aftermath of the knife attack on staff and students of the Gaelscoil Cholaiste Mhuire on Parnell Street that left one five-year-old girl fighting for her life, several other children injured, and a creche worker who tried to shield the children from the attacker in an intensive care unit. That the attack was committed by an Algerian-born Irish citizen was seized upon by agitators who utilised social media platforms such as Telegram to mobilise protestors, stoking anxieties regarding immigration levels in Ireland. The events of that day offer an insight into both the interplay between the multiple crises (of housing, policing, and public service provision, to name a few) impacting contemporary Ireland and the role social media plays in shaping public discourse and fomenting discontent. One perhaps unlikely-seeming factor in the 23 November disturbances was the prominence of Irish sportsman Conor McGregor in public discussions and digital messaging. In this blog post I supplement the already substantial commentary on the recent riots with a consideration of the role celebrity can play in times of crisis, tracing how in a contemporary age marked by the instantaneous flow of digital media, such prominent figures can focalise disparate strands of discontent.