Ireland’s far-right candidates failed to win a single seat in the country’s general election and are now echoing it the Trumpian cry of “stop the theft”..”
“Does anyone think this is possible?” Philip Dwyer, one of the highest profile far-right candidates, wrote in X after receiving just one vote from a polling station in Friday’s vote. “Surely there is no election interference here… is RTE actually telling us outright that the game is rigged?”
Dwyer, who did not respond to a request for comment, received just 435 votes out of 57,000 people who cast ballots. The single vote came from a polling station in Newtownmountkennedy, IL scene of violent anti-immigration protests in recent months which Dwyer himself has documented in detail for his large social media following.
The Irish election results, which are likely to see the incumbent government return to power, buck a global trend this year that sees far-right and populist parties and leaders making significant gains in Europe and the United States .
Other far-right candidates have echoed Dwyer’s claims of voter fraud. Derek Blighe, the leader of the far-right Ireland First party, claimed on before the voters arrived.
It also amplified the claim that a voter in Cork was able to vote twice after receiving two ballot papers. “I wonder how much of this happened across the country?” Blighe wrote about X.
When asked about these claims, Blighe called this WIRED reporter a “pro-government asshole.”
The term “rigged” was trending on X in the days following the election as votes were being counted. “Substantial evidence has emerged of voter fraud that prevented right-wing candidates and parties from winning,” an Ireland-focused conspiracy account with 160,000 followers wrote on X on Monday, without providing any of the “substantial evidence” mentioned.
Prominent figures in the USA far right have sought to influence Ireland’s growing far-right movement over the past 12 months, and a day before the election, billionaire Elon Musk shared a post on X from a leading Irish far-right figure, with the comment: “The Irish people will vote for freedom.”
