McGregor Rants About Immigrants on St. Patrick's Day, a Day About an Immigrant
UFC fighter trotted out as a xenophobic trinket on St. Patrick's Day.
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Conor McGregor, UFC fighter and rapist, warned the United States about the perils of immigration during a White House press briefing on St. Patrick’s Day:
"The illegal immigration racket is running ravaged [sic] on the country. There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop."
At a totally legitimate event and definitely not a tacky publicity stunt designed to invoke the celebrity of the most famous Irishman in the United States on St. Patrick’s Day, the “Notorious One” raved about the immigration woes bedeviling Ireland, drawing from a deep well of expertise as a—checks notes—high-school graduate, plumbing apprentice, and professional fighter.
The irony that seemed to escape McGregor is that St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was an immigrant — born and raised in Britain to a Romanized family—credited with introducing Christianity to Ireland. In other words, St. Patrick did in “one fell swoop” what McGregor fears immigrants in Ireland will do today: Change the culture. But the Irishness that, in McGregor’s opinion, the country is on the “cusp of potentially losing” would not be what it is today without St. Patrick, a onetime slave, missionary, and immigrant.
Over the years, McGregor has spoken publicly about the hardships endured by the Irish people and his family in particular. He wrote the following in an Instagram post from 2016.
In my family's long history of warfare there was a time where just having the name 'McGregor' was punishable by death.
He’s referring to a period in the 1600s during which James VI outlawed the MacGregor name in Scotland, leading to a brutal period of oppression where the murder of MacGregors was effectively sanctioned. Irish McGregors are said to be descended from the MacGregor clan.
This is what saddens me most about xenophobia, racism, and overall prejudice. A history of persecution does not in and of itself breed empathy nor does it inoculate people from the fear of “outsiders.” Sometimes, that past only magnifies and entrenches the fear of the outsider.
I would be guilty of an offense similar to McGregor’s if I assumed all Irish people shared his views. They clearly don’t. Leaders in Ireland have already condemned McGregor’s words, including Prime Minister Micheál Martin:
"McGregor's remarks are wrong, and do not reflect the spirit of St Patrick's Day, or the views of the people of Ireland."
Conor McGregor used to be my favorite fighter. I watched him when he was making “60Gs, baby” on the undercard. Before the world learned of the loudmouth, I came to admire a young man who in his quieter moments exhibited a Buddhist centeredness. His brashness was always there, but at the time it manifested not as a bloated, overwrought ego but as an unflinching self-belief that I found inspiring.
His self-belief was such that he his words assumed an almost prophetic quality, invoking the spirit of Muhammad Ali when he predicted the rounds in which he would defeat his opponents. “Just call me Mystic Mac,” he said. “Because I predict these things.”
But something changed. He seemed to lose control of his life. His mannerisms warped. His public antics became increasingly bizarre, including an attack on an older man in a bar. The line between outspoken fight promoter and thoughtful student of the martial arts dissolved. The final nail in the coffin for me was the rape allegations. There will always be those that doubt the women in these cases, but it hardly takes a gumshoe to detect an escalating pattern of abuse and excess in McGregor’s life. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
What happened to him? Did fame and fortune change him? Was it drugs? Or was he always like that privately and became comfortable enough to be like that publicly? I suppose we’ll never know, but it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, we’re all judged by our actions regardless of our histories.
His words were once like coiled snakes—pregnant and dangerous—but they lost all meaning when his actions no longer matched his words. He kept making predictions, but now he was losing fights. His public image sullied and his fight career imploding, McGregor railed against the people responsible for his downfall—you know, immigrants.
McGregor has been wrong, in deed and in word, for too long to take anything he says seriously. He’s proven time and again that he’s no mystic, but at least one of his prophecies seems to be coming true:
“I’ll die a crazy old man!” he said during his rise. I doubt this is what he meant, but he’s on his way all the same.
I was thinking about writing a joke essay arguing that St. Patrick's Day should be cancelled because it in spirit is part of DEI.
A waste of skin!!