Trump and Musk are not helping right-wingers abroad

The foreign policy of the Trump White House is generally thought of as orbiting Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, but the administration has also sought to impose itself on the wider world ideologically, via the endorsement and support of Trump-friendly personalities and movements across the west.

The results of this outreach have been mixed. Elon Musk has been at the forefront, speaking to an AfD event in January, and seemingly contributing to that party’s slightly underwhelming election results. He was also recently linked to a potential donation to Nigel Farage and Reform UK, though that appears to have fallen by the wayside just as Farage’s party entered a tumultuous period. The Canadian Conservative party, though definitely not the beneficiaries of any positive attention from Trump-world, appear to have suffered from a perceived ideological closeness to them. So why are MAGAs attempts to leverage its domestic and online power for the benefit of similar movements around the world so counter-productive?

Ireland is the next country in line for this special attention so it’s worth considering them as a case point. Conor McGregor, a loud and insistent critic of his government’s migration, housing, asylum and policing policies was invited to the White House for St. Patrick’s day. From the briefing room podium, he gave full vent to his opinions whilst boasting of the Trump administration’s full support. Back home, this produced a multi-day cycle of embarrassment and outrage on the part of the government, its partners in the public square and much of the public itself.

For Ireland’s disparate anti-immigration forces, there are a couple of positive outcomes that might emerge. The first is that the Irish government and media have been put on the defensive and, by panicking, might pre-emptively concede ground or draw attention to unpopular or absurd positions by rallying to defend them.

Populism in Ireland needs to convert energy into elected officials and boring old policy

The latter has kind of already happened: McGregor stated during his white house press conference that small Irish towns are being “overrun”, and many have in short order become minority Irish. This prompted fact checks by the Irish media, who reassured the public by pointing out that many of these little hamlets are now only 30–40 per cent (rather than majority) non-national. This type of extravagant missing of the point is likely to reinforce a sense amongst many — even the majority who can’t stand McGregor — that the press have a partisan stance on the issue and are part of a conscious effort to frustrate effective discussion of it.

There’s also the possibility that other, more respectable celebrities will break cover and take a reputational hit to agree with the general thrust of McGregor’s argument. That has already happened in the somewhat tragicomic case of popular TikToker Garron Noone, who scorned the messenger but indicated agreement on some essentials before deleting his social media accounts amidst a storm of left-wing outrage. A number of Sinn Fein TDs then tweeted in support of Noone, indicating that the party has identified this as a small Sister Souljah moment where it can tout a newfound responsiveness on immigration concerns. These small shifts in attitude are a direct consequence of McGregor speaking out, and they can add up.

But there are downsides to empowering McGregor as a MAGA ally, and they speak to why these ideological interventions on the part of the administration have been unsuccessful. McGregor is Ireland’s best-known celebrity, but he has never been a nationally beloved figure even at the height of his sporting achievements; the recent civil court finding that he had assaulted a woman has damaged even that limited standing.

From the outside that might be seen as something he has in common with a pre-election Trump, but the comparison is not a good one. McGregor isn’t equally hated and loved the way Trump was, and he doesn’t embody a classic national archetype for Ireland as Trump did for America. He also has no plan or route to use the apparatus of an existing establishment party to realise his aims as Trump did with the Republicans. But you need knowledge of Irish politics and society to understand these points.

There is zero doubt that if you remove the messenger from the picture, McGregor is tapping into ideas with an unrealised political potency in Ireland. In their uncontrolled form, those ideas are what erupted in the street protests that seized international headlines in the last two years. McGregor represents a further manifestation of that rage. The next challenge for populism in Ireland is not to increase that energy, but to convert it into elected officials and boring old policy. Success at doing that has been very limited, bordering on non-existent. Again: you would have to be Irish to understand this.

There is also a larger problem with American endorsement that speaks to the experiences of the Canadians and possibly the AFD. Regardless of the issue, when people feel that the power of a foreign state (or worse, a foreign Big Tech billionaire) is working to move the wheel of opinion and policy in your country, a sense of national pride and solidarity is activated even in people who were previously uninterested in the issue. It’s more likely to push the public in the opposite direction, giving the Powers That Be a target to rally popular opinion against. Additionally, in Ireland, anti-immigration forces have been accused of being aligned to foreign interests, a charge to which they have sometimes given credibility. The administration’s help may compound that problem for them.

Stepping back, there are a couple of assumptions that underlie every action the Trump White House takes, including in its outreach to international populist figures. These include the assumption that since Twitter is the core platform that powers the MAGA movement, Twitter and politics are the same — that doing politics is just doing Twitter in real life. Another assumption is that empowering individuals and promoting their ambitions and personal interests — those Great Men in the Trump/Musk mold — will naturally lead to the success of populism in different places. These assumptions are based on the experiences of Trump and MAGA in coming to power, and the key part that Musk, his money and his platform are seen to have played in winning a second term.

Musk is poisonously unpopular outside America, even in comparison with Trump himself

Above all of these, the overarching factor is that America is an imperial power run by a group of wealthy and ambitious men with their own personal and political interests, and these are always the prime consideration. It’s helpful to understand the McGregor situation in this way — by taking Ireland out of this picture and seeing everything that happened with him as being for the benefit of the administration, the powerful people in it and their domestic audience. Trump is particularly popular with young men, so giving McGregor an opportunity speak on Trump-friendly issues looks good to that demographic; from a MAGA point of view it helps gee up the online base by giving them the sense that their template is being copied worldwide: Trump is not just successful in America but is riding at the head of an international movement. Of course McGregor’s appearance also generates a huge amount of controversy on Twitter — traffic which is good both for Elon Musk’s ego and for his platform.

The fact that all of this is really about America and the American audience explains a lot, especially the near total disconnect between how Ireland is discussed by the Right online versus what is happening on the ground. In this context, what the anti-immigration movement in Ireland needs to go mainstream, and the natural political limits to Conor’s ambitions become a moot point. If McGregor wants to win the Irish Presidency, for instance, do people understand what an immense challenge it will be to even get on the ballot? The powers of the Irish president are not similar to those of an American President, since it’s not truly an executive position. McGregor is not only unlike the kind of person who has occupied that office in the past, he is in fact closer to the platonic opposite of those patrician and grandfatherly academics. But these realities reflecting events on the ground in Ireland are an irrelevance to the people discussing it online — fighting the war is the point and what they need is more fuel. Ireland, like many other countries, is the fuel.

Obviously some people in or close to the Trump White house are genuinely motivated by populist issues in the international context or have an emotional connection to Ireland, and they are boosting it the only way they know how. Steve Bannon is an example. None of the above is a comment on McGregor, who is using the platform he’s been given, and nor is it a judgement on people who would like to see the issue addressed directly, who just are happy anyone is doing so.

The reality is that Trump is a unique figure who came to power in a particular context. His will and his political cunning are easy to imitate but hard to pull off, and they are not transferable to other people. They’re certainly not transferable to Musk, who often acts for Trump in these matters but who is poisonously unpopular outside America, even in comparison with Trump himself. It’s not even transferable to the rest of the Republican party, as mid-term results have consistently shown. More Trumpist energy, or more involvement by Trump and co., is probably not going to promote the move towards normalisation that populist movements globally need. They are already pushing up against the limits of what shock and controversy can do for you. They are experiencing their own version of the old left-wing Scandinavian reverie; except instead of Sweden, they are asking of every political choice, “How is this going to help us become Denmark”? It’s not certain the weird stew of influences and egos in the Trump White House helps them achieve that dull but essential goal.