Ireland's far-right candidates failed to win a single seat in the country's general election, and now it is being echoed The Trumpian cry of “stop the steal”,
“Does anyone think this is possible?” Philip Dwyer, one of the most high-profile far-right candidates, wrote on Friday after receiving only one vote from a polling place in Friday's poll. “There's certainly no election interference going on here… Is RTÉ really outright telling us that the game is rigged?”
Dwyer, who did not respond to a request for comment, received only 435 votes out of the 57,000 people who voted. The single vote came from a polling place in Newtownmountkennedy. Scene of violent anti-immigrant protest Dwyer himself has documented his large social media following in detail in recent months.
Ireland's election results, which are likely to return the incumbent government to power, contrast with a global trend of far-right and populist parties and leaders making significant gains in Europe and the US this year.
Other far-right candidates repeated Dwyer's claims of election fraud. Derek Blige, leader of the far-right Ireland First party, claimed without evidence to the Times that voters were not being asked for ID and that ballot papers, which were supposed to be separated from their counterfoils in the voters' presence, were being torn. out before the voters come
He also claimed that a voter in Cork was able to vote twice after receiving two voting cards. “I wonder how much that happened across the country?” Blige wrote on X.
When asked about these claims, Blige called this WIRED reporter a “pro-government idiot.”
After the elections, when the votes were being counted, the word “rigged” was trending on X. “Substantial evidence has emerged of voter fraud that prevented right-wing candidates and parties from winning,” an Irish-focused conspiracy account with 160,000 followers wrote on Twitter on Monday, without providing any of the “substantial evidence” they mentioned.
Prominent personalities in America far right There have been attempts 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 the With: “The people of Ireland will vote for independence.”