STEVE BANNON, AN influential advisor to Donald Trump who spearheaded his first successful presidential bid, said he is “spending a ton of time behind the scenes on the Irish situation to help form an Irish national party.”

Speaking to the news website Politico, Bannon said Ireland was first on the list of EU countries that would be targeted by pro-Trump activists looking to reshape Europe in Trump’s vision.

The interview comes weeks after the Trump White House announced a change in foreign policy, which chastised the EU, conjuring a worldview with close parallels with the conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement”.

“They’re going to have an Irish MAGA, and we’re going to have an Irish Trump,” Politico quoted Bannon as saying. “That country is right on the edge thanks to mass migration.”

Bannon, who had been vice president of Cambridge Analytica, a firm at the centre of multiple election scandals, was appointed White House Chief Strategist when Trump first ascended to the US presidency in 2017.

He was fired later that year, as Trump was under fire for blaming “many sides” after the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville. The demonstration, organised by a coalition of racist, neo-Nazi, and fascist groups, saw a left-wing counter demonstrator killed after a self-described white supremacist drove into a crowd.

Bannon is a convicted fraudster who was also indicted for contempt by Congress for refusing to give evidence over the investigation into the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol.

A recent release of evidence from investigations into Jeffery Epstein also pictured Bannon and the convicted sex trafficker together. The pair’s relationship has been detailed in other files. 

However, despite Bannon’s involvement in effective far-right movements in America, it is unclear how he expects to find success in Ireland.

The piece in Politico, published on 29 December, notes that Conor McGregor was endorsed for the Irish presidency by both Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who also promoted McGregor’s campaign on X.

Despite this, McGregor was unable to even get on the ballot (despite his prior claims that he had secured enough support).

Ireland already has a number of far-right parties, including ones that explicitly embrace the Trump-led MAGA movement.

Many of these were formed in recent years, including Ireland First, which was named after Trump’s slogan of America First.

However, despite the increase in the number of parties, electoral success has remained flat: no candidate from a far-right party has won a seat in the Dáil.

The targeting of Ireland by Bannon, who describes his family as mostly “Irish-German”, may be driven by a broader conservative American view of Ireland, which sees it as an ethnically and socially pure country perverted by cosmopolitanism.

Prior to the repeal of the eight amendment, many US Conservatives saw Ireland as a socially conservative pro-life bastion against the legalisation of abortion that was common in Europe.

Since then, right-wing Americans have instead sought to portray Irish people as victims of the EU and immigration, in particular by right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, who filmed a show (rife with misinformation) in Ireland with Conor McGregor.

Similarly, a Fox News segment in August, debunked by The Journal, sought to portray Dublin as one of the most dangerous cities in Europe due to a surge in immigration.

It is unclear if portrayals like these, which appear to be catering to an American anti-liberal viewpoint, will gain similar traction on this side of the Atlantic.