Garron Noone reactivated his Instagram and TikTok accounts on Monday evening, March 24 after he apparently deactivated them last week amidst "backlash."
Noone, who is known for his lighthearted comedic videos on social media and has more than 3 million followers between Instagram and TikTok, posted a video on March 19 in which he said he had been asked to respond to Conor McGregor's St. Patrick's Day visit to the White House.
At the White House, the Irish UFC fighter who was found liable for sexual assault in November claimed the "illegal immigration racket is running ravage on" Ireland.
Responding, Noone said in part: "There absolutely is an immigration issue in Ireland," but added, "That doesn’t mean that people feel like we shouldn’t take the refugees that we’re able to take.
"It doesn’t mean that people feel like people shouldn’t be able to come here for better opportunities."
He added: "Our towns and especially our cities are becoming much less safe. Now that’s not just because of immigration, there’s a lot of factors to that, but if you can’t see that that’s happening, then you have not left your house."
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In a follow-up video the next day - that appears to have since been deleted from Instagram and TikTok - Noone said in part: "If we can’t discuss those things openly, if people are regulated to talking about it in echo chambers and only really hearing about those concerns from more extreme people, that makes everything worse."
He added: "I am not anti-immigration. Absolutely crazy to think that.
"Right after the Dublin riots happened, I made a video where I came out and completely condemned the actions of the far right, who I believe were just opportunists who wanted to vandalize things and cause havoc and do not care about the country at all. They didn’t have anybody’s best interests at heart and I condemn that absolutely, and I still do condemn them.
"But at the same time, to say that there are no concerns as immigration increases, to say that things haven’t been mishandled, and to say that people should not be able to express how they feel about those things, their concerns about those things, I just don’t think that does any good.
"I think people should be able to express those things and I think obviously more extreme beliefs are not something that we want, but we we need to hear people out. We need to know what they’re thinking, and hopefully that can keep everybody as reasonable as possible."
Garron ended his follow-up video saying "f--k the far-right and f--k the far everything."
Soon after, Noone's TikTok and Instagram accounts went dark, though the conversation surrounding his videos continued through the weekend.
Noone reactivated his accounts on Monday evening, posting a nine-minute video to his Instagram and TikTok pages.
In his video on Monday, Noone said that it would be the last time he was going "to discuss this particular topic."
"I really want to get back to doing what I like to do, which is just having the craic," he said.
He admitted he had to take a few days away with all the "stuff happening online," adding, "I think anything I said in response to it would have been purely based on emotion and just not productive."
He thanked those who offered their support: "The generosity that I experience from people is just incredible.
"Just like what I've always known to be true is people have just such beautiful, caring souls, and I've seen so much of that this week, not only from Irish people but from people who had immigrated to the country."
He also thanked anyone who disagreed with him "in good faith," adding, "We should be able to have conversations about these things."
Accountability
Noone went on to say that he did want to take "some accountability," admitting that some of his comments were "too vague, too open to interpretation."
He continued: "I'm sure some of you have seen some of the far-right people who were misappropriating what I was saying and trying to use it to bolster their own agenda which was obviously absolutely horrifying to me and the last thing that I would want.
"Though I do think some of the assertions that people were making that I was a far-right poster boy or that they were all behind me, I think that was really overblown and a hysterical reaction."
He said it was "very upsetting" that "people were trying to completely misrepresent what I was saying."
He continued: "People are negative about me all the time. I'm used to that.
"But to have very large groups of people misappropriate what I was saying, to have very large groups of people making out that I have some of the worst beliefs that I can possibly think of, it was difficult."
"I said the opposite"
Noone went on to say that he never said he was anti-immigration and that he never aligned himself with Conor McGregor.
"In fact, I said the opposite," Noone said.
"I never said that immigrants are criminals or that immigrants are making our crime rate shoot to all-time highs. I never said any of this stuff.
"I never said that immigrants were coming into the country and causing this crime rate to skyrocket.
"I never said anything about crime rates, and I never said anything about immigrants causing that or anything like that.
"What I said is that the towns and the cities are becoming much less safe, and I believe that to be true.
"Some people were quoting in CSO [Central Statistics Office] statistics and saying that crime has gone down, and many types of crime have gone down, some types of crime have risen slightly.
"That's not the primary thing that I'm thinking about though.
"There's a lot of anti-social behavior being unaddressed. There's a lot of problems with drugs, the types of drugs have changed.
"There is many, many factors to why people feel things are getting much more unsafe.
"And also some of these problems were typically only present in Dublin and we're starting to see them in other places in Ireland.
"Now you can disagree with that, but it's not misinformation.
"There's perfectly reasonably a case to be made for that. It's something that a lot of people feel.
"I also think we have to talk about these things, you know, 'cause you've got Conor McGregor saying things like Dublin has gone from being one of the safest cities in Europe to being one of the most dangerous. That is not an accurate statement.
"And the problem is, when we're not talking about what people are feeling, what people are saying, what people are concerned about, you allow people to hijack the conversation and drive it up into that hysterical level, where you're saying it's one of the most dangerous things, and blah, blah, blah.
"But people do have legitimate concerns about things and those concerns are fine to have."
"I don't think I was specific enough"
He went on to add: "What I was saying in the video is that denying the reality that people have these concerns is leaving a massive, massive vacuum open for people like Conor McGregor to come in and occupy and spread messages that I know you don't want them to spread.
"That was the entire point of my video, and I stand by that.
"However, I do agree, though, that when I'm saying immigration and talking about safety in the same sentence, I need to be very, very specific about what I'm saying.
"I don't think I was specific enough.
"And I think that a lot of the misinterpretation about that, even though I do think most people understood what I was saying, I do think the misinterpretation is on me."
You can watch Garron Noone's return to social media here:
@garron_music ♬ original sound - Garron Noone
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