Comedian and musician Garron Noone. Photo: Terrie Burton/Noir Photique
Noone deactivated his social media accounts on Thursday following backlash to comments he made about immigration in a video where he shared his thoughts about Conor McGregor’s visit to the White House on St Patrick’s Day.
“I stand by what I said in my first video, this video will clarify any points I’ve seen that were taken up differently to how I meant them, and this will be my last word on it,” he wrote in the caption of the video posted to his TikTok and Instagram accounts, which each have more than 1.7m followers.
Comedian and musician Garron Noone. Photo: Terrie Burton/Noir Photique
News Catch Up - Monday 24th March
Noone said this video would be the last time he addressed the issue and he wanted to get back to “having the craic”.
"I needed to take a few days away,” he said.
"There was a lot of stuff happening online, as I'm sure many of you know, and I just couldn't stop myself looking at it, and engaging with it, and it wasn't productive.”
He then extended a “massive thank you” to those who sent him supportive messages and reached out over the past four days. He also thanked people who disagreed with him “in good faith”.
“While I think that most people, seemingly to me, did understand what I was trying to get across in the video, I do think some of my points were too vague, I think they were too open to interpretation.
“Enough people did misinterpret it that it's clear to me that I definitely could have communicated it better, and that is 100pc on me. I absolutely should be held accountable for that.
“I have a very large platform and the things I say get out to a lot of people and if they’re poorly communicated, people absolutely should criticise now, then, and they should criticise me in the future, that’s absolutely tremendously important.”
There was a significant online reaction to the video Noone posted last week, and he said he experienced “personal attacks” and was called a racist and a fascist.
Noone said his video was misappropriated by members of the far right to “bolster their own agenda”.
“There absolutely is an immigration issue in Ireland,” Noone said in the initial video posted on Thursday night.
"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, but the systems we have in place are being taken advantage of and that is plain to see, and the Government continually does not allow people to express their concerns about that.”
Though Noone condemned the far-right, a number of high-profile anti-immigration figures expressed their support for him, including Andrew Tate’s brother Tristan and Katie Hopkins.
He clarified that he took down his TikTok and Instagram accounts himself as he found the reaction to the video “very upsetting”.
"I never said that I was anti-immigration, I honestly don’t know where people even got that. I never aligned myself with Conor McGregor and said that I agreed with everything he said or anything even close to that. In fact, I said the opposite,” Noone said.
He concluded: “I’m going to go back to doing what I normally do and encourage ye to all chat about whatever ye wanna chat about.”