‘I lost a lot of sponsors' – Garron Noone says he didn't leave his house for a week after immigration backlash
Noone deactivated his TikTok and Instagram accounts in the wake of backlash he faced to comments he made on immigration in a video shared following MMA fighter Conor McGregor's St Patrick's Day visit to the White House.
In the initial video posted on Thursday, March 20, Noone said: 'There absolutely is an immigration issue in Ireland' and 'the systems we have in place are being taken advantage of'.
When he returned to social media days later, he clarified that he is not anti-immigration nor is he aligned with McGregor.
Speaking to The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk, Noone said he received 'hundreds of messages' quoting things he had never said and linking him with people he didn't want to be 'associated with'.
'I felt like I was going to walk outside and people were going to start shouting at me about me all these awful things people were saying I was going to be,' he said.
'So, I didn't leave the house for a week after that. I didn't sleep much while I was gone and look, I've learned from that. I know what might come if I say something in the future. That's life and I've accepted that as part of what I'm doing.'
Noone said he didn't expect 'how much worse' the situation would become when he deactivated his TikTok and Instagram accounts, which each have more than two million followers.
He said he 'lost a lot of sponsors' as a result of the controversy but 'things have returned to normal now' in his working life.
A number of high-profile anti-immigration figures associated with the far-right expressed support for Noone in the days following the video. He said he 'wasn't thrilled' that Tristan Tate, the brother of misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, posted a message of support for him on X.
'There was a small group of people who maybe sort of deliberately mistook what I said and tried to make it look a lot worse than it was. There were some that had a disagreement. Most people understood what I was saying and whether they agreed or disagreed, were fine about it.
'The primary point of the video was about, if we're not hearing people out with the difficulties that we're having, we're creating an environment where somebody who's badly intentioned can come in, tell people everything they want to hear and dominate that conversation and make things sound worse than they are.
'Whereas, if we're willing to take the middle ground with their concerns and stuff like that, I think we stop people from going down that path. That was the actual message of the video.'
He added that he felt some parts of the video 'could have been better worded' and he 'didn't expect it to get as much attention as it did'.
Echoing a follow-up video he posted on March 24, Noone said he stands by what he said initially and there are people 'taking advantage of what people feel isn't being heard'.
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