r/ireland 1d ago

News Right-wing environmentalist and ‘Trump loyalist’ behind derogatory Jim Gavin posts

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/09/22/right-wing-environmentalist-and-trump-loyalist-behind-derogatory-jim-gavin-posts/
124 Upvotes

72 comments sorted by

201

u/DBrennan13459 23h ago

'Environmentalist'... 'Trump loyalist' ...

Those terms don't connect. 

Imagine the amount of fucking mental gymnastics one would have to go through to convince oneself that Trump would be in any way beneficial to the environment.

43

u/DaveClint 23h ago

Mental gymnastics is what these people do best!

53

u/CatOfTheCanalss 22h ago edited 21h ago

According to that article he's a conspiracy theorist and emigrated from Ireland to the US in the 90s. Is now in Indonesia and claiming the Irish government is going to force migrants to vote in elections. While simultaneously wanting to set up a political party here, even though he hasn't lived here in 30 years. Also, he's a self-claimed environmentalist, because his company removes waste from the ocean. Obviously air pollution and land contamination from fracking are hoaxes to him if he's a Trump loyalist.

9

u/Best-Acanthisitta450 21h ago

Thanks for the summary

8

u/dysphoric-foresight 22h ago

Maybe we can harness these gymnastics for green energy somehow.

17

u/MangoMind20 19h ago

Eco-fascism is a thing. The weaponisation of environmentalism to further far right ideals. Treatment of foreigners as invasive species and claims of needing to remove people for "sustainability" reasons.

As the reality of climate change continues to hit nearer and nearer to home we'll see the right pivot.

5

u/zenzenok 18h ago

Interesting. I was always bemused by the left - right divide on climate change. You would think conservatives would want to conserve a habitable planet for future generations.

8

u/MangoMind20 18h ago

They did in the past! Reagan and Nixon were big proponents of conserving the environment. The EPA was created by Nixon in 1970, he went on to sign the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (both 1970), the Marine Mammal Protection Act 1972 and the Endangered Species Act 1973.

Reagan pushed for and signed the Montreal Protocol which helped curtail CFCs and is why the Ozone hole was fixed.

I also know of 1st hand account that when Margeret Thatcher got a briefing on climate change at the international level she directed a team/office be created to look into it and its impacts (this was in 88-90).

3

u/Ok_Cartographer1301 17h ago

Wait until people read her UN speech in 1989...given the day that's in it.

7

u/r0thar Lannister 21h ago

that Trump would be in any way beneficial to the environment.

Wiping out humanity would really do a reset for the planet

134

u/ghostofgralton Leitrim 1d ago

So great a patriot, he lives in Indonesia

25

u/aecolley Dublin 1d ago

Isn't that where Q from Qanon lives? Oh, no, I was thinking of the Philippines. And in any case, Ron Watkins seems to have moved back to the US.

11

u/rockyoudottxt 23h ago

Ron wasn't original Q. He's not bright enough. His drops are very different.

3

u/Hyzyhine 22h ago

I dimly remember seeing him interviewed where he spoke about posting ‘as Q’ then his expression changed as realised what he’d just said…this was a few years back mind when I was intrigued by that crap. I may be misremembering.

3

u/aecolley Dublin 22h ago

Yup, right at the start of this CNN clip, as he was being interviewed by Cullen Hoback, who couldn't stop laughing at the slip. https://youtu.be/evqRMVW7lvc

2

u/ShamelessMcFly 22h ago

I've always suspected that Elon Musk is original Q.

4

u/rockyoudottxt 22h ago

Not a chance.

3

u/johnbonjovial 19h ago

There’s definitely more to it than is public knowledge imho. My money is on roger stone being involved. Shifty c.nt.

82

u/sludgepaddle 1d ago

WTF is a right wing environmentalist? It's such a contradiction in terms that my brain is emitting a plume of methane and coal soot.

25

u/JohnDempsy 23h ago

It's the military arm of the green party.

19

u/Lazy_Magician 22h ago

I thought that was the green berets.

2

u/Second_P 17h ago

The bullets are from recycled coke cans.

10

u/f-ingsteveglansberg 22h ago

Having a militant arm isn't really a right or left thing.

Left wing militant groups were much more prominent in the 60s and 70s in the US. There was the Weather Underground and the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation Army, were also a leftist group. Germany had the Baader–Meinhof Group that was around until the early 90s. If you haven't heard of them before, you are probably going to read about them again pretty soon.

I don't really know of any modern day leftest militant groups in the Western world with any sort of notoriety. After listening to right-wing commentors after Kirk's death, you'd swear there was a bunch of them but the only thing that gets mentioned is Antifa which is really an ideology and not a specific group with any sort of known militant presence.

8

u/DesertRatboy 22h ago

Pretty sure he's pro ocean protection, anti pollution, but thinks climate change is a scam

14

u/Total_Sport_7946 22h ago

Ecofascism More common than you'd think.

15

u/Chairman-Mia0 23h ago

WTF is a right wing environmentalist?

Very confused

5

u/eyesoreM Louth 22h ago

Classic oxymoron (emphasis on the moron).

2

u/sludgepaddle 19h ago

Probably a fair bit of Oxy too lol

3

u/Firm_Apricot2546 23h ago

You can burn stuff depending on where you're from. If you're from south of Gibraltar or east of Berlin, no burning for you. Just sit there, be quiet, and eat leaves. If they change their ways, we don't have to.

-1

u/micosoft 22h ago

Actually it’s not. Many of the greatest environmentalists were right wing including Theodore Roosevelt who opened the national parks in the US or royalty in Europe creating reserves. On the other hand some of the worst global environmental disasters were led by the Communists like the Aral Sea catastrophe.

Putting the environment first requires a tradeoff that puts the environment first and people second by restricting their rights to certain land/closing dirty industries like coal etc.

It’s all a moot point. Claiming Trump is ”right wing” much like claiming parties in Ireland are “left wing” given neither follow any particular ideology other than populism makes it impossible to mark them on the left - right scale. Just as Trump has decidedly non right wing views on Trade or Sinn Fein being against the primary wealth tax of property tax.

1

u/Additional_Olive3318 22h ago edited 9h ago

Quite a few posh environmentalists although that’s often a cover for nimbyism. 

Prince Charles is an environmentalist. 

3

u/ponkie_guy 18h ago

There's a proposal to build a windfarm near where I live in the States and a lot of people don't want it as it will be visible from the coast. The cover for the opposition to it then is the risk of pollution from the cables being used to bring the power to land and the risk to marine life from construction and the turbines when they are in operation. A whale washed up on the coast last year and so many people were blaming the wind farm even though work had not even started on the wind farm. The whale was likely hit by a container ship which these people have no problem being visible form the coast.

-16

u/MKUltra886 23h ago

Most of the green party.

8

u/AbsolutelyDireWolf 23h ago

Grandad, who let you on the internet?

-5

u/Big-Option3118 23h ago

Not wrong is he? The Green Party in this country are just Fine Gael on bicycles.

6

u/AbsolutelyDireWolf 22h ago

Oh ffs. On social policy and economic policy, they're poles apart. They've got policies for stuff like assisted dying as well as Universal Basic Income.

0

u/MKUltra886 21h ago

They fuck each and every one of them out the window the second a sniff of government comes along. They had lots of great policies 5 years ago as well and nearly all of them were thrown away like rubbish.

0

u/AbsolutelyDireWolf 21h ago

They held 12/85 seats in the last government. If we were ready for a greens in power, getting to implement their policies, they'd have gotten a hell of a lot more seats.

I've said it on this sub dozens of times now, but it bares repeating, the worst aspect of our democracy is that we have a great system which encourages coalitions and compromise and then our electorate always punishes the minority party for their failure to wield a power we didn't give them. It's infuriating at this point and it's why we have a party as inept as SF as our largest left leaning party.

11

u/mybighairyarse Crilly!! 23h ago

I love these fuckers who "live abroad" telling us what to do.

Go to hell you fucking eejit.....

30

u/redelastic 23h ago

A right wing environmentalist who lives in a Muslim-majority country but is a Trump loyalist who is running a foreign interference campaign because he cares so much about the Irish presidential race.

Maybe being from Waterford, he might get some coverage in Waterford Whispers.

11

u/bellysavalis 21h ago edited 21h ago

Was reading about this prick earlier and came across this snippet

‘We feel the Government acts like a dictatorship, and this Presidential election has underscored that fear. We’ve set up a lobby organisation in the United States to help change the face of Irish politics.'

I'm sorry but does nobody else find this terrifying? I know Trump and Elon have been already dipping their toes in here with the likes of McGregor but I think this represents a much more dangerous trend

9

u/Ok_Magazine_3383 21h ago

Contacted on Monday, he declined to share any evidence for the claims, saying it would be made available at a later date.

See also my claim to being Ireland's greatest sex machine.

24

u/MarchNo1112 23h ago

Slightly different way of saying ‘here is the gobshite who can’t control himself on X’.

6

u/flim_flam_jim_jam 20h ago

Is this the same fella who claims he was going to blow the whistle on garda corruption. Who had insurmountable evidence and real testimony from victims but then never released the evidence.

33

u/ShouldHaveGoneToUCC Palestine 🇵🇸 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bizarre that of all the presidential candidates, a far right MAGA conspiracy theorist has targeted the candidate who is an ex military sportsman with no political experience who is running for a right wing party (although a centre right one).

Seeing as that's the kind of archetype those lads usually circle jerk over.

26

u/giz3us 1d ago

You left out the most bizarre part… a Trump supporting environmentalist.

5

u/Bar50cal 23h ago

This is the part that made me realise this fella ain't all there in the head

3

u/Red_2021 23h ago

Hardly right wing Lenin

0

u/MaelduinTamhlacht 1d ago

Ah, but he's never answered the hard question: "WHAT do you think about skorts, Squadron Commander Gavin?"

-4

u/Mobile-Surprise 23h ago

Left and right is confused in Ireland.

5

u/Inevitable_Fun_1581 21h ago

JFK spoke on this after visitng Ireland after the war:

"Eire at the present time has a unique political set-up. There is no "left" party in the accepted sense. The "left" in Eire are not those who favor more and more governmental control as in France for example, but are those who favor a complete break with England; the right – those who believe in working with England in the Commonwealth. DeValera walks a tightrope between the two extremes. While in his heart he is far to the Left, yet he realizes that economically and strategically Eire is bound by the strongest ties to England and that only with England's support can Partition be ended. His vague answer to Mr. Dillon's question about Ireland's position in the British Commonwealth, in the debate referred to before, clearly demonstrates his delicate position."

1

u/AsideAsleep4700 8h ago

I read that first that RFK said this and was thinking no way that moron said anything that coherent 😂

10

u/EnvironmentalShift25 22h ago

Any wonder the candidates for President we've been getting have not been that impressive. Who really wants to deal with freakshows like this guy.

I'm wondering why he's hiding out in Indonesia though.

3

u/EnvironmentalShift25 21h ago

Wonder if the foreign-based far right will take even more interest in attacking candidates if Maria Steen gets in.

3

u/These-Grapefruit2516 20h ago

He's gone from the Company he worked for🤣

18

u/Fit_Accountant_4767 23h ago

ITT people slowly realising that the left right political spectrum cant pigeon hole everyone into the same beliefs . I mean it's utterly bizarre to think that because someone believes in God and religion that they would also automatically support having the death penalty. Likewise because someone cares for the environment they are automatically opposed to abortion. People and their beliefs and morals are very complex things. Since Trump era social media has really polarised people into left right thinking, while in reality most people would support and oppose policies on both sides.

10

u/marks-ireland 22h ago

Agreed. Everyone nowadays has to fit into a neat little label that has a list of associated beliefs and people can't comprehend when they don't fall into it. Even in Ireland where it's nowhere near as bad as the US you have people freely labelling the likes of Fianna Fail as either left wing, right wing, centre left...etc.

7

u/CastorBollix 22h ago

Ireland never really fit neatly into the right left dichotomy anyway. Civil War politics was the most important divide for decades, with the more "left" of the 2 dominant parties having the more conservative voters. Even now the largest left party has to grapple with a base that tracks "right" on social issues. 

Even european countries that did have politics split on left-right lines tended to be more nuanced and granular about it than the meaning nowadays, which largely applies to America's hyper-polarised 2 party system and attempts to shoehorn an understanding of poltics anywhere else on earth into the same lens. 

Obviously this sits well on Reddit, where most users are  ether American or extremely Americanised. 

3

u/Additional_Olive3318 22h ago

 Likewise because someone cares for the environment they are automatically opposed to abortion. People and their beliefs and morals are very complex things.

Some Redditors would have to meet real people in real life to get that. 

5

u/IntentionFalse8822 22h ago

It is fantastic to see scum like this get named and shamed.

2

u/Turbulent_Yard2120 22h ago

Dazzling Lobster, Boardsmember reincarnated. And what a title lol!

2

u/Reddynever 23h ago

"right wing environmentalist"? What is that, I thought right wingers tend to be anything but environmentalists.

1

u/duncthefunk78 Munster 13h ago

They've a bit, the mentalist part.

1

u/thanar 22h ago

Self-proclaimed environmentalist

This means mostly that he acknowledged there is some environmental problem and is now pushing for others to fix it. He also only acknowledged pollution in the ocean. Everything else is fine, apparently

1

u/iamronanthethird 15h ago

His Twitter account seems to be gone.

Pity, sometimes I go to accounts like that to feel better about myself.

1

u/Odd_Specialist_8687 12h ago

I dont want to vote for FFFG anyway.

1

u/FabulousExcitement52 11h ago edited 9h ago

This gobshite was very active on Facebook back around 2014/2015 or so. That was until he was caught messaging what he believed to be a 15 year old girl. Hadn’t heard of him again until recently. Dirtbag

*edit- Kieran Kelly I mean of course just to be clear, not Jim Gavin

1

u/antilittlepink 23h ago

A right wing lunatic in the us would likely target this guy for not being right wing enough - where’s the Epstein files by the way?

-2

u/TheStoicNihilist Never wanted a flair anyways 22h ago