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The weekend before last, I was asked to stand in memory of Charlie Kirk.
“It just seems the right thing to do, it seems the noble thing to do, it seems the correct thing to do, for us to stand in a moment’s silence to honor a great warrior,” the speaker implored.
I was not inside the more than 63,000-seater State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where Kirk’s official memorial ceremony took place. I wasn’t even in the United States.
I was in a derelict shed in the town of Boyle in the northwest corner of Ireland listening to Vincent Carroll, a doctor turned Covid vaccine conspiracist. He spent the rest of his speech ranting about the threats posed by Muslims who, in his telling, want to “change” Irish society in their image.
Carroll, who did not respond to a request for comment, was one of more than 20 speakers at the Rebels Across the Pond conference, a gathering designed to strengthen ties between conspiracists and far-right extremists on either side of the Atlantic.
The event and the rapid speed with which Kirk’s killing has become a central narrative for overseas groups show once again how influential the US far right has become on a global scale. Carroll was one of many speakers who invoked Kirk’s name during the event. Another was Eddie Hobbs, a former prominent TV presenter in Ireland who in recent years has launched a YouTube channel that flirts with conspiracy theories and now views his former employers as enemy number one.
“My job is to go for the jugular against the Irish media on my channel, and I will do that until or unless I end up like Charlie Kirk,” Hobbs told the audience, which then pleaded with him to run for political office.
Hobbs subsequently told WIRED that he doesn’t actually believe that he might be assassinated because of his beliefs.
Boyle is an idyllic town of just 3,000 people in County Roscommon, best known for being the birthplace of Bridesmaids and Black Mirror actor Chris O’Dowd. But since 2017 it has also been the home of Mark Attwood, an Englishman who in 2023 established Live 5D Health, which its website describes as “a private members holistic wellness club,” in the town. In addition to mainstream services like saunas and steam rooms, the club offers more esoteric services such as the Orynoco Healing Pod, described on the club’s website as being powered by “quantum healing we can’t really explain.”
Attwood is a well-known figure in the online conspiracy world, running a popular video podcast series and Substack where he covers everything from QAnon to the threat that demons pose in your everyday life. Leveraging his connections in this world, Attwood organized the event, inviting many of the people he speaks to on his show to travel to Boyle. (Attwood did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)
On Saturday morning, having stumped up $170 to attend the conference, I was forced to sign up for membership at Live 5D Health before receiving a wristband that would guarantee me access to the event. Inside the club, among the alternative treatments on display, was the Pure Body Extra detox treatment that the anti-vax community has claimed in the past can be used to treat autism, despite the product’s manufacturer stating on its website that it is “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”
The location for the event, which was kept secret over concerns about protesters showing up, turned out to be a venue normally used as a roofed beer garden and music venue for a local pub on the banks of the River Boyle, just a few minutes away from Live 5D Health. Previously, one local told me, it was among other things the location for a professional chainsaw workshop.
Before the event began, the attendees milled about outside, speaking to those who were advertising wares and services. I spoke to Louis Sexton, who was selling black stone medallions under the Atlantis Round Towers of Eire brand. He claimed the items could provide more energy or focus, adding that he had located the special stone using instruments he collected during his time working in the nuclear energy industry. One woman next to me quickly handed over €150 ($180) for three medallions.
Further down the table, other people were talking to Martin, a representative from the PanTerraVida Private Society, a sovereign citizen–style organization. It’s unclear if anyone signed up. Martin did not respond to a request for comment.
Inside the hall, attendees filled rows of white chairs that would have been more at home at a wedding. The attendees were split pretty evenly between men and women, and while the average age was certainly over 50, there were a couple of dozen in their twenties. Amulets, gemstones, and bare feet were on display, as well as one woman wearing a green “Make Ireland Great Again” baseball cap.
The majority of attendees were from Ireland, though one woman came from the east coast of Scotland, a group from Germany, and another woman from the Netherlands.
At the front of the hall, which Attwood said he had cleansed with sage the night before, a stage was adorned by a large-screen TV and flanked by large speakers. At the front of the stage someone had hung a T-shirt bearing the phrase “Hey Satanists, Go Fü¢% Yourselves.”
Also on the stage was a device purportedly emitting scalar waves, in line with an unproven pseudoscientific concept that suggests invisible energy can help heal a variety of ailments.
Attwood opened the conference by talking about his own experiences with demonic forces, including a claim that while he was in his kitchen chopping vegetables, someone beamed a voice into his head using “voice to skull” technology that instructed him to “kill your children.”
Over the course of the next seven hours, without a break, speaker after speaker filled the stage with wild allegations about child sex trafficking, global elites controlling the world, anti-trans rhetoric, and the coming Rapture—though not the one that was meant to happen within days.
Jana Lunden, an anti-trans activist from America now living in Ireland, said “the tsunami of what is happening in America is coming over to Ireland.”
As an example, she claimed she recently met in Dublin with Kimberly Fletcher, the head of the far-right activist group Moms for America, which has close ties to members of the Trump administration. Lunden said that they had discussed her heading up an Irish chapter of an international women’s movement and added that she would be traveling to Washington, DC—where, she said, she would “hopefully” not need a bulletproof vest. She claimed that a meeting at the White House was a possibility.
(Lunden and Moms for America did not respond to requests for comment.)
Following Lunden on stage was Fergus Power, a prominent Irish far-right agitator who was named, using parliamentary privilege, by an Irish lawmaker who implied he was among those who incited the Dublin riots in November 2023.
He told the audience that “God has chosen me for this battle” and that he won’t stop until “every indigenous man, woman, and innocent Irish child in this country truly knows the meaning of the word freedom.”
Power, who is followed on X by disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, has been at the forefront of the far right’s recent anti-migrant campaign, which demands that Ireland should be kept for the Irish. He failed to mention that the conference was being organized by a man from England and that the previous speaker was an American living in Ireland. (Power agreed to answer questions from WIRED but did not respond after the questions were put to him.)
At this point, the event was briefly disrupted by a small protest outside by two local activists who highlighted the fact that Attwood had been advocating a toxic bleach solution to his followers. Power and fellow far-right activist Philip Dwyer confronted the two protesters and questioned if they were trying to get Attwood killed, just like Kirk. Dwyer declined to answer WIRED’s questions about his comments but called this reporter a “communist left-wing radical.”
Back inside, Attwood laughed off the protesters, with one later speaker calling them “clones.”
Finally, after mystic Honey C Golden had informed everyone that “The Matrix was a reality show” and that she doesn’t “really believe in time,” it was time for Lewis Herms, a fringe candidate for California governor, to take the stage.
Herms, who became popular through his Screw Big Gov platform online, is running as an independent conservative and is one of almost 70 people who have filed statements of interest in being governor of California. Calling himself an “anti-politician,” Herms slammed the GOP for not talking about “child trafficking,” “election fraud,” or the influence of “Big Pharma.”
While Herms has decided not to employ a campaign manager—because it would not be authentic—he did claim that he is working with some other people.
“I'm very proud to say a lot of RFK Jr.’s team is already working with us,” Herms said. “And they already label our team Super MAHA because we're looking for different modalities that we can bring back to California and bring to a whole other level than he’s even doing it right now.”
Herms and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment.
Herms received a standing ovation at the end of his nearly 45-minute speech despite the fact that most people were, at this point, very cold. But even though it was now dark outside, there was still time for one more speaker—Janine Morigeau, a Canadian tarot card reader.
Just as the day had begun with the name of Kirk being invoked, so it ended. “Is Charlie Kirk really dead?” an audience member asked, with the rest of the crowd reacting excitedly. Morigeau proceeded to pull half a dozen different cards and very quickly concluded that the person seen on camera being shot was not actually Kirk at all.
“Whatever they were doing there was likely a white hat op, because it’s to the benefit of humanity,” Morigeau said before adding mysteriously: “I don’t know if even the real Charlie Kirk was who we thought he was.”
English (US) ·