Republican House Candidate Posted IRA Cosplay Video
Republican House Candidate Posted IRA Cosplay Video
Brandon Herrera, who is challenging GOP incumbent Tony Gonzales in Tuesday’s runoff, was called “jaw-droppingly stupid” by a Northern Ireland human rights campaigner.
The “gunfluencer” turned Texas Republican congressional candidate Brandon Herrera posted to YouTube a video in which he wears a balaclava, fires an Armalite rifle, uses Irish stereotypes while joking about the IRA, and says he “fucking hate[s] the British.”
“I’m not doing it because I like or support the IRA,” says Herrera, now 28 and a candidate for the Republican nomination in Texas’ 23rd U.S. House district, in the video posted on March 17, 2023—St Patrick’s Day—and titled “The AR-180: The IRA’s Lucky Charm.”
“They were pretty heavily socialist. Of course they really hurt a lot of innocent people sometimes. I’m not doing this video because I like the IRA or I support them. I’m doing this video because I fucking hate the British.
“Guys, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Mostly.”
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Speaking to The Daily Beast, Aidan McQuade, from Northern Ireland and a former director of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights group, condemned Herrera for displaying “jaw-dropping stupidity” in his IRA-themed video.
“It is quite an achievement to make a video of which the anti-Irish stereotyping is the least offensive part,” McQuade said.
Other remarks by Herrera in the video include a promise to get “belligerently drunk” to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and, “The IRA [were] very famously unhappy for a certain group of folks going after their Lucky Charms,” a reference to famous ads for a U.S. breakfast cereal featuring a leprechaun character.
Over footage of a gun jamming, meanwhile, Herrera says: “This is why Ireland isn’t free.”
McQuade said: “From a historical perspective it is jaw-droppingly stupid to suggest that the course of the Troubles could have been changed with a more dependable Armalite.
“From a human perspective, Herrera’s attitude to violence seems that of an adolescent video-gamer blissfully ignorant of the trauma that war inflicts on a society, and the unending grief of victims’ devastated families.”
He may have misunderstood the R in IRA. He's welcome to pop over to Northern Ireland where someone will set him straight.
His only point, per him, is his hatred of the British. I tried for a few minutes to think of a group that fought the British that he could cosplay as but I came up blank. Either they were fighting for religious freedom (not his so that’s out), they were fighting to avoid colonialism (he’s all about that), or they wanted to remove autocrats (totally against his party).
The Romans? Technically fighting Britons but it's close enough.
