“There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”
— Franz Fanon
There’s a specter haunting Ireland, and that specter is backwards ultra moronic patriotism.
The phantasms of patriotism and nationalism have been on the rise throughout the globe over the last number of years, people becoming possessed by false idols and fantasies creating a growing collective mass delusional psychosis. Even Ireland isn’t immune from this spreading disease.
Over the last year there have been riots, numerous assaults on individuals and a wave of arson attacks on buildings earmarked for refugees. Just yesterday (15/7/24) in the deprived area of Coolock in Dublin anti-refugee violence broke out into a riot on the street lasting hours. Ireland has a long history of anti-colonial struggle and emigration so how can the Irish who have suffered a similar kind of discrimination and racism now be the oppressors. Some may wonder how oppressed people can become possessed by lies and such levels of hate after such a long history of colonial oppression.
To echo Franz Fanon, the first thing the colonizer does to subjugate a people is to plant the seed in the minds of the colonized that they are savages living in misery and insecurity while the colonizers are actually saving them from themselves, helping them gain social-economic and technological progress. Colonial domestication creates a psychological disorder of a self-hate inferiority complex. The colonized believe they are stupid and inferior and the only route to salvation is the civilization brought by the colonizers and so imitate the colonizers.
In neo-colonial era Ireland the recent decades of catholic cultural hegemony, combined with the added psychological harm and alienation created by the rest of the power structures and constructs of civilization continuing the domestication process started by British colonialism.
Adding to multigenerational trauma and socio-economic insecurities and poverty furthering inferiority complexes affecting people in the same way as under direct colonialism. It’s becoming a mainstream belief that modern civilization causes mental illness with all its sensory stimulation gadgets and false realities of social media keeping us glued to phones, TV, and the promises of a better life and wealth to chase after, but most will never receive. Some turn to drugs, substance abuse and the many other addictions of civilized life, some to the false realities of cosmetics and materialism, others direct their inferiority/self-hate outwards taking on the abusive characteristics of the oppressors directing their anger towards those around them and lower on the societal hierarchy and individuals perceived differently than the norm. So this growing hate against minorities and the marginalized is a byproduct of civilization. How civilized many Irish truly have become.
Ultimately the system of civilization is the root cause, but the actors in all this also bear blame and responsibility. Even with the psychological effects of domestication and the influence from socio-economic poverty, individuals can still make some choices. But instead of directing anger and frustration at the oppressors and the power structures, many of the oppressed are turning to patriotic nationalist ideology for a solution to their problems.
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Patriotism can be found in the same realm of the mind as Christian mysticism. Opium for the gullible.
But what is Patriotism exactly? The feeling of love, devotion, sense of attachment to a country or state. This patriotic love is a false love in the same way an abuse victim may feel love for their abuser.
This supposed love for the sacred ideals of patriotism and nation – to live for, to die for if needs be, to kill for if necessary. To sacrifice yourself for an idol built on lies and manipulation. How can this be love? Love for tyranny, chains, an illusion, pure fantasy.
This psychosis like self-deception for the psychologically weak, frustrated by lack of meaning in their life and alienation from an unequal society, gorge greedily on the lies and fantasies, feasting on nationalist ideals turned sacred in cognitive dissonance.
The patriots pledge allegiance to an abstraction not having the courage or the brains to live their own life on their own terms, and so feel the need to knock down those that do.
Patriotism and nationalism have different meanings in different places and points of time. Currently in Ireland it’s used in the sense of a past time in history of simpler times reminiscing of The Quiet Man¹ Hollywood depiction of the emerald isle of picture postcard perfection. Nostalgia for a time that didn’t really exist. A fake memory built on fantasy, the Irish Free State was never great.
Ireland from the 1920s right up to the 21st century was a place of non-stop housing crisis, poverty, inequality, political corruption. The exact same issues as now were around from the very birth of the Free State in the 1920s. The differences Queers had to hide in closet from fear of annihilation by pretty much the entire population; unmarried mothers were locked away blackmailed to give their baby away to the catholic church who sold to the best bidder, when a woman got married they were slave to the husband divorce outlawed no way out or escape, domestic violence was viewed as legitimate punishment to correct the behavior of your wife, by law a husband couldn’t be found guilty of raping his wife; there were no refugees or immigrants stealing the jobs because there were none, but that didn’t stop the city dwellers of Dublin blaming the chulcies* for the lack of employment opportunities and housing. Mass emigration was the norm scattering Irish across the planet in the search of a better life In Ireland’s past, patriotism was used as a means of uniting a colonized people against the colonizer. When P.H. Pearce² proclaimed “Irish belongs to the Irish”, he meant it in the sense of anti-colonial rebellion. Now it’s the battle cry of the hodgepodge ragtag of idiots that makes up the numbers and supporters of the far right, ethno-nationalists, Christian crusaders and out right fascists. Anti-colonialism bastardized to suit the fantasy of fools.
Marx was wrong to lay the blame on capitalist exploitation for creating alienation, although partially true. Stirner completely pulled the veil away when they wrote the Unique and Its Property; an in-depth description of how alienation stems from the social constructs and abstractions which birthed civilization and all the horrors that came with it. Nationalism, patriotism, states, borders, racism, classism,xenophobia, queerphobia, patriarchy, culture and a whole host of other malicious anti-individual fantasies are all civilization creation weaponized to justify invading, enslaving, exploiting, murdering, raping and pillaging every corner of the globe.
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The far-righter rant about “our” culture being destroyed. The culture they are referring to isn’t even real, it was a creation of post-British occupation mostly influenced by the Catholic church. Repressing women and queer people at it’s core and society generally through theocratic hegemony of the Roman Catholic church.
What are the specific attributes that can be narrowed down to describe a culture? Most of the cultural attributes that culminate in description of a supposed Irishness have come from other places and cultures across the globe. Humans like many other animals are a migratory species we have always moved around even as far back when gatherer-hunter lifeway was the norm; people existed and lived through vast interconnected networks of tribes. No culture is static, cultures are in a constant state of evolutionary flux. Culture is a multigenerational overlapping of trends, traditions, values, beliefs, etc . Let’s look at Irish traditional music which has a big place in what’s described as Irish culture, tunes such as jigsaw, reels, hornpipes and the likes, many of which a mixture are from across Europe and the US, although with some indigenous aspects.
Banjos (an African invention), fiddles and mandolins (Mediterranean) don’t come from Ireland but are synonymous with Irish traditional music.
Another example is in Irish Celtic design such as triquetra the trinity knot. It spans across Irish culture; the book of Kells uses it in all sorts of images, but is it Irish, or even Celtic for that matter? It can be found spanning across multi cultures of Europe and into the middle east all the way back to the iron age. Far-righters use such designs as part of their propaganda and symbolism and mostly don’t know it’s history.
Even the contents of the book of Kells is an importation, a Christian bible. Christianity the first colonizers of this land started the domestication process 1600 years ago assimilating Celtic culture into its fold turning Pagan goddesses and gods into Christian saints and sacred places into places of Christian prayer.
Before colonization the people on this island had a Celtic ecological animist culture based around the unwritten Brehon law, which wasn’t like bourgeois law, it wasn’t to protect private property of a minority against the majority. It recognised divorce and equal rights between the genders and also showed high concern for the environment. Homosexuality was provided for and was only criminalized on this island in the early 16th century when British king Henry the VIII took over the monasteries taking control of the courts which had been ruled by the Catholic church previously.
Irish myths and legends also have a Queer and immigration undertone to them, in which the patriots wouldn’t like to recognise. The mythical warrior hero Cúchulainn is believed to have been bisexual. The Aos Sí (Sí meaning she in Irish Gaelic) were fairies (Pucas in Gaelic) that were shapeshifters between human and non-human animal forms, they were non-binary/gender fluid shifters. They cannot be pinned down as male or female; they were beyond the binary. They were descendants of the Tuatha Dé Danann also known as the people of Danu. Danu is believed to possibly mean the Danube, one of Europe’s longest rivers. So the Tuatha Dé Danann could be in reference to the first Celtic people that immigrated to Ireland. Queerness in Celtic cultures across Europe was acceptable; there are many references from Roman text confirming this. Queerphobia is an invention of Christianity and was the norm in many cultures before Christian colonization.
Even the Patriots hero Micheal Collins³ is rumored to be closeted gay or bisexual. And the flag they love so much, the Irish tricolor, itself is an importation, from France. The Tricolors meaning is of diversity among different cultures to coincide living in peace on this island. And likewise the ideology of Republicanism is an importation inspired by the French Revolution and its motto, Liberty, Equality Fraternity ( Liberté, Égalité Fraternité). These homegrown patriots have forgotten this in their nationalist fever that Irish revolutionaries who took up the ideology of Republicanism were fighting for diversity of cultures, organized religion, slavery, and all forms of tyranny.
In the very same way culture is multi generations overlapping; ethnicity can be viewed in the very same way. A clear example of this in the context of Ireland are with surnames, many of which people would think are of Irish origin but are actually Anglo Saxon or otherwise, such as Barrett, which coincidentally is the surname of one the most well known far-right and neo-nazi agitators in Ireland. So this proud patriot is actually from British colonizer descent not fully Irish, as is nobody really because most people classed as Irish have ancestry from all sorts of places.
And likewise community, another sacred construct weaponized as a tool for oppression and conformity. Each collectivist ideology from left to right has different meanings for what community constitutes. A term readily used to justify all sorts of heinous acts against any individual deemed enemy or subhuman. “We don’t want outsiders, foreigners, unvetted males in our communities” – the delusional patriots proclaim.
John Zerzan was right when he described a community as an elusive term. What constitutes a community exactly? People that live on the same street or apartment block? Or individuals who share a common characteristic?
In the hellscape concrete jungles of civilization people live beside others mostly not out of choice. People could live next door to each other for years and not even know one another’s name, many people in estates don’t even talk or like one another in fact. No mutuality and no voluntary association exists here. Iv heard community my whole life but never felt part of any of this supposed thing.
Cities, towns, housing estates with their alienation, social isolation and exclusion are an invention of colonial civilization along with private property, which also didn’t exist on this island prior to colonization. People lived in tribal clan structures based on mutualism of loved ones and extended family living with the environment and animals in kinship. In all, the closest to an authentic Irish ethnicity and culture that partially survives today would be the Irish Traveling people also known as Pavees. Who lived in nomadic clans for at least a 1000 years, it’s not known for sure how long their culture spans back because of the lack of written records there are different theories and vast oral history by Travelers themselves to where Travelers originated from, such as: they were predominant culture before the Celts arrived here, refugees from Cromwell’s genocides who took to land, the people who refused to give in to British colonization and domestication living in the traditional way.
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The nationalist psychosis engulfing Ireland over the last few years culminates in idiotic stupidity that would be laughable if it wasn’t having serious consequences. In one such case a few months ago fools possessed by patriotism attacked two Croatian men, beating one to death. All because they weren’t speaking English. These warrior patriots of Ireland while stomping on the skulls of these unfortunates didn’t seem to know just a few generations ago British colonizers inflicted cultural genocide on the island to enslave and assimilate the inhabitants into their colonial system. And one outcome from these horrors was the near annihilation of the Gaelic language. So the language they love so much they’d kick a person to death for not speaking isn’t even “Irish”.
The patriots burning buildings earmarked to house refugees proclaim “house the Irish” and “house our homeless”. If they are so concerned for their beloved Irish why not squat the buildings and hand them over to Irish homeless people? It’s because the patriot warriors couldn’t give two fucks about homeless people Irish or otherwise. These begrudging fools even have issues with refugees sleeping on the streets.
How many of these brave fighting men took up arms against the British occupiers or loyalist death squads stalking the streets executing Catholics at random. Where were the heroic Irish warriors when loyalists assembled to block Catholic school girls attending primary school in Ardoyne, when mad bigoted loyalist grannies shoving porn mags into the little girls faces while their men folk threw bottles of urine and pipe bombs at defenseless primary school children and their parents. Where were these brave men then? It wasn’t that long ago, many of the patriots were of “military age” but yet did nothing.
Not one of these fascists have I ever heard say anything about the very real oppression of British colonialism that inflicted hundreds years of genocide and which is very much still alive and well occupying this island. Patriotism, nationalism, loyalism, colonialism, fascism, Catholicism, Christianity, leftism, all collectivist moralities with their social constructs each believes in refusing to allow the individual to be considered as a unique being, instead every single individual is put in social category boxes for the benefit of their identity politics lies: which is the cause of so much misery and all sorts of shite in the world.
“The people is dead. Long live me!” – Max Stirner
Footnotes
¹ a movie starring John Wayne made in 1952 depicting a highly romanticized version of Ireland
²was a revolutionary republican and one the leaders of the 1916 Easter insurrection. And was also closeted gay
³ was one of the leaders of the IRA during the Black and Tan war. He betrayed the struggle accepting partial liberation of Ireland which split the country allowing the Brits to remain in the north of the island. He was assassinated in the vicious civil war that folded. The far right hold Michael Collins up as the nationalist founding father, strangely considering it was his actions which partitioned the island instead of gaining total liberation.
Contribution by Renzo Connors