The Shamrock and the Swastika: Notes on Irish Republicanism and National Socialism

Statue of Seán Russell
Fairview Park, Dublin

Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler / Who made the Britons squeal

Sure before the fight is ended / They will dance an Irish reel

I.

Whilst my knowledge of Irish history and politcs is rather limited, I was surprised to hear that Sinn Féin had polled almost a quarter of all votes cast in the recent general election; more than any other party, gaining them 37 of the 160 available seats.

A left-leaning republican party, Sinn Féin emerged in its current form during the Troubles, when it was linked to the IRA. Since the Good Friday Agreement (1998), however, they've successfully rebranded themselves as a populist movement and in 2018 they completed their transformation by announcing Mary Lou McDonald as party leader, succeeding the far more sinister figure of Gerry Adams.

However, whilst Ms McDonald might not carry the same paramilitary baggage as Adams, it might be noted that the other two main political parties in Ireland - Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil - continue to regard Sinn Féin as beyond the pale and have so far refused to consider any form of coalition with the latter.

We might also recall that Ms McDonald has also attracted criticism herself in the past; for example, for allowing her campaign office to sell IRA souvenirs and memorabilia and for speaking at a rally in Dublin in 2003 to commemorate Seán Russell -  an IRA leader with links to Nazi Germany.           

II.

I understand that, sometimes, it's strategically necessary and politically expedient to enter into alliances with the Devil himself. And the ancient proverb about the enemy of one's enemy being one's friend provides philosophical justification for such pact-making. But, even so, it's a bit shocking to discover just how far along a very slippery and dangerous slope Seán Russell was prepared to tread ...

In the summer of 1940, Russell occupied a villa outside Berlin where he was accorded every privilege possible by his Nazi hosts, including a chauffer driven car and the services of an interpreter. He was also, more significantly, given access to the Brandenberg military camp in order to study the latest techniques in sabotage and guerilla warfare. His liaison at this time was the SS officer Edmund Veesenmayer, who would later become an architect of the Final Solution in Hungary and Croatia.

It was Russell's hope that the German high command would enlist the services of the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern Ireland and on the UK mainland and that, following the planned invasion of Britain, he and his comrades would be duly rewarded. Unfortunately for him, on his return to Ireland aboard a U-boat, he suffered the rupturing of a gastric ulcer and this proved fatal. 

None of this, of course, proves that Russell was sympathetic to or in agreement with Nazi doctrine. But it should surely give us all pause for thought about the way in which romantic nationalism and political idealism can easily collapse into the black hole of fascism. At best, Russell was outrageously naive - though whether that excuses him of his active collaboration with the Nazis (who were busy at that time occupying Western Europe) is debatable.

It might also be noted that Russell wasn't the only one within the IRA supporting the Third Reich. In July of 1940 the leadership issued a joint statement declaring that German forces would be welcomed as friends and liberators should they land in Ireland. The public was assured that the Nazis had no interest in occupying the country or further frustrating the dream of independence, but merely wished to see Ireland play an active role in the new Europe.  

Worse still was the fact that the IRA's main publication - War News - began to adopt openly anti-Semitic language and expressed their satisfaction at what was happening on the Continent, as the cleansing fires of the Wehrmacht drove the Jews from Europe. Shamefully, the leaders of Sinn Féin at this time also indulged in such rhetoric, repeatedly attacking the alleged Jewish influence in Ireland.

One dreads to imagine what would have happened to Ireland's tiny Jewish community (numbering only a few thousand) had the Nazis chosen to invade the Emerald Isle and paint it black. As the Irish historian Brian Hanley notes:

"Across Europe a variety of ethnic and political groups collaborated with the Nazis in order to further their own agendas. Inevitably this meant active involvement in Nazi persecution of Jews and political opponents. It also meant becoming a part of the Nazi governmental machine. Does anyone seriously believe that the IRA would have avoided playing this role?"   

Ultimately, I don't like nationalisms of any variety: Irish, German, Scottish, Catalan ... even English. As Nietzsche pointed out, subscribing to such a politics in its vulgar modern form, is, for free spirits, profoundly mistaken; a deliberate deadening of our higher natures.    

See: Brian Hanley, "'Oh here's to Adolph Hitler" ... The IRA and the Nazis', History Ireland, Vol. 13, Issue 3 (May/June 2005): click here to read online.

On the Triumph of Donald Trump: Don't Say I Didn't Warn You ...

Photo credit: AP/LM Otero

I hate to be one of those people who says I told you so, but, back in 2008, in a series of essays on myth, history and cultural despair, I did suggest that - thanks to globalization - we in the West find ourselves today in very similar position to the people of Austria during the 19th century and that the potential for a new type of pessimistic and reactionary politics, based on notions of race, religion, and national identity, was thus a very real danger.   

Such a desperate response, I noted, might not be very desirable, but was perfectly understandable when mass immigration had resulted in the internal exile of indigenous populations in their own societies and concern over their future survival as ethnically and culturally distinct groups was increasingly widespread.

In order to provide some theoretical support for this argument, I referred to an essay by Jean Baudrillard in which he offered a painfully revisionist explanation for why it is that only figures on the far-right seem to possess the last remnants of political interest. This passage in particular seemed at the time - and still seems - absolutely spot on:

"The right once embodied moral values and the left, in opposition, embodied a certain historical and political urgency. Today, however, stripped of its political energy, the left has become a pure moral injunction, the embodiment of universal values, the champion of the reign of virtue and the keeper of the antiquated values of the Good and the True ..."

In short, the left has become boring and this results not only in their abject surrender, but in a situation where it’s only neo-fascist and populist politicians who have anything interesting left to say: "All the other discourses are moral or pedagogical," writes Baudrillard, "made by school teachers and lesson-givers, managers and programmers".

In daring to embrace evil and reject political correctness, I concluded, the far-right looks set to scoop the political jackpot ...

Now - just to be clear - this didn't mean back in 2008 and it doesn't mean now that I support or necessarily share the views of Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump. But it does mean I can understand the attraction of these figures to voters who are sick to death of being spoken down to by those in power who think they know better than the people who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

And it does mean I'm conscious of the more prosaic reasons why the above seem to speak to and for an angry white working-class who feel increasingly marginalized by high-tech industries and the enforced integration of ethnic minorities into their communities.

For, unfortunately, globalization doesn't only unleash flows of capital, information, and talent across national borders, it also brings with it crime, disease, and barbarism (by which I mean unfamiliar and often antithetical customs, norms, values and beliefs). And so, unsurprisingly, defensive ideologies arise that promise to counter threats to national and cultural identity and restore order.

And so Brexit and the triumph of Donald Trump ...

Notes

Stephen Alexander, 'Reflections beneath a Black Sun', The Treadwell's Papers, Vol. IV, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).

Jean Baudrillard, ‘A Conjuration of Imbeciles’, in The Conspiracy of Art, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext[e], 2005). 

On the Question of Scottish Independence

David Bowie's unexpected and rather pitiful plea that Scotland stay with us - made at the Brit Awards and voiced via Kate Moss - brought a predictably abusive online reaction from nationalists north of the border, informing him, in short, to fuck off back to Mars and keep his nose out of their affairs.

One might of course simply smile at this and say fair enough. But, as a matter of fact, Bowie is entitled to his view and entitled to express his view, as a Brit and as an Englishman (albeit an Englishman in New York and no longer a UK resident). 

Similarly, I feel entitled to both hold and express a view on the issue of Scottish independence, which is to go to a referendum in September, as a Brit and as an Englishman who also happens (not uncommonly) to have had a Scottish grandmother, even if I'm not entitled to a vote in said referendum.

But what is my view? 

Well, until recently, I would have been fully supportive of any movement that sought independence and wished to proliferate cultural difference, thereby countering the political will to oneness. I shared Lawrence's dream of a future democracy of touch that would dissolve all ideal attempts at universalism and put an end to centralized government. 

Like Lawrence, I thought that a vivid recoil into separateness would see the joyful rebirth of many small states in an infinite variety of forms and that this had to be positive and progressive; that war, for example, was born not of difference, but of the denial of otherness and an obsession with making all people think and act and speak the same beneath a single flag.          

But now I'm having to rethink and revise this view in light of recent world events. Suddenly, the idea of encouraging solidarity and defending political union no longer seems so monstrous or mistaken in the face of grotesque and sinister micro-fascist attempts to rekindle old hatreds and divisions based on racial identity, religious sectarianism, and tribal nationalism.   

  

And suddenly the vitriolic remarks aimed at Bowie no longer seem so innocent or amusing ...

Nor, for the record, do I much care for the fact that my Spanish ex-wife, who has lived and worked in Barcelona for almost twenty years, still has to accept being called a guiri on a daily basis by her Catalan friends - as if she were not only a foreigner, but also a Francoist.