Gangsta Rap Politics: Middle Class, Middle Aged Journalists and their Vicarious Thrills.
For "polite society" or the segregated suburbs, the gangster becomes a vessel through which forbidden traits can be experienced indirectly - aggression, ruthlessness, rebellion, freedom from rules. Gangsta rap offers a safe, commodified view into a world they do not...
Why the Department of Education’s Gender Mission Creep Matters
Some time ago, Richie Allen on his podcast, played excerpts of a drag queen being interviewed on a national UK radio station. He made various comments during the interview, but, apart from other views he shared, his refrain was the...
Fox Hunting at Stormont? Inside Sinn Féin’s 2026 Ard Fheis
On 24th and 25th April 2026, Provisional Sinn Féin gathered in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast for an Ard Fheis that revealed much of the party’s present condition. This was not the gathering of a revolutionary Republican movement nor even...
An Irish Ostpolitik? Aughinish Alumina and Ireland Sanction Hypocrisy
A tactical media-NGO operation to kick the Irish government smartly in the shins over the continued processing and sale of Russian-owned alumina at Aughinish Alumina has left certain officials sweating and for good reason. Joint reporting by the Irish Times’...
Showboating to Gaza: Why the Freedom Flotilla is Bad for Palestine
Whatever about the campaigns Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran are waging against Israel, because the current flotilla winding its way to Gaza in support of the Palestiniians is strategically rudderless, it presents no threat and is of no real consequence to...
Scotland Beyond the SNP: Speaking with Alliance to Liberate Scotland
The forthcoming Scottish election is unlikely to be decided by smaller pro-independence formations. Yet some of the more interesting currents in Scottish politics are found outside the familiar SNP-dominated landscape. The Alliance to Liberate Scotland and Sovereignty point to frustration...
Scotland’s 2026 Election and the Cracking of the Yookay-An Irish Republican Perspective
For Irish readers, the most important feature of the forthcoming Scottish election may not be the familiar question of who forms the next devolved government at Holyrood, but the broader constitutional mood it reveals. Increasingly, the SNP’s politics are being...
The American Feds Have Busted the SPLC, So Why Does the Irish Independent Still Cite Them?
News of fraud charges and accusations of funding the very extremism it was designed to combat spell the probable doom of the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) as the American Department of Justice turned the screws on the once brawny...
Halal or Kosher? Religious Animal Slaughter in Ireland
For years, the issue of religious slaughter has tended to be discussed in Ireland in the broadest and crudest possible terms. Halal and kosher are lumped together. Animal welfare concerns are dismissed as bigotry by some and treated as self-evidently...
CYM Splits and Lazlo Axed: Has Ireland’s Post-Left Moment Flatlined Already?
The political firing squads have been working overtime over the past week, with news of a split inside the Stalinist Connolly Youth Movement (CYM) alongside the departure of László Molnárfi from the socialist media project Aontacht Media. But the question...