Dublin’s newest art installation, a multicoloured monstrosity occupying a historic plinth in front of City Hall, has garnered deserved controversy since its unveiling yesterday. 

However, what has largely flown under the radar is the anti-Irish messaging laced into the artwork. 

Titled ‘RGB Sconce, Hold Your Nose’, the stated purpose of the statues playdough like colour scheme, according to creator Alan Phelan, is to ‘signify the diversity of modern Dublin’. 

However, the explanation given on Dublin City Council’s Sculpture Dublin website regarding the subtitle of the piece is far, far more concerning.

“The subtitle of the work ‘Hold Your Nose’ refers to a collection of ‘sanitary songs’ that was published during the 1884 Dublin Castle Scandal, located in the adjacent building complex which was the site of the British colonial administration.”

“Irish Nationalists revealed homosexual activities of high-ranking British civil servants, using this as proof of corrupt and immoral British rule. The poetry pamphlet instructs ‘decent men’ to ‘hold their noses’ so not to breath in the perceived debauchery of the castle.”

“Reclaiming this little-known history and subverting this olfactory phrase into the visual realm, builds in a self-critique where flamboyance and failure are united to reveal different narratives about the past.”

While merely being referred to in this excerpt as ‘homosexual activities’, the Dublin Castle Scandal was in reality far more than that.

An early triumph of then nascent Nationalist journalism, in 1884, the newspaper United Irishman newspaper blew the lid on a story involving high ranking British officials secretly engaging in gay sex with a wide variety of different men.

Further investigation, both private and public, unveiled an underground sex and prostitution ring operating right across Dublin. 

The entire scandal resulted in prosecutions, resignations, and ultimately a massive PR victory for Irish Nationalists at the time, undermining the authority of British rule in minds both at home and abroad.

With this in mind, the notion of ‘reclaiming’ the history of the event is extremely ominous, especially when coming from a state-subsidized body. 

Regardless of how you feel about homosexuality, to paint the victory of nationalists of old as something that requires reclaiming is greatly disturbing. The notion that a public body may be taking the side of corrupt British imperial officials over those who fought for Ireland goes beyond standard west-brit antics.

To value such recent moral miscellany over the historical struggle for the nation reveals a value shift away from the local and towards a rootless, globalist mindset. The mindset which has created numerous crises in Dublin and beyond, such as homelessness and power shortages.

What typifies this point is that the project this sculpture is part of, Sculpture Dublin, is costing the Irish taxpayer €600,000. Is there not a better way to spend public funds?

Perhaps not within a globalist mindset.

Posted by Daithí O'Duibhne

8 Comments

  1. Ireland is the poster child rainbow 🌈 nation .

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  2. Mary Stasia Concannon 01/10/2021 at 4:44 am

    The Brits circulated the Black Diaries with the intention
    of villifying Roger Casement before they hanged him. For decades Ireland petitioned for the return of his body, and finally were able to honor him with a state funeral and burial in Glasnevin among the heroes of the Rising.

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  3. Mary Stasia Concannon 01/10/2021 at 4:50 am

    “Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours…then surely it is a braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.”

    Roger Casement

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    1. Josie Bowie 01/10/2021 at 3:01 pm

      Very apt.

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    2. Muriel Kinsella 05/10/2021 at 10:01 am

      Spot on! The above quote has the same validity now as it did over a hundred years ago.There is nothing new under the sun.

      Reply

  4. Those tax payers funds could be put to better use, rather than being used to promulgate an LGBT Subculture with expensive monuments costing over half a million euros from the tax payers pockets.

    The funds could be put to more productive causes, such as improving the kitchen centres around ireland that feed the homeless, by purchasing cooking facilities, vans, and cars for them to reach the homeless, providing them with good nutrition. Those funds could be used to provide irish families stuck in cluttered inhumane hotels, with a warm meal, to make sure they and their family are getting their adequate nutrition.

    These people should not be blamed for their predicament in life. The blame should directed towards the unaccountable reckless nature of globalist government in power in ireland, that panders to international agendas that are eroding the national soverignty of ireland, and the state coffers, creating a deplorable quality of life for its citizens.

    A reckless class of government that is being constantly voted in by a clueless electorate whose state broadcaster censors the opposition, spreads globalist propaganda on almost every news cycle, and capitulates to globalist agendas in a form of bias in their TV-programming, that can not be seen as fair non-bias journalism from any neutral observer. At least some countries are more balanced with the coverage. Ireland is not, as the state broadcaster is a form of political wing of the government, a broadcaster that does not ask the HARD QUESTIONS! A broadcaster that sucks tax payers pockets dry, and overpays their presenters to lecture the irish on everything globalist.

    The mismanaging of Irelands state finances should be seen as astronomically detrimental to the future of irelands economy and its citizens. The politicans in management of the state finances are not qualified to be in charge of such an asset or any state assets for that matter.

    The massive sums of money being used to develop, and promulgate perceieved globalist ideals, in the form of funding mass-immigration pushing NGO quangos to the tune of millions annually, is costing the irish tax payers a FORTUNE, and is creating a severe housing shortage. The tax payer is in no position to afford it all. The continous use of tax payers money to invest in the mismanagement of mass-immigration that creates housing shortages is not a healthy model. They then have the cheek to campaign for hate-speech laws so people will feel impeded to speak out freely. NGO quangos funding needs to be stopped. There are Better use cases for such funding such as the homeless crisis.

    Ireland badly needs a first amendment speech law, not censorship around freedom of speech. Government should fear the people, not people fear the government. The people are the governments masters. The current irish government are unqualified and should be voted out in the next election. They are unemployable!

    Ireland is becoming heavily communised with globalism group-think.

    This model should be seen as an unsustainable model for the future health of the economy, and a detrimental obstacle for the improvement of the housing crisis. The housing, and rent crisis is a result of all the mass-immigration that ireland can not facilitate. Ireland does not have the room or resources for such percieved globalist idealism. It is a small country, and should be managed like a small country, and its real natural assets should be used for the good of the irish people not foreign interests.

    Vote NP and Irish Freedom Party to bring in balance and start asking the hard questions. They will wipe the smirks off the faces of an out of control and reckless government in the oireachtas. The bias state broadcaster will have no choice then, they will have to cover it, irish minds will be open, nationalism will prevail.

    Nationalism is an obstacle to globalists, therefore, vote nationalist parties and impede one world governance dystopian communist tyranny.

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  5. Entartete kunst.

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  6. “Hold your noses.” Is this thing supposed to be a visual representation of a fart? It is clearly intended to provoke disgust and shove it in the public’s faces, whether they like it or not, as if to proclaim “we rule you, and there is nothing you can do about it!”

    Everything the left does is to subvert, degrade and insult the things which are wholesome and just.

    Reply

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