“Revisionism became a purge, a way of sanitising the Irish past to make it compatible with contemporary liberalism.”-Richard Kearney
Does Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc see Blueshirts in his cornflakes each morning?
The left-republican academic continues the media tour of his newly released “analysis” of what he terms the far right, tracing 2023’s Dublin Riots to no less a figure than the Free State’s first police commissioner, Eoin O’Duffy.
While serious analysis has linked the riots to a combination of online disinformation, preexisting delinquency, narcopolitics and the post-COVID dilapatude of the north inner city where our dear native gurriers live check to jowl with migrant slumland Ó Ruairc is more historic in approach to the causes of the riots.
1920s Treatyite politics.
Spinning a historic yarn that would make a PBP activist blush, Ó Ruairc chronicles the Irish (far) right as being a solely anti-republican phenomenon. Half wanting to cooperate with the UDA, half wanting to restore a Q-anon-driven Catholic theocracy in whatever Marxist worldview that makes sense.
Think a Jimmy Adair crossover with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Burkean’s recent review of Ó Ruairc’s literary offerings featured at a recent book launch at Hodges and Fidges, where the arguments of the piece were cooly dismissed.
To recap, the article argued that the rather rushed book was as selective as it was sloppy, ignoring swathes of 20th-century history by an academic with a political agenda stronger than his objectivity.
Attempting to draw ideological lines of continuity between Combat18, Eoin O’Duffy, and locals torching an IPAS in Cabra is a mean and cynical feat, as Ó Ruairc continues to run the media circuit promoting his recent work.
From Pease and Plunkett chit-chatting about restoring a Kaiser-backed High-Kingship to the defenderist wings of the Provisional movement (itself criticised by Marxists in the Workers’ Party as being reactionary), Irish republicanism as a fluid, broad church ideology has clear ‘right-wing strands.’
If anything, the decades-old Sinn Féin practice of mobilising working-class communities in Dublin for anti-state actions extending into the water charges protests set the legitimising groundwork for the recent agitation.
Just like northern nationalists slipping the leash from a left-leaning republican leadership in the 1960s Dublin proles are moving away from the fake and gay containment zone of the left and returning to their actual militant roots.
It all seems rather familiar to the Troubles-era historical debates about Irish nationalism, whereby revisionists (from the left, right, and centre) attempted to deflate separatist urges right as Nordie nationalists were trying to keep the wolf from the door.
In this instance, Ó Ruairc has replaced Conor Cruise O’Brien in his metapolitical attempts to case Irish republicanism in the 20th century as a franchised wing of left-liberalism attempting to undercut the legitimacy of the men of violence in Coolock, East Wall, and Parnell Square.
The intellectual battle lines are being formed for the next generation of history-centred public debate in Ireland, with red revisionists getting their first media-fueled outing by Ó Ruairc.
Let’s hope Brian Hanley makes a better go of it.
Irish Freedom…NOT…Ireland’s free-Dumb
… – just like Sham Fein… IS Globalist …NOT Republican
We all know now that the Globalist Parties of FF/ FG/ GRN including others is Totalitarian
….but we’ve let… The Far Left…Marxist…Globalist…Open Borders…Replantation Of Ireland
…R O I …Woke Degenerate…Abortionist…Child Abuser…SF…HIDEbehind – Republican Utd.Irl
Tomorrow – or today where you are – is the 109th anniversary, falling within Easter Week this year. A terrible beauty was born.
Holy Easter Week – The Resurrection – Ireland – A New Pope …nothing left to chance
@ Gearon,
Yes my Dear friend,as always your ON THE BALL and wide awake too in America, for a Man
of few words Gearon you always Hit The Nail On The Head and for me its the equivilent of
reading Chapter and Verse,always a pleasure.
Their is no coincidence here…its the right place at the right time…and every word profound.
I wrote in detail last Easter…and every Easter is A New Beginning,thank you.
Great to see O’Ruairc is getting his balderdash and rameis publicly challenged! He looks ill at ease in the photo: he knows he is selling a fake narrative.
Eoin O’Duffy was a particularly complex character. He actually led men and fought both in the Irish streets and n the Spanish Civil War for the Franco side.
https://www.theirishstory.com/2018/10/24/gods-battle-oduffys-irish-brigade-in-the-spanish-civil-war/
“At sea, the volunteers were picked up by a German ship, flying the Nazi swastika and shipped over to fight in the civil war in Spain.
At Salamanca they met their leader Eoin O’Duffy, who paraded them with the ‘Franco flag’, the Nazi banner, the Italian fascist flag and the Irish tricolour.[1]”
The reference is to a book by a man who fought under him there.
I was interested to read your opinions there, great to read different viewpoints. On the point you make about “no less a figure than the Free State’s first police commissioner, Eoin O’Duffy.”
O’Duffy was quite a complex character. There seem to be a wide range of opinions, including a number which are not very complementary.
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/booze-free-gardai-wish-of-drunken-fascist-chief/26419326.html
https://presspack.rte.ie/2006/12/05/hidden-history-founding-fathers-eoin-oduffy-an-irish-fascist/
https://www.theirishstory.com/2018/10/24/gods-battle-oduffys-irish-brigade-in-the-spanish-civil-war/#_edn1
“At sea, the volunteers were picked up by a German ship, flying the Nazi swastika and shipped over to fight in the civil war in Spain.
At Salamanca they met their leader Eoin O’Duffy, who paraded them with the ‘Franco flag’, the Nazi banner, the Italian fascist flag and the Irish tricolour.[1]”
Brian Hanley has researched the period though I found he has a few key misunderstandings about this period which he doesn’t support with evidence. e.g. he is of the opinion that the Nazis planned to invade Ireland, and various Irish people were involved with planning that, a view which is not supported by the interviews with the German high command and other evidence including the plan he named.