All posts by Ciaran Brennan

The Connolly Youth Movement is where the Left goes to die

“I have long been of opinion that the Socialist movement elsewhere was to a great extent hampered by the presence in its ranks of faddists and cranks, who were in the movement, not for the cause of Socialism, but because...

/ 23/09/2019

Central Bank Wages War on Dublin’s Cityscape

A relative oasis of tranquillity, Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance commemorates Ireland’s patriotic dead and provides some uplift in a benighted north inner city. Even if one has to step over half a dozen heroin addicts on the way there, through...

/ 08/09/2019

Introducing the Irish NGO Complex

The following is a multipart series examining the role of Ireland’s NGO (non-governmental organisation) sector in influencing journalism and policy formation, as well means to combat it. So far in the eyes of this author, criticism of the NGO lobby...

/ 15/08/2019

Time for YFG to Grow Some Teeth

Imagine the following scenario: a high ranking member of the Labour Party Youth group attends a foreign conference of international socialists. The conference, while banal in their eyes, plays host to a variety of far left Stalinists and Marxist-Lenninists sympathetic...

/ 06/08/2019

Irish Republicanism has Exhausted Itself

Twenty years of peace has done more to harm the fortunes of Irish republicanism than thirty years of warfare. Republicanism in 2019 finds itself between the Scylla and Charybdis, of bungling dissidents and a post-nationalist Sinn Féin. The botched murder...

/ 13/07/2019

EU-Mercosur Deal is a Symptom of Neoliberal Exhaustion

The culmination of twenty years of intermittent trade negotiations, the EU-Mercosur trade deal stands to open up fissures in Irish life. Aiming to liberalise trade barriers between the EU and the four membered South American bloc over a ten year...

/ 04/07/2019

The Sunday Business Post’s Brown Scare

{This article is written in response to the Sunday Business Post piece “Ireland’s Alt Right: The people building an empire online” 16/6/19 detailing the apparent rise of an online far right presence in Ireland supported by foreign actors} If Ireland...

/ 17/06/2019

Irish Anti-Trump Hysteria is Futile

Plenty of steam has (and will be) given off this week for the visit of President Trump to Ireland on the tail-end of his visit to Europe. Almost three years into his term, Ireland’s progressive classes have failed to properly...

/ 06/06/2019

Ireland Shouldn’t Care About Palestine or Israel

The Irish have a misplaced sense of nostalgia when it comes to Palestine. As the heirs of an anti-colonial past we tend to view contemporary politics through a lens uncommon to most Europeans. From the Plantations to the northern conflict,...

/ 18/05/2019