Category: Ireland
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’...
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...
Continuity Under Strain: How Irish Republicanism Navigated the Emergency
The period between 1938 and the end of the Second World War represents one of the most severe tests faced by the Irish Republican tradition in the twentieth century. It was not a period of decisive advance, nor of final...
Will Fianna Fáil’s Zoomer Golden Boys Oust Martin?
Reports of Micheál Martin’s political demise have been repeatedly overstated in the post-Covid period. The Leesideleader has managed to endure, despite recurring unease among Fianna Fáil’s upper ranks even up until the Jim Gavin fiasco. However, that run of resilience...
Ciarán O’Connor’s Iranian Bots: Time for Irish Media to Register ISD as Foreign Agents
The Irish Times op-ed pages have long enjoyed the rare distinction of irritating both left and right, largely through its habit of quietly importing the anxieties of British securocrats and repackaging them as native concerns. From ritualised scoldings about Ireland’s...