Category: Ireland

CERD19: Cat Lady Totalitarianism On Display

The following is the second in a multipart series examining the influence of Ireland’s inordinately sized NGO sector in the realm of policy formation, particularly in the areas of hate speech legislation and anti-racism advocacy. This segment casts an eye...

/ 12/12/2019

Ireland is Entering Late-Stage Liberalism

Ireland and the Rumblings of Populism The quick-fire legislation towards hate speech early next year is a clear signifier that the powers that be in Ireland are becoming rather rattled over an as of yet non-existing populist insurgency. While right-wing...

/ 01/12/2019

Can Fianna Fáil be Co-opted

How does the right attain political power in Ireland? The options must be considered and the most efficient option adopted. There are small parties, which one could join and or vote for; or there are the established parties which could...

/ 20/11/2019

The University Times’s Bugging Scandal and Ireland’s Emerging Media Class

“I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.” -William Butler Yeats Remembering Buttergate For the campus reactionary,...

/ 10/11/2019

Defending Dev: Irish Neutrality in WW2 was justified

Dev’s Ireland dodges a bullet Amid the perpetual turmoil of Brexit, a historic occasion passed by almost unnoticed in the Irish public square. The Emergency Powers Act passed through the Oireachtas on the 3rd of September 1939 de facto commenced...

/ 29/09/2019

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

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

Fake Controversy and the High Court’s Citizenship Ruling

On the 18th of July a calamity happened, or so the immigration lawyers would have you believe. Mr Justice Max Barrett, in a landmark High Court ruling, held that the Minister for Justice could not offer exemptions to a clause...

/ 21/07/2019

Ireland’s Emerging Rightist Media Nexus

This is intended to be a resource on Irish-oriented right-wing media platforms, most typically YouTube channels, but also encompassing other formats.  There is an undeniable thirst for information sources outside of the narrow sliver of ideological choices available from the...

/ 09/07/2019

Thoughts on Irish Taxation

There is much discussion about the tax code; whether it is broad based and whether we should be running surpluses. It is assumed that surpluses are the definitive measure of fiscal responsibility, though this isn't always the case. Governments ran...

/ 22/06/2019