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Post by hibernicus on Jul 27, 2018 21:12:15 GMT
I would argue that the far-left often has a style of politics that is very like right-wing populism, in that they latch onto whatever grievance is going and use it to acquire support rather than to make concrete achievements. (Karl Marx actually spells out this strategy in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. There is a passage in the MANIFESTO which is often quoted to present Marx as a social reformer, but when read in context what he is actually saying is that communists should demand reforms but if any of these reforms are conceded they should immediately demand more, because the overriding aim is not to achieve particular reforms but to encourage popular discontent in order to build support for a root-and-branch revolution. This BTW is why democratic socialist or social democratic parties have generally found it necessary to kick out Leninist entryist groups - the entryists use this strategy to build support for the group even if this damages the party, guarantees years of right-wing government etc. Comrade Stalin's brilliant insight that in Germany c.1930 the Social Democratic Party was more dangerous than the Nazis, the early-80s British Bennite belief that once they had defeated the Labour Right Mrs Thatcher would be a pushover, are examples of how this strategy can misfire.) Another comparison is how they both claim to speak for the people and denounce experts and elites, when quite often despite their rhetoric they are run by small elites themselves. To go by the SWP's rhetoric you would think they were anarchists, when in fact they are run top-down by a vanguard body on the Leninist model. Those far-right groups which have a smidgeon of strategic thinking often do exactly the same thing. Nick Griffin's BNP's brief period of success came from marketing themselves as a vaguely populist party appealing to the discontented English white working-class, but the leadership's swastikas still tended to slip into view at awkward moments.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 28, 2018 22:05:50 GMT
My central grievance with Des Fennell is not that I disagree with him on quite a few specific issues (although I do). It's that he operates on the assumption that whatever he takes up is self-evidently right and that people who disagree with him are so self-evidently wrong that they need not be understood, but must only be ignored or sneered at. Let me tell you a story about why this is not only unjust but positively harmful. From about 1910 to 1960 the best-known Catholic apologeticist and academic in Ireland was a man called Alfred O'Rahilly, who was president of University College Cork in the 1940s and early 1950s. (There is a rather uncritical multi-volume biography by Fr JA Gaughan.) Commentators at the time pointed out (in public and in private) that O'Rahilly was an egotist; he treated whatever cause he took up as self-evidently right and he would never acknowledge opponents' good faith. (For example it was noted that whereas GK Chesterton always treated such figures as GB Shaw and HG Wells with respect during their controversies, O'Rahilly's critiques of them were marked by unremitting personal hostility.)
An old friend of mine (now dead) once described for me how this attitude worked out in practice. Since Alfie O'Rahilly could never entertain the possibility that he could be wrong, his circle of associates was dominated by the only people who will always tell you are right - namely toadies and flatterers. (A real friend will disagree with you sometimes, and that was what he couldn't tolerate.) When O'Rahilly retired as president of the college, the toadies and flatters all deserted him and flocked off to fawn on the new president. Alfie was genuinely hurt because he had really believed those people were his friends. That's what happens when someone refuses to entertain the possibility that they might ever be wrong about anything, and treats anyone who disagrees with him as "abnormal", not "truly human" etc. Any similarities with how the church authorities in Ireland (and elsewhere) got into the current mess is not coincidental.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 28, 2018 22:42:02 GMT
Desmond Fennell strikes me as somebody so fascinated by geography that he sees everything in terms of it.
I suppose we would all have our corresponding fascinations, and would tend to see everything through some prism.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 28, 2018 22:51:57 GMT
This post prompted me to Google Fennell a little. I was interested in this paragraph from Bob Quinn's review of Fennell's autobiography:
"It is clear that Fennell lost hope for that local movement when he left Connemara many years ago, subsequently writing: “The several thousand men and women throughout Ireland who speak and read Irish well . . . embody the Irish language alive today . . . more fully than any Gaeltacht did.”
This indicates that his thinking is not inflexible, that he can jettison lost causes. He quotes his friend Terence Brown’s dictum: “In the light of the homogeneity of a consumer society . . . social and cultural pluralism will be, before long, an entirely otiose concept . . .” "
I also believe this. I must say, I have ceased to believe in the possibility of Ireland reviving its traditional culture or becoming more distinctive. All I can see is a tidal wave of sameness covering the developed world, which will also engulf Ireland more and more. I don't even hold out much hope for populism in this regard, as it pays so little attention to culture.
I am still a nationalist, but my hopes for nationalism are much diminished.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 3, 2018 22:44:51 GMT
I more and more think Christopher Dawson had a point when he said the basic unit is the wider civilisation and not the individual nation. My big problem with Fennell is that he generally starts out with a programme he wants to have implemented, and when he finds out it can't be done exactly as he wants it he concludes nothing can be done at all, and displays utter contempt towards the people for not doing what he tells them. The academic Brian Hanley has a new (and very expensive) academic book out about the impact of the NI TRoubles on the Republic in the 1970s, and he has a couple of pages on some of the things Des Fennell wrote in AN PHOBLACHT and the SUNDAY PRESS in the 1970s. After the Dublin bombings he actually suggested this would justify setting off similar car bombs in the North to deter further attacks. I really hope Hanley has misinterpreted that. BTW the argument about whether the Gaeltacht or the urban Gaelgeoiri best embody the language goes back to the early days of the GAelic League. There was a Fr O'Reilly who wrote a book called THE NATIVE SPEAKER EXAMINED HOME, containing the priceless statement: "The native speaker is the worst enemy the language possesses, and it must be saved from him before he kills it completely".
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Post by maolsheachlann on Aug 4, 2018 14:08:12 GMT
I more and more think Christopher Dawson had a point when he said the basic unit is the wider civilisation and not the individual nation. My big problem with Fennell is that he generally starts out with a programme he wants to have implemented, and when he finds out it can't be done exactly as he wants it he concludes nothing can be done at all, and displays utter contempt towards the people for not doing what he tells them. The academic Brian Hanley has a new (and very expensive) academic book out about the impact of the NI TRoubles on the Republic in the 1970s, and he has a couple of pages on some of the things Des Fennell wrote in AN PHOBLACHT and the SUNDAY PRESS in the 1970s. After the Dublin bombings he actually suggested this would justify setting off similar car bombs in the North to deter further attacks. I really hope Hanley has misinterpreted that. BTW the argument about whether the Gaeltacht or the urban Gaelgeoiri best embody the language goes back to the early days of the GAelic League. There was a Fr O'Reilly who wrote a book called THE NATIVE SPEAKER EXAMINED HOME, containing the priceless statement: "The native speaker is the worst enemy the language possesses, and it must be saved from him before he kills it completely". In 2016 I made a big, big effort to improve my Irish, with a view to eventually using it on a regular basis. It wasn't a success and I have come to the view that, just as "it takes a village to raise a child", it takes a community to preserve a language. You can't do it solo-- you need people to speak to and it has to pervade everyday life. It makes me sad because the loss of the Irish language as an actual living language, outside a tiny minority, seems a howling loss to me.
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