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Post by hibernicus on Jun 18, 2009 12:08:00 GMT
I have just been reading Desmond Fennell's latest book, IRELAND AFTER THE END OF WESTERN CIVILISATION. Fennell does tend to have a certain readership among what may be called conservative or traditionalist Catholics, and there was a time in the 1980s when I admired him myself. I have long since lost any such admiration, for the following reasons: (1) His work seems to me to display an intellectual incoherence which reflects a profound egotism. A good analysis is one which can be reproduced, developed and built on; he seems to take the view that whatever he says means exactly what he means it to say, nothing more or less, and that anyone who paraphrases or summarises his statements or tries to derive underlying principles from them is necessarily a liar. (2) He demands that his analysis of events should be treated not as an interpretation but as a simple statement of the way things are, and thus not open to debate or questioning. (3) He shows no interest in why people might hold views other than his own; he simply treats them as the dupes and servants of power.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 18, 2009 12:26:43 GMT
Here's a Fennellism to get started with - AFTER THE END OF WESTERN CIVILISATION p.55. Fennell is describing a meeting in which an EU official talks about various post-Soviet republics with the implication that it would be a good thing if they eventually joined the EU.
Fennell comments that it should be obvious that "this snooping around the borders of Russia, and in territories which were until a few years ago within Russia's domain, would annoy Russia. Or rather, it would continue that provoking of Russia which had followed the collapse of Communism, when the EU and NATO, with American encouragement, had set to gobbling up, from Estonia to Bulgaria, as much of the previous Soviet empire as they could. And this continuing annoying of Russia would cause Russia to make more of those annoyed and bellicose noises which, in response to such previous encroachments, it has been making for some years past; with this in turn causing the western politicians and mass media to make more objecting noises about a revived Russian aggressiveness and imperialism! Was there some nostalgia in the EU and the West generally for the East-versus- west confrontation of the Cold War? Some insane urge to add that to the West's confrontation with radical Islam?"
First of all, Fennell treats the eastward expansion of the EU and Nato simply as a matter of unilateral aggression. Apparently it does not occur to him, or he does not see it as important, that those former units of the Soviet Empire which joined the EU and NATO did so of their own volition as the result of decisions freely taken by democratically elected governments.
Second, he assumes that Russia is legitimately entitled to dominate those states which were formerly part of the Soviet Empire, which took and retained them by force, and to veto their involvement with the EU and NATO - and that the EU acts wrongly in not accepting this Russian veto. This is pretty rich coming from someone who blames all the shortcomings of post-independence Ireland on neo-colonialism.
Third, he completely fails to acknowledge reasons other than an EU lust for Lebensraum for its own sake as motives for EU enlargement. Possible motives would include (a) belief that unless the new states can be incorporated within an overarching legal-military framework they will drift into conflicts over borders, minorities etc and that this would not only lead to much local bloodshed and suffering but draw in outside powers and spark wider conflicts (b) fear of Russian revanchism, which Fennell treats as entirely unreasonable and imaginary. If anyone is tempted to share this view of Russia as invariably peaceful and benevolent I would recommend the Polish film KATYN, which goes on release tomorrow (c) Belief that EU membership will encourage the survival of democracy and prevent a return to authoritarian regimes such as afflicted the region in the interwar period. The validity of these views can be debated, but Fennell does not even acknowledge their existence - he simply treats his own views as self-evident.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jun 18, 2009 13:10:53 GMT
Like Hibernicus, I went through a period of admiring Desmond Fennell. When I met him around 1991, I thought him already an old man - but he will only turn 80 this year. I went to his website: www.desmondfennell.com/index.htm to glean what I could find. We can all be counter cultural and Fennell's insights due to his travels give him a very broad perspective. But what he is coming out with is mad stuff. I did see an eccentric whiff from him years ago. He seems to have been consumed in self-belief.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 19, 2009 17:51:16 GMT
A lot of his madder elements are already visible in his 1980s work, though the intensity of his anti-Americanism is new. His view that Hiroshima marks an absolute break with Western civilisation and the beginning of something new and profoundly more amoral than anything that went before is overdone, though there is something in it. There was always an element of amorality, Machiavellianism and Realpolitik in classical Western civilisation. Civilisations are always more incoherent than he lets on. I don't think the world we live in now is an anti-civilisation or uniquely meaningless as he makes out; I think there are differences between then and now but the divide is more gradual than he admits and the present more the product of the past than he lets on. Similarly, he does have a point about the inner emptinesses of consumer capitalism and its long-term problems, but insofar as he has it has been said better by Theodore Dalrymple and Peter Hitchens. They have their own problems, but they do attempt to engage with the world around them; Fennell has simply laid down his own self-referential framework and refuses to depart from it.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 23, 2009 12:13:54 GMT
Another problem I have with Fennell is that when discussing Irish nationalism he always starts from the premise that it is self-evident and that any criticism of it is illegitimate per se. For example, his explanation for the economic failures of the post-independence state is simply "We had not achieved it owing to the persistence after independence of the self-doubt planted in our deeply colonised souls". Perhaps there is something to be said for this view - but it is also at least arguable that it failed because of the economic limitations of a policy of self-sufficiency, or because Irish Catholic/nationalist ideology identified modernity with Britishness and tried (or professed) to resist it indiscriminately. These views may or may not be incorrect, but they are not self-evidently wrong. Fennell just assumes the truth of his preferred view and makes no effort to prove it.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 24, 2009 9:29:52 GMT
There seems to be an immensely destructive dogmatism about Fennell coupled with a lack of awareness of how few people out there who take him seriously, other than himself.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 25, 2009 11:32:17 GMT
The central problem with Fennell seems to me that he sees everything in terms of a projection of the will. Change, for him, does not come about through the cumulative effects of a number of smaller changes whose long-term implications were not necessarily foreseen, but is always and everywhere due to somebody or some group sitting down to consciously change the rules of civilisation. Hence, according to Fennell in BEYOND NATIONALISM, we can achieve a community of communities if we only draw up the right constitutional arrangements. Denis Johnston's play THE OLD LADY SAYS NO has an actor who comes to think he is Robert Emmet (he is acting in a romantic melodrama and accidentally hit on the head) who proclaims at one point "We can make Ireland anythign we want if we only want it enough". The Fennell attitude to a T. A nice example of this is in the new book. He calls for the establishment of a pilgrimage route Sli Padhraig based on the Camino to Compostella; the fact that the Camino existed from mediaeval times and has been revived in recent years, while his Sli Padhraig would have to be invented from scratch does not faze him in the slightest.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 6, 2009 13:27:48 GMT
Here's another point. In the new book, when denouncing the Spire (and the recent installations by an artist showing silhouette-figures walking) on O'Connell Street, Fennell presents these as exemplifying the soullessness of consumer capitalist Ireland, exemplified by its lack of heroes; as further evidence of this he remarks that no new statues of individual heroes have been put up on O'Connell Street since Jim Larkin in the late 1960s. Er, Des, this may be true of the central spine of O'Connell Street, but if you had turned your head as you glared so indignantly at the Spike, you would have seen a statue of James Joyce on the corner of Talbot Street and O'Connell Street, which was put up about 15 years ago.
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Post by assisi on Oct 25, 2010 21:54:03 GMT
I like Fennell and broadly agree with his analysis of what he sees as the 2nd American Revolution originating from American liberals, the big state policies of Roosevelt's New Deal, through the mass murder of Hiroshima right up to the present day.
He says that the glue that kept this 2nd American revolution together was the ability of the people in America and Western Europe to do things and to buy things. When the money runs out he predicts social disorder - as there is no underlying agreed values that the people can cling to, agree on and make sense of. I think he is being proved correct.
I also admire the fact that at 80 or so he still has the stomach for a fight in which the liberal consensus has control of RTE and the Irish Times and can chose to ignore you if it doesn't agree with your views.
His emphasis on particular key events, Hiroshima for example, as landmark historical turning points may be debatable but his final analysis is sound.
I do think that you could be right that there is a streak of pride working within him as he took Heaney to task when Heaney could do no wrong in the eyes of many. For that alone I quite like his gumption.
It is also worth reading in his collection 'Cutting to the Point' a short essay 'Regarding Mark Patrick Hederman' where he tries to engage in a discussion with Hederman only for the said discussion to deteriorate into an undignified squabble. Funny and sad!
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 1, 2010 11:57:45 GMT
My own take on the Fennell-Hederman discussion is that it reflects their mutual intellectual self-indulgence. Quite simply each of them dismisses views which disagree with theirs as inherently inauthentic, so neither of them can achieve dialogue which requires that you accept the other person's autonomy as a starting-point. (Hederman winds up by calling on his readers to steal Fennell's pamphlet from libraries and use it as toilet paper - very civilised, O Abbot of Glenstal.)
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 14, 2012 1:24:35 GMT
Trying to get this thread going again. I still think Fennell is important, but it is symptomatic of his lack of interest in intellectual give and take that he has no comboxes on his website. There is a "contact me" facility, but this of course has Fennell himself as its only viewer and criticisms made of him are not visible to other readers- the idea that his critics might have any function other than to enable Fennell himself to express his views more effectively is dismissed out of hand.
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Post by assisi on Apr 14, 2012 19:41:18 GMT
Trying to get this thread going again. I still think Fennell is important, but it is symptomatic of his lack of interest in intellectual give and take that he has no comboxes on his website. There is a "contact me" facility, but this of course has Fennell himself as its only viewer and criticisms made of him are not visible to other readers- the idea that his critics might have any function other than to enable Fennell himself to express his views more effectively is dismissed out of hand. Hibernicus, the lack of a combox may be due to his not having the resources to set one up? I communicated with him several time over the last few years via email and on at least one occasion he has collated a set of replies he received on a particular esay and sent them all to respondents. Most of the replies were sympathetic to his opinion but some were not. I had a quick look through the Eucharistic Congress website to see if he was to be one of the speakers but didn't find anything. I think that he could be an interesting contributor regarding the Church and our current 'liberal consumerist' culture.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 15, 2012 21:28:47 GMT
Fair enough - I seem to have done him an injustice. There are types of free software which allow for visible comments - ProBoards (this platform) is one, LiveJournal (which Fabio Barbieri uses) is another - but given his age he may not be up to installing them. I certainly couldn't and I am a good deal younger than him - I didn't set this forum up, I came to it after Michael G had already established it.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 23, 2012 21:01:05 GMT
Here is the latest piece of Fennellite lunacy, which appeared in the IRISH TIMES letters column earlier this week. The reasons why I call it lunacy rather than simply disagreeing with it are as follows: (1) He places all the blame on the British and Americans, as if they had originated the revolt instead of merely encouraging it once it had started (and indeed some of its supporters are complaining that the British and Americans are not doing enough to help them). Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are also backing the rebels, and Russia and Iran are backing the Assad government, but according to Des Fennell the only foreign intervention that counts is the expressions of sympathy for the rebels by the British and Americans, apparently because he considers "Ameranglia" an universal anti-civilisation and the source of all evil. (2) "Any government would put down an armed rebellion" says Dr Fennell. Of course he does not mention the possibility that the government's own repressive actions helped to cause the rebellion. This from someone who used to complain that condemnations of the IRA failed to acknowledge British responsibility in provoking it, and who recently suggested the world ought to arm the Palestinians so they could retaliate on equal terms to Israeli attacks, but apparently in Fennellworld there is one law for the Brits and Israelis, and another which gives Basher Assad carte blanche. (3) The suggestion that the rebels ought to accept the government's offer of negotiations is pretty ridiculous, given that Assad has pretty clearly shown that a ceasefire would be used to repress the rebels and he cannot be counted on to observe any concessions he might make. There is a case to be made for the view that it would be better for Assad to survive (on the view that he might be better for minorities, and on the Hobbesian argument that it's better to have a dictator, however oppressive, who can preserve internal peace rather than have a weak government and anarchy). Anyone who makes that argument should be prepared to accept a lot of blood on their hands. I would have more respect for Des Fennell if he came straight out and made that argument, rather than engaging in evasions and weasel words to express what amounts to the same thing. This comment of his is highly reminiscent of his view that Russia ought to have been allowed to block states formerly part of the Soviet empire from joining the EU and NATO, which I noted on this thread some years ago. www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2012/0815/1224322198325.htmlEXTRACT Sir, – I am dismayed by the eagerness of the Americans and British to encourage poorly armed young Syrians to continue battling against the might of the Syrian army, thereby bringing about not only the deaths of many of them but also the collateral misery and deaths of many civilians. Naturally, the Syrian state must try to suppress an armed rebellion. If foreign meddling in Syrian affairs is to occur at all, then surely it should take the form of urging the rebels to accept the government’s offer of negotiations. Yours, etc, Dr DESMOND FENNELL Sydney Parade Avenue, Dublin 4.
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Post by shane on Aug 25, 2012 15:26:08 GMT
You are overinterpreting his letter. He doesn't fault the Americans and British for originating the revolt, he blames them for encouraging it. It's quite a common belligerent tactic for an enemy power to forment or assist internal subversives in order to undermine that state (like the French or the Spanish did with Irish rebels). The US recently cleared the way for Americans to donate funds to the Syrian rebels and some politicians want the US government to actively arm them. The United States has long been hostile to the Syrian regime (Bush included it as part of the 'Axis of Evil') so it's not unreasonable to suggest they might have an interest in undermining it. It's a legitimate object of criticism.
As for "Fennellite lunacy", is there really a need to get so personally abusive? Why not simply criticize his point of view without the insults?
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