National Identity

[Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha]

This topic has been a lifelong interest of mine, going back to when I was 8 or 9 at the oldest and I see some of the concerns I had for years articulated by John Waters in today's Irish Times: www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0914/1224324008802.html

Noteworthy is the fact that the murdered Dublin RIRA leader Alan Ryan (and his killing is wrong too - whatever punishment we might think he merited) appealed to the legacy of the 'nine hunger strikers'. The writer pointed out there were ten and Ryan couldn't name any. Most people can manage at least Bobby Sands. Whereas my personal nationalism does not appeal to Bobby Sands MP or Francis Hughes or Raymond McCreesh (whose brother is PP in Omeath, Co Louth) or the INLA's Patsy O'Hara or Ciarán O'Doherty TD or Martin Hurson (I can recall Charles Haughey, just out of power, saying his death was solely the fault of the British Government) or Joe McDonnell (which is as many as I can remember without wikipedia), it does appeal to a pretty broad aspect of the history and culture of this country, beginning with the fabulous pre-Celtic passage tombs in the Boyne Valley, Lough Crew, Carrowbeg in Sligo and elsewhere; centred on the identity forged after St Patrick's mission which brought about the Church we now have which survived horrendous persecution of several centuries and which brought the faith to nations and even continents from its earliest days; to our literature, sacred and profane, which comprises a substantial body in at least four languages with fragments in others - even though much of the finest writing in recent centuries comes from the Anglo-Irish tradition and some is very anti-clerical - in a weird way I have pride (not in equal measure) in both Ulysses and Dracula; to our music, once praised by the Cambro-Norman misanthrope Giraldus Cambrensis, which has made its effects felt on several continents; to the fact our country was at various times a refuge for different reasons to geniuses such as Georg Friedrich Handel, Erwin Schrödinger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Heinrich Böll (there are others, I know); to achievements as diverse as Walton's Nobel physics prize and Katie Taylor's Olympic Gold medal; to the achievements of the Irish abroad from St Columbanus to Ambrosio O'Higgins (once I was among the guests at a pre-wedding reception drinks in the Austrian military academy after a wedding in the chapel. There were portraits of Holy Roman Imperial/Austro-Hungarian generals on the wall; I was standing under one of a Nugent from Westmeath; in the achievements of people of Irish ancestry across the world, even those who are not so obvious like Charles de Gaulle, who had a grandmother from Co Meath. This is an inexhaustive list and no doubt the rest of you will come up with things I haven't considered. In case you think I have missed the point, the seventeenth century neo-scholastics like Luke Wadding and Aodh Mac Aingil are particular points of pride - no doubt Luke Wadding had his reasons for turning down the papacy, but pride would be difficult to contain had he accepted.

For all that, I would hope my Irish patriotism would be like Solzhenitsyn's Russian patriotism - that it sees the faults, problems and even evil in the system, and one condemns it. It is the patriotism that seeks one's country to perfect itself. Perfection itself is impossible and perfectionism can be very destructive, but that doesn't absolve one from the urge to improve.

Improvement is precisely the point I will emphasise. The Alan Ryans of this world thrive in atmospheres of ignorance and the type of nationalism they profess, which has no basis, is a short cut to fascism. On the other hand, most other products of an education system which does not inculcate a healthy patriotism will be indifferent. One will find the only thing that I mention above which might register is the Katie Taylor gold. The fact is there is more to life than popular culture, and if school children aren't shown that, it is at a risk of more Alan Ryan's appearing.

There is also a huge gap in religious education. Aside from the fact militant atheism is thriving on this, as is indifferentism (more so), those with an interest are gravitating into the sort of groups I list under weird new movements. I think the same process is at work; that the fruits of ignorance are antipathy, indifference and fanaticism.

[maolsheachlann]

Personally, my patriotism, or national feeling, is not necessarily rooted in a notion of "Irishness" so much (although I certainly do have an ideal of Irishness) as a belief that national identity per se is a good thing, that a world full of distinctive national cultures is more interesting than a global monoculture, or a world of superficial cultural differences. I feel I should celebrate my Irishness, and play my part in keeping Ireland distinctive from other nations, in the same way that I would want a Canadian to do the same for Canada, or an Australian to do the same for Australia. If I went to those countries, I would want to find a vibrant and distinctive national culture there.

I like the part in Orthodoxy where Chesterton says that true patriotism-- including the cosmic patriotism which is a primary loyalty to life itself-- doesn't need reasons. Just in the same way that you love your family not because of their accomplishments but because they are yours.

Having said that, of course I am proud of many particular things about Ireland-- our reputation as good talkers, our poets and especially our writers (especially Yeats, the greatest English language of all time), our invention of Halloween, our ancient civilization, our sense of humour, our missionaries and reputation for chivalrous military service, and many rather intangible things. Those are almost at random.

I think Irish people can become self-congratulatory at times, but is that really so bad? Every mother thinks her baby is the most beautiful in the world. It would seem wrong for national sentiment to be too sober and objective-- as long as it doesn't become actually blind and distorting.

[maolsheachlann]

The anecdote about Alan Ryan reminds me about an incident I witnessed on a bus to Ballymun-- somebody was smoking cannabis at the back, which is not unusual, but what was unusual was that a spunky middle-aged lady confronted them and phoned the gardaí. (I am ashamed to say I kept my head down.) Another loutish fellow who was there, and who wasn't smoking cannabis or sitting with the junkies but seems to have sided with them, got into a rather incoherent argument with the woman and kept saying, "Tiocfaidh ár lá!", presumably as some generalised slogan of rebelliousness. The woman started addressing him in Irish and he was completely flummoxed.

[Askel McThurkill]

Love the story about the Ballymun bus.

Writing with a Gaelicised Norse name, I can say the Irish identity is more complex than we give it credit for, although at present we have our first significant influx of immigration since William of Orange's day.

I remember Ronnie Drew presented an interesting series on RTE in the 1970s called 'Irishmen and Irishwomen' in which we heard about off-beat Irish figures such as Charles Wogan (who escorted Princess Clementina Sobieska to marry King James III & VIII and was later governor of La Mancha) or Captain Myles Walter Keogh or John Field the composer. More show up through Sunday Miscellaney, whether Lola Montes, mistress to King Ludwig I of Bavaria or St Thomas Aquinas' tutor, Petrus de Hiberniae (there was a Franciscan Jacobus de Hiberniae who reached China before Marco Polo). There is much to take pride in.

[maolsheachlann]

These are some of the things I take pride in as an Irishman:

Red lemonade, the sport of road bowling, Wren Boys (though I've never seen them), the invention of Hallowe'en (as mentioned before), Irish street and patriotic ballads (apparently there were a flood of ballads written about Katy Taylor), Ireland's Own, our world-beating per capita consumption of tea, brightly painted house fronts, our high proportion of redheads, our beautiful drizzly and grey-skied climate, Aran sweaters, the high value we have traditionally placed on education and culture.

Things I don't take pride in as an Irishman:

The tricolour (boring), Temple Bar, the poetry of Seamus Heaney, the phrase "the New Irish", Dragon's Den, Mary Robinson, Roddy Doyle, the fact that our pub names are so boring compared to that of wonderful English "The Moon Under Water" type pub names, ugly anglicized Irish place names like Ballybunion, self-conscious and self-parodic use of terms like "at all, at all" and "to be sure, to be sure", and "the craic".

One thing I changed my mind about: the Spire of O Connell Street. Used to hate it, have come to like it.

I've kept religion out of it, since I do worry that "Faith of our Fathers" sentimentality (while not at all bad in itself) can sometimes make faith seem like a mere heirloom. But of course I am fiercely proud of Ireland's Catholic heritage.

[hibernicus]

One point which strikes me about Alan Ryan is that earlier in the century nationalism/republican tended to present itself in terms of a pre-existing national identity which was seen as being repressed and needing adequate political-cultural expression. Nowadays, it seems to me, republicanism/nationalism has a much shorter memory, if it has any memory at all, and presents itself as an outburst of angry protest without much positive content - protest almost as an end in itself. (To be fair, this has always been an element; the story of the Sinn Feiner asked in 1918 what was the policy of Sinn Fein who replied "Vengeance, bejasus" reflects a similar impulse.)
Part of this loss of memory, I think, reflects awareness that our previous sense of identity was a construct (not ex nihilo - it drew on things which actually existed) of various nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural and political projects, and has been broken down by the limitations and failings of those projects (and also to some extent by their successes - any project defines itself against certain obstacles as much as in positive terms, and when those obstacles are overcome the definition, which took their existence for granted, is affected as well).
I suppose I am a provincial - I have lived my whole life on the island and have rarely gone abroad. But I do feel I have something in common with the inhabitants of this island, and an obligation to try to make things better for them - even if only by helping them to understand a little bit better where they have come from, so that they can make a better fist of their future journey. The highest patriotism is to understand honestly and to act on that understanding - to provide others with the fruits of our contemplation, having drawn in turn on the fruits left by those who went before us, so that through us their work goes on.
To look to the past is to be tempted to nostalgia and despair, and part of the scope of understanding is to resist those temptations and to see, as Frederick Ozanam put it, that holiness is as attainable now as then.

[shane]

Prejudice is of course to be condemned regardless of the source from which it emanates, but I have to say I have found violent Anglophobic bigotry a much more prominent current in the nationalisms of Latin countries than in Ireland, and it often takes nasty forms (conspiracy theories etc.) I just came across this photo uploaded in a Spanish friend's tweet. It's a Spanish patriotic 10 commandments from WW2. I wonder was it taught in schools? It's pretty ghastly; I can't remember seeing anything this bad from an Irish source.








I. Obey the Caudillo [Franco]
II. Consider that Spain and the totalitarian countries presently have a common destiny in the triumph of Justice
III. Do not forget for a moment that the best Spaniard is he who is fighting in Russia [referring to the Division Azul]
IV. Do not trick, nor deceive, nor whisper, for that is the criminal way of operating of the English Secret Service.
V. Do not forget that all the evils your Fatherland suffers, Great Britain is solely responsible.
VI. Everyday dedicate a memory to Gibraltar and swear to recover it.
VII. Convince your friends that Anglo-Saxon capitalism and Russian communism are the same thing: Judaism
VIII. When you hear someone hypocritically defending Marxism or the democracies, interrupt the poison.
IX. Do not wish for your children a past moment of shame, in which Spain was a colony of Judaism and Freemasonry.
X. Hate England and pity the English.

[maolsheachlann]

The idea that patriotism = nationalism = chauvinism = racism, and that all national chauvinism is much of a muchness, seems pretty common in left-wing circles, but I don't see much basis for it. It seems to me that national chauvinism differs enormously from country to country and era to era; from the more or less benign to the sort of thing Shane illustrates above.

I recently bought, from a second-hand bookshop, a couple of volumes of bound parish magazines from two different parishes in England-- Harpenden in Hertfordshire and the tiny Bonnington near the Romney Marsh-- the first of which runs from 1904 to 1914 and the second of which runs from 1930-1939. It's a pure coincidence they both end in a war year- the connecting thread is a Rev. W.W. Colley, whose family came from Clontarf and who ended his days there.

The magazines are absolutely fascinating as social and ecclesial history, but one thing that struck me is the rhetoric of the World War One issues. As you would expect, they are stoutly behind the war effort, plea with all the young men to join etc. etc. But what is lacking is any xenophobic attitude towards the enemy. The german's militaristic and unchristian attitude is attacked, but they are not portrayed as villainous or despicable. The magazines are also staunchly imperialistic, but Empire is seen in the Kipling sense of being a solemn service rather than overlordship.

[Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha]

When I learnt the Seven Deadly Sins, I learnt them as "Na Seacht bPeacaí Marfacha" - Uabhar, Saint, Drúis, Craos, Éad, Fearg agus Leisce (Pride, Covetessnous, Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath and Sloth - this is at least the order I remember them.

The first is pertinent to this discussion, as there are two words in Irish for pride: Uabhar and Bród. The difference is that one is a sin and the other is not. Bród reflects the positive qualities of pride and Uabhar is what happens when this goes wrong.

To put this into the context of this thread, it is could be said that Bród = Tírghrá (patriotism) and that Uabhar can = Náisiúnachas (nationalism). However, we are dealing with two different things. Patriotism is a sentiment, a feeling. Nationalism is an ideology (which like most ideology has a considerable spectrum, but in itself is neutral. NB, variations on nationalism such as fascism are not neutral). There are distortions on patriotism, which may be fed by misguided nationalism, such as jingoism or chauvinism. These lead away from Bród and into Uabhar. In the case of historical Irish nationalism, the attempt to construct an autarkic economy was an example of applying ideology at the expense of the well being of many of the citizens who had to either emigrate or remain here in poverty. At the moment, de Valera's 'Comely maidens and atlethic youth' speech is derided (I'm not sure if it was at the time it was delivered), but if one eliminated the regularly-quoted lines from it, updated it a bit and delivered it at a Green Party meeting, not only would no one notice, it would probably receive a thunderous applause.

The NY Times/Manchester Guardian grouping of patriotism = nationalism = chauvinism = racism is remarkably myopic, because it represents an anglophone culture which doesn't question too many of their own assumptions. They may be more self-conscious of prejudice than the sort of stuff that Maolsheachlann is referring to in regard to the days before the First World War (taking his point this was not jingoistic), but they are prejudiced nonetheless.

On Maolsheachlann's point above, has anyone read Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands? I thought the juxposition between English patriotism and respect for Germany, while anticipating a possible war with them was interesting. Childers himself saw no contradiction between serving in the Royal Naval Reserve in WW1 and advocating a more robust settlement for Ireland than Home Rule. He also asked his son, on the night of his execution, to find the men responsible and shake their hands.

To make some point here, we need to be conscious of globalism, and our weak position in the anglosphere, to develop a sense of national identity other thancrassly painting our faces green and orange for international soccer matches or going for the fanatical version of the late Alan Ryan, which has nothing more to it than protest. There is much more to Ireland than either represent.

[maolsheachlann]

"In the case of historical Irish nationalism, the attempt to construct an autarkic economy was an example of applying ideology at the expense of the well being of many of the citizens who had to either emigrate or remain here in poverty. At the moment, de Valera's 'Comely maidens and atlethic youth' speech is derided (I'm not sure if it was at the time it was delivered), but if one eliminated the regularly-quoted lines from it, updated it a bit and delivered it at a Green Party meeting, not only would no one notice, it would probably receive a thunderous applause."

Ha, ha! I never thought about this. It's so true. Historical Irish nationalism actually anticipated a lot of the folksy elements of the counter-culture (back to the land, small is beautiful, anti-materialism, admiration for simple lifestyles close to nature). I've always had a certain fondness for some aspects of the hippie "ideal"!

[Askel McThurkill]

There is no incongruity in the position of Richard Greene's political history, which involved membership of Fianna Fáil of a very republican hue, an attempt to set up an 'Irish National Congress' in the late 1980s/early 1990s, membership of the Greens and current associations with trad groups (though he is not a trad Catholic himself). He essentially feeds on the 'small is beautiful' ideal that cuts across nationalism and environmentalism.

Just because diverse politics is not incongruous, though, doesn't mean that Richard Greene is not a nut.

[hibernicus]

THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS is a very odd book in terms of its attitude towards the Germans. The hero considers it positively admirable that the Germans should wish to assert themselves and aspire to wage successful war on the British (though of course as a British patriot he will do his best to stop them) and expresses admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II for building up German power. (Really this is a view of war as competitive international sport which did not survive 1914.) At the same time the villain is considered the lowest type of scum because he is an Englishman who has sided with the Germans - even though he has lived in Germany for many years and is married to a German, which one might think might reasonably excuse a change of allegiance. Julian Symons remarked that there is a certain irony in this, given that the villain's situation might be seen as mirroring Childers' later development (though Childers would have said he always considered himself an Irishman, he had taken an oath of allegiance to the Crown as an officer in the British armed forces -something which was recalled by his opponents during the Dail debates on the Treaty,)

[hibernicus]

There was a certain ambiguity about the politics of autarky in an Irish context. One version was a form of "infant industry" protectionism - seeing it as a means to the end of economic development and better living standards, and sacrificing immediate access to cheap consumer goods for the sake of investment. This was certainly Lemass's position, probably Griffith's as well. The other was advocacy of self-sufficiency as an end in itself, the ideas behind it being a mixture of (a) it is better to be poor and self-sufficient than to be a bit better off but dependent on outsiders who don't have your long-term interests at heart (b) capitalism may deliver better results in the short term but it'll all end in tears - better to have slow and steady development based on retained profits than go into debt and be open to money manipulation (c) poverty as a form of self-denial is positively good for the soul - better to be poor and honest than rich and self-indulgent. Advocates of the third view tended to lay themselves open to the charge that they seemed not to think that this warning applied to themselves - Dev's house in Cross Avenue Blackrock was a great deal bigger than the labourer's cottage in Bruree - and that they constituted a sort of new aristocracy specially chosen to run the country.
One interesting feature which classical republicanism (which had a major influence on Irish nationalism under the Union) shares with Catholicism is that they are both anti-liberal in the sense that they reject the view that rational self-interest and avoidance of suffering is the highest good - they both maintain that there are circumstances under which one ought to accept suffering in the name of virtue. That is one reason why the cult of the 1916 blood sacrifice was seen as having natural affinity with Catholicism (Eoin MacNeill's argument that this was delusory and that Pearse's self-portrayal as Jesus is in fact essentially pagan and self-regarding is very interesting and highlights the tension between Christian sacrifice and the classical republican honour code.)

[hibernicus]

The NYT/Guardian view of patriotism=nationalism=racism is actually somewhat more interesting than pure anglophone complacency; it reflects the view of a transnational elite which is not merely Anglophone. The Eurocrats who run the EU are driven by exactly the same view - that the nation-state by definition leads to war, colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
Another feature which underpins it is the question of anti-racism and immigration. There is a widespread (though not uncontested) view in America that the US is really a propositional nation founded on the Constitution, and that if it were inhabited by naturalised Martians it would still be the same country so long as they kept up the Bill of Rights and the other national symbols. In Europe - certainly in Britain - there is a similar view of what the nation ought to be (especially on the left) which is quite widespread at elite level to an extent which people lower down have not fully realised. The view that a country should not distinguish in any way between its own citizens and resident aliens, and to do so is equivalent to racism, is regarded as common sense in GUARDIAN-reading circles. SEARCHLIGHT the British anti-fascist magazine (which combines exposes of genuine fascists with a much wider left-wing agenda) is quite remarkably open about this when it maintains that the idea that there is a historic British (or English, or whatever) identity going back into history is a form of racism because it implies that someone whose ancestors lived in Britain since the Welsh or the Anglo-Saxons is more authentically British than someone whose ancestors fled from the pogroms to the East End of London in the 1890s, or came from the West Indies on the EMPIRE WINDRUSH after World War II.
Now this is a legitimate concern; the question is whether the offered solution is appropriate.

[maolsheachlann]

Personally I think there is no problem at all in saying some people are more authentically British, or Irish, or American, than others. I think it is the height of arrogance to come to a country and assert that the ancestry, history, biology, cultural knowledge and shared memories of your more established compatriots is of so little account that you are now "just as" British or Irish or American as they are.

Of course, that's putting it bluntly. I don't mean this attitude should be a license for bigotry or snobbishness. There's nothing wrong with coming to a new country and seeking to assimilate, and only a boor would reproach somebody for that. But if I was a newcomer, I think I would rather like the idea that I was being welcomed into something too big and old and important to absorb in a few civics lessons or just by getting a passport. It seems more meaningful that way.