3 New Poems: Irish Tet, We Are All Republicans, and Six Million Died

Below are three new poems. For an explanation of how I do these poems, see this. The last poem, "We Are All Republicans," is based on a non-political skinhead song by an anti-fascist skinhead band, so that's different than most of my poems.

1. Six Million Died. About Holocaust Denial.
2. Irish Tet. About the IRA
3. We Are All Republicans. About the IRA.

The rest of the poems can be found by clicking on the "lyrics" label at the bottom. There are about five pages worth so click on the "older posts" link at the bottom of each page.

“Six Million Died” based on “Six Million Lies” by No Remorse, original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the Holocaust. About six million Jews died.
2. With the last line of the first verse, I don’t mean to say there aren’t large differences between anti-Semitic extremism/violence and anti-fascist extremism/violence.
3. “Living Space” is English for a Nazi German term for what they wanted in central and eastern Europe- space for German settlers. I think this was largely but not totally separate from the Final Solution, since that part of Europe had a lot of Jewish people. I think it makes enough sense.
4. Zyklon B was the gas they used.
5. In EUROPE (and kind of in the Pacific), the Allies or at least the US, waged a fairly honorable war against the Axis.
**6. 60% of this version is me, 40% is the original.
7. I give this poem three stars out of five.
8. Occasionally I use words like"fight" and actually mean non-violent "fighting"; in this poem I was thinking of a response to to holocaust denial and fascism generally where the response is PROBABLY about 99% non-violent.
9. UPDATE 2/17/16 I replaced "in case" with "that" in the 5th line of the first verse.

Six million lies?
No, that’s how many died
Torture by the Nazis, we have the proof
Why did they try to cover up the truth?
Scared that they would all hang
yeah, their extremism and violence would boomerang

Chorus:
Six million of the human race
Partly to get more “living space”
Genocidal use of Zyklon B
By the fucking Nazis, of Germany

One of the worst genocides in history
They wanted Europe Jewish free
A cover-up is what nazis have tried
To hide the lies of their white pride
Well anti-fascism didn't die
The truth will break through all the Nazi lies

Chorus

So let's make the world Nazi free
We all want a diverse society
Nazism is rotten to the core
We’re fighting for truth and justice in this war
With honour and respect we'll surely win
Just like we did when we took on Berlin

*********

"Irish Tet" based on "Final Attack" by Final War, original lyrics are here.

1. In the 1980s the IRA had planned and partly armed themselves for what might be called an Irish version of the Tet offensive of the Vietnam War. Partly because some of their arms were lost or intercepted, they called it off. This poem is sort of a “what-if” about those plans.
2. I deleted the chorus and the last two lines of the last verse.
3. The BA is the British Army.
4. In such a situation I’m not sure if their mission would have been to maintain that level of activity until the British agreed to leave- it probably would have been to do that for as long as possible (and liberate as much territory as they could for as long as they could). Such a campaign would have contributed to a later agreement by the British to leave, especially as it would have drawn a LOT of global attention to their cause.
5. The 3rd line of the second verse is a reference to historical events centuries ago.
6. With the last line of the 3rd verse I probably greatly exaggerate how much revenge motivated them. But the British Army and the RUC did horrible things to the nationalist community.
7. The last line refers to the WWII (brown is the color of fascism). I just learned that apparently sometimes the French Resistance DID take and hold objectives for a short period of time. (this creates the necessary minimum conflict between my poem and the beliefs of the (AMERICAN and possibly Irish-American) authors of the original lyrics (more here))
**8. 58% of this version is me, 42% is the original.
9. I give this poem four stars out of five.
10. UPDATE 2/17/16  Based on what might be called a fairly scientific look, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death.
11. UPDATE 7/5/16 I replaced "unleash" with "release."


The day is approaching, the day we release
All hell on the BA and the RUC police
gonna fight back, gonna knock em dead
Like fire the revolution will be spread

gonna use RPGs and heavy machine guns
won't stop till our mission is done
they invaded and took our land
now we’re gonna smash them with an iron hand

we've got our sights set on BA choppers and watch towers
corporate buildings, we’ll show them this country is ours
we're on a rampage, we just let loose
We’re gonna make them pay for all their abuse

we’re seizing mills, bridges and towns
We’re inspired by those French that fought against the brown


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“We Are All Republicans” based on “We’re The Oppressed” by The Oppressed original lyrics here.

1. This is basically about the IRA although some of it could apply to other mainstream republicans as well depending on how we define words like "fight" for this poem. It’s set sometime before the 1997 cease-fire, I guess at least about 4 years before.
2. Orange is the color of anti-Catholic bigotry in the Irish-British context.
3. The BA is the British Army.
4. They were forcing the British elite to move towards a united Ireland, and to some small degree they succeeded (my thoughts about the compromise of the Good Friday Agreement are here).
5. At some point in the past for at least a year or two and probably a decade or two, Sinn Fein called for a constitutional convention to be part of a future unification of Ireland. I think it’s a great idea that should be revived for two reasons: 1) it would probably shift Ireland towards the left and even more importantly, 2) it would give the northern Protestants a very big say in what kind of Ireland they’re being added to (they’d be on the same level as everyone else). (more of my thoughts on how to ease Protestants and unionists into a united Ireland are found here)
7. The second half of the first line of the second verse is a little strange, but that was already there and for the time being I have decided to keep it (and I wouldn’t be surprised if BA soldiers saw the Nationalist community as being the “other”).
**8. 79% of this version is me, 21% is the original.
9. I give this poem five stars out of five.
10. The second line of the last verse refers to the NORTHERN Catholic working-class.
11. Armalites are rifles, RPGs are Rocket Propelled Grenades.

Born to fight, born to win
We are all republicans.
Born into this sectarian Orange state
Fighting for Irish freedom, we won’t wait

The BA fears us, thinks we're strange
Armalites and RPGs, we fight for change
We will never, ever be beat
As we force the British elite

We are Volunteers, of the Irish masses
Fighting for the Catholic working-classes
Advancing freedom and revolution
A new Ireland and a new constitution