Combatting Anti-Semitism

Below is a guest opinion of almost 700 words that, with very few small differences, I submitted to the Daily Camera (Boulder's main paper) about four weeks ago. At this point it's not going to get published.

There are some things I'm going to clarify and offer some addendums below the essay following this introduction. Let me first say that I have heard of two other recent attacks in the last year or so and there was one more in London three weeks ago. Also, one thing I came across a few times in the last several months in articles on CNN.COM is prominent liberal or progressive Jewish-Americans saying that there ARE some problems with anti-Semitism on the university campuses Trump has been attacking, although these leaders make it clear that it's not as bad as Trump makes it out to be and that the President is not helping at all

 

Tom

 

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I’m sure I am forgetting 1-2 examples of this, but in the last eight years there have been some really significant anti-Semitic physical attacks. From the American Right there was the 2018 murder of 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Right here in Boulder in 2025 one Jewish person (a Holocaust survivor) was killed and several were wounded and the number one suspect is a Muslim. At Bondi Beach last year in Australia 15 Jewish people including one Holocaust survivor were killed and the two (dead) suspects were a Muslim father and son. In January 2026 an anti-Semitic arson took place at an important synagogue and the number one suspect is a White, American (possibly fundamentalist) Christian. A few days ago a destructive attack was carried out at a synagogue and community center in Michigan and the dead suspect was an Arab-American man.

Some of this predates the Gaza War and most of it predates the Iran War. The common theme is anti-Semitism. I do have some connections to the Jewish-American community, and I am incredibly partisan (on one side) in the fight against anti-Semitism, but I go where the facts take me and I say what has to be said, independent of the politics (I have been a supporter of the Irish political party Sinn Fein since 1997, but 1999-2004 I criticized them very publicly three times because they had strayed a bit from the path of opposing homophobia). Although this is greatly exaggerated by some political tendencies among Jewish Americans (such as the ADL), most Republicans including Trump, and an official part of the Israeli government, there IS some anti-Semitism among progressive supporters, Muslim supporters and Arab supporters of the Palestinians. I have encountered it in Ireland and in Boulder.

When I started my blog in 2008 I was very quick to add fighting anti-semitism to the list of official main topics. I’m not sure when I started thinking about it critically (probably about 25-30 years ago) but I have always been a fan, when looking at history, of what the Allies of World War II did. The Holocaust was one of the worst things to happen in this world’s history (a big part of my major was American Indian Studies and in some ways what happened to Native Americans may have been more destructive to humanity, but the Holocaust, overall, was way up there, too). One of the other reasons I made it a big part of my blog is that in my Sophomore year of college (1995-1996) I was mildly anti-Semitic. I don’t think I did any harm, and there were a lot of anti-Semitic things I did NOT do, but I believe in compensating for the tiniest possibility that I DID do some harm. Anyway, about half of why I was slightly but significantly hateful was the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

What can be done about anti-Semitism in the short-to-medium term? Some suggestions:

1) Supporters of the Palestinians who believe that because Jewish-Americans are not oppressed (AS JEWISH-AMERICANS) no effort should be made to avoid friction with that community need to understand that we’re all standing in a lake of gasoline called ANTI-SEMITISM and we need to, when appropriate, avoid creating sparks that could set it on fire.
2) Supporters of Israel need to be less trigger-happy with the accusation of anti-Semitism. I don’t have space here to go into any detail, but, for example, there is nothing inherently bigoted about the term “Israeli Apartheid.”
3) Sinn Fein, which is largely against anti-Semitism, needs to stop putting out (side-by-side) the following two statements: A) that there must be a boycott of Israel and B) that it was okay that the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany.
4) It wouldn’t hurt if supporters of Israel would speak about anti-semitism in their own ranks (I.e. The Rapture, and the anti-Soros stuff, and comparing reasonable things like COVID-19 public health measures and hostility towards Republicans in our society with what Nazi Germany did).

I AM a pretty solid supporter of the Palestinians, and for decades now I have believed that opposing anti-Semitism STRENGTHENS that movement, and that supporting the Palestinians STRENGTHENS the struggle against anti-Semitism.

 

*********

 

Some things to clarify and/or add:

 

1) There's a post partly about my sophomore year and anti-Semitism, here.

 

2) As far as my assumption that Jewish-Americans are not oppressed AS JEWISH-AMERICANS, I wrote a fair amount about that in mid-2020 here.

 

3) Why do I mention a "lake of gasoline"? There's a line in the 1991 movie "Backdraft" spoken by Robert De Niro, a line that for some reason I really like. It refers dramatically to a "lake of gasoline."

 

4) I don't know if this has been repealed since but at some point about 20 years ago an agency of the EU said that the term "Israeli Apartheid" is anti-semitic. I did a post that was largely about refuting that accusation. It's here.

 

5) After Bondi Beach I felt like I had to do something and I decided to weaponize a post on my blog about the problem with Sinn Fein that I refer to above. It went nowhere, for some reason or other. So I brought it into this. The post is here. 

 

6) Maybe the worst fit in this essay is suggestion #4. I did a post on my blog that is overwhelmingly about examples of anti-Semitism among SUPPORTERS of Israel. I think it's at least kind of relevant to this, but I'm not sure if I added it to this essay very well. That blogpost is here.

 

7) I am thinking of doing a fairly long essay that focuses on and substantiates and further develops the idea in the last paragraph of the essay above.

Jewish Skinhead Army: A New Poem

Here's a new poem. For various reasons I'm doing it now instead of waiting for 2 more to be ready. You can read about how I write my poems here. This one is about anti-racist skinheads and general notes for that kind of poem are here.

You can find all the other lyrics by clicking on the "lyrics" label at the bottom. The other SHARP/RASH poems are here.

 “Jewish Skinhead Army” based on “European Skinhead Army” by No Remorse. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about Jewish-American skinheads. I’m not sure how many of them are members of anti-racist skinhead crews (a skinhead gang but, with non-Nazi skinheads, it doesn’t mean what you think), but I’m sure some of them are.
2. The first 1/3 of a post here is relevant to this.
3. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews in Nazi Germany of their citizenship and contributed to the creation of a kind of Apartheid for German Jews.
4. Normally I wouldn’t encourage White people to brag about being white, but Nazis don’t think that Jews are White like, for example, Irish-Americans are (of course there are Jewish Irish-Americans).
5. “Bourgeoisie” is a term for the upper-class. Anti-racist skinheads are overwhelmingly working-class and proud of it. Very few are socialists or anarchists, but some are and I’M writing the poem (if that implies I’m a skinhead, I’m not).
6. “Sunwheel banner” is a term for the Swastika.
7. ZOB is the Polish acronym for the Jewish Combat Organization, the group that carried out the rebellion in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.
8. Bonehead is an anti-racist term for Nazi skinhead.
9. In the movie “Uprising” a member of the ZOB dressed in a German Army uniform jokingly says “Heil Shitler!”
10. Valhalla is part of Norse mythology, it's a place where warriors go after they die, although there seems to be some debate about exactly who gets in- only people who die in combat? Anyway, the fascists love it and have sort of taken over the concept, but a friend told me that he likes the idea of the left claiming it and specifically said that if such a place exists, Che and others like him are probably there. (Do I believe in Valhalla? You could say I’m sort of an agnostic on that question and am sort of solidly a Christian. The way I see it, this is pretty flexible, don't take it too seriously, and one way to think about it is that if you believe in Heaven and would rather these people went there instead of Valhalla, maybe they can do both, spend some time in Valhalla and some time in Heaven; but my friend and I do like the idea of reclaiming it from the fash).
11. Oi! is music that most skinheads (and some other fans of what you might call the kind of music that inspires moshing) listen to. I’m not sure how to describe it musically, although it resembles punk. I think it’s sort of defined by lyrics about violence and the working-class and being skinheads and the hair cut of most people in Oi! bands.
12. Hallah is a kind of Jewish bread.
13. **65% of this poem is me and 35% is the original.

On the Nazi boneheads we’re gonna go medieval
We're shaving our heads because it's good against evil
We've got the music, we've got the bands,
We never lose, we play the winning hand

Chorus:
Jewish Skinhead Army,
We stand together in the anti-fascist cause,
Jewish Skinhead Army,
We smash those who admire the Nuremberg Laws

We're on the streets, every night,
We’re of the working-class and we’re also White,
Smash the bourgeoisie, socialize their manors!
We raise our middle fingers to the sunwheel banner

We remember the ZOB, and fuck Shitler,
the Nazi bonehead is a class traitor,
If we fall in battle and go to Valhalla,
We’ll listen to oi! and eat some Hallah

Irish Unity: Three New Poems

Three more poems. For info about how I write my poems, see this. 2-3 of these poems are based on lyrics I find offensive, see the next paragraph. The last poem is about anti-racist skinheads. There are notes for those poems in general here.

I have until recently been very unsure about whether or not “Sweet Home Alabama” is a racist song. But, if wikipedia is not totally full of shite, I lean very heavily towards saying that it’s racist. That’s based partly on the song’s wikipedia page. I looked at the interview with the back-up singer, and I looked at the page with the statement by Ed King. Also, although Neil Young says they were right to be angry about his song “Alabama,” “Sweet Home Alabama” refers to the Neil Young song “Southern Man,“ which he doesn’t apologize for and which is (lyrically) a fairly-very good anti-racist song. I also found an article in The Atlantic that  makes it pretty clear they were racists when the song was written (the confederate flag has always been a symbol of racism).

You can find the rest of the lyrics, about ten pages of them, here.

1. "General Maurice Rose" About the Allies in WWII and specifically about Jewish-American soldiers who fought Nazi Germany.
2. "The North." N. Ireland. (A BLACK AND GREEN POEM)
3. "Skinhead Unity." Anti-racist skinheads.

“General Maurice Rose” based on “European Skinhead Army” by No Remorse. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is a little complicated. It started out as a poem about the US Army IN GENERAL in the European part of WWII. But then I needed something that rhymed with “Valhalla” (see below) and I found a kind of Jewish bread. Then I remembered about General Maurice Rose (see below) and made it PARTLY about Jewish-American soldiers in that theater (it's not from General Rose's perspective, and I imagine a lot of Jewish-American veterans might not know what to think about the part about Odin, but I explain that below (for whatever it's worth, the reference to Odin was already there)).
2. A medical center in Denver is named after the late General Maurice Rose. On their site they say the following about a point in 1945:

“It was around this time that news broke that General Maurice Rose, a Denver son and the highest-ranking Jewish officer in the U.S. Army during World War II, had been killed in combat. Rose was known for his aggressive style of leadership, directing his units from the front rather than a rear command post. When he and his staff, surrounded by German troops, were attempting to surrender, a panicked young German tank soldier fired one shot to Rose’s head, killing him instantly. His death caused an uproar: demands were made by congressmen for an investigation, and it was front-page news. Suddenly, the committee knew they could achieve two goals—create the new Jewish hospital and memorialize a fallen Jewish hometown hero.”

3. The Waffen-SS was the tactically-elite military, as opposed to paramilitary, part of the ideologically-based SS.
3. The Rhineland was a strategically important part of western Germany with a lot of industry.
4. FDR was the President of the US during almost all of WWII, until he died about a month before Nazi Germany was defeated.
5. Nazis made Jews wear a yellow star armband.
6. Although it’s true that the WESTERN Allies rarely carried out night assaults A) The Soviets frequently did, B) it rhymes, and C) sometimes they DID- see this and this.
7. The Wehrmacht was the German military, although it’s unclear if the Waffen-SS was part off the Wehrmacht.
8. The “sunwheel banner” is a term for the Swastika flag.
9. Odin is the god of Valhalla. Valhalla is part of Norse mythology, it's a place where warriors go after they die, although there seems to be some debate about exactly who gets in- only people who die in combat? Anyway, the fascists love it and have sort of taken over the concept, but a friend told me that he likes the idea of the left claiming it and specifically said that if such a place exists, Che and others like him are probably there. (Do I believe in Valhalla? You could say I’m sort of an agnostic on that question and am sort of solidly a Christian. The way I see it, this is pretty flexible, don't take it too seriously, and one way to think about it is that if you believe in Heaven and would rather these people went there instead of Valhalla, maybe they can do both, spend some time in Valhalla and some time in Heaven; but my friend and I do like the idea of reclaiming it from the fash). I MADE A POINT OF REFERRING TO ALL U.S. SOLDIERS IN THAT THEATER NOT JUST THE JEWISH ONES, TO LESSEN THE DEGREE TO WHICH I AM SAYING THAT GENERAL ROSE (SPECIFCALLLY) WENT TO VALHALLA. (also I’ve done six other poems where I imply that people who don’t believe in Valhalla go there, and one of them was about Allied soldiers in the Western European theater (the other five references to Valhalla were largely but not exclusively about Irish Republicans)
10. After Germany was defeated, a process was started that resulted in a democracy being created in what would be West Germany. Although some would point out that it was done through military occupation and an effort called “de-Nazification”, I think the entrenched nature of Nazism in Germany meant that there was no other way to create a democracy there. If it weren’t for a lot of Allied soldiers, de-Nazification would have been impossible to enforce, and the German Army would have reconstituted itself.
11. The second to last line. It’s meant to refer to members of the Waffen-SS. They were responsible for massacres of civilians (even in the West), the execution (in ONE incident) of American POWs, and some of them were concentration camp guards. Such people, IF soldiers in general go to Valhalla (see above), don’t go to Valhalla, in my opinion.
12. Hallah is a kind of Jewish bread.
13. You have to emphasize the “er”s in “banner” and “shatter” to make them rhyme.
14. **73% of this poem is me, 27% is the original.

On the Waffen-SS, we’re gonna go medieval
The Allies have teamed up and it's good against evil,
We've got the tanks, we’re heading for the Rhineland
We won’t lose, we’ll play the winning hand

Chorus:
United States Army,
We fight together, commanded by FDR
United States Army,
We fight for the people who wear the yellow star

We're advancing day and night,
Behind the front our air support takes flight
Smash the Wehrmacht, make it shatter
We raise our middle fingers to the sunwheel banner

many U.S. soldiers will meet Odin, unlike Hitler,
After we take Berlin, a democracy we’ll configure
When we kill Nazis in battle, they won’t go to Valhalla
After the war, we’ll celebrate with some Hallah

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“The North” based on “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Original lyrics are here.

1. See my thoughts above about whether or not the original is a racist song.
2. This is set around 1990.
3. I assume that BA units were flown into the North instead of traveling by sea.
4. “The Six” is short for the Six-Counties, a republican term for N. Ireland (I say “the Six” not because republicans say that (they don't) but because it rhymes).
5. In 1983 the very popular British Nazi skinhead band Skrewdriver did a song called “Smash the IRA” and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of young, working-class, conservative and patriotic BA soldiers were fans. Skrewdriver’s vocalist and lyricist Ian Stuart Donaldosn started, in the late 1980s, a side project called The Klansmen, which was about the American South.
6. Margaret Thatcher’s constituency was Finchley.
7. “Tiocfaidh ar la” is a republican slogan coined by Bobby Sands and means “Our Day Will Come.”
8. There’s a theory, which must be embraced by N. Ireland anti-Catholic bigots, that Catholics aren’t real Christians.
9. Bangor is a medium-sized city (in the NI context, if Belfast is a large city, and Derry is also a medium-sized city) that’s almost entirely Unionist.
10. In my version the boos are coming from Nationalists and republicans.
11. The Provos is an earlier term for the movement made up of what we now call simply Sinn Fein and the IRA. I explain here how they had, 1981-1997 a comprehensive strategy for getting the British out and helping their community.
12. “The Falls Rd. Curfew” was a major turning point in the very first year of The Troubles. In Aug. 1969 there were massive anti-Catholic pogroms in Belfast which were destructively and lethally successful. Because of this, the British Army, who sort of saved the Catholics, was welcomed by a decreasing number of Catholics in the first several months after the BA came onto the streets of N. Ireland. On June 27th there was a major and partly armed, attack by loyalists on the isolated Catholic enclave of the Short Strand in East Belfast. The British Army wouldn’t help but about four members of the Provisional IRA successfully defended the area and killed five armed loyalists. 9 days earlier a British general election had been won by the Conservatives. The Unionists were furious about the PIRA action in the Short Strand and demanded action. The following is from the Conflict Archive on the InterNet:

********

Friday 3 July 1970
Falls Road Curfew
Beginning in the afternoon, the British Army carried out extensive house searches in the Falls Road area of Belfast for members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and IRA arms. A military curfew was imposed on the area for a period of 34 hours with movement of people heavily restricted. The house searches lasted for two days and involved considerable destruction to many houses and their contents. During the searches the army uncovered a lot of illegal arms and explosives. However the manner in which the searches were conducted broke any remaining goodwill between the Catholic community and the British Army. During the period of the curfew there were gun battles between both wings of the IRA and the Army. Two people were killed by the British Army during the violence; one of them deliberately run over by an Army vehicle. Another person was shot and mortally wounded by the Army and died on 10 July 1970.

Saturday 4 July 1970
 The Falls Road curfew continued throughout the day. A man was killed by the British Army.

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(I should clarify something- I don’t think there was any inter-republican fighting, but both the Provos and the Officials, separately, fought the British during the Curfew; also, although the official record doesn’t totally reflect this, a Polish-British photojournalist was killed by the BA, bringing the total to 4 civilians killed; one of the two local men shot was 62 years old)

13. The red, white, and blue are the colors of the British flag.
14. The Civil Rights Movement in N. Ireland in the late 1960s and the early 1970s was inspired by its counterpart in America, and at the very end, a delegation from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference attended the Bloody Sunday funerals.
15. **77% of this version is me, 23% is the original.

Jet turbines keep on turnin’
Carrying British soldiers to the Six
Singin' songs about the Southland
Occupying northeast Ireland because of Tory politics

Well I heard Mrs. Thatcher say the North is
as British as Finchley
Well, that’s nonsense and won’t stop us from
creating a border in the Irish sea

Chorus
Tiocfaidh ar la Derry
Where the skies are so blue
Tiocfaidh ar la West Belfast
Where Catholics believe in the Lord, too

In Bangor they love the Queen, (Boo! Boo! Boo!)
Now the Provos are doing all that they can do
The Falls Rd. Curfew angered me
An atrocity carried out under the red, white and blue

Now Southern Blacks had “We Shall Overcome”
And they overthrew segregation
They inspired us to march for our rights
And it turned into a struggle for liberation

***************

“Skinhead Unity” based on “European Unity” by Brutal Attack. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about anti-racist skinheads. Although there might not be any left in America, they used to exist, so I’m going to occasionally do poems about them.
2. I get the impression that when Nazi skinheads became part of the skinhead scene, non-racist and anti-racist skinheads initially didn’t do much to stop them.
3. D-Day was the Allied invasion of Europe during WWII.
4. Skinhead was started in connection with Jamaican immigrants in England. Nazi skinheads claim it isn’t true.
5. Most anti-racist skinheads are patriotic.
6. Anti-racist skinheads are frustrated by those skinheads who are more or less neutral.
7. Ska is a kind of Black music that a lot of non-racist and anti-racist skinheads (as well as others of course) listen to.
8. As far as I can tell in the 1980s and 1990s a LOT of anti-racist skinheads were homophobic, but I have reason to believe that, as homophobia became less common among youth in the last 20-30 years, it became less common among anti-racist skinheads.
9. Although anti-racist skinheads occasionally used guns, Nazis love guns. And there was a similar gap when it came to knives.
10. A mask is sometimes defined as a PROTECTIVE covering. So, they’re not hiding their reasons for being more or less neutral. I wouldn’t be surprised if they can’t handle the kind of beating that Nazis give anti-racists.
11. **50% of this is me, 50% is the original.
12. I just added "great" to the 4th line. It makes more sense, I forgot I'm not writing 10 years ago, when I wrote most of my poems.
13. Bonehead is an anti-racist term for Nazi skinhead.
14. UPDATE 4/14/20 I just changed "from" to "of" in the last line of the chorus.

You know our scene’s been taken over by fools
Mis-using their strength, inspired by the Nazi tools
Some of us are to blame for not stopping them right away
But now we’re fighting the fash like our great-grandfathers did on D-Day

Chorus
Skinhead unity
friendship, class pride, a diverse community
Skinhead unity
Our culture free of the Nazis

Our skinhead forefathers were Black English people you see
But that’s not what the boneheads would have you believe
So how come our scene’s been overrun?
By alien ideologies, the fascist atrocities, with the knife and the gun

So listen skinheads, listen very carefully
It’s time to wake up, time to make a stand you see
United we'll win, come here our call
If we stick together nothing’s gonna make us fall
It wont be easy it'll be a long hard task
And there are those fools who hide behind the neutrality mask
But we'll pull through, ‘cos ska wins in the end
To anti-Semitism and homophobia we will never bend

1847: Three New Poems

Three more poems. These are all based on offensive material, I explain that and my poems in general here.

The rest of the poems are available by clicking on the "lyrics" label at the bottom. There are about 10 pages worth, so click on "older posts."

1. Black 47. About the Irish "Famine."
2. Still Right-Wing. About American politics.
3. 1945. About WWII.

“Black 47” based on “Six Million Lies” by No Remorse. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the so-called “Famine” that Ireland experienced.
2. From elsewhere on my blog, here’s a fairly good summary:

During the Famine, 10-15% of the population died and 10-15% of the population would have died if they hadn’t emigrated. This was concentrated in the South and West of Ireland where there very few settlers- if you ignore the settlers and their descendents, it was probably closer to 15-20% and 15-20% of the population. Why did a potato blight result in something close to genocide? First, the indigenous Catholic population was still recovering from about 1.5 centuries of political and legal disempowerment that occurred because of the Penal Laws which denied them most of the rights enjoyed by most or all Protestants (it varied from right to right). “Catholic Emancipation” was only made about 90% complete about 15 years earlier. Because of this and general poverty, the indigenous population was largely dependent on land owned by land lords and the potato crop. For about 45 years before the Famine and during the Famine, Ireland didn’t have a devolved parliament, they were completely ruled from London. Crucially, during the Famine, MASSIVE amounts of food were being shipped from Ireland to Britain, something that involved seventy-five British Army regiments. …  the deaths only stopped when the blight stopped. … The British were more or less racist towards the Irish at that point in Anglo-Irish history and were more concerned about practicing Laissez-faire economics and feeding the British population than they were concerned about mass starvation among the Irish

3. It was close to genocide.
4. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that a British Prime Minister apologized for British policy during the Famine. I guarantee you they weren’t being honest about it and not apologizing.
5. I’m not sure to what extent the British pushed the idea that the Irish are all alcoholics, but I’m sure they at least sort of did.
6. If you focus on the number of INDIGENOUS Irish who died or emigrated, it was a little less than three million.
7. As far as the American establishment pushing lies about the Famine, see this. As far as I can tell, a lot of Irish-Americans believe that the Irish chose to just eat potatoes.
8. I’m not saying that everyone who supports Northern Ireland being part of the UK also peddle lies about the Famine, but I think that most of them do.
9. During the Famine, people were offered money if they didn’t teach their children Irish (that’s according to a Sinead O’Connor song).
10. The 12 of July is a major holiday for N. Ireland Unionists, and is political and sectarian (it’s the anniversary of a battle in Ireland where a Protestant contender for the British throne beat his Catholic rival).
11. Orange is the color of anti-Catholic bigotry in the Anglo-Irish context.
12. Partition is the division of Ireland.
12. As I prove here only .3% of operations of the Provisional IRA resulted in civilian death. And I like referring to The Troubles as the Second Anglo-Irish War (the first being the War of Independence).
13. This isn’t ABOUT SF. It’s just saying that the cause of Irish freedom is strengthened by SF’s electoral success. It’s not saying SF believes this or did that, except that they will lead Ireland to unity (no member of SF is going to complain about that statement).
14. There is a theory I largely subscribe to, that the Unionists in N. Ireland are actually Irish, but I’m also comfortable with the idea that they can and (in a united Ireland) will develop a British-Irish identity which I’m sure the Irish will be willing to accommodate.
11. **78% of this version is me, 22% is the original. I took the first two lines of the original, combined them, altered them, and then created a completely new 2nd line.
12. No Remorse were British and supported the unionist and/or British cause(s) in N. Ireland.

Did the Irish really prefer potatoes or is it just a British lie?
20% left and 20% died
Genocide by the Brits, we have the proof
Why did they try to cover up the truth?
Scared that they would look like scum that they are
So they pushed the idea that the Irish can’t stay out of bars

Three million of the human race
Because the British Army had an iron grip on the place
They play down the fact that food was shipped across the Irish sea
They may have fooled you, but not me

The worst case of Laissez-faire economics in history
It was also racism and religious bigotry
American media and schools cooperate
With the lies of those who support the North being part of the British state
Well the beautiful Irish language didn't die
Fuck Margaret Thatcher and the 12th of July!

So let's make Ireland British Army free
We’ll make sure there's no return to an Orange society
The partition of Ireland is rotten to the core
Provos fought with courage and honor in the Anglo-Irish War
With Sinn Fein and global solidarity we'll surely win
And the Protestant Unionists will see us as their kin

**************

“Still Right-Wing” based on “Still Occupied” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is the address of the White House.
2. Fash is short for fascists.
3. I doubt it’s just a tiny minority of white people who worry about that. I think it might be around 20-30%.
4. “Right-to-work” is, in general, a reference to anti-union government policies. Specifically, “Right-to Work” laws say that someone can’t be required to join a union in order to get a job. This means that people who benefit from a union contract at their job don’t have to pay membership dues, which weakens the union.
6. As far as the racist, homicidal cops, see this.
7. A lot of GOP local and state elections officials pull fucked up shit. Not enough voting machines in certain precincts and few or no opportunities to vote early means long lines and people going home without voting so they can get up and go to work the next morning. There’s what happened in FL in 2000 where they were. WAY to quick to take people off the rolls because they MIGHT have been convicted of something. More recent fight-back against letting ex-cons vote, and creating a poll tax by saying that such people have to pay all the money they owe in connection with their conviction before they can vote again.
8.  In terms of racial equality, the FUTURE looked so bright when Obama was President. Trump took that and turned it on its head. Also, Obama (as a candidate and as President) was not a progressive, but nor was he a Clintonite. He was a liberal, as I non-philosophically define them here.
9. I’m not interested in an alliance with the obnoxious, extreme, sectarian anarchists. I think the moderate anarchists were SLIGHTLY happy with Obama being elected, because he was the first Black President, and as I explain above, he was not a Clintonite. And I think that most Marxists and almost all social-dems were at least sort of happy with him, for the same reasons.
10. **76% of this version is me, 24% is the original. The second-to-last line of both verses is brand new- it wasn't there before.
11. UPDATE 4/1/20 Just in case there's confusion, I'm not saying that everyone to the left of center and  opposed to the GOP is a leftist or more generally a progressive. It might sound like I'm saying that, but I'm not. I JUST CHANGED "WE'LL" IN THE COUNTY CLERK LINE TO "DEMS AND PROGRESSIVES WILL".

With Obama, the future looked so bright,
Finally, a President who wasn’t white.
But then, at 1600 Pennsylvania, Trump moved in,
Even though, the popular vote, he didn’t win.
Our society is being torn apart,
think this is bad but it's just the start.
Instead of health care fash worry that the white race will die
How can so many white people swallow so many lies?

Chorus
It’s still a “right-to-work” nation, workers aren’t free -
The working-class labor movement is on it’s knees
And it's hard, hard to defeat -
the murderous police departments patrolling the Black street!

With GOP County Clerks Dems and progressives will never have a chance to win
Their idea of democracy and fascism are almost akin
Hopefully the white working-class will awake, before it's too late,
And Labor will keep educating them, however much money it takes.
We’re trying to save the labor movement from homicide,
we're for comprehensive diversity and for class pride.
Whether we’re social-dems, Marxists or moderate anarchists
We're never ever giving in to the fucking capitalists!

*************

“1945” based on “Final Attack” by Final War. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the last several months of WWII in Europe.
2. A bridgehead is either a position held to maintain the possession of a bridge at the front, or a position just behind enemy lines.
3. Many of them didn’t do any time because they were executed.
4. The Waffen-SS was the military (as opposed to paramilitary) component of the SS (the very ideological, official, domestic security part of the Nazi state).
5. Combined arms attacks involve more than one type of military unit (i.e. infantry, armor, ground attack aircraft, artillery)
6. The main weapon of a tank is its main gun. Bazookas were an early version of a Rocket-Propelled-Grenade type weapon.
7. Panzers were German tanks.
8. **71% of this poem is me, 29% is the original.
9. UPDATE 4/6/20 I need to say that as far as American servicemen opposed to anti-semitism, realistically it was probably just some moderate-sized minority of them.
10. UPDATE 4/6/20 The chorus is kind of out of whack chronologically (to one ridiculously large degree or another, knowledge of the camps was incredibly limited until the end of the war).

The day is approaching the day of victory
for the Poles, the Jews, and all those, opposed to the Nazis
gonna keep fighting gonna knock em dead
gonna reinforce the front and our bridgeheads

gonna take many prisoners when their lines we overrun
won’t stop till our mission is done
they took over Europe and made Jews wear an arm-band
now we’re gonna smash them with an iron hand

(Chorus)
Oh no, what are the Nazis gonna do?
when we find the concentration camps for the Jews
We’ll put them on trial for war crimes
After they’re convicted, they won’t do any time

we’ve got our sights set on the Waffen-SS
Arms factories, all those Nazis who oppress
we’re on a rampage we’re letting loose
And we’ll only accept unconditional surrender, without a truce

We carry out ambushes and combined arms attacks
they tried to take the world, now they cower at our artillery impacts
Main guns and bazookas are how we destroy Panzer tanks
And when we capture Krauts we love to interrogate their upper ranks

Most Oppressed People on Earth

In a recent post, which is largely about the question, Are Jewish Americans oppressed as Jewish Americans? I added something fairly relevant about US foreign policy in relation to Ireland, specifically the Famine years and The Troubles. I meant to attach the following update to the paragraph about the Famine, but for a few minutes or (more likely) a few hours it was attached to the paragraph about The Troubles:

(UPDATE 3/12/20 Some would say it was a different USA back then, but has any American President ever apologized for the failure of the US to do something? In some bizarre alternate history where the US sat out WWII and Nazi Germany was defeated anyway and there were a whole bunch of Holocaust survivors, the US would have at some point between then and now apologized for their inaction)

After moving that update to the Famine paragraph I added a brief note to the Troubles paragraph about the mistake. I don’t know if anyone saw the post before I fixed things but I worry that they did. Although I AM worried, it also occurred to me that it’s far from total nonsense to compare N. Ireland with Nazi Germany. First, here I’ll quote or describe and evaluate three statements by political figures who are more or less mainstream in Ireland.

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1. During something called the Siege of the Short Strand, a senior politician of the moderate nationalist and Christian-/social-democratic party the Social Democratic and Labour Party (a year earlier they had gone from getting about 60% of the Nationalist vote to getting 40-47%) compared the situation to what happened with the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland during WWII. That article (it’s not the most widely respected news source, but A) at the TIME, I read about some SDLP politician making the comparison, B) I found another article online referring specifically to McDonnell, and C) I can’t find anything better) offers some info about the Siege, and I’ll provide more in a minute, but a VERY thorough description of what happened is available from a very credible, academic source here.

The Short Strand is an isolated Catholic enclave in East Belfast surrounded on three sides by Unionist areas and on the fourth side by a river. Although I believe the Short Strand might be slightly middle-class on average, as far as I can tell their most immediate neighbors and/or those about a mile away are on average working-class. The Siege lasted for about 3 months in the late Spring and early Summer of 2002. There were frequent periods where the sky was saturated by rocks and other missiles being thrown into the Short Strand. There were 1-2 incidents of of close quarters fighting, and a small number of shots were fired. According to the link right above:

As previously noted, ‘one consequence of the interface violence was the inability for people from the Short Strand to access crucial services due to a Loyalist blockade of the area’. These included the doctor’s surgery; chemist; post office; dentist; baby clinic and shopping centres. The knock-on effect was that many elderly people were unable to collect their pensions; people who were ill could not visit the surgery or collect prescriptions; and mothers could not receive baby food supplies. It emerged through further discussions that women from the area took it upon themselves to organise ‘the relief effort for the community’. They organised transport for people to collect their pensions at post offices not in East Belfast, and they facilitated the community centre as a makeshift surgery

At one point a Catholic funeral procession was attacked. There was some violence by the security forces aimed at the Short Strand and little was done to break the Siege (less than a year earlier, after the Ulster Defense Association (a loyalist paramilitary) killed a Catholic and a Protestant who was hanging out with Catholic friends, in separate attacks, the British government minister for N. Ireland said that the UDA cease-fire was intact) (In July 1996 during 5 days of loyalist rioting throughout N. Ireland, 662 plastic bullets were fired; immediately after that, during 3 days of nationalist rioting, 5,340 plastic bullets were fired, according to a report by the Pat Finucane Centre).

As I wrote elsewhere on this blog, I think that the SDLP politician went too far, but it wasn’t absolute nonsense. Especially because the Siege was, in the end, broken by the Jewish Combat Organization (the group that carried out the rebellion in the Warsaw Ghetto). … No, it wasn’t  :  ). But I love that clip and the movie in general.

************

2. Michael Farrell is one of my top political heroes. He wrote an amazing book “Northern Ireland: The Orange State.” It’s a great book- it’s fairly introductory at the beginning and is a history of N. Ireland ending at some point in the 1970s depending on which edition you read. It’s also almost a labor history of N. Ireland, offers a lot of analysis, exposes the sectarian, brutal and near-authoritarian nature of the Northern state. It highlights the contributions made by Protestants and leftists to the struggles for justice, equality, and freedom. It exposes the role that capital played in creating and maintaining N. Ireland and the ways that capital benefited from the partition of Ireland and Orange rule in N. Ireland. Farrell was a leading member of People’s Democracy whose politics and activities I describe in the first half of this post (starting in the very early 1970s they expressed support for the Provisional IRA).

According to his wikipedia page:

After moving to Dublin and becoming a solicitor, Farrell was co-chairperson of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties from 1995 to 2001. He was appointed a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2001 and reappointed in October 2006, serving until 2011. In 2005 he was appointed to the Steering Committee of the National Action Plan Against Racism [according to his ECRI page, it was 2001-2003- TS]. He is currently working for Free Legal Advice Centres, Dublin, and has brought cases to the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. In 2011 he was appointed to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, and in 2012 he was appointed to the Irish Council of State by President Michael D. Higgins.

I can confirm pretty much all of it (including the Council of State part), and there’s also the fact that people who were (between 1970 and 1990) very vocal and active Northern supporters of the Provisional IRA are not appointed to the Council of State (by a mainstream Labour politician) 20 years later without being (for example) a ridiculously well respected human rights/civil liberties lawyer.

In “The Orange State” he writes on page 97 that in 1936:

The NCCL [the British National Council on Civil Liberties] commission commented that the Unionists had created “under the shadow of the British constitution a permanent machine of dictatorship.” They compared Northern Ireland with the fascist dictatorships then current in Europe. In so far as the total identification of party and state was one of the hallmarks of European fascism, the comparison was apt.

************

3. Mary McAleese was a two-term President of Ireland, who was returned unopposed for her second term. She had grown up and spent probably half her life in the North when she was first elected. In 2005 she compared sectarian hatred of Catholics in N. Ireland with the hatred of Jews in Nazi Germany. She was seriously criticized by Unionists and quickly walked back the comments and apologized. She shouldn’t have. The best evidence of widespread hatred of Catholics is the following:

A: The popularity of the Orange Order, whose anti-Catholic nature and centrality to the Unionist community (for decades until about 2005 they had a bloc vote in the leadership of the UUP (then the largest of the two main Unionist parties)) is described here. (Orange Order parades were often forced through Catholic areas by the security forces including the local police)

B: In 1971 Catholics were twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants, and in 1988 they were two and a half times as likely to be unemployed as Protestants. According to the documentary OFF OUR KNEES, in 1988, 17 out of 26 local government districts refused to sign a tame “declaration of intent” that as employers they would not discriminate, and I guarantee you that the 9 who signed it had a large Nationalist majority and that their populations added up to probably less than a 1/4 of the North’s population.

C: 1969-2005 722 Catholic civilians, only about 27 of whom were identified in the Sutton Database as political activists, were killed by the loyalist paramilitaries or the locally recruited security forces. A similar scenario in America during the same years would have seen 57,000 unarmed people of color killed by cops or Nazi skinheads (etc.) (A: based on what I’ll describe at the very bottom, I would guess that the actual number for that was probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000; B: I'm not saying the racist system in this country wasn't, ideologically or programmatically, capable of killing 57,000 people of color in those years if the "rebellion" among people of color here had been as militaristic as the one among Catholics in N. Ireland; but the reality is that as bad as it was for people of color here in those years, it was, in terms of deaths, MUCH worse for Catholics in N. Ireland). It gets worse. As I more or less wrote elsewhere on this blog:

1) In the early and mid 1970s, during internment without trial, 107 loyalists were interned, 1,874 republicans (and two leftists who were not republicans) were interned, and on average the republicans were interned longer because the first 1.5 years not a single loyalist was interned. Practically all the loyalists did was kill Catholic civilians because they were Catholic (see this). As I proved here, the Provisional IRA only targeted civilian life in .3% of their operations and only .3% resulted in civilian death (when I say 
“operations” that doesn’t include things like keeping loyalist mobs or (towards the beginning of the conflict) the security forces outside Catholic areas or interface incidents with loyalist paramilitaries). Therefore, the government (either the local one or the State-wide one influenced by the local Unionist leaders) was more concerned about IRA attacks that almost never resulted in civilian death than about the sectarian slaughter of Catholic civilians because they were Catholics.

2) From its formation in 1971 until 1992, the main loyalist paramilitary, the Ulster Defence Association, was considered a legal organization by the British government. In 1974, when the gov't finally got around to declaring Sinn Fein a legal organization, they "balanced that out" by declaring that the Ulster Volunteer Force, the other main loyalist paramilitary, was legal. That lasted for about 18 months, during which the UVF was blamed for about 50 murders.

3) This indicates that the Army and (crucially, in this post) the police, were sympathetic to loyalist paramilitaries. Some new information about collusion is in a new post here.

4) There was widespread and systemic collusion with loyalist paramilitaries and this definitely included the locally recruited police. And there is evidence here and there that then two main Unionist parties, who like to talk like supporting loyalist paramilitaries is a working-class thing, frequently hinted in different ways that the Unionist middle-class was into it as well. Large elements of the Unionist middle-class accepted the crucial role of the UDA in bringing down the power-sharing Sunningdale peace agreement in 1974. Middle-class Unionist leaders often shared a platform with people representing or associated with the paramilitaries. They never objected to the double standard of Internment, and they practically never called for the UDA to be banned until shortly before it was banned.

D) Between 1998 and 2018, with the exception of 2011 (when this question wasn’t asked), Northern Ireland Life and Times asked people if they prefer to live in a neighborhood entirely of their own religion, and in an average year 22% of Protestants said that they prefer a neighborhood that’s entirely Protestant. NILT also asked people (1998-2018 with the exceptions of 1999, 2000, and 2011 (when this question wasn’t asked)) if they would mind if a close relative married someone of a different religion, and in an average year 11% of Protestants said they would mind a lot and 19% said they would mind a little. And those surveys started the same year that the Good Friday Agreement was created and a year after the IRA went on cease-fire (as I prove here, in only .3% of their operations did the IRA target civilian life and probably 2/3 of that time it wasn’t aimed at Protestants who were INNOCENT civilians; but I’m sure that the now-permanent cease-fire by the IRA had a positive effect on sectarian attitudes among Protestants).

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If, in an alternate history, the Nazis had stopped at anti-Semitic propaganda, the various laws (like the ones named Nuremberg) that created a kind of Apartheid for German Jews (and stripped them of their citizenship), and periodic orgies of violence against Germany’s Jewish population like Kristalnacht (in 1938), Nazi Germany would have been only a little more anti-Semitic than N. Ireland was anti-Catholic.

People are probably shaking their heads and thinking of how the Nuremberg laws created what I would call a kind of Apartheid for German Jews and took away their citizenship. There was informal apartheid in N. Ireland (Stormont was the regional parliament and government):

1) Even in a majority-Nationalist city like Derry, in the early 1970s anti-unionist marches were banned from the city center.

2) There were laws (during almost all of the Stormont era (1920-1972)) about voting which, without mentioning Catholics, were anti-Catholic. In local elections, you had to own a house (remember the unemployment and some stuff below) to vote and certain kinds of businesspeople, who were disproportionately Northern Protestant, had MORE than one vote in local and regional elections.

3) There was clear evidence of discrimination in the allocation of public housing in the Stormont era (partly because of that it was incredibly common during the Stormont era for more than one Catholic family to be living in a small home and this may have continued to a small degree in the 70s and 80s, although apparently DISCRIMINATION stopped in the very early 70s).

4) Although it wasn’t formal, there was segregation in housing- crucially, Catholics in mixed areas were often intimidated out of their homes.

5) Although I doubt it was enforced more than 5% of the time during the conflict, until 1988 there was a law criminalizing the display of the Irish flag, and in the mid-60s twice riot police in Belfast raided a Sinn Fein election office in solidly Nationalist West Belfast and removed a tri-color that was in the window.

Were N. Ireland Catholics stripped of their citizenship during The Troubles? Yes, and they also picked cotton for master Paisley. :  ) …No, they weren’t and they didn’t (Ian Paisley was between the mid-1960s and around 2005 a very visible, extremely Unionist and anti-Catholic politician). But between 1975 and 1998, with practically zero influence on law and policy beyond local government, they were ruled by a state they quite reasonably saw as both foreign and hostile. And according to this, there was a small but significant gap in pay between Catholics and Protestants who were employed. As far as I can tell (no, I don’t have a finance or economics degree) the average employed Catholic made 75% of what the average employed Protestant made.

*************

Criostailoíche. That’s my half-assed attempt, using Google, at translating Kristalnacht into Irish. In August 1969, in response to the growing confidence of nationalists, the RUC police and a Unionist mob launched a determined attack on the Catholic Bogside ghetto in Derry. The area was successfully defended by local youths over 2-3 days, and the "Battle of the Bogside" sparked off similar confrontations in Belfast. There, where Catholics were more vulnerable, unionist mobs (led by the RUC) unleashed a wave of terror- in one night alone, 650 Catholic families were burnt out of their homes (in general, 83% of the homes and buildings either destroyed or needing re-building were occupied by Catholics; many of the Protestant victims were attacked by the same mobs as their Catholic neighbors were attacked by; but some were forced out in retaliation by Catholics (the odds are that the Catholic-occupied homes and buildings contained more families and a LOT more people than the Protestant-occupied homes and buildings)). Around 5-6 Catholic civilians were killed. That figure for deaths is either much lower than what happened to German Jews or almost nothing compared to what happened to German Jews (adjusting for the different population sizes). But (in July, August, and September) 1,505 Catholic families fled their homes (probably something like 18% of Belfast’s Catholic population, probably something like 1.8% of the North’s Catholic population). Kristalnacht was worse/much worse but not tons worse, especially if you consider what the police and loyalists had intended in Derry, which probably would have matched Belfast in terms of deaths and property destruction and people evicted from their homes.

Also, it would have been much worse in N. Ireland if there hadn’t been militant, and intermittently ARMED, resistance. I realize that if Jews in Germany had tried that, it almost certainly wouldn’t have saved them and there MAY have been more support among Gentile Germans for what Hitler wanted to do. But, it also MAY have encouraged those Gentile Germans opposed to anti-Semitism to resist. In the medium term it might not have stopped Nazi Germany. But IF there had been massive armed resistance by Jews and non-Jewish anti-Nazi elements, at a time when the German military wasn’t as strong as it was when the war started, it may have encouraged some European countries to attack Germany and since many elements of the German officer corps. considered deposing Hitler when it looked like he was leading Germany to disaster (and when there were fewer alumni of the Hitler Youth (who adored Hitler) than there were at any point between then and the end of the war), Hitler may have been removed from power by the military. Of course if it were the Soviet Union that attacked, that would have just united everyone remotely fond of Hitler, but they were pretty far away and seemed less than totally committed to the anti-Nazi cause. But liberal democracies may have threatened Germany enough that elements of the officer corps, with few Hitler Youth alumni in their ranks or the military in general, may have deposed Hitler.

I don’t mean to criticize German Jews of that time, but I do believe that what I just wrote is accurate (that is, how things likely would have worked out if there had been resistance), and I like talking about Nazi Germany and anti-fascism.

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So, yes, there are some small differences, some big differences, and one MASSIVE difference between what happened to Germany’s Jewish population during WWII and what happened to Catholics during The Troubles. But there are a lot of similarities as well.

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What makes me confident about my statement “probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000”?

1. Between 1996 and 2005 according to the FBI there were 38 racist murders. I have read that the Department of Justice officially estimates that for every hate crime reported to the FBI there might be 20-30 that aren’t reported because not all local law enforcement agencies report such crimes to the FBI. So I came up with 1,140 for those years.
2. I heard (from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest) that in a 12 month period during a 2014 (apparent) surge in police murders of black people including those of Eric Garner in NY, Tamir Rice in OH, and Michael Brown in MO among other highly publicized such cases, that around 200 black people armed or unarmed, had been killed by cops in America. Although I’m very open-minded about accusations that cops plant guns, this country also has a ridiculous number of guns.
3. Bear in mind that decades ago the number of people of color and the number of cops in this country were both smaller or much smaller than they are today.
4. If it’s worth much, about 10 years ago I read a huge amount of what the Southern Poverty Law Center put on their web-site in the previous 10-15 years. I also got an Ethnic Studies degree if that’s worth much.
5. There was little or no talk about “Brown Lives Matter” so I get the impression that very few Latinos/Latinas/Chicanos/Chicanas have been killed by cops in recent years (as far as I know, even Arpaio’s sheriff’s department in AZ didn’t kill a single such person) and that might reflect the situation in earlier decades. I have practically never heard of Asian-Americans being killed by cops. And if Native Americans were being killed at a high rate in the 80s and 90s I would have heard (a massive chunk of my major was Native American Studies).

UPDATE 6/9/21 I just found a Democracy Now! story relevant to this. It's about the last 20 years, but there's a small overlap between that and the period I was looking at Catholics and people of color (1969-2005), and it's possible that what I said about this comparison is off a little. Bear in mind that the figure I refer to in item #2 above came from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest.

In Memory of FDR: Three New Poems

Below are three poems. They're about WWII. The second one is based on a song I like politically. The other two are not, see this for an explanation of my poetry.

The rest of the lyrics are available by clicking on the lyrics label at the bottom.

“Allied Unity” based on “European Unity” by Brutal Attack. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about progressives in America who supported FDR and America’s involvement with the Allies.
2. I could be more familiar with FDR, but it seems like he was the most progressive President this country has had. I don’t think there’s any doubt that economically he was good- not a socialist but something very close to a social-democrat. On matters of race he was disappointing as President- his (possibly unavoidable) alliance with segregationist Democrats, Japanese/Japanese-American Interment, etc. But he DID allow for the creation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (see the first poem here) and the creation of the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Forces (see the poem in this post called “Three-Three-Two”) and the utilization as a combat unit in Europe of the 92nd Infantry Division (a segregated, Black unit of the US Army). It’s not irrelevant that his wife, who probably benefited politically from being the First Lady, was anti-racist, progressive, and politically active.
3. Blackshirts were Italian fascists.
4. The 6th line of the last verse is about my opinion of Irish neutrality during WWII. I should stress that the word mask can refer to a PROTECTIVE covering, so I’m not saying that the Irish were trying to hide their real motivation for sitting out the war. It might still be a tiny bit inaccurate, but at the most just a tiny bit (a tiny bit inaccurate because I think they're neutrality was principled instead of a way to protect their nation from harm).
5. Although I could attribute the statement against anti-Semitism to the progressives whose perspective the poem is written from, I also want to say that as far as American servicemen opposed to anti-semitism, realistically probably some moderate-sized minority of them.
6. Yes, I know that the UK and the US were/are imperialists. Ward Churchill was my faculty advisor and I’ve written this blog.
7. **66% of this poem is me, 34% is the original.
8. When I say "most" I mean most of those who fought for either side, and I think a large chunk, maybe majority? of the US male population fought in the Civil War.

You know our nation’s been put in the hands of someone so cool
Using his power, against the corporate tools
We were all together part of getting him elected
The poor, unemployed and unions have certainly been affected

Chorus
Allied Unity
Fighting with pride and dignity
Anti-Fascist Unity
European lands will be free from the Nazis

Most of our forefathers fought against the Confederacy
And now we’re fighting with the Brits against Nazi Germany
France, Libya and Poland were totally overrun
By Panzers and the Blackshirts, the Nationalist Socialist scum

So Americans, Brits and Soviets, listen very carefully
We need to stick together, with a unified strategy
United we'll win, all for one, and one for all
If we stick together the Axis powers are gonna fall
It wont be easy it'll be a long hard task
Unfortunately there are those fools who wear the neutrality mask
But we'll pull through, cos truth wins in the end
To anti-Semitism and Nazi Imperialism we will never bend

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“Three-Three-Two” based on "Belfast Brigade" I usually just provide a link to the original lyrics, but in this case I use a combination of two versions I found online (plus 3 more changes that I made myself), so the lyrics for the original are below.

1. This is about the 332nd Fighter Group of the US Army Air Force during WWII. It was a segregated, Black unit that saw combat in North Africa and Europe and towards the end of the war had an impressive record as bomber escorts. I saw two movies (twice) about them (“The Tuskegee Airmen” and “Red Tails”) and movies don’t lie, so I’m fully educated about them. Seriously, though, I don’t think I’ll do any more research about them.
2. Goring was Hermann Goring, the head of Germany’s Air Force. Messerschmitts were highly effective fighters.
3. There were efforts by American racists to keep the 332nd from participating in WWII, and when that failed, to keep them from getting bomber escort duty (after something like 1-2 years that failed as well).
4.  Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, was possibly their biggest advocate.
5. After I wrote the next line I learned that the name changed to US Army Air Force just before the war started. Goddamn fucking facts getting in the way of a good rhyme.
6. “Spit Fire” was. a motto of theirs, according to wikipedia.
7. There was the Hitler Youth, and I read a book about a member called “A Child of Hitler.”
8. Some German planes, towards the end of the war, were jets, and I think the first one shot down was downed by the 332nd. Also, the 332nd did NOT get the newest, most advanced fighters available.
9. Conflate traditionally means to combine, but according to my experience and this it can also mean to confuse two similar but different things.
10. As enthusiastic as I am when I think of the Allied cause, in all honesty, I doubt that more than half of American servicemen could have been called anti-fascist. But I think it must have been 100% with the 332nd. They volunteered and fought for the opportunity to fight the Nazis, and there’s no way they didn’t recognize Nazism as white supremacist.
11. **65% of this version is me, 35% is the original.
12. UPDATE 3/2120 The very original versions, which I combined and made a few changes to and THEN seriously altered to make this poem, say "men" instead of "those" in the chorus. But since women have (for at least110 years now) been included in republican armed groups like the IRA, I changed it (in my version of the original, which is below my poem below) to "those" and forgot to change it back for this poem. So now it says men in the chorus.
13. UPDATE 3/29/20 I already mentioned that I thought the pilots were part of the USAAC. Some would say, even if that were true, what about what the USAAC did BEFORE WWII? I don't know. Although WWI was pretty fucked up (politically) as wars go, America didn't go to France to keep Black people down or take the side of right-wingers in a conflict with left-wingers or something. And as far as all the times the Marines were sent into South American and Central American countries on behalf of US corporations, that was the Marines, not the Army, and considering the range of aircraft back then, the lack of aircraft carriers, and the very small and short-term nature of those interventions, I'd be surprised if the USAAC was involved, and if so, it would have been nothing, in terms of planes, pilots and missions, compared to what the USAAC (actually the USAAF) did in WWII.

Goring sent the Messerschmitts up to shoot the bombers down
He thought American racists had kept the Black man down
But he got a rude awakening, when, in their bomber escort debut
He met the Tuskegee Airmen of the Three-Three-Two

Glory, glory to the memory of Eleanor
Glory, Glory to the US Army Air Corps
Glory to the memory
Of the men who flew and died
“Spit Fire!” was the war cry of the Three-Three-Two

Messerschmitts came from Berlin, equipped with machine guns
Planes by the dozens, piloted by Hitler’s sons
But when they approached the bombers they found they had no clue
When it came to fighting the anti-fascists of the Three-Three-Two

Chorus

They had no jet propulsion and their secondhand planes were full of dents
They were ready to defend themselves no matter where they were sent
They were out for equality and to hell with Hitler’s Aryan state
Segregation and National Socialism were easy to conflate

Chorus

All you gallant African-Americans who joined the three-three-two
The world will always owe an enormous debt to you
We should know our country's history, and the sacrifice you made
In the anti-fascist struggle, never did you stray


original lyrics:

Craigavon sent the Specials out to shoot the people down
He thought the IRA were dead in dear old Belfast town
But he got a rude awakening, when with rifle and grenade
He met the first battalion of the Belfast Brigade

Glory, glory to old Ireland
Glory, Glory to this island
Glory to the memory
Of those who fought and died
"No Surrender" is the war cry of the Belfast Brigade

Specials came from Holywood, equipped with English guns
Men by the thousand, ammunition by the ton
But when they got to Seaford St. they were seriously delayed
By the fighting 1st battalion of the Belfast Brigade

Chorus

We have no armored cars or tenders for to show
We're ready to defend ourselves no matter where we go
We're out for our Republic and to hell with your Orange state
"No Surrender" is the war cry of the Belfast Brigade

Chorus

So come all you gallant Irish people and join the IRA
To strike a blow for freedom, when there comes our certain day
You know our country's history and the sacrifice it made
Come join the 1st battalion of the Belfast Brigade

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“ZOB” based on “Final Solution” by No Remorse. Original lyrics are here.

1.This is about the rebellion in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. ZOB is the Polish acronym for the Jewish Combat Organization. My knowledge of this comes from an extensive study of the European part of WWII and watching, multiple times, the movie “Uprising.”
2. The leadership of the ghetto occupants tried to appease the Nazis.
3. As I explain here (in a paragraph towards the top that begins with “Also”) it was possible to predict what was going to happen to the Jews and I think the ZOB understood that to one degree or another. If you think I’m being too harsh on the ghetto leadership, in that post I tear the Irish a new one based partly on my theory that it was possible to predict the Holocaust.
4. The Home Army was the non-Jewish Polish resistance and based on that movie, they were fairly supportive of the ZOB and I think that the Allied leadership told them to be. I think that the HA may have been grateful that the ZOB created another front the Germans had to fight on. They were probably also grateful for every German soldier the ZOB killed.
5. **67% of this poem is me, 33% is the original.

The Nazis will never care about your pleas and weak demands
They read Mein Kamph and will follow Hitler’s genocidal commands
You’re so blind, you don’t understand where it's gonna lead
You would just lay there dying And no one hears your pleas

Armed resistance
To make possible our continued existence

Our goal is not to defeat the reich we just want to survive
Got to make their determination tremble, when we attack we’ll leave none alive
We’re trying to educate the Jewish Council, But they cooperate with the scum
The Nazis ignore our pleas But they'll  be obstructed by the gun

Once we have guns and explosives the Jewish People will let loose
The traitorous and corrupt ghetto police will be hanging by the noose
The Home Army is out there and the Allies are concerned about our plight
They need to see Germans in body bags and see our people fight

Sinn Fein and anti-Semitism

Recently I spent a day typing a lot of updates on this blog relevant to Sinn Fein and anti-semitism. Then, about 8 hours later when I woke up, one of the first things I saw on the Web was a story about a SF TD (MP in the South) being accused of anti-Semitism. I couldn’t fucking believe it. First, there are two more stories you might want to read (if you feel like subbing to the Irish-Times) here and here.

I was of course curious what exactly the tweets had said. Even though SF (and possibly Cronin as an individual) seems to be admitting that they were anti-semitic, I wanted to know because supporters of the Palestinians are often falsely accused of being anti-Semitic but even some of the progressive ones ARE anti-Semitic. So I found the Irish news site that broke the story. An update to their original story is here. The story that has the details of the controversial tweets is here.

First, the first article linked to says:


“She had previously made the news this past weekend when the Sunday Times reported that she had accused Israeli intelligence of interfering in the recent UK election to prevent the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. Mr. Corbyn himself had been accused of anti-semitism in the run-in to that election.”

I haven’t followed the anti-Semitism controversy in the Labour Party very much. I DO know that one of the most outspoken critics (in terms of how big they think the problem is) of anti-Semitism in the party is also VERY supportive of the Palestinians. On the other hand, a friend who is a very solid opponent of anti-Semitism says that the accusations are pro-Israel nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel IS involved, but at the same time the allegation about the Mossad mentioned above comes from someone who I think IS or WAS an anti-Semite.

Why do I think she is or was an anti-Semite? Let me quote and discuss each of the actually or allegedly anti-Semitic tweets.


“Israel have taken Nazism to a new level, by showing they can get away with it.”

This is the most solidly anti-Semitic of the tweets. Calling Israel Nazi is anti-Semitic. First, a friend points out that some Jews do that. That’s different. It’s fairly comparable to black people in America using the n-word. Here are my thoughts about this:

1. It's not too different from calling people of color in America racist.
2. You can call Jewish people fascists, but not Nazis.
3. If you want to say that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians could shift towards the genocidal, fine, but don't call them Nazis (for info about how horrible Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is, see this and many of the articles you’ll find here).
4. If you absolutely insist on comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, write a detailed, argumentative, well-documented 10,000 word essay, not a tweet.

From the Gript story: “Deputy Cronin once responded to a message containing an image of a large number of monkeys sitting at computers by saying that she had thought it was an image of the inside of the Israeli embassy.”

The Israeli embassy represents a fairly democratic state and the tweet was four years before the controversial “Jewish Nation State” law was adopted. Although this fairly democratic state is also engaged in something colonial, it, for better or worse is defined as the Jewish State. Many would say that’s the problem and I kind of agree (I will soon do a post about that and related matters (UPDATE 3/8/20 That post is here) and for those of you who think I am a hypocrite because I’m an Irish republican, see the brief essay at the bottom of this post), but it is 80% Jewish and although, yes this is also a problem, the State is politically even more Jewish in terms of who has power. The Jewish population in Israel is roughly between 35% and 44% of the world’s Jewish population and probably another 30%-38% (that is, a large majority of Jewish-Americans) identify with Israel (and probably 50-75% of the rest of the world’s Jewish population identify with Israel). And the best Cronin can do is the tweet described above. It shows a complete lack of willingness to take the Jewish population seriously and treat their representatives with some respect. An embassy is more a representative of a State (in the European sense) than a Government. So it’s not Netanyahu she’s making fun of. I am saying something similar to what I said in item #4 when I discussed calling Israel Nazi, but I certainly find substantive criticism of Israel much more acceptable than calling it Nazi, it's just that this tweet was not substantive criticism.

The next example of anti-Semitism is something she  re-tweeted that I almost dismissed as misunderstood by her critics- I thought it couldn’t have been anti-Semitic because it criticized Hitler. It said, according to Gript, that Hitler was a pawn of the Jewish-founded Rothschild bank. Not only was the bank owned by a Jewish family, it is frequently referred to by people who are definitely anti-semites. The thing is, this claim is saying that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust or POSSIBLY is saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen.

According to Gript.ie and some of the screen shots they show in their article, she believes strongly that banks control the world and at least once mentions a bank owned by the Rothschild family. She also tweeted that “those wars were instigated and funded by banks.” There is an anti-Semitic stereotype of bankers as Jewish and Jews as bankers. I don’t know what the stats are about religion and bankers, but if you look at a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, only 44% of Jewish-American households had a yearly income of $100,000 or more. Yes, that is higher than other religious groups, but how many bankers don’t earn A LOT more than that? I mean, if a banker’s household is earning $100,000 a year, they must be a a horrible banker. And even if we focus on those Jews earning as much as successful bankers earn, what about all of them who get rich from various other businesses such as retail, manufacturing, real estate, Hollywood, the media, etc? Also, you need a college degree to be a banker, and to one extent or another (depending on the bank and how senior the position is) you need a graduate degree, and I’m sure many people at the very top have a Ph.D. According to the PRC, in 2016, 59% of Jewish-Americans had a college degree. Ahead of them were Hindus at 77%, and Unitarian Universalists at 67%; tied with Jews were Anglicans at 59% and right below them were Episcopalians at 56%, and of course all the other religious groups and Atheists were below that. First, like I said, to one extent or another you need a graduate degree to be a banker. Second, finance is only one of roughly 100-150 degrees available in America. Anti-Semites would say that there is some kind of strong integration among Jewish people that connects the bankers and the non-banker (ridicuously vast) majority. Even during the Nazi era there was division among Jews. A minority wanted to fight, another minority collaborated or supported collaboration or advocated for it, and most were passive. Look at voting in America. In recent decades about 2/3 of those who vote vote Democratic, about 1/3 vote Republican, and although Jewish voter turnout is a little higher than it is with the general population, that still leaves a lot of Jews staying home. And on Israel there are similar divisions. In 2013 (according to the PRC), only 70% said they feel “very” or “somewhat” attached to Israel. According to a 2020 poll of Jewish-Americans (described in an article here (the Times of Israel is only slightly pro-Israel and publishes so many articles that expose what I call Israeli Apartheid that about half the articles I link to from my post about that are in the TI)) commissioned by the Jewish Electoral Institute:

Only 32% of Jewish voters characterized Israel as “one of the most important” issues to them in the upcoming election. Of far greater concern to Jews are healthcare, medicare and social security, and gun safety.

Although 91% said they were generally pro-Israel, 56% identified themselves as “critical” of the Netanyahu government, a government which had the support until recently of a majority of MKs (MPs) and which might possibly be returned to power with a similar majority of MKs.

The article describes some more results of the poll, in reference to Trump:

Fifty-one percent said they supported his Israel policies; 39% said they didn’t. A slightly larger majority (52%) said they approved of his decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights.

The US Jewish community appeared much more divided on Trump’s decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which roiled the White House’s relations with the Palestinians. Whereas 45% approved of the move, 42% said they were opposed to it.

American Jews are similarly split on a dimension of the president’s peace plan that would allow Israel to annex the existing West Bank settlements: 44% approve of that policy and 40% disapprove of it.

Although this is anecdotal, I’d like to address the idea that Jews with a lower income somehow benefit from the wealth of those bankers who ARE Jewish. I have lived in Boulder, CO my entire life. As you may know, Boulder is an expensive place to live, it has always been more expensive than the county that surrounds it, and recently it has gotten very expensive and the supply of affordable housing is insufficient. I think that most of the Jewish people I have known who either work in Boulder or who I went to high school with, live/lived outside Boulder and I’m pretty sure it’s for financial reasons. 

I’m not sure if I just addressed some of what leads people to become anti-Semitic, but I think I may have.

Crucially, an aspect of this is the idea that bankers are central to capitalism. I’m not an economist or business school graduate, but I think the role of bankers in capitalism is slightly if not significantly exaggerated by people who generally like capitalism but (probably) don’t like Jews. The bankers are coordinating capitalism and the flow of capital, but are not making decisions about wages, benefits, working conditions, unions, etc. They don’t make decisions about whether or not to shift production to low-wage areas. They don’t make decisions about what to produce. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for them to make decisions about loans based on their agenda (and apparently they play a major role in urban development), but I think this is exaggerated. They want to make the loan so they can make money on it by collecting interest, and once the loan is made I seriously doubt they’ll make a negative decision if the company recognizes a union, for example- I’ve never heard of that happening and I have been a socialist for 25 years (and I doubt that hardly any businesses would take a loan whose terms involve the absence of a union because if they lose a certification election, they default on the loan). Investors do that sort of thing, and although banks are to one degree or another part of that community, they are not all of it. Unions invest, individuals invest, corporations invest, pension plans invest, non-profits invest, etc. This hostility towards banks also implies that they are inherently capitalist and do nothing good for society, communities and individuals. I have tried to find out if anti-Semites are known to also attack credit unions, an institution which I have no problem with at all. If they ARE hostile to credit unions because they extend their stereotype about Jews and bankers to them as well, that just proves beyond any doubt that they are motivated not by any hostility towards capitalism, but simply bigotry. And, although this might fuel anti-Semitic hostility towards credit unions, here and there and maybe more often than that, Jews have organized credit unions.

The actor Mel Gibson, clearly an anti-Semite, once said that all wars were the fault of Jews. Even IF there was more than the tiniest amount of truth to the stereotype about Jews and bankers, I would have to say, even as a socialist, that wars are not always solely the result of economics (and as I said, there are more components to capitalism besides banks). Imperialism is of course almost always present and there is an economic dimension to that, but there is also right-wing nationalism, racism or some other kind of bigotry. There is often support for war among the military (who often have great influence while a decision to GO TO war is being made), and that is almost always independent of capitalist beliefs and/or the defense industry. I won’t go anywhere near an exhaustive survey of war, but here are my thoughts on some wars.

1. The “American Revolution.” Although I’m not happy with the European settlement that preceded it or the westward expansion that followed it, the colonists had legitimate, non-capitalist complaints against London. I suppose some would say that the British effort in that conflict was for the benefit of banks, and there’s probably some truth to that.
2. The American Civil War. Yes there was an economic dimension, but there was also a great deal of principled opposition to slavery on one side and racist support for it on the other (yes that racism was encouraged by capitalists, but the most direct explanation for popular opposition to abolition was racism).
3. World War I. This was incredibly imperialistic and nationalistic, although I think the racist nature of that nationalism was almost nil. There was militarism. This may have been a war that could be largely attributed to bankers.
4. World War II in the Pacific. I’m not real familiar with what I call Japanese Imperialism (you could also call it Japanese Fascism). There was an economic dimension, although I’m not sure to what degree it was for the benefit of capitalists. There was undoubtedly militarism, possibly even more so than was the case with the Nazis (these Imperialists believed in what you might call a ridiculously negative and fascist warrior code that included killing prisoners or treating them much worse than the Nazis treated POWs of WESTERN Allied states). There was incredible racism towards other Asians (remember that race is socially constructed; I did a few google searches and it seems that at least MANY Japanese have light skin; Apartheid South Africa, for economic reasons, classified Japanese as White and I don’t think it was JUST economic; they were allied with Nazi Germany; I read about how an American white supremacist music label would receive a lot of orders for CDs from Japanese people who considered themselves the “white men of the East”). Although some powerful people in the United States may have primarily been worried about Japan as an imperialist rival, and FDR pursued a foreign policy that put us on a collision course with Japan, A) Japan WAS doing bad stuff, B) FDR was NOT a solid capitalist, C) Pearl Harbor was attacked, D) FDR may have allowed it to happen so that he could go to war with Germany (see below).
5. World War II in Europe. Although the Nazis were sort of capitalist and capitalists supported them, they were driven much more by bigotry, militarism, imperialism, (a crude, populist) anti-Communism and a reverence for power and strength and violence. I’d say roughly the same thing about Italian fascists, with less anti-Semitism and perhaps a little closer to socialist instead of NATIONAL socialist. The Soviet Union fought largely because they were going to be destroyed, although there were certainly some genuinely anti-fascist tendencies in Moscow (if you believe they were more than tendencies, what about the non-aggression pact between Moscow and Berlin that lasted until Germany invaded?). The British were certainly an imperialist and capitalist power at the time, but they were also a liberal democracy and recognized Nazi Germany for what it was in terms of authoritarianism and expansionism. And shortly after the war the British Left/Center-Left won a massive electoral victory, so I think most of the people at every level were motivated by a left-wing opposition to fascism. The United States quite possibly allowed a situation to develop where they would go to war with Nazi Germany. Yes, America was a capitalist and imperialist country, but once again, it was also a liberal democracy, and there seemed to be a massive center-left/left minority in the years leading up to the war and during the war, and FDR was just to the right of that (although as President he was fairly disappointing when it came to racial justice and equality, his wife was not and that’s not totally irrelevant).
6. Vietnam. The Vietnamese had been fighting for independence from the French (and briefly the Japanese) for decades and wanted a united, communist nation-state. I’m not real familiar with Vietnamese communism but banks are not inherently capitalist, and I just did some searches and apparently, for better or worse, there are almost zero Jewish people there. The United States was certainly motivated in part by capitalism. JFK and LBJ were economically to the right of FDR and Nixon certainly was. But there was also a conflict between a block of liberal (and often social) democracies and a block of communist countries that, whatever the progressive value of their social, economic and foreign policies, were authoritarian. Although the US introduced the nuclear weapon to the world, and aimed missiles at the USSR, there were a bunch of them aimed at the US.
7. Israel. Conflicts involving Israel are not anywhere near as much the fault of Jews as many people think. First, although Zionism is very flawed in multiple ways (See this) and I have serious problems with what happened to the Palestinians, the seizing and settlement of lands beyond the pre-1967 borders and states defined by ethnicity and/or religion, Israel’s Arab neighbors wanted in the past to DESTROY Israel- not in the sense that a one-state solution would “destroy” Israel, but in the sense that Jews would be driven into the sea. And this was just decades after the very flawed pacifistic response of European Jews to the Nazis contributed to 2/3 of that population being killed. As far as American fuel for Israel’s behavior towards its neighbors, see some of the material in this post. As far as an alleged Jewish role in the Bush administration’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq, see what I’ve said about support in America for Israel, and consider what I wrote elsewhere on this blog:

Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were many, Israel was a small part of it. There was the opportunity to give lots of money to corporations in multiple ways, the strong desire for using the US military that most GOPers have, the desire to teach the world a lesson in terms of what the US will do to them if they piss off D.C., the desire for oil, the idea of democratizing the Middle-East. I also heard something about it being connected to countering the growing strength of the Euro. It's possible they half believed that stuff about WMDs and Al-Qaeda. Israel was a small part of it.

I’m going to end my discussion of war there.

I believe that TD Raeda Cronin was an anti-Semite. The relevant tweets were made about 6 years ago, and she has apologized. In connection with what I write here (the first article I link to in that post is not relevant, but the rest of that post is) I’m not against the idea that SF should expel her or at least have her stand down as a TD, but I’ll continue to support SF even if they don’t. As I sort of prove here, SF is against anti-Semitism. I did this post largely because the controversy gave me a chance to discuss anti-Semitism among progressive supporters of the Palestinians, and to combine the anti-bigot part of this blog with the Ireland/N. Ireland part of the blog.

**********************

I’ve referred twice to my concern about Israel being officially called The Jewish State and being defined by ethnicity and/or religion. Some would call me a hypocrite because I’m an Irish republican. So let me explain this. Don’t call me a hypocrite. You will lose every time you try that.

After the War of Independence in Ireland, in 1920-1925 the South became what was called a “Free State.” Its independence from the UK was limited. For example, members of Parliament had to swear an oath to Queen. The 1937 Constitution created the position of President and the first President was a Protestant. Presidential terms are normally seven years and someone can serve two terms. In the 1970s there was another Protestant President for about 2 years before he died. So out of nine Presidents, two were Protestant. As far as the 1937 Constitution and Catholicism, it’s true that early drafts emphasized Catholicism and the Catholic Church, but there was GREAT opposition to that. The final draft of the relevant section recognized the existence of the main Protestant churches in Ireland, as well as the Jewish religion, and it recognized “the special position” of the Roman Catholic Church “as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.” This special place for the Catholic Church was done away with in 1972. The ban on divorce was done away with in 1995. There were of course homophobic laws (only in 1993 was homosexuality decriminalized) and the constitution had to be amended in 2015 to allow for gay marriage (there wasn’t anything in the document about “a man and a woman,” but still, only in 2015 was it amended to solidly legalize gay marriage in a country where a law could be more easily overturned by politicians if the country drifted to the right) and abortion is 99% illegal there, but there is plenty of homophobia and pro-life politics among Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc. (also, although the Catholic Church is in two ways sexist, that can be exaggerated, and in recent decades, FREQUENTLY the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) has been a woman and between 1990 and 2011 the slightly powerful position of President of Ireland was held by women, one of whom went on to be the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights)

Is Ireland defined by ethnicity? Until about 20 years ago the South was almost literally 100% white, and there weren’t many non-Irish white people (in the last 20 years there has been bigotry that sort of resembles racism towards, for example, Poles). In 2004 there was an Amendment to the constitution that eliminates birthright citizenship for people born to parents who are not both citizens of Ireland. But if one parent is a citizen, they get citizenship. Also, although naturalization has been restricted, it’s still possible and it’s still fairly easy for citizens of the European Community, although that could be interpreted as racist, but I don’t think they had much of a choice as a member of the EU. First, the parties in Ireland I primarily support (SF and Irish Labour) opposed it as racist (and also as being in conflict with the Good Friday Agreement). Second, although I couldn’t have said this until recently, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland for the last few years was a man named Leo Varadkar, whose father is Indian. Also, he’s an openly gay man. I don’t like him or his party (Fine Gael, who are sort of socially liberal but sort of pro-British and in love with capitalism). According to wikipedia, he was a government minister between 2011 and 2017 when he became Taoiseach. Between 2007 and 2011, when FG were in Opposition, he was a  Spokesperson (shadow minister?). The Irish language is recognized by the Constitution as the first official language and English is recognized as the second. A lot is done to promote the former, but practically everyone practically always speak the latter and everything official is available in both languages. The British came very close to stamping out the Irish language (and they WERE trying to).

The South is not comparable to the Jewish State. And SF doesn’t want a United Ireland to be any more Catholic or Irish than the South is now. The second half of this (starting with the sentence “A lot of people…”) talks about the former, and most of this deals with the latter.