Green Politics In Ireland

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Green Politics In Ireland

Once again, a sudden gain by a minority party is being hailed as a landslide victory – even though it is nothing of the sort. A cursory glance at the election results makes it clear that the numbers don’t add up: Sinn Féin now has 37 seats, one less than Fianna Fail and two more than Fine Gael. So the boring old middle-of-the-road Establishment parties, who have been in power since the foundation of the State and spent the past four years in a symbiotic “Confidence & Supply” relationship, have fifty percent of the vote. This figure, coupled with the widespread, publicly expressed disillusionment with the Government, implies that the vote for Sinn Féin was merely a protest vote – and that a cautious 50 percent of voters actually voted against Sinn Féin.

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Identity Crisis For The Indigenous Irish

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Identity Crisis For The Indigenous Irish

It was a poster for Irish pop magazine “Hot Press” in the early 2000s that most eloquently summed up the national identity crisis and was a harbinger for the troubles to come: “One thing this pasty-faced country needs is more immigration.” The quote, from journalist and left-wing activist Eamonn McCann (who has since gone on to represent hard-left party People Before Profit in Northern Ireland), epitomized the Irish self-loathing complex which his fellow socialists have often blamed on the legacy of the country’s 400 years under British rule. Staring from the poster, McCann’s own decidedly unsunkissed face illustrated the inferiority complex inherent in this declaration.

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The Irish Pachamama

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The Irish Pachamama

Long before Pope Francis venerated the pagan fertility goddess Pachamama in the Vatican Gardens at St. Maria de Traspontina church, as part of the Catholic Church’s Amazon Synod, a similar idol appeared in churches all over Ireland….

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Buyers Remorse In Ireland: Nostalgia For Bad Roads

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Buyers Remorse In Ireland: Nostalgia For Bad Roads

In July, 2018, just two months after Ireland voted three-to-one to legalize abortion, something happened that puzzled the national media (the cultural cognoscenti), all the main political parties, most of the elected independents, the civil service including the forces of law and order – indeed the entire spectrum of mainstream Irish life. The Establishment was basking in the afterglow of “Repeal” by which they meant not just the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution protecting the life of the unborn; the word had been adopted as a mantra, a totem, a cultural term and even the title of a book.

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Armageddon in the Auld Sod The Conflict Between Neo-Paganism & Conservative Catholicism in Modern Ireland

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Armageddon in the Auld Sod The Conflict Between Neo-Paganism & Conservative Catholicism in Modern Ireland

It was once known as the Isle of Saints and scholars, a title it proudly held for 1,500 years. But now Ireland has embraced a different kind of Pride: the rainbow-flag waving, Shout-Your-Abortion kind. And the learned Holy men have been replaced by witches’n’warlocks who would not look out of place in a 1970s Hammer House of Horror movie – though it would be a Hate Crime to say so.

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