To Antifa and antifascists everywhere – What’s “Nationalist”, “Socialist” and wears blackshirts?
http://www.sinnfein.org/ – “In the Six Counties, Sinn Féin is the leading NATIONALIST party
https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/55073 – “Friends, I am the President of Sinn Féin.
I am also a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister. I am a woman playing my part in trying to make my country and the world a better place. We are a party of the left – progressive and SOCIALIST. “ Mary Lou McDonald
Welcome to Sinn Fein, Jeremy Corbyn’s second favourite party.
Fascism Defined
There are as many disagreements as to what Fascism is, as there are Fascists. Wikipedia lists several definitions and characteristics. Those familiar with events in Northern Ireland in the 20th century might recognise these:
“the use of organised terror, nationalism”
“A revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values.”
“Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.” The word “palingenetic” in this case refers to notions of national rebirth.”
“Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community.”
You’ll find a model there which matches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
Irish Antisemitism
Sinn Fein and the republican movement are certainly anti-Israel, and the IRA has a history of collaboration with the PLO and Hizbollah. Such antipathy usually leads to antisemitism on a casual level without it being systemic as such. It should also be borne in mind that until recently Ireland was a deeply religious country and staunchly Catholic. This also leads to antisemitism, since Christians seem to struggle with the idea that Christ was executed by the Romans, and prefer to blame Jews.
Ireland also has uncomfortable associations with Nazi Germany. Charles Bewley, Irish Ambassador to Berlin from 1933 to 1939 was an unashamed Nazi supporter and rampant anti-Semite. According to Professor Bryan Fanning of University College Dublin, he appears to have gone out of his way to prevent hundreds of Jewish refugees from escaping Nazi Germany to Ireland by denying them visas, even when they had already been approved by the Dublin government. Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Éamon De Valera caused international outrage when he officially expressed his condolences on the death of Hitler, with Ireland’s first President Douglas Hyde also calling Germany to relay Ireland’s sympathy. https://www.irelandisrael.ie/blog/anti-semitism-in-ireland/
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n19/colm-toibin/what-is-your-nation-if-i-may-ask
A 2011 poll found that 22.2% of people in Ireland would deny Irish citizenship to Israelis, and 11.5% of Irish people would deny citizenship to all Jews. “There is a real danger that the public image of ‘Israel’ can lead to an increase in anti-Semitism” said Father Micheál MacGréil, a Catholic priest and the author of the study. Prejudice against Jews was strongest in the 18-25 age group, with 53.6% of this group saying they would be willing to accept a Jewish person into their family, versus 60.7% of Irish people of all ages. https://www.irishcentral.com/news/anti-israeli-mood-rife-in-ireland-says-new-survey-findings-122794539-237390421
In 2014 the organisers of Ireland’s Holocaust memorial event banned any mention of Israel at the county’s annual ceremony and fired the event’s host for the past 12 years because of his objections. The Irish president, prime minister and other senior officials have attended and addressed the ceremony over the years, and that year Irish President Michael Higgins was in attendance, as was the Israeli ambassador to Ireland. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/mention-of-israel-banned-at-irish-holocaust-memorial-1.5344970
Are nationalists antisemitic?
Sinn Fein and Antisemitism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_boycott – An early 20th century boycott of Jews, supported by the man who went on to create Sinn Fein.
“Irish Republicanism’s anti-Israel campaign has, unsurprisingly, given rise to accusations of anti-Semitism. Certainly, the movement is tainted with an anti-Semitic past. Arthur Griffith, who founded the original Sinn Fein movement in 1905, used the pages of his newspaper to rail against “Jew Swindledom” (9/10ths of all Jews were, he proclaimed, “usurers and parasites”) and the Dreyfusards. While similar prejudices were commonplace in all the political parties which descended from his organization, only the eponymous rump which remained after the splits of 1921 and 1926 habitually preached Jew-hatred, culminating in a demand for an Irish-German alliance in 1939.
The “new” IRA, itself soaked in anti-Semitism, took a similar view and attempted to forge a working relationship with the Germans. The death of its leader, Sean Russell, on a U-boat bound for Ireland on a mission sanctioned by Ribbentrop was an early blow to its hopes; he was buried at sea with full military honorus, his body wrapped in a Nazi flag (Republicans still hold an annual commemoration service for him which senior Sinn Fein members have regularly addressed).
In the post-war period, anti-Jewish concerns continued to shape the worldview of many in the Republican movement. Its official newspaper, the United Irishman attacked “Jewish finance,” “Judaeo-Masonic news agencies” and the Jews themselves as “the bitter enemies of Christianity,” this at a time when the IRA itself was being denounced by Ireland’s leading anti-Semitic ideologue, Fr. Denis Fahey, as part of a Jewish-Communist International bent on bringing Ireland under the control of “Moscow or Jerusalem.” However, such criticisms did little to dull his influence on generally left-wing Republicans, whose own anti-Semitism stemmed from a belief in a Jewish-capitalist plot to take over the country. Some, most notably the Republican icon Sean South, joined Fahey’s viciously anti-Semitic Maria Duce movement and became active in the 1950s in warning against such dangerous agents of the World Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy as Larry Adler and Danny Kaye!”
https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/04/ira_plo_history_cooperation.html
The Hibernian was a monthly Irish magazine with the subtitle “Faith, Family and Country”.Twenty-nine issues were published between May 2006 and September 2008. It was launched in May 2006, by Gerry McGeough, formerly a member of the Sinn Féin national executive, as editor.
“Helen McClafferty “The Illuminati and Bilderberg Conferences” Hibernian February 2007 pp20–21 _”In 1776 the Illuminati set out to destroy nations and religions, private property and marriage. Today,in 2007, we are now witnessing those acts coming to fruition” and Tommy Price “Money Matters: Abraham Lincoln’s greenbacks – Part V in a series on money” – “These external forces were trying to break up the union, so they could have smaller nations of equal power, to play one against the other in the war debt game.. International banking was the hidden power behind these conflicts in Europe… Rothschild agent August Belmont had placed large amounts of Rothschild money into bonds of the state sponsored banks in the South… International banking houses were furious over the issuance of Lincoln’s Greenbacks.. Eventually Abraham Lincoln paid the price for the issuance of greenbacks.. killed by John Wilkes Booth, who had links to the Knights of the Golden Circle.. drawing its membership from masonic lodges” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hibernian
In 2009 the only Jewish deputy in the Parliament,, Alan Shatter, and the Israeli ambassador, were both compared to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels by Sinn Fein MK Aengus O Snodaigh. N.B. According to the IHRA definition of antisemitism such comparisons of Jews with Nazis is antisemitic. https://www.indymedia.ie/article/90622?userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true
February 2020. New Sinn Féin parliamentarian apologises after comparing Israeli embassy staff to monkeys. A string of tweets and retweets also alleged that Jeremy Corbyn had been targeted by Mossad and said Hitler was a pawn of a Rothschild bank. https://www.thejc.com/news/world/new-sinn-f%C3%A9in-parliamentarian-apologises-after-comparing-israeli-embassy-staff-to-monkeys-1.497043
https://www.irelandisrael.ie/blog/the-sinn-fein-td-and-the-israelis-as-monkeys-tweet/
In a statement, Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, declared that “the various Tweets from Sinn Féin TD Réada Cronin are inaccurate, antisemitic and racist. We note the comments made today by Pierce Doherty . However it is disappointing that her offensive comments have neither been criticised nor condemned by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald”
https://eurojewcong.org/news/communities-news/ireland/irish-jews-condemn-inaccurate-antisemitic-and-racist-by-newly-elected-sinn-fein-td/
February 2020. Sinn Fein’s seven MPs are among the last nine who have so far failed to sign up to an international definition of anti-Semitism.
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/sinn-fein-mps-fail-sign-antisemitisim-definition-641-out-650-mps-signed-so-far-1381499
