Editorial from Irish Political Review, April 2004

Find The Fascist!

Is Ireland going Fascist? The message of the Government seems to be that it is because of the rise of Sinn Féin. An alternative view is that it is the Government that is going Nazi since it is mired in corruption (judging by its own Tribunals) and is introducing a biological test of citizenship. Justice Minister McDowell declares it to be an established fact that Sinn Féin is funded by the proceeds of criminal activities and then he condones those activities by doing nothing about them. Is that not exactly the way the authorities of Weimar Germany behaved towards the Nazi Party when the German electorate started voting Nazi? By making this assertion about Sinn Féin and doing nothing about it McDowell is debasing public life in the Republic beyond the abysmal depths it had already reached. It doesn't matter whether he believes his assertion or has invented it as a piece of Parliamentary banter—either way his conduct is inexcusable. And then there is his proposal to introduce a biological test of citizenship. Under it people born in the State will no longer have an automatic right of citizenship. On their first entry into this world they must be able to show that they are Irish in some other way than by simply being born in Ireland. They must have a genealogy. Finian McGrath of the Independent Hospitals Alliance, the most consistently reasonable and practical TD in the Dáil, says that he has noticed a significant increase in racist attitudes amongst his constituents since MacDowell started stirring up this issue. The PDs are playing into the hands of Sinn Féin, both by their groundless accusations against it and by their racist anti-immigrant attitudes. They are of the circumstances that are bringing about the increase in support for Sinn Féin both as the party of nationality and as the anti-discrimination party. A strange, meaningless non-event happened during the month. Fianna Fáil dropped its subtitle of "The Republican Party", while the PDs declared that they are Republicans too. It is unlikely that the grass roots of Fianna Fáil will re-make themselves into West Brits at this signal from the leadership. The PDs of course have no grass roots. And all they mean by the declaration that they are Republicans is that they do not propose to abolish the Tricolour just yet. (Perhaps they recall their abolition of God in the first careless rapture of their existence ten years ago, and how they had to let him back a short while later.) The PDs are a small-minded provincial petty-bourgeois party which adopted the ideology of globalist capitalism but was unable to live that ideology. It is in office only because the Labour Party is unable to shake off its absurd Treatyite orientation and form a Coalition with Fianna Fáil which would bring out the social and national side of that former Republican Party.

C O N T E N T S Find The Fascist! Editorial Rwanda: A Tribal Conquest Angela Clifford EU Constitution: Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack The Cory Report Angela Clifford Irish Times Defends Terror Bombing Pat Walsh An Cor Tuathail: Bright Sliabh gCua (Compiled by Pat Muldowney) "Why I'm Not A Spy In Spite Of All You Hear". Report of Martin Mansergh article and responses from Jack Lane and Dave Alvey 'Irish' Revisionists And Madrid Seán McGouran Ground Rent John Martin Casement And The First World War. Part 2 of report of Symposium: Brendan Clifford's Speech Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: 1974 Bombings: DAIL COP-OUT!

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