Ireland’s New Colonials
Watching the attempts in the last week by activists to infect Irish life with the alien mind-viruses of Black Lives Matter and White Privilege, there was something nagging at me. Their entitlement, the willingness to position their material interests as a moral imperative, their insistence at centering public life around marginal micro-perspectives. All of it taken together reminded me of something. What was it?
Oh Yeah. This is Colonialism.
Definition:
Feel familiar?
I don’t think Ireland is being literally colonised but I do think that organisations like MASI (for example) and their highest level representatives are better examples of the colonial attitude than any living Irish person.
So the Colonials don’t have full political control but they have the power to introduce and change foundational laws to their great benefit; to make themselves part of the law enforcement process without any level of public accountability; and to elicit performative acts of loyalty and submission from politicians more due to an occupying power or religion.
The Colonials aren’t “occupying with settlers” but the are funded by the government to agitate constantly for massive and irreversible demographic change in their preferred direction, including where this means accommodating people who have broken citizenship laws.
The Colonials don’t do many of things we associate with economic exploitation in a colony but if I could emphasise a single point here it is that Ireland has the most lavishly funded NGO sector in the world. Those NGOs are exclusively and fervently for social liberalisation. So when an activist appears on RTE to tell you how awful Ireland is and how society should be reordered to her benefit and centre on people like her — that’s the state telling you that. That is definitely economic exploitation.
One final missing characteristic of colonial attitude as described above is contempt for the indigenous population. This is the cycle, which seems contemptuous to me: people are sheltered here and attain prominent positions at our institutions, and from there are promoted and paid (almost entirely by the state — by us) to tell us how awful we are, and how rotten the country that sheltered them is, and that the central remedy is demographic change, which will result in more people doing what they’re doing. This continues into infinity. What is the benefit for us of this, exactly?
I guess telling Irish people they have always been awful racists and that their society needs to be reoriented around hating themselves and their past must be one of those famous jobs that Irish people just won’t do anymore.
Finally, to compare the current colonial attitude to the previous one we experienced in Ireland — say what you like about the British, but at least we got some decent buildings out of it. What will the fruits of this new attitude be, in 100 years time?
