November 25, 2023 - 3:00pm
Dublin has stealthily become a tinderbox on issues of immigration. When news began to filter through on Thursday that a five-year-old girl (now in a stable but critical condition) had been stabbed, allegedly by a man originally from Algeria, the whole city braced. Many saw images of young men in the area pushing back against police and hoped that was as bad as the reaction would get.
Instead, the severity of the riots accelerated hourly, as pictures of burning buses and trams flooded social media alongside 28 Days Later-style footage of a lawless city centre. Riot police were deployed and some businesses were looted; public transport in the city was shut down, much of it still suspended the next morning. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris described the rioters as “a hooligan faction driven by far-Right ideology”.
There was some sense that this was coming. Earlier this month Jozef Puska was sentenced for the murder of Aishling Murphy, an event which rocked Ireland in much the same way that the murder of Sarah Everard did the UK. In court her bereaved boyfriend read a statement which explicitly noted that Puska had “come to this country, [to] be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years [but could] never hold down a legitimate job and never once contributed to society in any way, shape, or form”.
This commentary was passed over by much of the press but electrified social media. One of those who amplified it most viscerally was the mixed martial artist Conor McGregor, who continued to post animated tweets about crime and the failures of Irish immigration policy even as the riots took hold. In retrospect, the statement and the reaction to it were a tremor to the riots’ earthquake.
Now that the earthquake has struck, how will mainstream society react? Branding the rioters as scumbags and scroungers is a quick win for the Government — this will be a popular stance and reflects the feeling of the great majority of the country.
What political action can be taken to stop this from happening again is a deeper question, and not so easy to resolve. Ireland has adopted a cordon sanitaire approach to migration policy and cultural change, with previously common restrictionist perspectives pushed into the background. On its own terms, that policy has been a total success: critical assessment of these issues does not really exist in the mainstream. But the effect of that success is that mainstream figures cannot influence these currents when they need to.
The “safe” buckets into which the Government, press and activists have sought to divert reactionary sentiment on immigration — framing it as a debate about public services, warning about the spectre of an omnipotent far-Right — are already at maximum capacity. Ireland has elected no dedicated anti-immigration parties or politicians who can be unseated. There are no significant mainstream press outlets with an immigration-sceptic angle whose advertisers can be pressured.
The only move left is increased Government interference in social media, public conversation and a revival of the delayed hate speech laws. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has already signalled intent on the latter. It will likely have the desired effect in the medium term but is fundamentally based on the same premise as the tactics that have failed thus far. That is to say, if we can stop people talking about certain ideas in public, the salience of those ideas will be neutralised.
In the meantime, Ireland is in a holding pattern, with journalists and commentators chanting their rote catchphrases at one end, and the spectre of McGregorite stormtroopers at the other. Everyone in the middle should expect more riots of this type, for a variety of reasons. The most troubling of these is that Ireland has designed a system to ensure the energy they represent has nowhere else to go.
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SubscribeI strongly suspect that Ireland offers us a glimpse of a horrifying future for the whole formerly western world. Immigration only works when it involves a small number of newcomers actively welcomed into a tolerant but self-confident society, able to insist on a certain number of basic norms. Those norms should themselves represent deeply held popular assumptions such that they carry the force of complete conviction; and they should be wholly shared and endorsed by the elite. The result is integration. What, however, do we have instead? Vast numbers of newcomers not welcomed but imposed. They flow into a riven society, caught in an incomplete (and probably flawed) transition from a Christian to a secularist ethos. As such, it cannot insist on norms of any kind nor do so with any force, whilst the elite offers nothing but the denigration and repudiation of its past and of the society it claims to govern. The looming result will be widespread sectarian division and civil strife. One must add, as a final observation, that the elite in question is not merely incompetent, it is malicious; operating a range of double standards in justice, policing and ethics which actively oppress the old, indigenous majority. One can only assume, therefore, that in some spirit of maximalist Gnosticism, they are out for the complete destruction of our society in the spurious hope that from the rubble will spring Utopia. We are reaching a point of no return and the overthrow of this malicious elite is an increasingly urgent necessity.
Let me express one extremely unpopular point of view.
For me, the starting point was the moment when the same-sex marriage laws were passed.
Let me explain why I think so.
All species of animals have strictly defined types of mating relationships: monogamy, polygamy, absence of marital relations, etc. This is a species characteristic. Humans are the only biological species that does not have a specific pattern of marital relations. In human communities we can see monogamy, polygamy, and promiscuity.
As far as I am familiar with this topic, the explanation for this phenomenon lies in the peculiarities of human evolution. Figuratively speaking, we wised up too early and some of the most important species characteristics simply did not have time to form.
But pay attention – within the community, the pattern of mating is canonized and deviations from it are persecuted. The question arises – why?
It seems to me that the answer is obvious if we ask ourselves what is the purpose of marriage. The goal is not love and happiness. The goal is procreation and the survival of society. And since there is no biologically defined pattern, society creates external moral crutches, like “lets be together until the grave.” In the Middle Ages, by the way, this sounded different, one quickly ended up in the grave, and the other found a mate. My paternal grandmother died two years after they arrived in Siberia. Grandfather married a year later. You can’t survive in Siberian village alone.
Bottom line: I completely agree with the statement that marriage is a social construct. Construct unified within society. I agree entirely.
But this construct has nothing to do with how and with whom you make love… Lawyers, shut up, “what the marriage is” is none of your business!
Please note, all these goats are foaming at the mouth to prove that same-sex lovers have the right to marry, but not one can answer the question, why are we talking about two lovers, and not one A and four B? Like Muslims! Why are they worse than Muslims, not to mention the answer to the question of who is A and who are B in this case?
I’ll stop here, it’s time for me to go to bed, but gay marriage is just the starting point in these thoughts. Our societies have a colossal number of taboos that we do not notice due to their familiarity, but it is these taboos that allow a huge number of people to coexist together.
That is why I am sure that without the most severe measures directed against liberalism in morality, migration, against “trust in science,” we will very soon, within 10-15 years, roar into the abyss.
What I’ve written here sounds incoherent, but I’d really like you to think along these lines. I’m talking about destroying the fabric of society
Sorry for broken English
We’ll think along the lines we choose, on the basis of our knowledge and experience of life which may have something in common with your post, or may not.
For what it’s worth, the same-sex marriage laws were a product of the way society was becoming more accepting of loving partnerships, not – as you claim – the “starting point”. Same sex relationships have existed throughout recorded history.
You didn’t understand me, I’m sorry. I didn’t talk about “same sex relationships”. I said about “same sex relationships” and “marriage”. Maybe, my bad English is the reason, but “relationships” and “marriage” are not just different words, they are different concepts.
Feel the difference, please
PS. Can anyone here give an example of a society that had same-sex marriage before the end of the 20th century?
I understood you perfectly. Your claim that same sex marriage – which is just an official recognition of a same-sex relationship – being the “start” of anything is simply nonsense. Instead, it was the culmination of a process by which society provides a legal framework for relationships on the same basis as different sex relationships.
Marriage itself isn’t intrinsic to procreation, or vice versa, otherwise society wouldn’t bother recognising marriage between two 60 year-olds, where the female was no longer fertile. It’s more to do with inheritance, and the transfer of wealth (however much or little).
Nonsense is a very powerful argument. I hope you and I can end the discussion at this point
Rome is one example. Of course, it fell.
Example of what?
I think that you may be mistaken. My reading was it was “tolerated” as long as one didn’t flaunt it in public. Certainly not “marriage”. The Roman orgies where everything went if the host so deigned!
The roman empire didn’t fail it transfer to christian church the found this was easier to control people than war
The Ancient Greeks, Romans and other pagan societies were completely tolerant of homosexual relationships, but they would have laughed at the idea of two men getting married, because they understood the difference between romantic, sexual relationships and marriage.
Now we live in a world where “reason” rules, two men can get married, and a man with a 9-inch p…s can consider himself a woman and win women’s sports competitions.
In this world, only uneducated, stupid homophobes and transphobes like me would dare to say that this is crazy.
By the way, I am not at all against the legalization of relationships between gays, I just argue that they should use a different term. Or, other terms, given modern gender diversity.
But anyone who insists on using the term “marriage” to refer to this kind of relationship should, in my opinion, be consistent and admit that the bloody beating a woman by a “former” man and now a “woman” in a women’s boxing competition is a fair approach which should be greatly welcomed!
I agree with you, but I think in a world terrified of masculinity, legitimized sodomy and the externalization of sexual fetishes like cross-dressing are perceived as ‘harmless’ channels through which to divert ‘dangerous’ male energies, and therefore are now being encouraged among young men via the media and education system.
What’s happening in Ireland is a forerunner. People are sick and tired of being unwilling test subjects in a massively unpopular social engineering experiment for radical sexual transformation and enforced immigration.
Without adequate means of contraception, procreation would happen anyway. Surely the goal of monogamous marriage is to provide social stability and protection for women.
Without it we would have a few men impregnating a lot of the women, a lot of unsatisfied men to control, and a lot of women and children with no means of support.
From a certain point of view, we already have examples of societies close to what you described here.
In the name of political correctness, I won’t point a finger in this direction.
Since polygamy is the traditional Islamic model, your description is apt for many Muslim societies. There are a lot of unsatisfied men to control.
Survival only occurs where offspring can reproduce and support their children. If offspring reproduce but they die, so does the genetic line. Humans require parental support probably to the age of 16 years of age in order to survive which requires marriage. If we look at violence between males, that between step fathers and step sons higher than betweeen fathers and sons. If we look at successful breeding, a male brought up by a father is greater than brought up by a step father.
Males reach peak strength at the age of 26 years or thereabouts. Reflexes and speed decline with age rapidly but not upper body strength. A fourty year old male is more likely to be able to do more damage to a mid teen male than the other way. Hence many teen males and females run away from homes with violent step fathers.
In what way does your impassioned diatribe relate to immigration? Aren’t most Eastern European, Muslim, and–to put it in a context more applicable to North America–Latino immigrants far more traditional, on average, than British or Americans when it comes to marriage?
True. But they are not reproducing little westerners, are they? And should you not carry your point further – to recognise that precisely because they are “traditional”, non-European populations are sustaining themselves and even flourishing, whereas we – pitiful celebrants of sterility – are withering away, even in the very hearts of our homelands. The fact remains that thanks to the dangerous gift of consciousness, human forms of love are always at risk of going massively astray and so require the trammels of long established custom to hold them to the optimum reproductive setting. Hence the “traditional” emphasis on heterosexual normality and on marriage as an exclusively heterosexual privilege, for the natural family is the only secure engine of social renewal. In fact, then, El Uro’s remarks are absolutely to the point, for a functioning society is not an agglomeration of atomised individuals as liberalism would have it; nor is it the crushed collection of such individuals bequeathed by the tyrannical forcing press of socialism; it is, of course, an ongoing, self-reproducing ethno-culture with insiders, outsiders, customs, ceremonies and rites of passage. And crucial to this actually living society – as opposed to the cut flower of liberalism and the pressed flower of socialism, both quite, quite dead – is to privilege and secure without the slightest shame heterosexual marriage and natural reproduction.
Such sweeping and self-certain assertions from you, sir–as usual. Maybe, sure I guess, not really, and yes and no to most of that, Mr. Denis. If Eastern Europeans are not Westerners, please define ‘Western’. If you mean WASP. or some other preferred subdivision of what is commonly known as the West, say so.
A society in which liberating or innovative forces do not exist in (inevitable) conflict and (intermittent, aspirational) dialogue with forces of conservation and caution is little more than a theory. And real-world examples of nearly un-tempered forces from either wing are documented living and historical nightmares.
You attempt to create unbroken through-lines from people like JS Mill and Barack Obama–liberals, of different colors and eras–and totalitarian communists (whom I’ll forbear to start naming since that will auto-trigger a 12-hour comment quarantine).
I regard that as an a incoherent mishmash. Your convenient mega-tent, with its giant canopy, is no more of a genuine structure than an umbrella under which GK Chesterton and Rishi Sunak brush shoulders with the farthest right European Political Leader Who Ever Lived (yeah, him). Not valid at all–a pointless blurring of meaningful distinctions you fail (pretend not to?) perceive or attempt to shout down.
You indulge in caricatures of liberalism and idealizations of conservatism that won’t persuade many who don’t already share your one-sided worldview*.
*Still, you are skilled polemicist and make some worthwhile or intriguing points, even if engaging with your pronouncements rarely seems like an open exchange or an actual discussion. (Granted, I may need to take another look in the mirror on that score).
And you accuse others of ranting?
Haha! Fair enough.
I wonder what you’re like in daily life. I picture you with a red-face, often sputtering with rage, a proudly-mean old man much of the time.
But it’s hard to read character in typed characters, isn’t it?
The Greeks put the boundary of Europe at the Urals. Western thought was created by the Greeks, devloped by the Romans and modified by Christianity.
Ok. But if cornered or caught off-guard I suspect you might admit that the boundaries are not so firmly or neatly established. They stretch, for example, into the Fertile Crescent of the ancient Near East. And, despite your reflexive minimization of or impatience with all things religious, the Western world was more than “modified” by Christianity. That influence has been transformative and “neo-foundational”.
Another point: If so-called barbarians like our respective Anglo-Saxon and Celtic ancestors can produce (a percentage of) descendants who adopt “Western thought”, why can’t Indians, Moroccan, and Asia-Russians too? And why can’t we be more willing to learn from the the cultural heritage of the globe instead of being Little Westerners?
Are Greeks and Italians ethnically identical to most English or German people? No Moorish blood in southern Europe, no Arab influence upon the Renaissance? Et cetera.
*And what is virtue separated from kindness and understanding?
Or “western-ness”, let alone Christian practice, without the charity and forgiveness that are central to the Gospels and several Hebrew books too?
“it is, of course, an ongoing, self-reproducing ethno-culture with insiders, outsiders, customs, ceremonies and rites of passage”.
Not a fact. That is merely one version of a “functioning society” and your emphasis on a global majority or villains, outsiders, and ethno-insiders far more narrowly conceived than your disingenuous alibi of “western” would suggest makes your vision decidedly oppressive, according to any well-rooted version of Western values.
It seems anyone branded a Liberal would also be due for cleansing, exile, imprisonment, or at least re-education in your authoritarian Republic.
Every happy family is the same, every unhappy family is different as they say. We are witnessing our own era’s variation on unhappiness. Eloquently described Simon, thanks.
Love that first line from “Anna Karenina”.
V interesting. But I dont agree that the Elite are engaged in a wilful self destruction. They have profited wildly from the 20 year property bonanza and heist which the combo of uncontrolled mass demand (via immigration) and controlled suppression of housing supply guaranteed. A million pound capital gain for every London home owner. Then this detached and yes mendacious Establishment – pumped full of the Graduate Production Factory – wedded itself to the ideal of A Multicultural Society and the debilitating terror of anti discrimination their mad new ideology has created. They are now trapped, unable to even acknowledge the downsides of this immigrant heroin for fear of triggering..er..riots in city centres when the truth comes out.
You’re right, the problem with these people is that regard not just immigrants but all people as mere units of economic production. The thought that people have interests beyond money and material wants is alien to them, it’s made even worse by the fact that these people have no concept of what culture is, do in part that they weren’t really taught about in school or college, (modern education systems are meant to churn out narrowly educated technical specialists who don’t think for themselves and conform), have no interest in culture because they’re too self-centered to care about things beyond themselves and think they’re too smart to bother to learn, as well as the fact they themselves have no culture of their own, only material and social appetites. The result when the problems happen, they’re at a loss of how to handle it, result to try to buy off or placate people(immigrants of course because they create more value because they’re cheap), and don’t know how to fix the problem or even aware of how bad the problem really is because they have no frame of reference and the fact that they’re cowards an opportunist by nature. The result the problems fester, and will eventually explode.
That sounds much more like what the rest of us get – rather than what the elite want for their own children.
Me neither. But I’m still not sure I’m convinced by your explanation. If you want to push up house prices, I’m not sure that mass immigration by poorly educated people from largely backward rural areas, with a very limited or inappropriate skill set, is really the way to go.
Oh yes it is.
They create demand at the bottom, first in rented property that is financed by the tax payer
I don’t think it was willful – the unintended consequences of chasing profit!
An extremely insightfull view. On the same train of thoughts, a colossal state debt accrued during an historical anomaly of 0% interest rates will have similar effects.
This is what happens what do you try to run a society like an open-air shopping mall or an office building, and replace culture with bureaucratic procedure and the market, the current problem with the elite is that they have they have a materialistic worldview in which everything is merely just an interaction of objects and there is no such thing as intrinsic value. When it comes to human relationships everything is a transaction, all interactions are really just an exchange of goods and services. The result such things as honor, integrity, and loyalty are alien concepts of these people. The result you have a class of people who are greedy, shallow, self-interested, and extremely arrogant. When it comes to their interactions with each other, They never met a person who could not be bought off or negotiate with. The result you have people who would not look out of place in such fictional settings like American psycho or Succession. Despite the fact that these people have character flaws that make them extremely dangerous and very effective at fighting their enemies, the order that they preside over is extremely fragile because it’s driven by purely find pure self-interest and are capable of being loyal to anything beyond themselves, eventually betray each other when the situation demands it. Another problem is at the so-called philosophy underlying the elite system is that it offers no meaning about existence or purpose beyond personal gratification, and offers no unity at all I’m actually works against it by putting the individual above everything. They think they can make this awful order work because they think they can fix society’s problems by treating it as an engineering problem or a case of bad coding. This is born out of of the fact that they’re technocrats by training and busted geared towards thinking in such terms, they’re conceit and selfish just encourages this, but also because such thinking gives them a false sense of security by giving them a belief that they can control things. But humans have wills of their own and they’re not inanimate objects, and don’t like to be controlled. It’s made worse that despite often being intelligent and clever, the ruling elite are not particularly creative or imaginative and tend to be very risk adverse and conformist out of fear of losing everything. The result is that you have extremely arrogant yet incompetent people, and such people tend to be dangerous and even more so when they feel threatened because they’re prone to panicking. And that’s what the problem is, they know the system they preside over is dying, but instead of fixing it they double down because that’s all they know and also cuz they fear will happen when the system dies, thus things get worse and people are noticing this, and are starting to get restless. I don’t think the leader doing what they’re doing out of maliciousness, Just incompetence born out selfishness and wrong headedness, and ineptitude. It’s best to think of them more like French aristocracy before the revolution, they knew there was discontent how bad the situation was. But we shouldn’t put Faith in revolution, because that revolution wasn’t many ways worse.
I agree with your comments on culture. Mr Fitzgerald’s words, ‘cultural change’ and ‘reactionary sentiment on immigration’, had already caught my eye. And he is correct in saying that there is no political bucket provided for those particular things. Because … well … what are they really? Personally, I think it’s an important question because I suspect that, alongside simple humanity, they could deeply underlie the inchoate response (followed by overt rage) that the stabbings induced. Yet, when people claim that they are losing their culture, there is frequently a chorus of, ‘what culture’? ‘What is this culture you are so afraid of losing?’ The questioners could be given a list of the country’s achievements followed by its ideologies etc etc but, in truth, the question is a naive one. It cannot really be answered, it can only be felt. There are components of culture that operate below conscious level. It is, to a great extent, summed up by the rather basic expression ‘blood and soil.’ And it encompasses a feeling for the land itself. A feeling that runs much deeper than any consideration of the square footage of a conveniently inhabitable, economic area. I quote Sir Walter Scott : ‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead, that never to himself hath said , This is my own, my native land.’
Obviously, all societies have overlapping, gross characteristics but an individual culture attaches different symbolic meanings to things. As Mr Fitzgerald comments, the Irish play the pipes. What’s distinctive about that? Most societies have a musical tradition, but producing music is not simply an activity. Things of this nature are almost ritual or ceremonial in that they carry folk memories and conjure feelings. And, speaking as an Englishwoman who hasn’t been a dutiful church goer, I nevertheless feel something when the church bells ring out over the fields. Something beyond a religious response. Would the Muslim call to prayer invoke anything in me? No. Would it give me that ‘this is where I belong’ feeling? No. It’s a whole big symbolic thing, like pulling a sword from a stone, and it seems as if all governments plus a lot of people will never either feel it or understand it.
NB. (Read or leave this bit. It’s personal observation on multiculturalism/integration)
In our retirement, my husband and I have tried to contribute to our locality. We hold an outdoor sculpture exhibition in our garden in May/June, showcasing the original work of British artists. It is well advertised, free entry, non profit, donations to charity. Teas are ‘help yourself’ with an honesty box, as is the sale of home raised plants. Five acres in which to wander and picnic and ‘feel better’. For many people, it is a self-proclaimed spirit raiser. We’ve done it for about 15 years now, launched a few successful, artistic careers and encouraged a lot of gardeners. Over six weeks in May/June, thousands of people pass through. And here is the point – though we are situated between Birmingham and Bristol, I would put at approximately one percent the number of visitors that have been, let’s say, ‘other than easily classifiable as’ basic English, Welsh or Scottish. And of that one percent, most were continental white European or from the Anglosphere.
Intriguing and well-stated post, to this Celtic descendant living in the former-colonial Anglosphere (USA).
I take your concluding personal reflection to imply that the love of place is not often transferable to the newcomer–or at least not in the same way for new-adoptees as for natives.
But that is not always true in an unqualified way. Some immigrants become more patriotic and rooted than the average local, even without the visceral, born-and-bred sense of belonging you refer to.
Honest question: Would you describe your area as provincial or “insular” in any way? That is: Even in the absence (or near absence) of any real exclusion or bigotry, might potential visitors that don’t fit a certain broad demographic feel a bit unwelcome there, as you or I might in a little Eastern European or Middle Eastern village?
I take your point, thank you. We are in the countryside so I honestly doubt that most would feel intrusive or anticipate ‘stares’ in the way one might if we were in a village. Personally, I think it is lack of interest rather than fear of low grade antagonism that is keeping them away. I suspect they are neither interested in garden visiting, a bit of a Sunday occupation in UK, or grass roots art. (We are hardly The Burning Man after all!)But it is certainly a concern of the globally inclined amongst our media that the countryside is ‘too white’. I think they too suspect that the countryside exudes quiet hostility. Conscientious councils even put up optimistic signs on walking routes indicating the direction of Mecca for the convenience of those about to pray. It isn’t working. And I really doubt that it is the fault of the odd farmer standing by with his dog.
But I wouldn’t deny that a proportion of incomers could become attached to a new land in some way, as you suggest. My husband retired from the army so we have lived elsewhere. And we were great explorers of other people’s habitats and cultures. Hence, perhaps, my comments on our own lack of exotic visitors. As for attachment? I must confess a strange attachment to Texas. Three years at Fort Sam Houston with loads of ‘boondoggles’ elsewhere in the States and yet Texas, comparatively barren as it could appear in places, whispered something to me. Still does, through old friends and photos. And the strains of the ‘Cotton-eyed Joe’. Odd, isn’t it? I could maybe have settled there. Though, of course, I would never have been a real Texan, I might just have fitted in and done my best to be a worthwhile guest in your country.
A very thoughtful and nuanced reply. Thank you. I know what you mean about all-white or mostly white places facing a kind of default suspicion, whether or not they are welcoming or narrow, and in what degree. I suppose I’m a bit guilty of that type of “white on white” judgmental-ness myself at times. But I don’t default to it and I recognize that places–with an oblique nod to your first post–have their own idiosyncratic characters that are complex and, of course, not reducible to the meanest or kindest people in a given town, village, or hamlet. Plus, individual people are not all one way all the time either, to put it mildly.
I just returned from a short trip to the Calgary, Alberta area, where I was born. Most of my father’s side still lives there, well outside the big city of Calgary. While the area is still predominantly white, there are certainly more multi-hued newcomers than there once were, often entrepreneurs (usually shopkeepers or restauranteurs) from various parts of Asia, including Pakistan and China. And some Canadian rednecks or mere traditionalists aren’t happy about that. But I wouldn’t judge all 15,000 residents of High River, AB according to its most outspoken xenophobes, or even assume the the anti-immigrant crowd is purely hateful, or has no point about some of the new arrivals.
After living in the SF Bay Area for 45 years, I feel some sense of rootedness here. But I have lived in so many individual cities in this region (including San Francisco, Palo Alto, Salinas, Santa Cruz, and now San Jose) that place-of-residence is not same kind of Home as it is for most of my Alberta cousins.
I don’t know whether the ethnic diversity of Silicon Valley is a net strength or not–but it is surely a reality. At 52, I sometimes think I might like to settle in a place where a higher percentage of people at least spoke English well, regardless of their complexions.
Forgive me if I’ve overshared.
Nice to hear it all actually. Husband and I went on holiday to the Calgary Stampede in 1973. Mere youngsters then. No spare money so camped by a stream on rough ground at the edge of town. Just got the tent up when a chapter of Hells Angels roared in. I was too tired to move. They were great. As was the Stampede. This is all apropos of nothing of course, but you revived some memories and I wanted to send my best from UK to your Alberta relatives. Banff, Jasper … beautiful …
Thanks very much. I’d love visit the English countryside on my first trip “across the pond”, decades delayed from my original plans at this point.
It is up to the incomer to fit in. Learn the history, geography,religion, traditions, join local clubs, etc. Realise the World does not revolve around oneself. If one is in Southern France where rugby is important, join the local club and support it. In France, understand the importance of Laicite. In Many Roman Catholic countries there are saints days and traditions based upon them: learn and follow the customs.
Why move to a country if one is not preprared to assimilate ?As the French say ” One needs to be loyal with one’s heart, not just one’s stomach “.
I don’t disagree. However, it is best to welcome the refugee, exile, and stranger whenever possible, setting standards and limits but not vilifying them en masse. And to avoid tarring them with a broad brush by calling them poorly-educated, barbaric, or “non-western”, etc., asserting a non-conformity or strangeness that needn’t be permanent, and often has plenty to do with fixed resistance or prejudicial judgment on the part of certain locals.
I don’t say these things about your views in particular, but the rhetoric tends to goes in a one-sided, ugly direction when immigration is broached, here and elsewhere. That’s true of pro-immigration viewpoints too: balance is too readily alienated from the discussion.
Similar here, I own a fairly important (in the field) Industrial Revolution relic in Yorks. Perhaps get three (groups of) visitors a week. Historic England (used to be English Heritage but that’s too exclusive) now pump out DIE statements but fact is only British ppl (of a certain type, which doesn’t mean middle class but rather tending to provincial, northern, a sense of history/cultural continuity) have any real frame of reference and only the odd non-native any interest.
I’m originally from the Durham coalfield, so I recognise your visitors as you describe them. Yorkshire was once called ‘God’s own country’. I count you lucky to be one of the current guardians of its hugely eventful and productive past. Thank you.
“One must add, as a final observation, that the elite in question is not merely incompetent, it is malicious; operating a range of double standards in justice, policing and ethics which actively oppress the old, indigenous majority.”
We don’t need to look far to find evidence to support that observation. What seems clear to some of those taking to the streets in Dublin, voting for the party of Gaert Wilders in the Netherlands or living in a state of increasing anger and frustration beyond the M25, is that this issue lies at the heart of a cultural war where the enemy seems to possess all the weapons. Who is the enemy? Immigration lawyers are lowly placed operatives who deserve their place up against a metaphorical wall come the revolution, alongside members of the CBI who see that their members benefit enormously from a divided and low wage workforce. Then there’s University Vice-Chancellors, surely among the most reviled of the enemy for presiding over the corruption of our children and demanding ever more visas for overseas students and their dependants to support a business model that owes more to turnover than the pursuit of knowledge. Then there’s the civil servants, so-called, at the Home Office (why is it called that comforting name when it exists almost exclusively for the benefit of foreigners?), cheered by the news that the Supreme Court had thrust a knife into the heart of the Rwanda Policy. The list could go on. I think we’re surrounded by them.
Are the motives of the elite really understood? We cover over our lack of understanding with phrases like:
But I have to confess I don’t really understand them. Some, such as a yearning for an impossible utopia, seem implausible from a group which has always been so self interested in the past? Part of it is clearly a desire to feel morally superior. But their willingness to put their societies at risk (whether you see that as risks associated with rapid mass immigration, or extremist reaction to it) is quite baffling. What do they stand to gain, that makes such risks worth taking?
My experience of the progressive elite in Britain (and some are my friends and very charming, bright people) is that they simply do not see the problems relating to mass immigration and multiculturalism. They believe that problems are essentially either in the eye of the beholder (seeing problems means you are a racist, and a racist by definition has a distorted vision, seeing problems where they do not exist) and/or are caused by the racists, the “far right”. The ways in which the “far right” cause the problems are a) by discriminating against the newcomers and suggesting that their behaviour is in any serious way problematic, so alienating them, b) by seeking through nefarious politicians to restrict immigration, which is cruel and also stupid because immigration only has pluses, and everything else is a racist figment and cruel with it…c) by damagingly adhering to outdated and racist notions of historical culture, continuity, sovereignty and so forth.
They are only (by hostile implication) particularly Utopian, and believe that “open society” trends to internationalisation, open borders, and “critique” of the notion of national community are simply normal and natural these days, and the only difficulty is these dreadful far-righters, populists and so forth who refuse to see that they are obviously “on the wrong side of history”.
Like you, I am also acquainted with one or two such characters; and you describe their delusions accurately. But to summarise, are you not showing that they are purblind, complacent, selfish and blinkered? And since their excuses depend on essentially Marxist foundations – referring to quite crucial notions of continuity and sovereignty as “dated” and “racist” for example (classic hard left rubbish) – are they not also profoundly and wilfully ignorant and corrupt? The corruption, of course, has been installed slowly, by means of social disapproval (our old friend “nudge”), of personal ambition (“sign up to the programme and the world’s your oyster”) and of profession terror (“say that again and we’ll never grant you another commission”). They are, then – as another contributor has pointed out – “trapped”; but a moment’s courage, together with some prudent financial retrenchment, would enable them to break free. Let us, by all means, maintain our links with the beau monde; let us break bread with them; let us offer them the odd moment of relief when they can confess their doubts and sorrows to one who despises and abominates their puppet masters; but let us never, never forget their total want of integrity.
You speak in such absolute and hyperbolic terms, with scarcely a detectable hint of nuance or charity. The belief that ones opponents are not merely mistaken but evil or universally devoid of integrity is a huge part of what plagues our zeitgeist from both sides of the sociopolitical blabosphere. You’re contributing to it.
Left wing midle class villified ( including Ann Cryer Labour MP ) all those who raised the issue of grooming gangs.
Ann Cryer – Wikipedia
Cryer attracted media attention, and death threats,[8] for speaking out against forced marriages, honour killings, calling on immigrants to learn to speak English before entering the country,[9] and for being amongst the first people to talk about the issue of gangs of Asian men sexually abusing children in Yorkshire.[10]
Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal – Wikipedia
Yes I’ve heard of it but thanks for your continuing series of reference-lessons.
There is simplistic overreach on both sides of the issue. You’ll never return to the level of insular Englishness many might prefer, according to an oft-idealized view of (say) early 19th-Century Britain. (Partly because the Empire and global emigration–sometimes forcible occupation and settlement–of British people was already in full career by then and soon reached a point where for a time the sun quite literally never set on that imperial project). But the whole culture needn’t be surrendered to waves of whoever wants to enter, and countries shouldn’t be expected to encourage and “fast-forward” to an ethno-cultural mishmash either.
Let’s have immigration and policies that are not beholden to extremists on either side.
God I can’t stand the ‘right side of history’ idea – it shows lack of attachment to truth-seeking.
As members of the “citizens of nowhere” class they consider cosmopolitanism to be virtuous and a sense of place ignorant, retrograde and backward. As consumers of local services they enjoy the benefits of immigration because it pushes down the cost of their nannies, dogwalkers, gardeners etc. Thus their egos and material circumstances are simultaneously served by the policies they have crafted and defend.
“Immigration only works when it involves a small number of newcomers actively welcomed into a tolerant but self-confident society.”
AND when the immigrants are strongly motivated to adopt their host country’s customs and culture.
AND when the immigrants don’t harbour hatred and contempt for their host county’s society.
And when the immigrants aren’t coached that they should harbour hatred and contempt for their host county’s society
You charge the elite with malicious incompetence, but with no evident benevolence or coherent plan of your own–not that you’ll state in plain terms, perhaps wisely so.
What type of overthrow? A bloody one? Does that include conservative elites?
Nothing approaching a majority of any elite with real financial, social, or cultural power is “out for the complete destruction of our society”. That is a spastically paranoid claim. A vocal minority of college students and extremely online types are, in fact, urging self-destruction from the sidelines. And some, typically less educated, are ready to take to the street over these internal squabbles, on both the far-right and far-left. Neither extreme side can ever win. Because such victories are never conclusive–not for Liberalism or Conservatism or any- other-ism–and the bloody aftermath of bloody methods just last and lasts.
How old are you man? You insinuate the need for radical-reactionary responses (right?) but will you be around for many of the bloody-mornings-after that follow those longed-for purges? Yikes, or to use a Briticism: oh dear.
Excellent comment but one point of which I am not so sure “One can only assume, therefore, that in some spirit of maximalist Gnosticism, they are out for the complete destruction of our society in the spurious hope that from the rubble will spring Utopia”
I would say it is more likely that they are intent on lining their own pockets regardless of the damage the are doing to this country and those that are doing the lining positively will the destruction of our society
“Immigration only works when it involves a small number of newcomers actively welcomed into a tolerant but self-confident society….”
True, but to which we need to add, “when it involves immigrants eager to adopt and adapt to the existing cultural norms of the country they are joining.” That seems not to be the case.
I don’t understand how 3 years on welfare, let alone 10, ain’t grounds for deportation. The host countries do not owe immigrants a living.
I also don’t understand the elite mentality that welcomes Muslim immigration in the name of toleration without noticing that the immigrants are extremely intolerant of LGBTQ lifestyles.
Finally, I don’t see how elites gain legitimacy by limiting freedom of speech and the press so only their views are allowed in public discourse. That’s tyranny, not democracy. Keeping a tight lid on dissent almost guarantees riots, particularly when elite policies are failing dramatically. There ain’t enough Garda to impose a police state.
In 2008, the Irish Central Statistics Office forecast that the Irish population might reach 4.9 million by 2041. Twenty years early, the Irish population broke through the 5 million barrier in 2021 – a 50% increase since 1996. Rather than using the short term benefit of bumper tax receipts from the multinational sector to invest in the necessary transport, housing and energy infrastructure to catch up with this level of population growth- unparalleled in the OECD – these have been squandered on quite extraordinarily high levels of welfare entitlements for people who cannot or will not work, including (but not just including) many migrants. And who can entirely blame migrants for being drawn to a country where the government is stupid to throw such money around? In the past 18 months the tourism sector has taken a massive hit as hotels and hostels, often in remote rural locations, have been filled with migrants awaiting interminable processing (which virtually never ends in deportation). It is deranged, and can only be sustained by increasingly hysterical policies, as if literally banning discussion of problems will make the problems go away. Far from being a “Far Right” conflagration, many of those arrested for looting in Dublin on Thursday night were migrants themselves, part of an increasingly feral underclass concentrated in Ireland’s urban centres.
Population was 5M in 2021 but 5.1M in 2022 and has added 96k in the 12 months to Q2 2023! I suspect this growth will accelerate, especially as the EU will distribute immigrants throughout the Union. 6M by 2030? 7M?
Poor, beautiful Ireland.
Yup, aligns to my trips home and what family tells me
My instinctive reaction to the ‘far-right’ riot was that a protest by deeply concerned citizens, shocked by the report of school children and their teacher being knifed had been deliberately hijacked by rent-a-mob in order to kick off a riot. The aim to distract all attention from the main event was hugely successful, as burning buses and shattered store fronts and a hooded mob – naturally labelled ‘far right’ moved centre stage of all news reporting..
In the US there was a march in Wisconsin by the so-called ‘far right’ – replete with the relevant flags that cannot be named for some reason. It was so obviously staged, and embarrassingly clear that the uniformly dressed men were acting the part, federal agents doing their desperate best to add flesh to the ridiculous claim that the greatest threat we face in the west is from the ‘far right’. (Jimmy Dore has done some pieces on this phenomenon)
We are being ruthlessly manipulated and the aim is to clamp down on our freedoms even further, more anti-protest controls, more hate speech laws and powers to silence whatever the state decides is ‘hate’ speech. My comment has been ‘awaiting approval’ for well over 12 hours now. Unheard.
It is astonishing to learn these statistics. I first went to Ireland in 1988 and there were hardly any foreigners there – Ireland was still a country that exported people and felt rather old-fashioned in places. When I next visited in around 2001 it had become pleasantly cosmopolitan in Dublin. Seems like it’s changed enormously since then.
The population of Ireland (whole island) has increased from 5.1m to 7.1m between 1991 and 2022. That’s 40% over 31 years. Still below the 8.1m peak before the potato famine in the 1840s.
Add in the effect of rural depopulation and the effect on the towns (and few real cities) in Ireland is even greater.
It’s hard to imagine that this level of demographic and cultural change doesn’t create some serious problems. It’s equally hard to imagine modern politicians actually planning for and providing the necessary housing, infrastructure and services to keep pace.
I suspect the rate and nature of population change in New Zealand is somewhat similar.
Irish people need to be told “This is not who we are”.
By a gay Indian career politician.
He is a product of a mixed race marriage between an immigrant Indian doctor and an Irish mother.
Hardly anything ” Indian” about Varadkar other than his surname.
Good article in this week’s ‘Country Life’ 22 (Nov) about the restoration of the former British Residency in Hyderabad, now off course the ‘Telangana Manila Vishwavidyalayam’.
Commiserations for last Sunday!
Well..lots of tin foil hat speculation going around about last weekend. Maybe no ” smoke without fire” syndrome…today is also building up.
Thank you, I shall look up aforementioned article. Though I should have liked a more apposite re- naming.
Re-naming to what may I ask? I am in a state of total ignorance!
Kirkpatrick House??!
Yes indeed an excellent, choice!
The Irish governing class are weaponizing the Garda against the opposition. Similar to how the FBI is now used in the US. Better act quickly before the damned Davocrat apparatchiks rip what’s left of the soul out of Ireland.
It will be war. The Irish are an insular race much given to drink, bagpipes and rage. They did not win their independence for the English aristocracy by staying silent as their homeland is invaded and their faith and Cristian culture polluted by propaganda and hate.
Thanks to “drink, bagpipes and rage” it took over 800 years to ‘chuck’ us out.
1169-1922.
The hate speech laws will be devastatingly effective… for anyone who doesn’t have Telegram or WhatsApp.
How does this differ from the Black Lives Matter riots?
Someone of X ethnicity is attacked by someone (presumably) of Y ethnicity, and a mob (presumably) of X ethnicity riots, loots and sets fires, causing immense damage to people who had nothing to do with the original attack.
Good point.
Obviously the difference is an officially sanctioned narrative of oppression. But clearly the rioters don’t buy that narrative.
But they’re still rioters, and arsonists, and looters.
I doubt that their innocent victims would care much about the difference you assert.
Because the BLM riots were state Approved and tolerated completely. It was the diametric opposite. The Irish riots are to save Ireland so will be Crushed. The BLM were to wreck America so supported by the state and opposition to them was crushed.
You must realize the State Hates you and wants you dead and extinct so a new group, completely fragmented and dependent on State handouts, can be created. This is well along in every Western Nation. It is genocide.
The last time I went to London, I walked around my old haunts to be amazed at the changes.
Off the Euston Road behind Kings Cross towards Tottenham Court Road, the whole area seemed to have become a little Somalia. The streets were lined with identikit ‘grocers cum cafes’ all full of men of working age sat, staring into space with gormless expressions over a cup of tea.
Anybody who thinks this is justified never mind sustainable is just mad at this point.
And yes, Mo Farah is a great Olympian but on average, it probably wasn’t worth it.
Is there a reliable source of information about the attacker? Is he an immigrant?
In the news that I have seen he is presented as an Algerian who has been in the country 20 years and a few years ago was arrested for wielding a large knife around.
The individual is not so important. Who knows, he may have mental health problems, or just be a generally bad person. What is significant is the reaction. Clearly there was a powder keg there just waiting to be ignited.
He’s obviously a W*g as we used to say, and should have been deported years ago!
Incidentally in the good old days of ‘Apartheid’ were Jews classed as White, Coloured or Black.
Sadly memory fails me on this one.
If it was a white working class guy, I’m sure we would all know that by now. Where’s the pressure coming from to release this guy’s identity.
Coulter’s Law.
“John Mooney in the Sunday Times today reports that the person of interest in Thursday’s stabbing was served with a deportation order in 2008. He was subsequently granted leave to remain. I understand that he has never worked while in Ireland.”
It would be interesting to compare immigrants to the Kinder Transport. The KT achieved two Nobel Prizes and umpteen joined Commando/Special Forces Unit in WW2.
Perhaps, but others we killing our boys in Palestine even as we were liberating Belsen.
WHO seriously denies this?
Begin was but he is not the whole Jewish people.
The Irish rioters have seen how successful the rioters were after the death of Nahel M. in France, and have learned their lesson.
If you want to see the extreme side of the anger arising from this State Sanctioned destruction of the traditional West I would recommend you try ‘Rumble’, which is the censor free youtube, and a loon ‘Salty Cracker’.
Cracker is the word for Red-Neck, and he uses no interviews but just rants into the microphone 1.5 hours Sunday, Wed, and Friday – against all the degeneracy which the modern state is bringing on us with corrupt MSM and sold out Politicians. He gets hundreds of thousands of views – more than any News Broadcast – watch him to see the boiling under the surface. (he is nuts, and very incorrect to the highest level, and also often entertaining, but crazy) ….. His ‘Salty Army’ are growing.
Here is a short of his take on the Irish riots
”Illegal Alien Stabs Kids in Ireland so Irish Men Burn Down ‘Migrant Center”
https://rumble.com/v3xi8ze-illegal-alien-stabs-kids-in-ireland-so-irish-men-burn-down-migrant-center.html
Good to see Coulter’s Law in action once again.
“a hooligan faction driven by far-Right ideology”.
Maybe hooligan but “far Right ideology-seriously-he may be corrrect but on what grounds is he making this assertion-that the local community were mightily pissed off ?
Given it’s history one might not have thought that Ireland would welcome becoming a colony again.
Do these doughty patriots loot shops when a white Irish person stabs another white Irish person?
I can find no precedent for a mass stabbing of children. Can you? Thought not.
“mass”?
And you might want to google “Andy Cash.”
Thomas Hamilton that Sc*tch pervert killed 15 little children in Dunblane. *
Not by stabbing I grant you , but with revolvers and pistols.
(*1996.)
If I remember correctly, he was outraged that the people of Dunblane didn’t trust him being around their children!
Precisely, and yet the Chief Constable of Scotland authorised him to him to carry a plethora of hand guns!
Brilliant!
I doubt this is a political movement, just people motivated by fear and frustration. Hopefully, it will open honest debates about immigration as you seem to be suggesting.
Like the “honest debates” we [do not] have here in the UK ? Political and media establishments across the Western world don’t want anything like that !
I’m sure that the people whose businesses were looted will be comforted by your insights and your hopes.
It may not sit well with commentators on an opinion-churning forum such as this but debate (honest or not) never produces much in the way of solutions.
I’m not even sure who started looting shops, I have seen one video of North side locals telling some Africans to stop looting a shop
Just the start? It’s 68 years since c400 white men, inflamed by the ‘White Defence League’, rioted in the Notting Hill race riots.
11 years later and 57 years ago the first Notting Hill carnival was held. Nowadays it’s London’s biggest cultural street festival (and one of largest in the World) attracting over 2million annually.
The dreadful crime committed by Puska does not mean Dublin fated to enter a dark period.
Worth investigating Rachman and de Freitas, all very murky.
Peter Rachman – Wikipedia
Michael X – Wikipedia