Fascism for Ireland?

Atoms for Peace

Will the inevitable collapse of the left leave the door open for a working class movement to take power from the fancy sock set?

FTA69

Why is the collapse of the left inevitable? The reality is that the far right has little answers for working class people and will only make things worse; fascism has always been co-opted by the ruling class historically.

20Cent

No there are lots of Nazi punchers in Ireland.

pablo39er

Left /Right ? Or any other identity politics lie . . .what a load of bollocks.

The greatest divide and conquer strategy ever devised to keep ordinary people subservient was dividing them up into 'left' and 'right' and other such identity politics to fight among themselves. People will support the most idiotic left/right wing self destructive policy, simply because they believe they must support one or the other side at all times no matter what, instead of taking each proposal on it's own merits. As soon as you hear someone spouting they support "left" or "right" - it's a sure sign they have handed over control of their own mind to someone else and don't even know it.

and we already have the blueshirts in power . . they're just a bit more careful about hiding it than they were . . .star wars socks and all that

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Stronger right, maybe & but fascism....?! Come on!

There's no way far anything will ever take off her. We're far too moderate

dxhound2005

The party who collaborated with the Nazis during WW2 must still be waiting for them to take up the invitation to come over and govern us. They don't seem to be interested in taking up power themselves.

FTA69

dxhound2005 wrote: »

The party who collaborated with the Nazis during WW2 must still be waiting for them to take up the invitation to come over and govern us. They don't seem to be interested in taking up power themselves.

Who’s that then?

corner of hells

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

Will the inevitable collapse of the left leave the door open for a working class movement to take power from the fancy sock set?

The fancy what set ?

s7ryf3925pivug

Leftist extremists are more likely here, and more likely to exhibit the violence that is involved in Fascism. Like those nutjobs that attacked the security guards on behalf of a tax evader, they definitely identify as left.

Danzy

The Left is fading away as a Working Class movement, it is now dominated by the Middle Class and that is increasing the distance it has from the Working Class.

We are at a stage now where one could argue that modern Left politics and working class politics are as often opposed to each other as on the same page.

Certainly is not clear cut as it used to be.

As for whether fascism will arise, I think not, but you can be certain that it will be called fascism.

Fascism as a term has become so debased by overuse that it no longer has any currency.

Atoms for Peace

corner of hells wrote: »

The fancy what set ?

It used to be about what colour shirt you wore, today it's all about socks. If you wear funky socks your a liberal, short socks your a wanker etc.

FTA69

Danzy wrote: »

The Left is fading away as a Working Class movement, it is now dominated by the Middle Class and that is increasing the distance it has from the Working Class.

We are at a stage now where one could argue that modern Left politics and working class politics are as often opposed to each other as on the same page.

Certainly is not clear cut as it used to be.

As for whether fascism will arise, I think not, but you can be certain that it will be called fascism.

Fascism as a term has become so debased by overuse that it no longer has any currency.

Sinn Fein, the Trotskyist groups all draw support from the urban working class. Labour was supplanted due to their abandonment of working class people but they were replaced from the left not the right.

Danzy

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

It used to be about colour shirt you wore, today it's all about socks. If you wear funky socks your a liberal, short socks your a wanker etc.

I'm not showing you my socks, that level of psychological scrutiny would be too much to bear for my soul.

There is something in it though.

dxhound2005

Danzy wrote: »

I'm not showing you my socks, that level of psychological scrutiny would be too much to bear for my soul.

There is something in it though.

Your foot.

s7ryf3925pivug

I wear odd socks but they're all kinda navy so you wouldnt notice. I don't wear odd socks deliberately, I just grab the first two that come to hand. But I'm also one of those horrible middle class liberals, and prefer our current regime to any other one we had in my living memory.

They're both inside out. Again, not deliberate, any socks I wear have 50% chance of being inside out.

Atoms for Peace

Should have started a sock thread, lol! Could a mod change the thread title to a more appropriate sock related pun.

Chinasea

Working class? They left with Angeles Delight.

Danzy

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Your foot.

The joke is on you my friend. I now own 2 pairs of socks.

dxhound2005

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

It used to be about what colour shirt you wore, today it's all about socks. If you wear funky socks your a liberal, short socks your a wanker etc.

I think we should explore the etc here, to get a full range of political types matched to sock styles.

statesaver

Antifa Ireland

Billy86

FTA69 wrote: »

Why is the collapse of the left inevitable? The reality is that the far right has little answers for working class people and will only make things worse; fascism has always been co-opted by the ruling class historically.

It's a misconception among those on the harder end of the right, because the idea that people might generally agree while having their own differences and disagreements on matter is strange and foreign to those who would prefer to instead blindly, unquestioningly, cultishly follow The Leader.

suicide_circus

Billy86

Carmelo Obnoxious Accelerator wrote: »

Leftist extremists are more likely here, and more likely to exhibit the violence that is involved in Fascism. Like those nutjobs that attacked the security guards on behalf of a tax evader, they definitely identify as left.

Is there an article to back this up, or do you just want them to be on the left? Beads e being Rosco mom farmers, them being "leftists" is... well... not all that likely.

Atoms for Peace

Billy86 wrote: »

Is there an article to back this up, or do you just want them to be on the left? Beads e being Rosco mom farmers, them being "leftists" is... well... not all that likely.

The provos came about as a backlash against the perceived Marxist direction that SF was taking, those lad's have more in common with the freikorps of the Weimar republic.

Danzy

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

The provos came about as a backlash against the perceived Marxist direction that SF was taking, those lad's have more in common with the freikorps of the Weimar republic.

Id but dollars to donuts that many og the people involved in Roscommon are members of FG and FF, maybe some Republicans as well giving structure.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

Will the inevitable collapse of the left

Hopefully its unmercifully crushed.

Sonics2k

I still don't know what leftist extremists are?

I've been called one, but I really don't know what it is.

I mean, so far as I can tell you thank the left for things like

Gay Marriage
Repealing the 8th
Better workers rights, instead of employers.
Better social care
Better health care (considerably cheaper than you'll get in other western countries)

Although, like most threads I assume this is far more focused on the American idea of left and right politics, rather than the actual Irish styles. In which case, the right have a long and storied history of demolishing the rights of the "working poor".

We have a "left" here to collapse? What people in After Hours, in a linguistic shift taken from Neocon Americans, are terming "the left" is really liberals, who are at least as economically rightwing as the self-styled conservative right. That penny just does not seem to be dropping. At all.

Joe Higgins is leftwing, and a few others. The official "left" here, the Labour party, are smoked salmon socialists by any standard. Firmly economically to the right - remember how the Labour party government ministers looked after their "special advisers" and other friends from 2011 on, while cutting everybody else's salary? The "centre" in Ireland today is far, far more rightwing than the "centre" in Ireland in, say, 1960 - never mind in the 1930s when we had actual communists going off to fight in Spain.

The fact that liberals are the ones pushing mass immigration, and that mass immigration at its essence undercuts the native poor by increasing competition for jobs/lowering employment costs for the economically rightwing should have long ago alerted the lamentable number of people here who blame "the left" for immigration that they haven't a fúcking clue what economic section of Irish society they are against.

But major league kudos to the economic right for getting every gobdaw on Boards to blame "the left" for the entire lowering of workers' rights and employment conditions, growing inequality in western societies, ridiculously low taxes on the wealthiest in society, and focusing on social welfare without ever having a look at the relentlessly increasing corporate welfare which marks western societies more and more than ever now. Pick on people on the dole, Travellers and all the obvious parasites, and give the biggest parasites of all a free pass.

s7ryf3925pivug

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/taoiseach-claims-sinn-féin-balaclava-slipped-in-eviction-row-1.3735794%3fmode=amp

Calm down. Left is good. Extreme left is bad. The people I know of supporting the mob are all of the more extreme left variety. Populist extremists.

But yeah the Irish political landscape is more about wringing the blood out of middle class people in favour of the idle rich and idle poor, so it probably is a different paradigm than left/right politics.

DS86DS

Danzy wrote: »

The Left is fading away as a Working Class movement, it is now dominated by the Middle Class and that is increasing the distance it has from the Working Class.

We are at a stage now where one could argue that modern Left politics and working class politics are as often opposed to each other as on the same page.

Certainly is not clear cut as it used to be.

As for whether fascism will arise, I think not, but you can be certain that it will be called fascism.

Fascism as a term has become so debased by overuse that it no longer has any currency.

This is so true. The Old Left used to be about defending the working class and their interests. Indeed, the founding fathers of America and France could be considered the Liberals of their day as opposed to the conservative monarchists.

What you have with the modern Left, is the politics of trendiness and trendies. It's all about feel-good politics and virtue signalling.

To be Liberal is considered to be morally superior....a more morally righteous standpoint over the great unwashed riff raff of the right.

You only have to see them at action here.....the snobbery and the utter contempt that Liberal trendies have for the ordinary everyday man and woman.

And you are correct. Modern right wing Conservatives are defending free speech. The modern Left are the new Nazis censoring anybody who disagrees with them.

mcmoustache

DS86DS wrote: »

This is so true. The Old Left used to be about defending the working class and their interests. Indeed, the founding fathers of America and France could be considered the Liberals of their day as opposed to the conservative monarchists.

What you have with the modern Left, is the politics of trendiness and trendies. It's all about feel-good politics and virtue signalling.

To be Liberal is considered to be morally superior....a more morally righteous standpoint over the great unwashed riff raff of the right.

You only have to see them at action here.....the snobbery and the utter contempt that Liberal trendies have for the ordinary everyday man and woman.

And you are correct. Modern right wing Conservatives are defending free speech. The modern Left are the new Nazis censoring anybody who disagrees with them.

You are ill-equipped to handle the internet. You should get yourself an old nokia or something because it's clear that you have issues discerning reality from the outrage that you guzzle from the daily mail.


You might be pissed off when you can't get people to agree with your nonsense and mistake argument for censorship. That's OK - it feels that way when you say something stupid and people tell you that it's stupid. It happens to lots of people who can't really handle the internet.


You can blame hipsters or any other kind of bearded stereotype all you like but these people aren't in charge in this country. Our government is a centre-right one and to be fair to them, they seem to be somewhat competent given the direction our neighbours to the west and to the east have gone.



Regardless, if you feel that you are being censored by the state. I'll back you up. If you just don't like people disagreeing with you, then you're on your own because freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to say stupid stuff without people telling you said stupid stuff. As I said, you might not not be cut out for the internet.

BBFAN

pablo39er wrote: »

Left /Right ? Or any other identity politics lie . . .what a load of bollocks.

The greatest divide and conquer strategy ever devised to keep ordinary people subservient was dividing them up into 'left' and 'right' and other such identity politics to fight among themselves. People will support the most idiotic left/right wing self destructive policy, simply because they believe they must support one or the other side at all times no matter what, instead of taking each proposal on it's own merits. As soon as you hear someone spouting they support "left" or "right" - it's a sure sign they have handed over control of their own mind to someone else and don't even know it.

and we already have the blueshirts in power . . they're just a bit more careful about hiding it than they were . . .star wars socks and all that

One of the most intelligent posts I've ever seen in AH.

BBFAN

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

It used to be about what colour shirt you wore, today it's all about socks. If you wear funky socks your a liberal, short socks your a wanker etc.

What about if you wear no socks?

Atoms for Peace

BBFAN wrote: »

What about if you wear no socks?

The most dangerous mother****ers to walk the earth!!!

Billy86

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

The provos came about as a backlash against the perceived Marxist direction that SF was taking, those lad's have more in common with the freikorps of the Weimar republic.

Yeah but do you actually have anything showing the rural people near that incident, in typically more conservative minded Roscommon, are "leftists" or no?

sk8erboii

DS86DS wrote: »

This is so true. The Old Left used to be about defending the working class and their interests. Indeed, the founding fathers of America and France could be considered the Liberals of their day as opposed to the conservative monarchists.

What you have with the modern Left, is the politics of trendiness and trendies. It's all about feel-good politics and virtue signalling.

To be Liberal is considered to be morally superior....a more morally righteous standpoint over the great unwashed riff raff of the right.

You only have to see them at action here.....the snobbery and the utter contempt that Liberal trendies have for the ordinary everyday man and woman.

And you are correct. Modern right wing Conservatives are defending free speech. The modern Left are the new Nazis censoring anybody who disagrees with them.

Cringe. Really just. Cringing at you typing that out without a hint of irony lol

DS86DS

sk8erboii wrote: »

Cringe. Really just. Cringing at you typing that out without a hint of irony lol

Prove what I said wrong then.

sk8erboii

DS86DS wrote: »

Prove what I said wrong then.

All you’ve written is cringy appeal to emotion.

‘REMEMBUH THE BRAVE BATRIOTS WHO FOUGHT DA LIBERILZ. DA HONORABLE CONSERVATIVES’

Mate, you really REALLY need to get some friends. I dont think id ever sense lonely bitterness in one cringy post but here i am feeling embarassment for you

DS86DS

sk8erboii wrote: »

All you’ve written is cringy appeal to emotion.

‘REMEMBUH THE BRAVE BATRIOTS WHO FOUGHT DA LIBERILZ. DA HONORABLE CONSERVATIVES’

Mate, you really REALLY need to get some friends. I dont think id ever sense lonely bitterness in one cringy post but here i am feeling embarassment for you

Why do you keep using the word "mate"? Were you raised in England, or have you been watching a little too much EastEnders this weather?

sk8erboii

DS86DS wrote: »

Why do you keep using the word "mate"? Were you raised in England, or have you been watching a little too much EastEnders this weather?

Who tf under the age of 30 watches eastenders?

Youre not some kind of no life loser that watches soap operas are you?

DS86DS

sk8erboii wrote: »

Who tf under the age of 30 watches eastenders?

Youre not some kind of no life loser that watches soap operas are you?

No bruv, ain't got time for that mate.

sk8erboii

DS86DS wrote: »

No bruv, ain't got time for that mate.

Embarrassing

DS86DS

sk8erboii wrote: »

Embarrassing

Whatever you say mate.

The_Kew_Tour

Hopefully never see the day, not in our lifetime anyway.

Although day is long time in Politics.

RWCNT

pablo39er wrote: »

Left /Right ? Or any other identity politics lie . . .what a load of bollocks.

The greatest divide and conquer strategy ever devised to keep ordinary people subservient was dividing them up into 'left' and 'right' and other such identity politics to fight among themselves. People will support the most idiotic left/right wing self destructive policy, simply because they believe they must support one or the other side at all times no matter what, instead of taking each proposal on it's own merits. As soon as you hear someone spouting they support "left" or "right" - it's a sure sign they have handed over control of their own mind to someone else and don't even know it.

and we already have the blueshirts in power . . they're just a bit more careful about hiding it than they were . . .star wars socks and all that

That's not even what identity politics means. Who's great strategy was it to divide the people into left and right?

Even among people who consider themselves left or right wing the blind partisanship you're referring to is quite rare in my experience, although the media and the comments sections online can offer a distorted view of reality. What sort of idiotic self destructive policies are you referring to?

Carmelo Obnoxious Accelerator

Carmelo Obnoxious Accelerator wrote: »

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/taoiseach-claims-sinn-féin-balaclava-slipped-in-eviction-row-1.3735794%3fmode=amp

Left is good. Extreme left is bad. The people I know of supporting the mob are all of the more extreme left variety. Populist extremists.

This is the sort of chimerical shít, useful idiot for the right wing, plebian deflection that I'm alluding to. "Extreme left" is communism so either you genuinely believe this state is faced with a communist threat in 2018 or you've invented your own idiosyncratic definition of "extreme left". Just how many people are in your so-called "extreme left"? How much power have they? How many government ministers do they have? And members of the judiciary? How many rich people are funding them? And when is this Irish Bolshevik Revolution going to happen?

Fúck that: your "extreme left" are a non-entity whose greatest usefulness is as some sort of bogeyman for modern-day clowns propagating a "red scare". Meanwhile the rich get richer than ever here, paying lower tax rates than ever and even when your so-called "extreme left" in the form of Sinn Féin got into power as the largest political party in Dublin city, apartment sizes became smaller than ever and building standards decreased to help rich developers become richer, and the homeless in this city rises more than ever. "Left wing" Sinn Féin certainly is not in reality, never mind "extreme left". "Populist" Sinn Féin certainly is in rhetoric. Yet you go on with this Red Scare bollocksology against some "extreme left" threat that has fúck-all traction, to understate its reality, in Ireland in 2018.

Moreover, you remain, like far too many on this website, relatively unexercised by the growing inequality in western societies. That companies earning billions pay 1% tax while those of us paying PAYE are beaten senseless by 50%-60% tax rates - and gouged out of our paltry after-tax income by the highest childcare and mortgage costs in western Europe - continues is more than a travesty here. And don't even mention the hospital queues.

This is all happening during the ascendancy of liberal economics, where shítehawk ina dhiaidh shítehawk comes out and tells us we have to "incentivise" the rich more and more and lower working conditions, building conditions agus gach rud eile. It's a gargantuan disconnect from reality for anybody to blame the "extreme left" as the ogre in all this. How about focusing on the tax policies of states across the western world whose legislators have been on a competitive race to pull back the post-War welfare state and lower their citizens' rights since at least the rise of Thatcherism/Reaganomics, a race to the bottom which has increased exponentially since the 2009 crash?

This dominant neo-liberal economics fashion of today is a textbook example of an "extreme" rightwing economic ideology becoming mainstream, becoming "normal". It will get its comeuppance. Nevertheless, for the time being it's frankly stunning that so many people on this website can pour all their energy into raging about some fantasy "extreme left" force while our western societies, and in particular their middle classes, crumble with paying for the consequences of neoliberalism. It's as if every one of these posters is posting from the tax-dodging superrich economic position of Dermot Desmond/Denis O'Brien/JP McManus/John Magnier, etc.

Mad_maxx

More people in Ireland are better off today than at any time in the past, without multinationals, all we have is farming and tourism, we are not in a great location and have a tiny internal consumer market, low corporation tax is the only edge we have.

Mad_maxx

Mad_maxx wrote: »

More people in Ireland are better off today than at any time in the past, without multinationals, all we have is farming and tourism, we are not in a great location and have a tiny internal consumer market, low corporation tax is the only edge we have.

It's not an "edge" when every country can do it. There is nothing to stop the EU initiating moves to harmonise corporation tax rates to a rate lower than Ireland's. It's a race to the bottom that undermines social cohesion in societies as they don't have the taxes to support the public services they previously could. And, as we're seeing in Ireland, a group of PAYE taxpayers in the middle suffer a penal tax rate in comparison to the rate paid by society's richest. The figures from economists Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and many others for rising inequality in western societies should be a clarion call for that squeezed middle.

dxhound2005

Deleted User wrote: »

It's not an "edge" when every country can do it. There is nothing to stop the EU initiating moves to harmonise corporation tax rates to a rate lower than Ireland's. It's a race to the bottom that undermines social cohesion in societies as they don't have the taxes to support the public services they previously could. And, as we're seeing in Ireland, a group of PAYE taxpayers in the middle suffer a penal tax rate in comparison to the rate paid by society's richest. The figures from economists Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and many others for rising inequality in western societies should be a clarion call for that squeezed middle.

What is your definition of the middle? In wages to me it is €70K to €90K gross for a two adult household. And how many are in the middle? If it is 80% of the population, by definition they should have to bear 80% of the taxes. But the figures show that those with much more substantial incomes, pay a higher proportion of the taxes.

s7ryf3925pivug

Deleted User wrote: »

This is the sort of chimerical shít, useful idiot for the right wing, plebian deflection that I'm alluding to. "Extreme left" is communism so either you genuinely believe this state is faced with a communist threat in 2018 or you've invented your own idiosyncratic definition of "extreme left". Just how many people are in your so-called "extreme left"? How much power have they? How many government ministers do they have? And members of the judiciary? How many rich people are funding them? And when is this Irish Bolshevik Revolution going to happen?

Fúck that: your "extreme left" are a non-entity whose greatest usefulness is as some sort of bogeyman for modern-day clowns propagating a "red scare". Meanwhile the rich get richer than ever here, paying lower tax rates than ever and even when your so-called "extreme left" in the form of Sinn Féin got into power as the largest political party in Dublin city, apartment sizes became smaller than ever and building standards decreased to help rich developers become richer, and the homeless in this city rises more than ever. "Left wing" Sinn Féin certainly is not in reality, never mind "extreme left". "Populist" Sinn Féin certainly is in rhetoric. Yet you go on with this Red Scare bollocksology against some "extreme left" threat that has fúck-all traction, to understate its reality, in Ireland in 2018.

Moreover, you remain, like far too many on this website, relatively unexercised by the growing inequality in western societies. That companies earning billions pay 1% tax while those of us paying PAYE are beaten senseless by 50%-60% tax rates - and gouged out of our paltry after-tax income by the highest childcare and mortgage costs in western Europe - continues is more than a travesty here. And don't even mention the hospital queues.

This is all happening during the ascendancy of liberal economics, where shítehawk ina dhiaidh shítehawk comes out and tells us we have to "incentivise" the rich more and more and lower working conditions, building conditions agus gach rud eile. It's a gargantuan disconnect from reality for anybody to blame the "extreme left" as the ogre in all this. How about focusing on the tax policies of states across the western world whose legislators have been on a competitive race to pull back the post-War welfare state and lower their citizens' rights since at least the rise of Thatcherism/Reaganomics, a race to the bottom which has increased exponentially since the 2009 crash?

This dominant neo-liberal economics fashion of today is a textbook example of an "extreme" rightwing economic ideology becoming mainstream, becoming "normal". It will get its comeuppance. Nevertheless, for the time being it's frankly stunning that so many people on this website can pour all their energy into raging about some fantasy "extreme left" force while our western societies, and in particular their middle classes, crumble with paying for the consequences of neoliberalism. It's as if every one of these posters is posting from the tax-dodging superrich economic position of Dermot Desmond/Denis O'Brien/JP McManus/John Magnier, etc.

Nice selective quoting to rant about. My full post was

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.iri...#37;3fmode=amp

Calm down. Left is good. Extreme left is bad. The people I know of supporting the mob are all of the more extreme left variety. Populist extremists.

But yeah the Irish political landscape is more about wringing the blood out of middle class people in favour of the idle rich and idle poor, so it probably is a different paradigm than left/right politics.

Agree corporations should be taxed properly, but jobs are good too. When Dell largely pulled out of Limerick it had a massive impact not just in terms of direct employment, but also hit a lot of satellite businesses. The place where I was living at the time went from being a nice enough place with working families to a dangerous ****hole with high crime.

With regard to houses people struggle to afford - lots of them are allocated to people who just decide not to try to work. That has a significant impact. The productive classes are hit from both ends.

The social welfare system here places us well away from anything resembling a far right coyntry, which you seem to perceive us as, while anyone who doesnt share that perception is an idiot. There are features that are very conservative, like the influence of the catholic church and related effects of that, and features that are quite leftwing. Like I said, we don't really fit the left-right paradigm.

But when it fomes to which people in Ireland might become militant, stand up and commit violence to advance their political positions, it's people who identify as leftwing who do it. Don't pay the water charges, more choice for your free houses and things like that.

pablo39er

When politicians and commercial journalist stop listening to ordinary people and continually dismiss their genuine concerns, and ensure they have no credible democratic alternatives, you get the likes of Trump and Brexit and the Yellow Jackets. I still have not heard any politician or corporate media ever express any genuine interest in genuinely investigating and genuinely solving the genuine concerns of ordinary people and the reasons that lead to Trump / Brexit / Yellow Jackets etc.