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Collins vs De Valera

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  • Registered Users Posts: 5,875 ✭✭✭Edgware


    If there had not been a split I wonder would Collins and DeValera be the great democrats they are stated to be. Would they have followed the lead of Mussolini and the lads rather than allow the Labour Party etc to develop?


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Edgware wrote: »
    If there had not been a split I wonder would Collins and DeValera be the great democrats they are stated to be. Would they have followed the lead of Mussolini and the lads rather than allow the Labour Party etc to develop?
    It’s a what-if that can’t be answered except with pure speculation - especially in Collins’ case. But it’s worth pointing out that, before the split, people were giving thought to the problem of how Ireland would function as a democracy with a parliament overwhelmingly dominated - and, they assumed, likely to remain so - by one party. Thinking in all-Ireland terms, they expected not one but two “permanent minority” parties, the other being a unionist party. They also notrd that the only thing that bound SF together was the national question and, once that was resolved, the expected diverse opinions to emerge within the party on social, economic, etc questions.

    Not everybody thought that this would cause the party to split. But there were proposals to, e.g, establish a system of departmental committees in Dáil Éireann to which ministers would be accountable, to ensure consideration of a diversity of opinions and perspectives in the administration of government. PR as an electoral system was adopted partly to facilitate this.

    How all this would have panned out it anybody’s guess. Perhaps it would have worked. Perhaps SF would have split into separate parties on social or economic questions rather than on the national question. Or perhaps we would have veered into Mussolini-style fascism, if not immediately then under the stress of the Great Depression.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,220 ✭✭✭cameramonkey


    From memory, I believe in 1920-21, one of these men was simultaneously the Acting President of Ireland, President of the IRB, Minister for Finance - and if certain historical sources are to be believed - giving Richard Mulcahy (head of volunteers/IRA/GHQ) orders in front of his own men, making him Ireland's military leader, for all intents and purposes.

    A pragmatist, not an idealist. A man who rejected protectionist economic policies, which our country later adopted, which notably held us back in the post-war era.

    What could have been... but instead we were sold to the Vatican by our other contestant. And the rest is history.


    You should read up a bit on the history of the early Free State, it was Collins's side that were fawning and taking their orders from Rome. Cosgrave was much more in the bishops pocket than Dev.


  • Registered Users Posts: 196 ✭✭Ascendant


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    It’s a what-if that can’t be answered except with pure speculation - especially in Collins’ case. But it’s worth pointing out that, before the split, people were giving thought to the problem of how Ireland would function as a democracy with a parliament overwhelmingly dominated - and, they assumed, likely to remain so - by one party. Thinking in all-Ireland terms, they expected not one but two “permanent minority” parties, the other being a unionist party. They also notrd that the only thing that bound SF together was the national question and, once that was resolved, the expected diverse opinions to emerge within the party on social, economic, etc questions.

    Not everybody thought that this would cause the party to split. But there were proposals to, e.g, establish a system of departmental committees in Dáil Éireann to which ministers would be accountable, to ensure consideration of a diversity of opinions and perspectives in the administration of government. PR as an electoral system was adopted partly to facilitate this.

    How all this would have panned out it anybody’s guess. Perhaps it would have worked. Perhaps SF would have split into separate parties on social or economic questions rather than on the national question. Or perhaps we would have veered into Mussolini-style fascism, if not immediately then under the stress of the Great Depression.


    I suspect Ireland would have been like South Africa today under the ANC or Putin's Russia - technically a democracy, but so dominated by one group that it's effectively a one-party state.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    I wouldn't have supported Dev but I would have supported the anti-Treaty IRA.

    By 1922 Collins had pretty much became a military dictator.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    I wouldn't have supported Dev but I would have supported the anti-Treaty IRA.
    Surely you'd have to have given up on one of these positions? How, in practice, would you hold both simultaneously?


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Oh & it's no surprise that all the members of the fascist Blueshirts were made up of members who fought on the Free State side under Collins. Ireland's only really sizable fascist organization. If they had been in power during WW2 they would have ended up allying with the fascists & would have been handing over the Jewish population in Ireland over to them.

    After Jewish people like Robert Briscoe were some of the main people in the Irish resistance front against the British during the Anglo-Irish war.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    Ascendant wrote: »
    I suspect Ireland would have been like South Africa today under the ANC or Putin's Russia - technically a democracy, but so dominated by one group that it's effectively a one-party state.


    A basket case? We too had our oligarchs, an unstable currency, offshore accounts, political corruption, etc.:o


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Though we have always remained a multi-party democracy, including through period when not many countries in Europe did.


  • Registered Users Posts: 196 ✭✭Ascendant


    A basket case? We too had our oligarchs, an unstable currency, offshore accounts, political corruption, etc.:o


    We, at least, have the option of voting them...to make way for the new lot. :D


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Damo123 wrote: »
    Just for the record Im not pro-dev...

    But I have to say I would like to see a pro-dev film made. I know so many people whos only source for not liking the man is because of how he was depicted in the Micheal Collins film. I think thats sad.

    You're spot on there mate. Most people who haven't a clue on Irish history will point to things in the 1996 film (that was rubbish) and say look at how bad Dev was. Nothing in the film about the Sinn Fein pact Collins & Dev made & no clips of Dev's popularity in America.

    I can't stand Dev but that's mainly for executing sveral IRA POW's in the 40's.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man



    I can't stand Dev but that's mainly for executing sveral IRA POW's in the 40's.

    I'm not a Dev fan either, but he was spot on about our role, or lack of it, in WWII. His finest hour.

    So he hanged a few Nazi collaborators (which is what the IRA were at the time, objectively speaking). Capital punishment was what was meted out at that time for that sort of thing.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    The most cynical and self-regarding thing that Dev ever did was bunk out of the final Treaty negotiations with the British and leave Collins to carry the can. They both knew that the full Republic was unachievable at that time but De Valera didn't have the guts to take responsibility for accepting the reduced offer. So Collins went and knowingly "signed his own death warrant".

    Interesting parallels with Britain today and the Brexit process. The hardliners know the only two options on offer are a soft Brexit with some fudged deal on customs union and a soft border with Ireland, which would be a humiliating climb down from the bombast of "taking back control"; or a "no-deal" car crash which will hurt working people hard. Far from the promises of having their cake and eating it.

    So the ambitious ones are lying in the long grass and either claiming to be uninterested in the Prime Minister's job (Rees-Mogg) or swanning out of the cabinet in a fit of pique and claiming it's all about "principle" (Johnson).

    A pair of De Valeras, the two of them. Let May sign whichever bad deal they eventually plump for and then come roaring into the battle for the Premiership squealing "betrayal".

    Been there, done that. How "Irish" of them!


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    Oh & it's no surprise that all the members of the fascist Blueshirts were made up of members who fought on the Free State side under Collins. Ireland's only really sizable fascist organization. If they had been in power during WW2 they would have ended up allying with the fascists & would have been handing over the Jewish population in Ireland over to them.

    I'm sorry. That's absolute bollocks!!

    For a start, you're throwing the word "Fascist" around with gay abandon without being clear on what you mean by it.

    The Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism, both of which were radical, anticlerical, modernist movements, bitterly hostile to church intrusion in the affairs of the state, slavishly trusting of modern science and both with deep roots in Marxism and Socialism.

    Mussolini in particular was an avowed leftist prior to the first World War, an editor of Avanti, the main Italian socialist newspaper for much of the 20th century. His manifesto called for nationalisation of important industries, heavy taxes on capital, a generous welfare state etc etc How left wing can you get?

    Nazism too was a movement that grew out of anti-capitalist ideology and favoured the little guy over the hierarchical land owners and big business moguls. The clue's in the name National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party.

    The Blueshirts were conservative, catholic, nationalist, land-owning patriarchs bitterly hostile to any sort of "Social interference" in family life by the state. They were much closer to Franco, for whom many of them went to fight, than Hitler or Mussolini. You can call Franco a Fascist if you like but it's a misnomer. He was a conservative, ultrareligious, nationalist, marxism-hating, authoritarian militarist thug but none of that, per se, qualifies somebody as a Fascist.

    Franco could have made things very difficult for Britain in WWII had he been of similar mind to the two regimes that were indeed his military paymasters throughout the Spanish Civil War, but he chose not to. What would have happened in North Africa if he had taken Gibraltar in 1940, when Britain was on her knees and before the Soviets or Americans entered the war? How soon would the war in North Africa have been finished? How much earlier could Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union have started if he didn't get bogged down bailing out his Italian allies in Greece and the Balkans? So why didn't he?

    And how many Jews were handed over by Franco's Spain in WWII? Er, none. Ironic perhaps when you consider Spain's hysterical anti-Jewish persecutions of the late middle ages.

    Bear in mind that the leader of the newly formed Fine Gael (which included the former Blueshirts) during the war actually wanted Ireland to join in on the side of THE ALLIES!! and your allegation that the Blueshirts were in cahoots with the Nazis crumble into dust.

    There WERE people in Ireland who wanted to collaborate with the Nazis in WWII and some who did. Ironically, or perhaps not, these were people who had fought AGAINST Franco (Frank Ryan, Francis Stuart et al) and were still by and large supporters of the IRA. And that organisation was keen to solicit German co-operation for its goals.
    Isn't history full of ironies?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,220 ✭✭✭cameramonkey


    The most cynical and self-regarding thing that Dev ever did was bunk out of the final Treaty negotiations with the British and leave Collins to carry the can. They both knew that the full Republic was unachievable at that time but De Valera didn't have the guts to take responsibility for accepting the reduced offer. So Collins went and knowingly "signed his own death warrant".

    That is a bit of a fairy tale, the great fairy tale of Irish history believed by those that do not understand that period of history.

    Collins was sent over not to sign an agreement , Dev wanted the talks to collapse over the six counties and the UK would be seen as the party that was trying to divide Ireland. Of course Dev knew this was rubbish but it was part of the talks strategy, unfortunately Griffith fatally undermined the strategy by doing a back deal with the Brits on the North meaning the delegation could not collapse the talks over the border. Collins was caught out and signed the deal when the pressure came on from the UK, there was no pressure from Dev, in fact he wanted Collins to come back with no deal.

    I would recommend this book for those that would like a more balanced and nuanced take on history.
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Irish-Counter-Revolution-1921-1936/dp/0717128857

    The story that Dev sent Collins to sign the treaty because he wouldn't do it himself is just for kids and blues shirts.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,174 ✭✭✭Thinkingaboutit


    There is a basic point that Eamon deValera lived to old age and had a long political career, something that proverbially ends in failure. Michael Collins had masterminded the destruction of English authority in Ireland, but the bulk his career likely lay in the future. Protectionism had a heritage with proponents like Arthur Griffiths, so that Dev opted for that direction was hardly weird. Michael Collins could have gone in that direction. Even if FF hadn't replaced Cumann na Gaedheal in power, the ancestor of FG was showing a leaning towards protectionism. I'm not sure the two can be fairly compared.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    That is a bit of a fairy tale, the great fairy tale of Irish history believed by those that do not understand that period of history.

    Collins was sent over not to sign an agreement , Dev wanted the talks to collapse over the six counties and the UK would be seen as the party that was trying to divide Ireland. Of course Dev knew this was rubbish but it was part of the talks strategy, unfortunately Griffith fatally undermined the strategy by doing a back deal with the Brits on the North meaning the delegation could not collapse the talks over the border. Collins was caught out and signed the deal when the pressure came on from the UK, there was no pressure from Dev, in fact he wanted Collins to come back with no deal.

    I would recommend this book for those that would like a more balanced and nuanced take on history.
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Irish-Counter-Revolution-1921-1936/dp/0717128857

    The story that Dev sent Collins to sign the treaty because he wouldn't do it himself is just for kids and blues shirts.

    Ooh. Feel the condescension.
    So why didn't De Valera go to the negotiations then?
    Your analysis doesn't address that point.
    BTW whatever about what "Blueshirts" think, the suspicion that he left Collins (and the others) to carry the can by signing a treaty he realised would be the best on offer is widely believed by people of my acquaintance of a much greener hue than that.

    And as for modern parallels: Watch what happens with Boris, Rees-Mogg et al in England over this Brexit nonsense. They will try to shaft May, but after whatever deal is decided is done. Not before.
    It's a fairly familiar Machiavellian tactic.
    As I'm sure you know. :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,220 ✭✭✭cameramonkey


    Ooh. Feel the condescension.
    So why didn't De Valera go to the negotiations then?
    Your analysis doesn't address that point.
    BTW whatever about what "Blueshirts" think, the suspicion that he left Collins (and the others) to carry the can by signing a treaty he realised would be the best on offer is widely believed by people of my acquaintance of a much greener hue than that.

    I may be a bit condescending, you may be right but I find the view that Collins was sent to be a fall guy a very facile understanding of the situation. It is not supported by events at the time or the documents released since. It is an invention that does not stand any scrutiny and one that feeds a very simplistic explanation of a very complex time.

    If we are to believe your take on the treaty talks you are saying that Dev decided to completely abdicate power and hand all to Collins? That Dev decided to let Collins decide the future of the country with no input from the president, that he would voluntarily decide to sideline himself after years of struggle and let Collins make all the running and move into a position of supreme power as Collins then did.

    This really does not make sense and in fact Dev's main reaction at the time was anger because the delegation had not consulted him, the president before the signing. Collins for all his strengths had been panicked into signing the treaty by pressure from the British and Griffith's duplicity.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,220 ✭✭✭cameramonkey


    And as for modern parallels: Watch what happens with Boris, Rees-Mogg et al in England over this Brexit nonsense. They will try to shaft May, but after whatever deal is decided is done. Not before.
    It's a fairly familiar Machiavellian tactic.
    As I'm sure you know. :)


    The equivalent would be May deciding to send Boris and Ress-Mogg to the talks because she thinks she can not get a deal thereby handing all power to the two bozos and making her a complete spectator. That is what you are asking us to believe in the case of Collins and Dev.

    It is just not the way politicians think, they are control freaks. Dev didn't do it and May will not do it either.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,367 ✭✭✭SafeSurfer


    I'm sorry. That's absolute bollocks!!

    For a start, you're throwing the word "Fascist" around with gay abandon without being clear on what you mean by it.

    The Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism, both of which were radical, anticlerical, modernist movements, bitterly hostile to church intrusion in the affairs of the state, slavishly trusting of modern science and both with deep roots in Marxism and Socialism.

    Mussolini in particular was an avowed leftist prior to the first World War, an editor of Avanti, the main Italian socialist newspaper for much of the 20th century. His manifesto called for nationalisation of important industries, heavy taxes on capital, a generous welfare state etc etc How left wing can you get?

    Nazism too was a movement that grew out of anti-capitalist ideology and favoured the little guy over the hierarchical land owners and big business moguls. The clue's in the name National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party.

    The Blueshirts were conservative, catholic, nationalist, land-owning patriarchs bitterly hostile to any sort of "Social interference" in family life by the state. They were much closer to Franco, for whom many of them went to fight, than Hitler or Mussolini. You can call Franco a Fascist if you like but it's a misnomer. He was a conservative, ultrareligious, nationalist, marxism-hating, authoritarian militarist thug but none of that, per se, qualifies somebody as a Fascist.

    Franco could have made things very difficult for Britain in WWII had he been of similar mind to the two regimes that were indeed his military paymasters throughout the Spanish Civil War, but he chose not to. What would have happened in North Africa if he had taken Gibraltar in 1940, when Britain was on her knees and before the Soviets or Americans entered the war? How soon would the war in North Africa have been finished? How much earlier could Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union have started if he didn't get bogged down bailing out his Italian allies in Greece and the Balkans? So why didn't he?

    And how many Jews were handed over by Franco's Spain in WWII? Er, none. Ironic perhaps when you consider Spain's hysterical anti-Jewish persecutions of the late middle ages.

    Bear in mind that the leader of the newly formed Fine Gael (which included the former Blueshirts) during the war actually wanted Ireland to join in on the side of THE ALLIES!! and your allegation that the Blueshirts were in cahoots with the Nazis crumble into dust.

    There WERE people in Ireland who wanted to collaborate with the Nazis in WWII and some who did. Ironically, or perhaps not, these were people who had fought AGAINST Franco (Frank Ryan, Francis Stuart et al) and were still by and large supporters of the IRA. And that organisation was keen to solicit German co-operation for its goals.
    Isn't history full of ironies?

    Eoin O’Duffy offered to send a battalion of Blueshirts to fight for Nazi Germany in operation Barbarossa.
    Many Blueshirts and subsequent Fine Gael TDs were rabid anti semites even after the horrors of the holocaust became known.
    O Duffy was inspired to found the Blueshirts after visiting Mussolini’s Italy.
    He advocated a military coup after the 1932 election.

    Former Blueshirts subsequently went on to become involved with extreme far right groups such as the Architects of the Resurrection and Greenshirts.

    To say the Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism is far from reality.

    Multo autem ad rem magis pertinet quallis tibi vide aris quam allis



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  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    Eoin O’Duffy offered to send a battalion of Blueshirts to fight for Nazi Germany in operation Barbarossa.
    The Blueshirts were passionately anticommunist. Their motivation there might have been more hatred of Godless Bolshevism than admiration of Fascism. Real Fascism, that is.
    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    Many Blueshirts and subsequent Fine Gael TDs were rabid anti semites even after the horrors of the holocaust became known.
    And many more weren't. Anti semitism was hardly likely to gain much traction in a country with fewer than 4,000 "Semites" most of whom occupied relatively modest positions in society. And many of whom had participated on the rebel side in the War of Independence, which gave the Jewish community a certain kudos in the newly independent state. The Irish born Chaim Herzog, future president of Israel, makes that point very well in his memoirs. His father, the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, was close to De Valera and other leaders.

    James Dillon, leader of Fine Gael, wanted Ireland to enter the war on the Allied side once America joined in. His brother lobbied very hard to increase the quota of Jewish refugees allowed into Ireland. Granted, preference was given to those who had converted to Christianity but that was no help to them in avoiding Nazi deportations. Anti semitism, as opposed to other forms of anti-Jewish prejudice, is based on race, not belief. "Was der Jude glaubt ist einerlei; in der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei" (What the Jew believes is irrelevant; in his race lies his swinishness)

    In real terms, such physical assistance as was given to the Nazis by Irish people came more from the left-republican element. That doesn't make Ryan, Stuart, Russell et al Nazis per se; they weren't at all. But it does make them collaborators.
    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    Former Blueshirts subsequently went on to become involved with extreme far right groups such as the Architects of the Resurrection and Greenshirts.
    About whom the average well informed layperson might say: "Who?"
    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    To say the Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism is far from reality.
    Their ideology, such as it was, had nothing to do with the ideas of Hitler or Mussolini. In reality they were an Irish organisation whose motivations and ideals were firmly Irish based. They were conservative, Catholic, distrustful of the post-treaty IRA (with good reason). The best, and most accurate description I have heard of the typical Blueshirt is "Pudgy farmers bellowing about cattle prices".

    Of course, they imbibed some of the style and mannerisms of fashionable international movements of the time. As Conor Cruise O'Brien once put it "They mimicked the STYLE of continental fascism (military uniforms, straight arm salutes etc); not the deeds" Did the Blueshirts actually kill anyone in Ireland? (Whatever about Spain) I don't think so.

    What sort of useless Fascist organisation was that?

    BTW Please don't think I am in any way sympathetic to the narrow, blinkered, stulted, self-important conservatism of the Blueshirts. I'm not. But I think it's a bit rich to compare them to serious Fascists just because they aped some of the postures of the time. The active collaborators with Nazism lay elsewhere on the IRish political spectrum.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,367 ✭✭✭SafeSurfer


    The Blueshirts were passionately anticommunist. Their motivation there might have been more hatred of Godless Bolshevism than admiration of Fascism. Real Fascism, that is.


    And many more weren't. Anti semitism was hardly likely to gain much traction in a country with fewer than 4,000 "Semites" most of whom occupied relatively modest positions in society. And many of whom had participated on the rebel side in the War of Independence, which gave the Jewish community a certain kudos in the newly independent state. The Irish born Chaim Herzog, future president of Israel, makes that point very well in his memoirs. His father, the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, was close to De Valera and other leaders.

    James Dillon, leader of Fine Gael, wanted Ireland to enter the war on the Allied side once America joined in. His brother lobbied very hard to increase the quota of Jewish refugees allowed into Ireland. Granted, preference was given to those who had converted to Christianity but that was no help to them in avoiding Nazi deportations. Anti semitism, as opposed to other forms of anti-Jewish prejudice, is based on race, not belief. "Was der Jude glaubt ist einerlei; in der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei" (What the Jew believes is irrelevant; in his race lies his swinishness)

    In real terms, such physical assistance as was given to the Nazis by Irish people came more from the left-republican element. That doesn't make Ryan, Stuart, Russell et al Nazis per se; they weren't at all. But it does make them collaborators.


    About whom the average well informed layperson might say: "Who?"


    Their ideology, such as it was, had nothing to do with the ideas of Hitler or Mussolini. In reality they were an Irish organisation whose motivations and ideals were firmly Irish based. They were conservative, Catholic, distrustful of the post-treaty IRA (with good reason). The best, and most accurate description I have heard of the typical Blueshirt is "Pudgy farmers bellowing about cattle prices".

    Of course, they imbibed some of the style and mannerisms of fashionable international movements of the time. As Conor Cruise O'Brien once put it "They mimicked the STYLE of continental fascism (military uniforms, straight arm salutes etc); not the deeds" Did the Blueshirts actually kill anyone in Ireland? (Whatever about Spain) I don't think so.

    What sort of useless Fascist organisation was that?

    BTW Please don't think I am in any way sympathetic to the narrow, blinkered, stulted, self-important conservatism of the Blueshirts. I'm not. But I think it's a bit rich to compare them to serious Fascists just because they aped some of the postures of the time. The active collaborators with Nazism lay elsewhere on the IRish political spectrum.

    The Blueshirt ideology was corporatism, similar to the Italian fascists.
    The main group of Blueshirts sailed from Galway aboard the Nazi kriegsmarine vessel SS Urundi. They literally “sailed under the swastika to Spain”.
    O’ Duffy was a regular at International conferences of fellow fascists, along side such luminaries as Norway’s Vidkun Quisling and indeed was appointed to the committee of the Fascist International. Before sending Blueshirts to fight in Spain he had pledged 1000 Blueshirts to fight for Mussolini in Abyssinia.

    Of course many commentators seek to distance the Blueshirts from their fellow fascists. They try to portray them as anything from harmless to not really fascists at all.

    Sometimes the truth may be ackward and embarrassing but undeniable.

    If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, rather than grasping at arguments why it may not be a duck sometimes one has to admit that it’s a duck.

    Multo autem ad rem magis pertinet quallis tibi vide aris quam allis



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man



    If we are to believe your take on the treaty talks you are saying that Dev decided to completely abdicate power and hand all to Collins? That Dev decided to let Collins decide the future of the country with no input from the president, that he would voluntarily decide to sideline himself after years of struggle and let Collins make all the running and move into a position of supreme power as Collins then did.

    That's not my take at all. My interpretation is that De Valera knew the British would not concede all that the Republicans were asking for, and they could either take nothing at all, which would probably have led to a resumption of the war that the IRA were struggling to continue; or they could take a "freedom to achieve freedom" interim deal which many would have condemned, and did condemn, as a sellout.

    De Valera wanted to be on the side of the damners rather than the damned. Worked out for him in the long run, didn't it?

    So why do YOU think he didn't attend the negotiations?


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    The Blueshirt ideology was corporatism, similar to the Italian fascists.

    Or in other words, state control of industry, similar to the Bolsheviks?
    Two can play at this "walks like a duck, talks like a duck" argument. :)
    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    Of course many commentators seek to distance the Blueshirts from their fellow fascists. They try to portray them as anything from harmless to not really fascists at all.

    Sometimes the truth may be ackward and embarrassing but undeniable.

    If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, rather than grasping at arguments why it may not be a duck sometimes one has to admit that it’s a duck.

    It all depends on what you mean by fascism. Is there an unambiguous definition of the term? If you take German Nazism and Italian Fascism together, and they have similarities as well as significant differences, they were both ultranationalistic, authoritarian, believed in the power of radical experimentation, were utterly indifferent, if not downright hostile, to established religion, demanded absolute submission to "the state" by all citizens, in return for which the provided generous welfare for their own "people" (to hell with anyone who WASN'T "one of us") and were extremely enthusiastic about the development of science and technology.

    The Nazis were also vehemently racist, and from a "scientific" or pseudo scientific point of view. Mussolini didn't give a hoot about hostility to Jews. Many Jews were members of his party and quite a few Jewish women shared his bed. Italian Fascism was nowhere near as "scientifically racist" as Nazism and Italy only brought in its anti-Jewish laws in 1938, at German insistence, and were most lax about carrying them out.

    Franco and the Blueshirts were different in that their ideology was indeed ultranationalistic and authoritarian but it derived its appeal from passionate religious conservatism, had little to do with racism (yeah, sure, there were a few droids like Oliver J Flanagan who imbibed too much of the AntiSemitic balderdash that was swilling round the world at the time but remember: he wasn't actually a Blueshirt! He joined Fine Gael eventually but he was first elected as a Monetary Reform candidate, and it was in that capacity he made his notorious speech about "Bees and honey, Jews and Money".)

    They were most clearly defined by their attitudes to prevailing issues in Ireland, hanging on to their farms, resisting "Godless communism", such as that espoused by the Irish Labour Party!!, and protecting their members from intimidation by republicans.

    Not the most admirable bunch of people we have ever produced but their gadding about at "international conferences of fascists" no more tied them to the ideology of Mussolini or Hitler than attendance at the Yalta and Teheran conferences made Hitler or Roosevelt Stalinists.


  • Registered Users Posts: 15,630 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    You should read up a bit on the history of the early Free State, it was Collins's side that were fawning and taking their orders from Rome. Cosgrave was much more in the bishops pocket than Dev.

    The majority of the population, high up and low down, pandered to the RCC. You would stick out like a sore thumb in Irish society if you didn't.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,367 ✭✭✭SafeSurfer


    Or in other words, state control of industry, similar to the Bolsheviks?
    Two can play at this "walks like a duck, talks like a duck" argument. :)



    It all depends on what you mean by fascism. Is there an unambiguous definition of the term? If you take German Nazism and Italian Fascism together, and they have similarities as well as significant differences, they were both ultranationalistic, authoritarian, believed in the power of radical experimentation, were utterly indifferent, if not downright hostile, to established religion, demanded absolute submission to "the state" by all citizens, in return for which the provided generous welfare for their own "people" (to hell with anyone who WASN'T "one of us") and were extremely enthusiastic about the development of science and technology.

    The Nazis were also vehemently racist, and from a "scientific" or pseudo scientific point of view. Mussolini didn't give a hoot about hostility to Jews. Many Jews were members of his party and quite a few Jewish women shared his bed. Italian Fascism was nowhere near as "scientifically racist" as Nazism and Italy only brought in its anti-Jewish laws in 1938, at German insistence, and were most lax about carrying them out.

    Franco and the Blueshirts were different in that their ideology was indeed ultranationalistic and authoritarian but it derived its appeal from passionate religious conservatism, had little to do with racism (yeah, sure, there were a few droids like Oliver J Flanagan who imbibed too much of the AntiSemitic balderdash that was swilling round the world at the time but remember: he wasn't actually a Blueshirt! He joined Fine Gael eventually but he was first elected as a Monetary Reform candidate, and it was in that capacity he made his notorious speech about "Bees and honey, Jews and Money".)

    They were most clearly defined by their attitudes to prevailing issues in Ireland, hanging on to their farms, resisting "Godless communism", such as that espoused by the Irish Labour Party!!, and protecting their members from intimidation by republicans.

    Not the most admirable bunch of people we have ever produced but their gadding about at "international conferences of fascists" no more tied them to the ideology of Mussolini or Hitler than attendance at the Yalta and Teheran conferences made Hitler or Roosevelt Stalinists.


    It is bizarre and disingenuous to compare Roosevelt’s attendance at the Yalta conference with O’ Duffy’s attendance at fascist conferences. O’Duffy served on the secretariat of the Fascist International.
    Furthermore claiming they were not racist is simply untrue. Their “racial ideology of pure Irish despondency" was a central tenet.
    The denial of the fascist roots of Fine Gael reminds me of the “What have the Romans ever done for us” Monty Python scene.
    So apart from attending fascist conferences, being on the secretariat of the Fascist International, identifying as a fascist, supporting fascism, offering to fight for fascists and fighting alongside fascists what makes you think O’ Duffy was a fascist?

    Multo autem ad rem magis pertinet quallis tibi vide aris quam allis



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    It is bizarre and disingenuous to compare Roosevelt’s attendance at the Yalta conference with O’ Duffy’s attendance at fascist conferences. O’Duffy served on the secretariat of the Fascist International.
    Was that the conference where he argued AGAINST Anti Semitism as being central to the common ideology of all the participants?
    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    The denial of the fascist roots of Fine Gael reminds me of the “What have the Romans ever done for us” Monty Python scene.
    So apart from attending fascist conferences, being on the secretariat of the Fascist International, identifying as a fascist, supporting fascism, offering to fight for fascists and fighting alongside fascists what makes you think O’ Duffy was a fascist?


    Well I was talking about the Blueshirts but since you mention Fine Gael, I feel I must point out, again, that the leader of that party during the Second World War wanted to join the war on the side of the Allies. How do you square that with being a fascist?

    And I must admit,I had to look up the Fascist International and if Wikipedia's summary is correct (that's a big caveat I know) it sounds like it was a cat fight from beginning to end, internecine squabbles galore, no attendance by German Nazis or Italian Fascists (a bit of an omission, no?) and hardly any agreement on anything as a result.

    That reminds ME of another scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian. The one where the People's Front of Judaea concede that "the only people we hate more than the Romans are the ****ing Judaean People's Front!" :)

    And in that they also have a lot in common with the Socialist roots of both Mussolini's Fascism and Hitler's NAZI party.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,188 ✭✭✭monseiur


    Just a quick question re. Mick Collins. A grand uncle of mine, who was in prison with Collins and others in Wales after the rising, used to claim that he attended meetings while in prison, chaired by Collins, where the seeds were sown for what would later become New Ireland Assurance. Could this be true ??
    He claimed that Collins was a walking encyclopaedia on all matters relating to banking, finance etc.
    M.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    Well he was Minister for Finance in the first Dail, so it could very well be true. And he worked with money in England before the Rising, so it's probably true yeah.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,780 ✭✭✭BalcombeSt4


    And as for the Dev vs Collins question, well I dislike Dev but like Collins, but would have been against the treaty, so would have fought against FS, then once Dev ascended to power I would have overthrown him in a coup.


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