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Blueshirt members

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  • Registered Users Posts: 957 ✭✭✭BloodyBill


    feargale wrote: »
    Not forgetting Dan Breen. But if you look in other "republican" threads you will see that now we are supposed to forget SF/IRA's dalliance with Hitler, even the IRA atrocities of 1969- now while the "patriots" are free to talk about the Blueshirts, the Black and Tans, the Famine, Cromwell, oh ffs they whinge and harp on about the 800 years of oppression.
    And some of them can't let go when the talk is of something such as Brexit. Thay have to bring all that stuff into it.

    Never a truer word was wrote. And Sinn Fein are successfully bringing their 'victim' culture down South and infecting our politics with it. Always painting themselves as oppressed . No matter what conversation is on they ll throw in the '800 years if oppression' 'Imperialism ' . You never hear the English going on about their 900 years of Oppression since the Norman invasion of 1066. They know that victimhood is in the long term poisonous.


  • Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 9,921 Mod ✭✭✭✭Jim2007


    BloodyBill wrote: »
    You never hear the English going on about their 900 years of Oppression since the Norman invasion of 1066. They know that victimhood is in the long term poisonous.

    That would be because they embrace it as part of their culture and they have 900 years of racism built in that makes them feel superior to the peoples of the old empire. That’s why their happy to accept immigration from the old empire but not Europeans, can’t keep up the pretense there - reality breaks in.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,772 ✭✭✭meathstevie


    donaghs wrote: »
    You can still see shadowy groups in Ireland in marching with quasi-military attire. Usually at funerals.

    Ireland was a lot more conservative then, most people took the lead of the Catholic Church and favoured Franco over the legitimate Spanish government (obviously there were exceptions). The attacks on churches in Spain would have been enough to make up some people's minds.

    I'm no fan of Eoin O'Duffy. But to suggest that he was some sort of proto-Hitler is laughable. If you look the actual Blueshirt ideology, stated aims, it basically boils down to following the catholic church and opposing communism. O'Duffy made lots of contradictory statements and positions, e.g. opposing ant-Antisemitism at a Fascist conference. He seemed to have been an effective IRA commander , but clearly was mentally past his prime by the 1930s.

    A lot of people seem to be getting this wrong but fascism itself, although not very nice to say the least, was not necessarily anti-Semitic in it’s early days. As the alliance Mussolini and Hitler grew closer anti-Semitism became the norm although the Italians weren’t too hot on holding razzia’s and organising the mass murder of Italian Jews.

    After the Allied invasion of Italy and the fall and propping up of Mussolini as a figurehead by the Nazi’s very significant amounts of Jewish folks were deported from Italy and previously Italian occupied parts of France.


  • Registered Users Posts: 14 Hyus


    A lot of people seem to be getting this wrong but fascism itself, although not very nice to say the least, was not necessarily anti-Semitic in it’s early days. As the alliance Mussolini and Hitler grew closer anti-Semitism became the norm although the Italians weren’t too hot on holding razzia’s and organising the mass murder of Italian Jews.

    After the Allied invasion of Italy and the fall and propping up of Mussolini as a figurehead by the Nazi’s very significant amounts of Jewish folks were deported from Italy and previously Italian occupied parts of France.


    This is an important point. There were even Italian Jews who supported the Fascist movement in it's early days (e.g. Ettore Ovazza, who was sadly killed by the SS in 1943). At the Montreux Fascist Conference in 1934, O'Duffy and Eugenio Coselschi (acting president of the meeting) were against including any hardline anti-semitism into the principles of the "Fascist International", while delegates from some other countries like Romania wanted it to be a central point.



    Overall, O'Duffy was certainly a right-wing nationalist and favoured an authoritarian form of government, but to imagine that his ideals were akin to Nazism is ridiculous. He may have favoured Catholics, but there was no talk of genocide or Nuremberg Laws in Ireland from his side. Anti-Communism and Catholic nationalism seem to have been the central tenets of his ideology by the time the National Corporate Party was founded, not European conquest or a crusade for racial supremacy.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,599 ✭✭✭Cyclingtourist


    They protected CnG meetings from disruption by republican gangs, so you could argue that at least some of their activities helped preserve a fragile democracy.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 16,338 ✭✭✭✭banie01


    Deleted, as I don't want to distract from the topic and tbh I should know better 😉



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


    Meh. You could make the same argument that the Brownshirts, in protecting Nazi meetings from disruption by Communist gangs, were "helping to preserve a fragile democracy". I'm not convinced that rival gangs of political thugs slogging it out in the streets are ever doing much to preserve democracy, regardless of the colour of the shirts they wear.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,599 ✭✭✭Cyclingtourist


    Meh. You could make the same argument that the Brownshirts, in protecting Nazi meetings from disruption by Communist gangs, were "helping to preserve a fragile democracy"

    You might.

    I would just make the point that CnG were a centre-right democratic party whose candidates were being intimidated by marauding gangs of anti-treaty republicans who had no sense of allegiance to the Free State or its institutions.



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


    Victim culture was already well established by the first few Fianna Fail governments from the early 1930s - early 70's when the Troubles started to come south, then they attempted to reverse engineer the process, by doing things like ban Republicans from the airwaves, stop annual trips to Bodenstown to Tones tomb, cancelling the yearly Easter Rising celebrations, and similarly stupid things which just mean't those things which state ministers used to attend now the Provos were the main attraction at Bodensttown or Easter celebration at the grave of some martyr.



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


    Sure the IRA had some connections with the Nazi's at this time, I don't remember SF have any links with the Nazis maybe they did. But the IRA also had former members fighting in the Connolly Column in Spain for the left-wing Spanish Republic against Franco, Falagnists, Italian Fascists & German Nazi's. Really not all that different from some Easter Rising leaders being pro-German Monarchy, while others like Connolly were out & out Marxists.

    And could you refresh my memory.

    Was it a former SF, IRA or FG politician who made this famous speech in the Dail, and who's son is in the same party he was.

    "I am very sorry that I cannot associate myself with this Bill or with anything relating to the public safety measures introduced by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government or by the present Fianna Fáil Government because I have seen that most of these Emergency Acts were always directed against Republicanism. How is it that we do not see any of these Acts directed against the Jews, who crucified Our Saviour nineteen hundred years ago, and who are crucifying us every day in the week?

    How is it that there are thousands of well educated young men being forced to take the emigrant ship, not from Galway Bay or Cobh this time to take them to the greater Ireland beyond the Atlantic, but to take them from Dun Laoghaire and Rosslare to the land beyond the Irish Sea, the land of our traditional enemy, to help England in her war effort against Germany? There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jews out of their country. Until we rout the Jews out of this country it does not matter a hair's breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jews are there is the money."

    Any idea?



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


    It was Oliver J Flanagan. But, to be fair, at the time he was neither a former SF, IRA or FG politician, he was a member of the (openly anti-Semitic) Monetary Reform Party, which founded by Seamus Lennon, formerly of SF (Anti-Treaty). For what it's worth, Flanagan later apologised for the remarks. He was not to join FG for another nine years.

    Virulent anti-Semitism of this kind was always pretty marginal in Irish politics but, if you want to link it to more mainstream movements, you can certainly link it to Sinn Féin. (Virtually all Irish political movements, apart from the Labour Party, can be traced back to Sinn Féin.) As noted above, the Monetary Reform Party had its roots in SF and, while the even more anti-Semitic Ailtirí na hAiséirghe had no organisational roots in SF, it did find support among republicans, including Gearóid Ó Broin (who was on the Army Council at the time), Kathleen Clark (who funded the party), Dan Breen and possibly Seán South. Ailtirí's extreme nationalism was appealing to many in SF.

    I myself don't think these connections are particularly meaningful. But I do think that this particular can of worms should not be opened by anyone who would be bothered if any of the worms might turn out to be Sinn Féin worms. There's always a link to SF.

    Post edited by Peregrinus on


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