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Post by kj on Jul 10, 2017 16:55:43 GMT
I'm going to be a bad boy here, but not in too inflammatory a way, I hope. I must confess the fact that we have a large percentage of non-nationals in the country disturbs me. I believe that of the 'bigger' EU countries we have the highest percentage. I want to emphasise that I am not a racist, cultural supremacist, white DNA merchant etc etc. I simply value and want to see developed traditional Irish culture and I fear that our progress toward becoming an identity-less hodge-podge of Anglo-American Liberalism is unstoppable. That high percentage of NNs doesn't help. Now, no doubt someone would point out that the children of those NNs will often become proficient in Irish, they will be as Irish as anyone etc etc. This may well be true, and fine, but still, it must also be pointed out that there are many undeisirables in the NN crew. For example, the Irish Times reported last week that the main dealers in the new spike in crack cocaine are West African. Now again, doubtless the Leftist would say those people are 'victims' and have no alternative but to turn to crime etc, or if it weren't them it would be our own lot doing it, but still.... If I had to prognosticate, I view Dublin as a lost cause, Cork slowly creeping that way and many other of the bigger towns. I fear that the last enclaves of Irish traditional culture will be those pockets in the west, which as we know are already under enormous pressure anyway. So there it is. Apologies if this offends anyone, but I wanted to float these thoughts and see if there's a reaction, or if I am over-reacting, or if indeed I am a terrible person  |
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 10, 2017 18:52:46 GMT
To me it's quite simple.
People prefer to live with their own ethnic group.
Ethnic diversity seems to lead to conflict, unease and often war
I am an ethnonationalist and I would like ethnic minorities in Ireland to make up a single figure percentage, ideally.
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Post by servantofthechief on Jul 10, 2017 21:08:32 GMT
I don't think you'll need to fear being accused of being a racist here, KJ, not unless you are actively calling for people of another race to be persecuted unneccessarily.
A simple and effective solution, I believe, to the high degree of non-national here, especially, and lets be honest here, with a lot of the scrounger economic migrants thereabouts, is to simply make life as difficult for them as it is for the Irish person. Want benefits? Too bad, get in line. Free healthcare? You get the same as everyone else buddy. Don't like your housing conditions? Work harder and get a better deal or bugger off, plenty of Irish living on the streets who'd gladly trade places with you. Want to start some trouble? You get the same treatment at the end of a Guard's nightstick as any Irish rioter would get. No exceptions, no excuses, no apologies. There's your egalitarianism for you.
I guarantee you half of them will just go home when they realise that it isn't going to be a free ride. I'd even be up for footing the bill int axes to pay for their flights home if they cannot afford the flight.
This is just to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, the obvious refugees will be easier to distinguish when most if not all of the actual wastrels go home. Most of the rest will be encouraged to integrate further into Irish society or will slowly move away over time. The best part of all of this, is that so long as we stick to our guns and don't be obviously discriminatory all the decrimations of racism in the world won't stop it from working, we just need the stones to go ahead with it.
As for new one's coming, I have a lot of thoughts, but the simple preference for White and Catholic immigrants with obvious preference for those with Irish ancestry would not go amiss.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 10, 2017 22:02:21 GMT
Honestly, I think the word "racism" is now meaningless. I think the term "race hatred" should be used instead.
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Post by cato on Jul 10, 2017 23:41:14 GMT
It's a pity the whole notion of race didn't die with the third reich. I understand racial bigotry exists but leftists seem obsessed by the topic and ironically keep the whole daft notion alive.
The idea whites are uniquely wicked and everyone else helpless victims is pathetic nonsense. Virtually every ethnic group regards itself as superior in some way to all the others except for self loathing western liberals
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 11, 2017 8:56:27 GMT
Here's the thing. The liberal left and the internationalist right (neocons, etc.) are constantly playing two tunes, which (in my view) are quite jarring when taken together:
1) Everybody is an individual, cultures are constantly changing and blending, peoples' identities are fluid and polymorphous, boundaries are bad, diversity is good, etc. etc.
2) The world is full of racism, discrimination, in-group preference and xenophobia. It's omnipresent.
So their recommended approach seems to be:
Enable and encourage the maximum mingling of peoples', accompanied by a heavy and ever-increasing programme of social conditioning in order to deal with the resultant tension and unhappiness.
It doesn't make sense to me.
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Post by cato on Jul 11, 2017 9:54:31 GMT
The mixing all happens to occur in the former west though. There are no emigrants from Europe and the USA heading to Asia and Africa looking to change them into multicultural liberal states.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 11, 2017 10:37:27 GMT
Yes, funny how that works, isn't it?
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angelo
Junior Member
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Post by angelo on Jul 12, 2017 21:59:34 GMT
I am a non-national. I moved here from Italy in 2002 and I always felt welcomed. (The only time someone pointed out my foreign origin in a derogative way was when senator David Norris, replying to an email , wrote to me "You do not know what you are talking about. Do you live in Ireland? If not where?". I was using an Irish email address and I definitively knew what I was talking about but because of my name and surname he treated me like if I wasn't entitled to have an opinion on that particular matter).
I suppose I come from a country that is not much culturally different from Ireland. I integrated easily and the fact that I lived in a university campus for many years definitively helped.
Maolsheachlann said: "People prefer to live with their own ethnic group." I don't think so. I have a couple of Italian friends here. Most of my acquaintances are Irish, some are not. Their ethnicity is irrelevant. I don't even know where my ethnicity begins and ends. This could be because, as I said, my background isn't much different from the local culture.
I am sure I wouldn't say the same if I was living in Iraq or Taiwan but as an European, I feel at home here as much as I did when I was living in Belgium or when I go back to Italy. Differences exist but what we have in common is more relevant.
Foreign immigration is undeniably problematic in other part of Europe but not in Ireland. I don't see ghettos, I don't see tensions between ethnic groups, I don't see strong resistance to integration.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 12, 2017 22:27:13 GMT
Well, I beg to differ! I don't think of myself as European in any deep sense, and I don't really feel any commonality with Europeans per se. I think our differences are more important than what we have in common, culturally. (Not humanly, not religiously, but culturally.)
There are always exceptions but I do think, en masse and over time, people generally prefer to associate with their own ethnicity and tensions develop. Even in supposedly integrated cultures like Belgium and Canada this seems to be the case. Even in America, the exemplar of multiculturalism. Or you can have a situation such as Yugoslavia which is apparently a text-book of integration and overnight, bam...
You may be a non-national strictly speaking but I categorize you as honorary Irish...I don't think these categories are completely strict. Nor am I just saying that as special pleading, I think it is consistent with everything I have written about my social and cultural nationalism...
The more non-nationals you have in a country the more difficult it is to use the word "we" in any meaningful sense, I think, when it comes to public discourse (which includes songs, poems, monuments, magazine articles, etc. etc.). "We" means "the people who happen to be in this country right now", not "we Irish, who (for the great part) share a common culture, ancestry and collective memory". And that is a great loss. I can feel it in my own lifetime.
There is also a matter of aspiration. My aspiration for Ireland is that it becomes more distinctively Irish, I would like to resume the project of the Celtic Revival. I don't want it to become more "European", whatever that might be!
As for discontent with ethnic diversity, well, I think people are polite and pleasant for the most part, but that doesn't mean they are happy. It's just under the surface.
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Post by kj on Jul 13, 2017 8:18:23 GMT
I agree with Maolsheachlann. The longer I spent outside Ireland, the more Irish I felt and wanted to get back home.
In Europe, I found the idea of being "European" was a mirage. The French looked down on everyone, the Spanish seemed fearful of them, and they disliked the Italians. The Italians loathed the Spanish and ignored the French. The Italians and the Greeks get on famously. The Germans seemed to alienate nearly everyone.
Let's bear in mind that for most of history the European nations have been at war with each other. The only time they got together was when they had to defend themselves against Islamic/Ottoman intrusion. "European unity" is a modern political ideal with little substance.
When I heard the Imam at the Commemoration ceremony on Sunday say "we" and talk about "our country" I felt quite disturbed, I admit.
I wonder if our Honorary Irish Italian friend lives in Dublin, which would certainly be more like one of the faceless European cities than the rest of the country.
I totally agree about Celtic Revival. Would love to see it happen.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 13, 2017 8:50:01 GMT
My father puts it very well. He points out that, in Ulster, we've had an ethnic minority that is European, Christian, and speaks the same language as the indigenous Irish (for want of a better term)...and there is still deep-seated ethnic tension, after centuries living together.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying the unionists, or people of British heritage, are aliens or un-Irish. Personally, I am in no hurry to see a united Ireland (partly for these very reasons), but if that were to come about I think it would be imperative to respect the traditions and heritage of the unionist minority.
I feel the same about ethnic minorities in general. I think they should be allowed and indeed encouraged to retain their traditions and identity. There was some grumbling about Polish language Masses in Ireland, but I am all in favour of them. Nobody should be asked to renounce their traditions. Tradition is very important. But precisely for these reasons I think it's important that ethnic minorities shouldn't become too large so the majority can no longer comfortably celebrate (and strengthen) their own traditions.
Let's not forget the Travelling community. Others may feel differently, but I was all in favour of their recognition as an ethnic group. However, we can hardly say relations between the settled community and Travellers have been easy.
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Post by servantofthechief on Jul 13, 2017 18:15:52 GMT
I personally do not approve of the travellers being considered a distinct ethnicity from the rest of the Irish and I have several reasons as to why.
First off, the Irish Traveller community is almost entirely borne of Irish Gaelic stock, a bunch of families uprooted themselves centuries ago and took to the road of their own accord and have been intermixing with other travelling families for generations, they have a slight genetic difference from the rest of us because of their relative isolation, but the differences are still primarily cultural, and not enough to make up for the lack of ethnic differences.
Second of all, and this may require some tinfoil hat wearing shenanigans, but it always struck me as somewhat suspicious the drive to create yet another 'minority' ethnicity amongst the Irish that was sufficiently different from the majority to acquire victim status. The travellers themselves, while always keeping to themselves, don't see themselves as a race apart from the other Irish, more akin to a tribe apart. If there are any settled travellers (or basically any travellers with wifi who see this) disagree, please correct me if I am wrong on this point.
Like how I am increasingly beginning to view the Unionists here in the North, the travellers are to me, just another tribe of the Irish, albeit, much closer to the home stock than the Unionists are (like it or not the Unionists are here to stay. Lets just hope they go the way of the Norse-Gaels and the Old English and assimilate in their own manner, hopefully converting to Catholicism in the process)
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 13, 2017 18:26:06 GMT
What I like about the word "ethnicity" is that there is no strict definition of it. It's not quite genetics, and it's not quite language, and it's not quite culture, although all those things are involved. It's quite a mysterious thing. So I think it's quite possible that your description of the Travellers is accurate and yet they are a distinct ethnicity. However, I do sympathize with all your points.
I don't think that we need invoke any tinfoil hat when it comes to your "victim status" comments. I completely agree. Progressives love the whole Traveller situation because it's a way to bash mainstream Irish society. And I think this is very typical. I heard one Scottish vlogger put forward the theory that Scottish liberals want immigration to Scotland because they WANT a racism problem. I can easily believe that.
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Post by rogerbuck on Jul 16, 2017 9:08:15 GMT
Well, I'm definitely more with Angelo here. Of course, like him, I'm a non-national myself and I actually feel more at home in Ireland than either of the countries I grew up in (America and England). That said, I think there are (uncomfortably) good points made above about tension - the case of Northern Ireland, for example and also Yugoslavia. In both those cases though, I note that some kind of religious identity has been involved: Protestant vs Catholic, Orthodox vs Catholic. This is something I wish I understood much better. But in reference to you writing this Angelo, I note some things ... I am a non-national. I moved here from Italy in 2002 and I always felt welcomed. .... I suppose I come from a country that is not much culturally different from Ireland. I integrated easily and the fact that I lived in a university campus for many years definitively helped. Maolsheachlann said: "People prefer to live with their own ethnic group." I don't think so. I have a couple of Italian friends here. Most of my acquaintances are Irish, some are not. Their ethnicity is irrelevant. I don't even know where my ethnicity begins and ends. This could be because, as I said, my background isn't much different from the local culture. I am sure I wouldn't say the same if I was living in Iraq or Taiwan but as an European, I feel at home here as much as I did when I was living in Belgium or when I go back to Italy. Differences exist but what we have in common is more relevant. First, like you, I always felt INCREDIBLY WELCOMED here in Ireland - much more so than I did in Wales, for example. I do think part of that is my Catholicity and I imagine your Catholicity may play a part too. And I think your point about "not much culturally different from Ireland" is relevant too. Again, I would see Catholicity here as a factor and it strikes me that it you also invoke Belgium and, obviously, Italy in this context. And I find for myself that this factor is HUGE. Just personally, subjectively, I have preferred to be in countries like Ireland, France, Spain to England where my roots are. I imagine I would find Sweden or Estonia quite difficult. Something I find interesting here. There is a French Swiss Canton called Jura that emerged rather recently (circa 1980 if I recall correctly) by splitting off from the Canton it had long been part of, Berne I believe. Why the split? Was it linguistic? - No. This had long been a French speaking region. It split because - even as late as less than forty years ago - the Catholic part of this French speaking canton wanted to be separate from the Protestant French speakers in the other part. Thus in the invocation of Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia above, I wonder if we need to factor in religion more, even when we are no longer talking about avid Protestants or avid Catholics. SaveSave |
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