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Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ Written by Oleksandr Kyselov and Olena Kalich.

Ukrainian socialists Olena Tkalich and Oleksandr Kyselov confront a Western anticapitalist left whose anti-imperialism has, in their view, become a politics of abandonment. 

Opposition to the West cannot substitute for emancipatory politics. 

European rearmament poses a genuine dilemma the left cannot resolve through reflex opposition alone. Opposing weapons supplies to Ukraine, whatever the justification, functions in practice as pressure on Kyiv to capitulate Class solidarity with Ukrainian workers is both materially possible and politically necessary. In a multipolar world where weakness invites coercion, they argue, the left must learn to build power rather than simply denounce it in others. [AN]

We are not writing to convey the ultimate truth. We are full of doubts ourselves. Our only goal is to share our thoughts and to point to the gaps in the thinking we ourselves once followed. Olena still feels ashamed when she recalls how, a few days before the outbreak of war, left-wing European journalists came to Kyiv and asked her about a possible Russian attack. She confidently dismissed this as a completely unrealistic scenario and suggested talking instead about how poor Ukraine’s social security system is. 

Continue @ ESSF.

No Mercy In A Multipolar World 🪶A Plea for Solidarity-Based Anti-Imperialism

Kevin Doyle ✏ Writing on Substack. 

Photo of a wall poster hanging in Amsterdam, the home of writer and genocide victim, Anne Frank. [Taken Dec 2025 Kevin Doyle]

The Irish Writers Union (IWU) was founded in the mid-eighties and has campaigned on many issues since: against censorship, for better library loan rates (PLR) for writers, against copyright violations and in recent times for protection for writers from AI theft of their work. In broad terms its role is to “further the professional interests and needs of writers in various media in Ireland”. Affiliated to the trade union SIPTU, the IWU retains full autonomy in running its own affairs. Internationally, it is a member of the European Writers’ Council (EWC), which itself is the largest federation worldwide that solely represents writers. The IWU is also the only nominating body in Ireland for the Nobel Prize for Literature as well the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Today it has over four hundred members and undoubtedly constitutes the main representative organisation of Irish writers.

At the union’s AGM this year, a motion[1] was put forward proposing that the IWU join the cultural boycott of Israel. Specifically, the motion asked IWU members to approve joining the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).[2] PACBI is the cultural and academic arm of the anti-apartheid boycott movement Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) set up to pressurise Israel to meet its obligations under international law regarding the rights of the Palestinian people.[3] A number of Irish trade unions are signatories to BDS and only last year Trinity College, Dublin agreed to abide by the principles of PACBI and join the academic boycott of Israel.

As it turned out, on the day of the AGM, in somewhat chaotic circumstances[4] the motion was narrowly defeated.[5] A number of the union’s Executive and some members opposed the motion, while another cohort, although supportive, felt they couldn’t vote for the proposal at this stage due to concerns about the impact of a boycott on individual Israeli writers. In the end just one vote divided the sides and the motion fell.[6] Later in a letter to the membership the union’s Chairperson conceded that the outcome was not in keeping with the mood of the AGM. He wrote:

It was clear in the discussion of the pros and cons that the majority of those present, in person and online, are very distressed about the situation in Gaza.

Many Irish writers have since expressed surprise and dismay at the outcome of the IWU vote. It is possible that some members who didn’t attend viewed the result as a foregone conclusion considering what has happened in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank in recent times. Currently Israel stands accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing.[7] A week before the IWU vote, Israel enacted a new law – the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law – which has drawn widespread international condemnation for its fundamentally racist basis.[8]

The IWU vote was close, and there are indeed grounds for disputing the veracity of the outcome.[9] However to engage in bickering over how the AGM was conducted only serves to distract from the more serious issues that arose in the course of the debate about the motion. For example, a number of the union’s Executive refused to support the boycott motion and hid behind the frankly surprising view that the IWU is a ‘non-political’ organisation. But this is not how the Executive saw itself a number of years ago when it quickly issued a statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Clearly the IWU union was ‘political’ a few years ago but suddenly isn’t now? So what’s going on?

What does ‘non-political’ mean?

Anyone I’ve asked about the concept that a union could be ‘non-political’ has frankly looked at me like I had three heads. How can a union be ‘non-political’? For example, take some of the campaigns the IWU has been involved in. Isn’t tackling the AI industry’s theft of writers’ work political? What about opposing the Far Right’s physical attacks on Irish libraries for stocking LGBTQ+ books? Surely that’s political as well? Yet, at this AGM, the current Chair, Conor McAnally, stated that the IWU is actually ‘non-political’ and this was why it couldn’t sign up to a boycott of Israel. This point tallies with correspondence I had with the former vice-Chair who told me in the lead up to the AGM that:

the (Executive) committee did decide that the IWU is not a political organisation and that this is [to be] used as a compass to advise us regarding campaigns etc.

As a former Chair of the IWU, I have looked everywhere for some record of when this decision was taken – indeed if it ever was. There is no official record anywhere. Nor is there evidence of a motion being proposed and seconded; a record of any vote being taken; or indeed any correspondence between whoever took this decision – the Executive? – to the membership informing the membership that a significant redefinition of the union’s status had occurred. So, while the current Chair and some Executive members may believe that the IWU is ‘non-political’ it is highly doubtful if this belief exists anywhere outside of their own heads.

Leaving aside the issue of democracy for a moment does it even make sense? Here the matter becomes more interesting. What does ‘non-political’ amount to? None other than George Orwell has written about this.[10] Orwell confronted the issue of art and politics many times. He pointed out that the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. So, while the Chair and some of the Executive claim their motive is to keep politics out of the union, they are in fact conducting a political manoeuvre of their own.

The next and obvious question is, towards what end? Here Orwell offers us further insight. He argues that those who subscribe to being ‘non-political’ are essentially those who benefit from the status quo. He added that most people cannot in fact afford the luxury of being ‘non-political’ at all. Day to day living dictates that. And I guess we could evidence here the desperate situation of those living in Gaza.

To further my understanding of what is going on I decided to ask some veterans of the trade union movement for their views. Gregor Kerr, a longstanding member of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation has been active inside and outside that organisation for many years. He made this point:


… people who think we shouldn’t be ‘political’ should ask themselves: If I was living in a totalitarian regime, if genocide was being committed against my people, if writers in my country were being imprisoned for what they wrote, if trade unionists in my country were being imprisoned for organising…. where could I turn for help? And if I saw people living in a relatively free and comfortable political environment saying ‘that’s too political for me to say anything about’, how would I feel?


He added:

Everything is political … [People] may try to claim it’s ‘not political’, but by choosing to look away they are in effect choosing a side. Desmond Tutu put it well back in 1984 when he said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor…

Another activist I asked is Dr Mary Favier. A founder member of Doctors for Choice, she was involved in bringing motions to the Irish Medical Organisation on abortion rights during the difficult years following Savita Halappanavar’s tragic death. She said:

I’ve come across this argument, yes. We brought many motions to our union, the Irish Medical Organisation, asking it to commit to helping with changing the draconian abortion laws that were in Ireland then. We faced a lot of sharp opposition. They often tried to prevent our motions from even being admitted onto the agenda. The argument used was that we were bringing ‘politics’ into the organisation. But how wasn’t reproductive healthcare justice not an issue for the IMO, an organisation of doctors? It clearly was.

She added,

We faced a lot of opposition, but we unpicked their arguments one by one. The claim that a union is ‘non-political’ doesn’t hold up in the end and what we found is that union members accept this when they hear the arguments. Everything a union does is political, and people realised that when they think about it.

Dr Favier also echoed the view that the ‘non-political’ argument is often advocated by people in positions of privilege and who favour the status quo:

[Supporters of this view] are happy with how things are basically. In the IMO in the past there were a lot of doctors who were happy for women to go over to England, unseen and unheard. That was the end of the matter. For them it was like why change anything? If that’s not privilege talking, then what is?

So, to conclude on this point, advocating for the IWU to be ‘non-political’ is really a cloak for supporting the status quo, for advocating for inaction. Which is a shameful position to hold – no? – given that Israel is conducting genocide against the Palestinian people.

What about Ukraine?

I was Chairperson of the IWU from 2021 to 2023 and remained on the union’s executive for a further year after my term. During this time I was never made aware of there being any policy in the organisation to the effect that the union was or should be ‘non-political’. In fact, the opposite seemed to be the case. In 2022, the Irish Writers Union was forthright in publishing its condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the time I helped draft the statement that was issued. My memory is that no one raised any objections to the issuing of the statement. Nor did anyone suggest that a statement on the matter was beyond the remit of organisation or that we were bound by policy to be ‘non-political’.

The statement by the IWU at the time was well received. It is available here. Interestingly, the European Writers Council also issued a statement about the Russian invasion and it is on the record that the Irish Writers Union was one of early signatories to this statement titled “Ukraine: European and International Writers and Translators against War and Violence”. This statement and a list of its signatories can be viewed here. Was anything similar issued by the IWU or indeed the EWC about Gaza and Israel’s brutal attack on its population? Sadly, the answer is no in both cases.[11]

Gaza, Palestine and Israel first came to the attention of the IWU’s Executive in late 2023. A member of the union, Kate Thompson[12] emailed the Executive asking it to consider adding the IWU’s name to a letter urging the Irish government to join in South Africa’s action against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Recall that South African was the first nation to accuse Israel of war crimes and genocide. Kate Thompson’s letter was discussed by email among the Executive and was met with immediate opposition. The letter petitioning the Irish government to add its name to the ICJ case “seems too political”, one Executive committee member said. Another wrote “[we] agreed that we keep a focus on issues relating to Irish writers (and writers in general). Otherwise, we have the potential to get dragged this way and that by the latest global atrocity and/or the political agendas of others”. Other similar comments abounded. At the time a number of committee members including Glenda Cimino and I dissented.

It was clear by late 2023 and early 2024 that Israel was using excessive force in Gaza. Of course, much worse was to come. We are now in the third year of Israel’s war and blockade of Gaza. The intervening period has been a bloodbath. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been murdered. Gaza lies in ruins. Israel’s war against the Palestinian people has also gathered pace on the West Bank. As I write, Amnesty International has issued a new report documenting Israeli state involvement in ethnic cleansing there.

In hindsight Kate Thompson’s letter was a small ask, a simple request to add the IWU’s name to a letter of petition to the Irish government. And indeed, irony of ironies, the Irish government did later join South Africa’s legal action – as did a host of other countries including Belgium, Turkey, Brazil, Spain and Columbia. Perhaps aware of its double standards around Ukraine and Palestine, the IWU later issued a statement highlighting the plight of writers and journalists in Gaza, many of whom had been murdered by Israeli troops; the statement called for ceasefire. That is the extent of our union’s commentary.

It is clear from the above that this claim about the IWU being ‘non-political’ is a fig leaf to hide behind. Those who articulate this viewpoint are in fact advocating silence in the face of war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Orwell arrived at his considered evaluation from his experience as a writer and humanitarian. He saw the rise of totalitarianism and recognised that inaction in the face of wrong doing is a form of action.

Elephants in the room

Is this about racism then? In reality it is difficult to know but clearly Gaza and Palestine have not received equal treatment to Ukraine’s. And considering the gravity of the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, and indeed the existential threat to the Palestinian people as a whole, we are well within our rights to ask for an explanation.

There is of course something else. At the recent AGM, one IWU member, Sally Rooney, addressed this when she spoke in favour of the motion to boycott Israel. She outlined what happened when she first made a public stand around the boycott of Israel – back in 2021. Declining to have her third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You? translated into Hebrew, she identified publicly with the BDS movement. PACBI later issued a statement warmly welcoming her stand.

Sally Rooney told the AGM that she was warned many times by people in the book business that she was doing irrevocable damage to her career and her book sales by taking the stand she was taking – supporting the cultural boycott of Israel. However, she refused to be silenced and went ahead. She has of course taken further action since. Sally Rooney informed the AGM that her book sales have not been affected by her action. On the contrary it seems. So, Israel’s reach doesn’t go quite as far as some fear.

Sally Rooney has made this point also and it is worth noting its wisdom. She said:

I would like to ask my fellow writers and artists, if I may, not to dwell too exclusively on what we stand to lose. There is another more important side to the story. To join in something greater than ourselves, to participate in some small way in a struggle for human liberation. To stand for what we know in our hearts is right and try not to be complicit in what we know is wrong.

Her words had impact on the day of the AGM, but it is clear that some, for whatever reason, have chosen, if not, to cosy up to Israel, then certainly not to speak ill of that country — even though it is conducting an ongoing genocide.

It is not edifying to admit to being a coward, far better to stand on some grand principal such as the union is ‘non-political’. Anthony McIntyre in his post about the AGM documented how the Chair of the union introduced the rantings of a known Zionist – not even a member of the union – as a warning to those at the AGM what might happen to the union if it dared to join a boycott of Israel. It was one of a number of ploys used on the day in an attempt to intimidate people about the impact of voting in favour of the boycott. William Wall, who seconded the AGM motion, said about those involved in scaremongering that they may well be:

thinking of their sales in America, or a possible contract in America, or a possible book tour in America. Or what will the Indo think of them? Or, God help us, Alan Shatter.

He may well be correct there.

The Irish Writers Union has a proud history. It was founded to fight for writers’ interests and to protect our freedom of expression. In terms of who it represents and what it stands for, we must defend its reputation. We certainly cannot let it be said that when we were asked what do we understand by ‘Never Again’ that we replied with silence or worse still we looked the other way.

References

[1] The motion was proposed by Kevin Doyle and seconded by William Wall.

[2] PACBI is part of the BDS movement. A full history of PACBI and its role in the BDS movement can be found at this link.

[3] Israel’s obligations under international law include a full withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel, and promotion of “the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties”.

[4] Attendance at the AGM was in-person or by Zoom link. The online attendance was larger than in-person but the only interface between both groups of attendees was a single laptop. The sound was poor and it was difficult to hear many of the contributions made by online members. This arrangement proved to be less than adequate during the terse debate on the motion.

[5] The vote was initially tied.

[6] PACBI is specifically not a boycott directed at individual artists and writers in Israel. It targets organisations only and in particular organisation complicit in Israel’s effort to sanitise its image abroad. Although this important aspect of PACBI’s work was explained a number of times during the debate on the motion, concerns remained.

[7] In proposing the motion to the AGM I outlined in detail the evidence that now exists that upholds the view that Israel is engaged in genocide in Gaza. See here.

[8] See UN view on this law here.

[9] When the vote was called, it wasn’t clear how many were in attendance and who was voting. A clear number of persons attending didn’t register any response – either a yes, a no or an abstention.

[10] Why I Write, George Orwell, 1946.

[11] It is notable that the EWC has been vociferous about Ukraine and has consistently supported its fight for freedom but has been completely silent about the genocide in Gaza.

[12] Further information about Kate Thompson here. Aside from fiction, Kate Thompson has written the popular Palestine A-Z, a highly readable outline of different aspects of Palestinian history and where we are now.

⏩Kevin Doyle is a political writer and activist.

To Be Brave Or Afraid 🪶 The Irish Writers Union And The Cultural Boycott Of Israel

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fifteen

 

A Morning Thought @ 3188

People And Nature ☭ Written by Simon Pirani.


At a Green Left zoom discussion on 23 June about “the Green party and NATO”, I argued that we can support resistance to Russian imperialism while opposing NATO. 

I was on a panel along with Paul Ingram, research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge; the socialist writer Gilbert Achcar, Emeritus Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and Linda Walker of the Green Party’s Peace, Security and Defence Policy Working Group.

This is what I said, followed by some notes on issues that came up in discussion. Simon Pirani.

Thank you for inviting me to speak. I will say some things about NATO, Russia and Ukraine, since I have researched and written about those countries. Before that, a couple of general points to frame what I say.

Demonstrating in London, October 2024

First, before working out political demands narrowly defined as demands on the state, we need first to talk about the interests of society as a whole, of humanity, as expressed by the labour movement (“labour” with a small “l”) and by social movements and civil society more broadly.

This is central to my understanding of socialism. It helps us to avoid falling in to the trap of defining our aims primarily in terms of policies that could in the short term be adopted by the UK parliament.

Second, when dealing with a specific foreign policy issue such as NATO membership, we need to consider the broader set of relationships between capital and society that form the context for NATO and other military alliances.

To explain what I mean by that. Let’s look at the 21st century’s great war crime, the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and Israel’s illegal expansionist wars in Lebanon and the West Bank.

It could be argued that NATO has little formal involvement. But that would be ridiculous. Israel is recognised, and defined in US law, as a major ally of NATO. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states also have a wealth of connections with NATO powers.

The largest NATO powers, including the UK, have actively facilitated the genocide.

In the last few weeks, while the UK has been trashing the right of free speech by treating direct action protest against Israel as terrorism, another NATO country, Sweden, has hosted an arms exhibition by Elbit Systems to market its technologies to NATO powers.

All this is reason enough to look forward to NATO being dismantled, just as we look forward to the European rearmament programme being scrapped, to nuclear disarmament, and to the whole notion of “security” being re-defined as a human, not state, concern.

In this framework, what about Russia and Ukraine? Ukraine has since 2014 been subject to invasion and occupation, and since 2022 to all-out war, by Russia, which is not only a non-NATO power but, in geopolitical discourse, is one of NATO’s main enemies.

There have been two very distinct responses to this by “left” political forces in Europe, including the UK.

One response has been to recognise and support Ukrainian resistance, just as socialists have traditionally recognised the right of people, from the Irish Fenians onwards, to resist colonialism.

To convey this point, on the big demonstrations in London about Gaza, a group of us carried a banner that said “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime”.

We were welcomed by the vast majority of demonstrators, but not by the organisers of those marches in the “Stop the War” coalition, who have avoided acknowledging that Ukrainian resistance is justified, and avoided denouncing the occupation of eastern parts of Ukraine by Russian-supported puppet regimes since 2014.

This political blindspot is described as “campism” – a belief that the anti-US geopolitical camp of Russia, China and Iran is somehow less dangerous than the US and its allies. Older people here will recognise a strong streak of post-Stalinism in it.

The practical, political issue where this difference matters is: arms supplies to Ukraine. “Campists” specifically oppose such supplies, putting themselves on the same side as the extreme right parties in Europe supported by Putin.

My view is that we can not oppose such supplies, even if they come from NATO powers who are simultaneously arming Israel. I agree with those Ukrainian socialists, who have welcomed calls by Scandinavian left parties for arms exports to be banned to all countries except Ukraine.

Note. This interview explains the stance of the Red-Green Alliance (Denmark); this, specifically on arms exports, can be machine-translated if you don’t speak Danish. On how this might play out in a UK context, see here.

I would like to mention a couple of “campist” myths that have been used to justify refusal to support Ukrainian resistance.

One such myth is that Ukraine is fighting a “proxy war” for NATO, and that NATO somehow pushed Russia into invading Ukraine.

In fact, NATO expansion in eastern Europe from the 1990s was first directed at trying to control, and then contain, Russia. Not to destroy it. Remember that the NATO powers fully supported Russia’s bloodbath against Chechnya in the early 2000s, and even talked to Russia about joining NATO itself.

Second, NATO expansion can not be understood as the only or even the main factor in changing relations between Russia and the European powers.

It has to be considered along with the integration of Russian capital into the global system, the resurgence in the 2000s of Russian capital on one side and the emergence of powerful social movements in Ukraine, Russia and across the former Soviet Union on the other, and then, under Putin, Russian imperialist revanchism.

This revanchism is feared not only in Ukraine but in other eastern European countries, the Baltic states especially, and that is the basis for overwhelming support in those countries for NATO membership.

In Mexico, people fear one imperialist aggressor. In Estonia, it’s a different one.

This is a reason to combine opposition to NATO with concrete discussions about how people in these countries can protect themselves from Russian imperialist aggression.

Another myth current in 2022 was that military aid to Ukraine should be opposed, because Russia might use a nuclear weapon. This downplayed

(a) Any analysis of the paralysing/ terrorising effect of nukes on civil society that persisted through and beyond the cold war;

(b) The actual damage done by conventional weapons, such as the destruction of the Kakhovka dam or Russia’s provocative actions at the Zaporizhya nuclear power station; and

(c) The counterfactual, i.e. the situation eastern Europe would be in now, had no military aid been given to Ukraine.

Note. In the discussion, I was challenged: how I could be certain that Russia would not use a nuclear weapon? I can not be certain. I think an exaggerated assessment of the danger is also a problem, though, as I argued in 2022 in this article. My point was to warn about the potential political damage of such an exaggerated assessment.

Finally, I would like to give my view on some relevant, immediate political issues.

(1) We can, and must, oppose the massive general rearmament programme.

(2) We can support the supply of weapons to Ukraine, not only by the state, but also the massive civil society effort for example by Ukrainians living in western Europe and the UK.

(3) We can engage in discussion with the labour movement and civil society in eastern European countries where fear of Russian invasion and interference is very real, e.g. the Baltic states;

(4) We need to consider our reaction to mischief-making by Russia in western Europe, largely via support for the extreme right. Our responses to this should be part of our efforts to strengthen the labour movement and social movements to defeat the extreme right, rather than relying solely or mainly on responses by the state.

☭ ☭ ☭ ☭ ☭

Here are comments on two issues that came up in discussion.

☭  I was surprised to hear the claim repeated that in April 2022 the Istanbul peace talks collapsed because Boris Johnson persuaded Volodymyr Zelensky to reject the deal on offer. I thought this fantasy, once current in some “left” circles, had been abandoned by now. Surely, with the benefit of four years of hindsight, it should be obvious to more people that a whole complex of problems torpedoed the peace talks, above all the question of what “security guarantees” could be provided to Ukraine, and who by.

Let’s recall the situation the Ukrainian government was in. Their country had been subject to the biggest land invasion in Europe since world war two. Reports were reaching them of the Russian army’s war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere. They were being asked to agree to giving away chunks of Ukrainian territory in exchange for too-vague “security guarantees”.

Ukraine had given up its nuclear arsenal in 1994, in exchange for security guarantees by Russia and the western powers that its sovereign territory would be respected – guarantees that were broken from 2014, when Russia gave military support to the proto-fascist “republics” in the Donbas, and the western powers’ reaction remained limited.

Did Boris Johnson go to spin Zelensky an aggressive, anti-Russia line? Probably. Were Zelensky and his colleagues stupid enough to take Johnson at his word, let alone act on his advice? No reason to think so, as Taras Fedirko and Volodya Artiukh pointed out at the time. And plenty of extra details emerged subsequently. The caricature version of April 2022 mainly served those western “leftists” who did not want to interrogate the real character of Russia’s actions and the imperialist revanchism that guided them.

☭ Mention was made of human rights abuses and political repression in Ukraine, and I responded that these could not be compared in scale or character to those in Russia. My concern is not to minimise them, but to counter the wretched “leftist” narrative, that points to these abuses to “prove” that the war is fought by two equally responsible and equally malign sides, neither of which deserve support (and, specifically, weapons).

Human rights abuses in Ukraine are well documented by, among others, Zmina and the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. Mistreatment of civilians accused of “collaboration” with Russian occupation forces, and of PoWs, is rampant. But there can be no serious comparison between this and the oceans of repression unleashed over the last four years by the Kremlin in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, and in Russia itself.

There have been tens of thousands of forced disappearances of civilians in the occupied territories and systematic kidnapping of children; Russia’s human rights groups – all of which, unlike their Ukrainian colleagues, are forced to operate outside the country – estimate that there are at least 3000 political prisoners; and state terror against all forms of political activity has virtually extinguished the rights of free speech and freedom of assembly.

Many Russian socialists and liberals define this as a new form of fascism. No-one in the Green party or anywhere else is likely to get their heads around what to do, if they do not have a clear take on the interaction between war and dictatorship.

🔴 Watch Try Me For Treason: speeches by anti-war protesters in Russian courts (50 min, English language) here

🔴 Voices Against Putin’s War – download free pdf here

☭ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month)

In Mexico, People Fear One Imperialist Aggressor 🪶 In Estonia, It’s A Different One

Tricontinental ★ Recommended by Tommy McKearney

While the capitalist system rewards short-term cycles, building a dignified future is a slow task that requires disciplined organisation and an enduring struggle to bring forth the social forces of a new world.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In 1921, a few years into the Soviet experiment, V. I. Lenin published an essay with the revealing title ‘New Times and Old Mistakes in a New Guise’. The essay opened a line of inquiry that would remain with Lenin until the end of his life three years later. What captivated him was the issue of how to build socialism in a country ravaged by war, with minimal capital at its disposal, a largely peasant society with high rates of illiteracy (around 70%), and no public administration capable of running a socialist-oriented state. In the essay, Lenin reflected:

After an enormous, unparalleled exertion of effort, the working class in a small-peasant, ruined country, the working class which has very largely become declassed, needs an interval of time in which to allow new forces to grow and be brought to the fore, and in which the old and worn-out forces can ‘recuperate’. … 

Continue @ Tricontinental.

Socialism Is Slow to Mature

Christopher Owens 🎵 with the 64th in his Predominance series.

“The sun went down and the ground started sort of grinding/A blinding light it tore the sky/A cyclone swept the landscape out and left it completely flattened out/And several twirls of smoke unfolded like gigantic flowers/The way the morning broke was quite unusual.” - Front 242

Horns up 

New Horizons


Extinction of Mankind – Slaves to No One

Amazingly, this is only their second album in 20 years (and fifth in total) but Scoot and the lads still deliver a punishingly cathartic set of metallic crust punk numbers that confront the problems in the world. Songs like ‘Defund the BBC’ are so crusty, they give the likes of Martyrdod a run for their money while ‘Fucked Up Society’ is a riif and a half.

The album can be streamed and purchased here.

Hard-Fi - Sweating Someone Else's Fever

15 years on, Hard-Fi aren’t as keen to go out the way they used to in case they get beaten up on the night bus or arrested. Musically, they’re still mining punk, house and dub for a sound that may not be a revolutionary as it once was but comes across as rejuvenated and boisterous in a sterile mainstream landscape. It’s time to get behind Hard-Fi and sing their praises.

The album can be streamed and purchased here.

Laibach - Musick

Turning their attention to these times, Laibach use the format of current chart music and its plastic platitudes to examine/celebrate/condemn Luigi Mangione, lockdowns, riots, AI, the cheapening of music and algorithms. It’s funny, until you consider how Laibach have mocked authoritanism in the past and you wonder if we are sleepwalking into a new kind.

The album can be streamed and purchased here

Golden Oldies


Dinosaur Jr – Bug

Although not quite as astonishing as the previous year’s ‘You’re Living All Over Me’, this is still an essential blend of noise rock, with ‘Freak Scene’ being one of the pivotal indie singles of the era and J.Mascis’ slack delivery of the line “so fucked I can’t believe it” summed up an entire generation. Closer ‘Don’t’ indicated that all wasn’t well with bassist Lou Barlow.



Antisect – The Rising Of The Lights

Waiting over 30 years to follow up an album as iconic as ‘In Darkness, There is No Choice’ seems like madness, but Antisect did so and while it doesn’t reach those lofty heights (how could it) it’s still an astonishing record that casts its eye over Britain in the 21st century while channeling Killing Joke and Hawkwind into its sound.



Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock

Although now disgraced due to well documented allegations of child molestation, Afrika Bambaataa was a pioneer of hip hop and this record (essentially a comp) stands up as an example of old school rap when it could also be tagged as electro. ‘Who You Funkin' With?’, a collaboration with Melle Mel and Tack<<<Head, is an expected highlight.



Amy MacDonald – This is the Life

Nearly 20 years since its release, it’s amazing how this record still stands up. Written when she was a teenager in Bishopbriggs, MacDonald’s yearning vocals match the angst and sincerity of teenage life (check out ‘A Wish for Something More’ as such an example) while the production lifts the songs beyond mere acoustic music and into something a little more life affirming.



⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Predominance 64

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fourteen

 

Religious Derangement Syndrome @ 4

 

A Morning Thought @ 3187

Dixie Elliot ✊We know who the first man to set foot on the moon was. 

But did you know that the first people to set foot in Ireland were immigrants?
 
That and other things you might not know:

The first people to arrive in Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-gathers who travelled across Europe and arrived in Ireland by boat around 8,000 BC.
 
So were the first inhabitants of Ireland immigrants or were they Irish?

Well Ireland hadn't got an name yet so obviously they weren't Irish.
 
Then in 4,500 BC the Neolithic Farmers came from Anatolia, which would now be known as Turkey.
More bloody immigrants!

Ireland still wasn't called Ireland so they weren't Irish either which meant that the country was full of foreigners, even before the Irish came.
 
Fuck off! Where did the Irish come from if there was nowhere called Ireland?

During the Bronze and Iron ages the Celts were moving around central Europe including Northern Spain. These people were described as Keltoi by the Greeks and they spoke a precursor to the modern Celtic languages. Along the way they integrated with other tribes, stayed in the one place or moved on.

Around 500BC the first of these Keltoi people arrived in Ireland. They didn't invade, they just arrived and kept coming over the course of time and settled here. The language these people spoke is well over a thousand years older than the English language which originated in and around where Germany is today. The Anglo-Saxons eventually brought the English language to Britain.
 
The Celts called the land they settled in Ériu, their word for describing a 'fertile land.' In their mythology Ériu became the name of a goddess and together with her sisters, Banba and Fódla, she represented the spirit of the island.

So Ireland eventually had a name.

In 795 AD the Vikings began raiding the coastal areas of Ireland, plundering and pillaging. These Norsemen, who were primarily from Norway, were a right shower of baduns. They eventually began to settle along the coast, so that they'd have somewhere to park their longships. Viking ports were eventually established at Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which became the first large towns in Ireland.

After they had been defeated by an army led by the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the Vikings gave up on the idea of conquering Ireland. Instead, the Norse established coastal settlements like Dublin and increasingly assimilated into Irish society.
However, the kinsmen of the Viking Norsemen, who were also primarily from Norway, had been at the same carry-on in in what would become known as Normandy in northwestern France, which was of course named after themselves and they became known as the Normans.
 
This lot eventually got round to invading England which, at the time, had been ruled by the Anglo-Saxons, who, as I already pointed out, originally came from Germany. The Normans, led by William the Conqueror, defeated the Anglo-Saxons, led by King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Apparently he was keeping an eye on them when an arrow went clean through that eye killing him stone dead. Or so they say.
 
Over time the victorious Normans intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts in Britain and became known as the Anglo-Normans.

In 1167 Dermot MacMurrough, the deposed King of Leinster, asked the English King Henry ll to help him regain his territory after rival Irish lords and the High King of Ireland Rory O'Connor forced him into exile. Henry told him to give a guy called Strongbow a shout. Strongbow had just discovered that if you crush apples you can get an alcoholic drink called cider, which was becoming very popular at the time, and he didn't want to go to Ireland in case others started into the cider making business while he was away invading.
 
MacMurrough told Strongbow that if he gave him a hand out he'd give him his daughter Aoife's hand in marriage. She was a fine looking colleen so Strongbow agreed to help him and in 1169 the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland. MacMurrough became the King of Leinster again and Strongbow cider became the most popular alcoholic drink in Ireland until Arthur Guinness invented the black stuff.
Strongbow married Aoife and MacMurrough was glad to be back on his throne, although his arse wasn't on it for more than two years before he died in 1171. The Anglo-Normans went on to help themselves to the rest of Ireland.
 
Now here's the thing. Over time the Anglo-Normans assimilated into Gaelic society, adopted the Irish language, embraced local customs, and intermarried with the native clans. They famously became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves.'

The English Crown weren't having any of this as it threatened their control over Ireland, so Parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. These laws strictly banned the Anglo-Normans from speaking Irish, adopting Irish names, dressing like the Gaels, or marrying native Irish people. However, these laws largely failed to stop the ongoing Gaelicisation of the Anglo-Normans.

So, in brief, the first people to arrive on these shores were immigrants. These immigrants kept coming until the first of the Celts turned up and they too were immigrants.
 
The Vikings and the Anglo-Normans came as invaders not immigrants, but Irish culture suited them just fine so they got tore into it and out came the jugs of Strongbow.

Irish culture, including the Gaelic language was as strong as it had always been. It remained that way until the time of the Irish Holocaust (The Famine) in 1845 when the deliberate starvation of the poor Irish people forced them to flee from the shores of Ireland, in coffin ships, seeking a better way of life. They went for the most part to America, where racism was waiting to greet them as soon as they arrived on Ellis Island in New York.

The London Times, at a time when the exodus was at it's most pitiful, screamed with delight in one of its editorials...

They are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan. 

It is estimated that up to 2 million people left Ireland for North America, Australia, and Britain to escape starvation and disease between the years 1845 and 1855. Since then, between 9 and 10 million Irish born people have emigrated from this country.
 
Today the Irish diaspora; that being all those known to have Irish ancestors, is believed to be in the region of over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland. Which is the reason why Saint Patrick's Day is the most widely celebrated national holiday across the world. More so than even the USA's 4th of July.

How ironic that the Far-Right in Ireland accuses todays foreign immigrants of being 'invaders' who are a 'threat to our culture' and that within twenty years Irish people will be as rare in Ireland as Eskimos in the Sahara Desert. Oh and Muslims will impose Sharia Law on the few remaining Irish people who will be driven into the likes of the Mourne Mountains or the bogs round Barnesmore Gap.
 
You don't need to ridicule that warped logic as it ridicules itself.

James Connolly wrote in July 1900:
 
All races are mixed more or less; a pure race does not exist. The modern Irish race is a composite blending - on the original Celtic stock have been grafted shoots from all the adventurous races of the continent.

Roger Casement made clear his feelings on racial purity back in 1904:

The more we love our land and wish to help her people the more keenly we feel we cannot turn a deaf ear to suffering and injustice in any part of the world . . . 
And remember that a Nation is a very complex thing – it never does consist, it never has consisted of men of one blood or of one single race. It is like a river which rises far off in the hills and has many sources, many converging streams before it becomes one great stream.
 
Bobby Sands scrawled his thoughts on racial unity on a filthy wall in his prison cell when he wrote his famous poem:

The Rhythm of Time

"It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space,
It has risen in red and black and white
It is there in every race.
It lights the dark of this prison cell
It thunders forth its might,
It is the undauntable thought my friend
That thought that says ‘I’m right’!"

The whole history of Ireland has been one of immigration. The immigrant came to these shores at the beginning of time in search of a better way of life. In more recent centuries the Irish immigrant was forced to leave these shores in search of a better way of life.
 
Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out. - Pierre Berton

 

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Where Did The Irish Come From If There Was Nowhere Called Ireland?

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