It’s about time that the paper of record pointed this out:
For Representative Peter T. King, as he seizes the national spotlight this week with a hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims, it is the most awkward of résumé entries. Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army.
“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.”
Dead Irish civilians: regrettable. Dead American civilians: cause for a witch hunt. Got it?
arguingwithsignposts
It is amazing the level of hypocrisy among these assholes. But, then again, not surprising.
Nick
Welcome to Long Island. Peter King’s district is the one full of white people who moved there so their kids don’t go to school with anyone other than white people.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Petey pals around with terrorists? Petey gave them money, moral support and excused their killing of innocents.
Petey loves his terrorists.
All he cared was that they were killing them ‘over there’ and not over here. King defines “one man’s terrorist is the freedom fighter for another”. Never mind that he was supporting the killing of others as it was for ‘his people’ and their fight for freedom.
Just like any other Republican, as long as it was good for him then that’s all that that matters.
Carnacki
Wait a minute. This can only mean that King was raised by his Kenyan grandfather and father on a steady diet of anti-British colonial indoctrination:
Mike Huckabee on King’s antiBritish words:
Good Lord, King and Obama have the same FATHER!
That means King grew up Mooslim! Experts have said these hearings will fire up anti-Americanism and be propaganda for radical Islam terrorists.
King is not doing it to attack them; he’s holding the hearings to HELP them!
Somebody ask King about his birth certificate, STAT!
Nick
@efgoldman:
Mostly Italian-descent, but a large number of Irish too, yes…also a small, but growing, South Asian (GASP!)
A few years ago and Indian family moved onto my friends’ parents’ block in Hicksville and Boy! You thought Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. Panicked screams of “They’re taking over!” and “Where can you run to?” The local PTA even met at a diner to “discuss the situation”
arguingwithsignposts
@Carnacki:
Hmmm. needs more chalkboard.
Litlebritdifrnt
So Pete King supports the killing of boy scouts just so long as it is not done in the US? Do I have that right? He supports the assassination of 16 year old Army recruits on train station platforms so long as it is not in the US?
He supports the slaughter of troops and horses during a ceremonial parade just so long as it is not in the US?
I lost friends to the IRA, I had to check under my car for bombs before getting into it every fucking day. Pete King can die in a fucking fire as far as I am concerned.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i am somewhat sympathetic to the irish republican cause, i mean the british empire was a force for evil around the globe before america ever decided they could follow through and do a better job.
however, the problem with the ira, is that it was mostly funded by americans or some of the same islamic fundies peter king thinks he is rooting out. on balance, its an irish decision, and mostly the people who should be the stake holders are, and have been sick of the ira and their various splinters.
so the brits got away with their villainy…what else is new.
Marc McKenzie
@arguingwithsignposts:
Took the words right out of my mouth.
That King is attempting to pull this off is galling. He should be called out and his hypocrisy should be dragged out into the light.
I mean…Jesus, around a month or so ago Congresswoman Giffords was shot…by a crazy white guy. Not a Muslim terrorist. So where was King then–was he calling for hearings on the radicalization of whites in America?
Take one goddamned guess.
This reminds me of the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when talk radio was aflame with threats of glassing the Middle East with nukes, that Saddam MUST have been responsible, and that all Muslims and Arab Americans must be gathered up and put away. Then, when it was found out that it was Tim McVeigh, it all ceased. But hey–I don’t remember hearings back then discussing the radicalization of young white American males either.
(Of course, I could be wrong. If there were hearings, I’d like to know myself.)
Be that as it may, though…screw King. What he’s doing isn’t even bad comedy anymore.
geg6
Being of Irish descent (though more Brit than Irish), I sympathized with the political goals of Sinn Fein. But never, ever, ever did I support the IRA, either financially or morally. Kinda like the vast majority of the American Muslim community, actually. Not to mention, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. Fuck that fucking hypocrite King. He is a parody beyond parody.
Nick
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Yeah well I’m somewhat sympathetic to the Palestinian cause…doesn’t mean I like Hezbollah.
Being part Irish, I too felt sympathetic to the cause of the Irish, but blowing up pubs and buses are terrorism whether it happens in New York, Tel Aviv or London.
Legalize
Hold it. Isn’t it uncivil to point out Petey’s associations, and that he is, in fact, a sack of shit?
Chris
@Carnacki:
And the fact that it might be true makes no never mind to you when forming your opinions of the British, or at least the way they were back then? Christ, I hate Huckabee. Not that I don’t hate King too, and the fact that he’s an IRA supporter just adds to what was already a farce. But fuck. I really, really fucking hate Huckabee. DIAF, Mikey.
Chris
@Nick:
This.
Wag
I think it’s time to find out where Rep. King stands on the Churchill Bust Fiasco. I certainly hope the he stands with our President against the hulking British Empire.
But I have no doubt that he could weasel his way around the issue and support the GOP talking points de jour.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
You big silly, Caucasians can’t be terrorists.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Legalize: It is only uncivil to slander sacks of shit by saying they have anything in common with Tiny Peter.
Chris
By the way, a question: why is it a Congressional panel investigating these things? Isn’t it the job of executive branch agencies (FBI, DHS and the like) to investigate potential terrorists and their supporters?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Self awareness FAIL.
rikryah
it’s past time someone pointed this out.
Redshirt
I hope/wish everyone deposed to testify at King’s “hearings” simply turns his questions back on him. Why do you support Terrorism, Mr. King?
Have you you no shame sir? Answer: No.
RSR
Irish citizens were ‘regrettable’ here in the US for a long time, dead or otherwise. NINA, Eire Canal, Duffy’s Cut.
Alwhite
It always surprises me when groups of aware people (and almost everyone here falls into the aware and at least semi-knowledgeable category on world events) is surprised that Americans only care about American deaths. Of course Rep King and his kind don’t care about dead Irish, or dead Spanish (see: bombing, Madrid) or dead Mexicans. We sure as hell don’t care about dead Iraqis or Afganies. The number of innocent civilians we have killed in those two countries in on the order of 50 times the number of dead on 9/11. And then we wonder why they don’t love us! It must be because of our freedom.
Omnes Omnibus
@RSR:
Freudian slip?
donquijoterocket
I’m almost convinced that this King is engaged in a personal urinating contest with the other King in the house to see which is the biggest most confirmed bigot and all-around dickhead.So far as I can tell it’s a toss-up, and unfortunately the contest will go on.
Svensker
@Alwhite:
We killed them for their own good. And the bastards aren’t even grateful.
/jonah goldblarg
jwb
@Nick: “Being part Irish, I too felt sympathetic to the cause of the Irish, but blowing up pubs and buses are terrorism whether it happens in New York, Tel Aviv or London.”
Well, yes, but that’s the problem with bringing out the pitchforks, no, that (real) people tend to die when they’ve been bared?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Nick: true enough, terrorism, and calling as such is largely dependent on who’s ox is being gored.
i don’t support the ira, but on some level i do understand.
mostly i think countries like Israel in Palestine, great britain in Ireland among many others, or the united states in pick one, have to lose the smug, why me face of decrying terrorism. they come off as nixonian, its isn’t terror when we do it.
again, don’t support peter king, don’t support the ira, don’t support muslim terrorists, Hezbollah, et al, but i concede that its easy for me to say that, since i have other options, or at least my government does.
Rpx
Peter King has always been one of those Congressmen who goes on TV and says stupid, outlandish, clownish things. In any sane party, he would not have been let near a significant leadership post.
mds
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Indeed, that’s why
is an oversimplification. Last time I checked, George Tiller was an American civilian.
IrishGirl
This is an example of how one person’s “terrorist” is another person’s “freedom fighter”. There are a ton of politicians in the Northeast that had and have relationships with the IRA in Ireland. Like so many politicians, he was probably trying to appeal to the white descendants of Irish immigrants. What’s truly unfortunate is that he and those descendants have forgotten their own history.
In the US, the protestant Irish started calling themselves Scotch Irish to distinguish themselves from the Catholic Irish because there was so much prejudice. It wasn’t uncommon to see comics in the newspapers showing the Irish as lazy, drunk, and villainous….not very different from comics of black people. Along this same line of thought….in the 19th Cent. US the term “smoked Irishman” was a slur used for Blacks but meant as an insult to both African-Americans and the Irish. Another slur, Wigger, was White Nigger….yes, I said it, and it was often used in the US at the same time.
Prejudice against Irish Catholics peaked in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement. Will today’s “know nothing movement”, aka the Tea Party, turn against the Irish? No, they are made up of many Irish-Americans.
Peter King, and anyone of Irish descent who supports him, is not only a hypocritical bigot (which by definition implies ignorance), they’re also a forgetful bigot.
Chris
@Rpx:
I see what you did there.
Ija
@mds:
The better formulation would be
Dead American civilians killed by non-white people: cause for a witch hunt.
I always wondered what would be the response if a white abortion doctor is killed by a Muslim anti-abortion nut. On the one hand, killing baby killers = good. On the other hand, Muslim killing white people = bad. The wingnuts heads would explode with the contradiction.
shawntos
I don’t understand, how many American Born Muslim terrorist have been captured and killed since 9/11? That one kid they got in Afghanistan and the Time Square Bomber plus who else that was an American Born Terrorist not an immigrant?
What about that guy that flew a plane into the IRS building in Texas? The nail bomb found on MLK Day in Washington State? Loughner wasn’t a Muslim he was a nutter? Tiller was shot and killed in a church on a Sunday, the killer wasn’t a Muslim? The guy that shot up the Holocaust Museum wasn’t a Muslim Terrorist either was he?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ija:Make it a Black Muslim anti-abortion nut and really watch head pop.
Poopyman
@geg6: Seconded, though I’m much more Irish than anything else.
Supporting a political cause and supporting terrorism supposedly in support of that cause are two very different things, and Petey quite publicly chose the latter.
Another Republican hypocritical scumbag. What a shocker.
Dan.
This is not a deep thought.
To average “Americans”, Irish people “look” white*, while Muslim people cannot “look” white. It’s that blurry place; is it racism if you are promoting hate against a religion, or is it racism to insist that skin color is a clear indicator of religion? Or is it just something awful and wordless?
* Let’s over look the fact that a bit of this nation’s history (from its founding until the early twentieth century) the Irish were not considered white. They were viewed and held as another race all together, a little ‘better’ than the blacks but not really all that much. High-five, USA
R-Jud
@Omnes Omnibus: You need to work “illegal” and “Mexican” and “public school teacher” in there somehow, too.
Ija
@Omnes Omnibus:
Have we had violence against abortion providers that were not perpetrated by white males? My recollection might be wrong, but it seems like there is a distinct lack of diversity in the make-up of anti-abortion violence offenders. I wonder why that is.
sublime33
“Peter King, and anyone of Irish descent who supports him, is not only a hypocritical bigot (which by definition implies ignorance), they’re also a forgetful bigot.”
Not true. People like King can’t be accused of being forgetful when they have no desire to learn in the first place. They know everything they need to know and have no interest in letting any new facts interfere with their opinions that are already etched in stone.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@arguingwithsignposts:
It is amazing the level of hypocrisy among these assholes.
Not uncommon among conservative Irish-Americans of that generation, BTW.
I remember Boston as being very IRA-friendly amongst the locals in the 70s and early 80s. Now that very same demographic is the most racist cohort around these parts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ija: I really have no idea.
Poopyman
@Ija: Shelley Shannon shot Tiller in both arms back in ’93. That’s the only non-male I can recall. No non-whites.
Michael D.
Didn’t the IRA prefer killing British civilians?
Chris
@Michael D.:
Irish Protestants in Northern Ireland, I think’s what he’s referring to. That, and any other kind of Irish that got caught in the crossfire.
water balloon
The Irish in America really did do the kinds of things he accuses American Muslims of doing. I had an aunt and uncle in the 80’s that supported the IRA, writing for a pro-IRA newspaper and even letting IRA members stay at their house from time to time if necessary until things “cooled down” etc. It was an open secret to the rest of the family and their friends, but nobody would even think to go to the FBI or anything because they were family.
Were my parents by extension terrorist sympathizers? I wouldn’t say so, but If we were Muslim, Peter King would.
arguingwithsignposts
@Chris:
Not just Irish civilians.
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Fixt for irony.
Suffern ACE
@water balloon: Indeed that is exactly what is going on. Unfortunately, there is no political loss to be had for King in making it appear that liberals are soft on extremists and to “look the other way” while your aunt has gone a little radical because, well, she’s your aunt is the most serious of crimes. In fact, there is much to be gained. Republicans seemed to get more popular last Summer when they were finding radical muslims everywhere. (They are everywhere…and liberals won’t do anything to stop them!!!!!). There is much to be gained.
That it won’t well for muslims and liberals-well that’s just a plus.
negative 1
What’s truly sad is how unprepared he is to answer questions about how this can be about anything other than bigotry. On the Today show this morning (hardly probing journalism) they asked the question (I’m paraphrasing) “are you concerned that your racist witch hunt will encourage violence against Muslim Americans?” He actually stammered the answer. He can’t have thought no one would ask – it’s just that there isn’t even a made-up reason he could use. This only makes sense as a bigoted witch hunt.
nancydarling
@Dan.: Long ago, I read that in slave states, when a particularly dangerous job needing doing, they would hire an Irishman, the Irishman being not nearly so valuable and more easily replaced than a slave.
sublime33
“Didn’t the IRA prefer killing British civilians?
Irish Protestants in Northern Ireland, I think’s what he’s referring to. That, and any other kind of Irish that got caught in the crossfire.”
And three passersby to Harrod’s in London in 1983, one who was American.
Mr Stagger Lee
You know, the IRA had support from Al-Fatah(PLO)trained in Libya, worked with the Italian Red Brigades and the West German Red Army Faction and at times got weapons and cash from the KGB. Does Rep King really wants to go there?
Suffern ACE
@negative 1: Exactly. I would not get too caught up with the hypocracy angle. These hearing are awful even if they were being lead by someone squeaky clean. My guess is that they won’t stop until they can find someone in the Obama administration who once said something nice about someone who later turned out to be sympathetic to terrorists of some sort somewhere.
Watching Peter King on TV two Christmas’ ago wetting his pants over the underwear bomber (They read him his rights. He doesn’t have any! Our rights are dangerous when they have them!) is far more damning to the man than anything else.
I look forward to the day, however, that the religious liberty charade is over and we can start mucking around in each other’s churches using political authorities. Apparantly some unsavory characters hang out in religious institutions…perhaps we should go back to that model where only official churches are recognized so that (political) heresies can be stamped out. What could possibly go wrong?
Benjamin Cisco
@Omnes Omnibus: __
Actually, make it a double Muslim.
rickstersherpa
@efgoldman: Irish and Italian working class descent. And to Mr. O’Dowd’s question, about why, because this is a tribal thing. Mr. King, through his own clan and tribe, related to the Irish, an actual blood relationship. And also, he knew people who died in 9/11 and so that was also an attack on his “tribe.” When you think and act in tribal terms, as Orwell pointed out in his essay on nationalism (and what I mean by the word “tribe or tribalism”) what your side does is always good, while all the people outside your tribe, whatever the circunstances, have committed acts of sub-human monstrosity.
“By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly – and much more important – identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.”
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.”[4]
“…Such people become susceptible to bias, only acknowledging information which they judge themselves as true, where emotions hinder in addressing facts. One believes in what they approve in their own minds as true to the point that they themselves deem it as an absolute truth, or as Orwell puts it, “More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly….”[5]
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
Chris
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Yes, and according to an article published by the John Birchers at PJTV last fall (http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/still-killing-ira-linked-to-farc-al-qaeda-hezbollah-and-taliban/), the Continuity IRA and Real IRA are still tied to al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the FARC.
That the guys who wrote this article will never say or write a word against Congressman King goes without saying.
@Suffern ACE:
Oh, absolutely. But there’s nothing quite so bad that the GOP can’t throw in a hypocrisy angle (from media bias to sexual morality to foreign policy) and make it just a little bit worse.
Can you imagine how completely the GOP, and for that matter the entire “mainstream” media, would flip out if a Democrat with King’s record tried to involve himself in counterterrorism?
rea
Dead Irish civilians: regrettable. Dead American civilians: cause for a witch hunt. Got it?
Funny thing-he’s now made a statement about this. Guess what he said?
“I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/us/politics/09king.html?_r=2&hp
PurpleGirl
@Suffern ACE: I look forward to the day, however, that the religious liberty charade is over and we can start mucking around in each other’s churches using political authorities. Apparantly some unsavory characters hang out in religious institutions…perhaps we should go back to that model where only official churches are recognized so that (political) heresies can be stamped out. What could possibly go wrong?
Did you know that during WWI, the FBI had German-speaking agents assigned to Lutheran congregations whose job it was to attend services and events to hear what was being told to the church members and what people talked of among themselves… to make sure the pastors weren’t advocating treason and whatnot. It was at this time that many Lutheran churches stopped using the German liturgy and giving sermons in German.
Bulworth
“British imperialism”? What is this guy? Some kind of Mau Mau revolutionist?
sublime33
“Can you imagine how completely the GOP, and for that matter the entire “mainstream” media, would flip out if a Democrat with King’s record tried to involve himself in counterterrorism?”
Like they gave Obama a pass with Bill Ayers. And their association was more than 35 years after Ayers was breaking the law.
Catsy
I love this blog. The majority of what I had to say has already been said, and my opinion can largely be expressed with blockquotes.
This = me too.
Also worth noting. A lot of people forget that Irish immigrants–along with many other nominally light-skinned demographics–were emphatically not considered to be “whites” for a very long time.
Which of course someone else then later noted.
The really astonishing thing is that this quote:
This should be the end of his career. Period. No American politician at any level above dogcatcher should be able to say this without being hounded out of office and shunned by society.
It should’ve been the end of his career thirty years ago, but with terrorism having become the preferred boogeyman of 21st century conservative fearmongers, and the fanatical way Republicans demonize anyone who expresses a need to understand what motivates terrorists… I’d like to say I can’t fathom why he still has a job, but the sad fact is that most Republicans really never cared much about terrorism until 9/11, and many are still willing to turn a blind eye as long as it’s in aid of a cause they support. See also Roeder, Scott; Reagan, Ronald.
Edit: FYWP, DIAF.
Chris
@rickstersherpa:
Thanks for the quote. George Orwell might just be my favorite point of reference in modern politics.
celticdragonchick
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Unfortunately, plenty of Catholic Irish people lost friends to the British Army and the Protestant militias. Along with being casually murdered, Irish Catholics were banned from many high paying jobs and often banned from even holding property. I met one lovely old lady who told me she had been banned from even being able to go to school, because she was Catholic. The RUC was notorious for badly beating civil rights marchers when they tried to peaceably bring attention to civil rights abuses.
Why would it be surprising to anybody that violence and hate would be reciprocated? In my view, England brought this on herself with centuries of murder, slavery * and ethnic cleansing in Ireland. Your friends did not do this, of course, and they did not deserve to pay for those crimes. Yet, at some point, somebody will always be made to pay.
*A nasty bit where both African and Irish women (often nuns and pubescent teens)were forcibly bred with African slaves (or their white masters, in the case of African women)to produce mulatto female offspring that were popular in Caribbean brothels. The practice of forced breeding of Irish women with African slaves was banned by the English parliament in the early 18th Century as I recall in order to guarantee greater profits for the slave traders operating the Middle Passage from Africa. It seems they did not like competition from slave owners who were having Irish women raped by other slaves for their own profit. Of course this did nothing to stop the white slave owners from raping African female slaves to produce the same effect. Unfortunately. (By the way, yesterday was International Women’s Rights Day…a good thing to remember here.)
ChrisB
It’s never going to happen but I’d love it if the Democrats asked every witness if they ever associated with the IRA the way King did, or if any of them worked with Roy Cohn, as King did.
All I can think about King’s hearings is how un-American they are.
Chris
@rea:
ORLY, asshole?
So by that standard, you’ll give a pass to Hamas and any other terrorist group that attacks Israel but doesn’t attack the United States?
Ash Can
@rea:
Protestantism never attacked the United States either, so why is he all enamored the IRA? Or is he still sore about the Redcoats?
@celticdragonchick: And nurturing grudges perpetuates the misery and violence. I’m no fan of the mistakes British imperialism has made over the centuries, but I’m not too sympathetic to anyone who sees fit to blow up someone’s home with their whole family in it because some Brits are assholes.
celticdragonchick
@Ash Can:
Let’s say you are the one who is stuck in a shitty rat infested tenement and your parents are banned from working in any high paying job because the majority population hates your religion and your ancestry.
Okay?
So, your mom and dad march in a civil rights protest. The Royal Ulster Constabulary beats the shit out of both of them. Your dad loses three teeth and your mother’s face is unrecognizable. Nothing really over the top here, since this is all fairly well documented from RUC treatment of Catholics.
So, you see as you get older that the police are going to violently put the boot to you if you peaceable protest, just as they would if you decide to throw rocks. You might get a few of them if you throw rocks, so why not? They are already trying to beat the shit out of you anyway.
As you become a young adult, you notice that your life choices have already been made for you…by the Protestant voters. Now, they may not have come down to the tenements and done anything to your personally, but they are the ones who vote for the police to come down and get personal, and they are the ones who vote to keep you out of their schools, their jobs and their land. How innocent are they after all? When the British Army shows up and people start showing up dead on back roads with a couple dozen bullet holes, the question broadens. The English public has been fine with keeping the Catholic Irish fucked over and miserable ever since the Battle of the Boyne. Just a bunch of goddamned Papist malcontents anyways, right?
So…everybody else is okay with the idea that you and your friends need to shut the fuck up and get with the program in your shitty rat house tenement and low paying textile job while the RUC does their thing.
What the hell is your possible motivation for caring about them? They can have you beaten or shot without regard or consequence…or vote to have somebody else to it in their name. Now two wrongs don’t make a right as they say…but again, why should you care? It appears they will keep on doing the same thing to you until they are made to stop.
So why not use force to make them stop?
Delia
@celticdragonchick:
It’s not that I’m unaware of British atrocities in Ireland, or that I don’t sympathize. And it’s not that I don’t know how difficult solving these things are. But I keep remembering the aphorism of Gandhi, who also knew a thing or two about British imperialism: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Omnes Omnibus
@celticdragonchick: There’s force and there’s force. Really, it depends on the targeting, doesn’t it? Bomb an RUC depot? Okay. Bomb a pub in the Midlands? Not so much.
Draylon Hogg
@70
How bout them Black Irish raids on Wales then? Are you going to apologise to those Welsh whose ancestors were enslaved? The Protestants burned by Catholics as heretics?
Don’t presume to speak for the English public. I am one. I’m from South Yorkshire which was colonized by Romans, invaded by Saxons, Danes and Vikings, and ethnically cleansed by the Norman French (the descendants of Viking invaders of France).
So I want a homeland in Normandy where I can worship Wotan, with an aquaduct, a chateau next to a fijord and larks tongues for tea.
Stop dealing in cartoonery the Catholic Irish aren’t the only people in history who ever suffered.
Omnes Omnibus
@Draylon Hogg: The geography of the chateau might be a little difficult, but I think we can do the larks’ tongue without too much difficulty.*
(*) The larks might make some fuss, but, once we have their tongues, they’ll keep quiet.
Draylon Hogg
The British bit of the Empire wasn’t exactly a land of milk and honey for the vast majority was it? Children labouring in dark satanic mills, workhouses etc. Are you trying to say that no rich Catholic ever did any wrong in Ireland?
celticdragonchick
@Draylon Hogg:
Indeed. However, suffering people tend to do nasty things to the folks who keep making them suffer. The concept is not particularly difficult and it certainly is not uncommon in history.
I don’t recall that the “Black Irish” made a 400 year career out of fucking over the Welsh. If they did, let me know by all means. As for me, I’m Scottish, so I am not really sympathetic here.
celticdragonchick
@Draylon Hogg:
Straw man.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
So what’s your excuse for the Americans like Peter King who financially supported the IRA for decades even though most of them were second and third generation immigrants? Were they just filled with so much empathy that they felt just like they were living in a slum in Belfast, too, so it was a-okay for them to give money to terrorists?
celticdragonchick
@Omnes Omnibus:
I would agree. I was trying to point out that a person growing up in that situation might have a different perspective.
Lawnguylander
Afre you trying to say that @Draylon Hogg:
I’m not endorsing that comment @ #70 but you’re going to address the grievances of Catholics in modern day Ulster by bringing up tribal raids that took place 1,300 years ago or so? Well, I say we can’t talk about that until the Tuatha Dé Danann are held to account for what they did to my people, the Fir Bolg. Get in line, Englisher.
Why is there always some dumbass apologist like you that comes along every time the subject of the British in Ulster or the Empire comes up? Or are you just the same idiot that keeps on popping up under different names?
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t make any excuse for the guy. Hell, I can’t stand the sight of the asshole. I imagine that family stories of why they left the old country can be powerful motivators. I read one account in Ta Nehisi Coates’ blog about a bitter inscription left in a Scottish family’s Bible about how the English forced them to leave their home in the Highlands, or die. That story…and hatred…had been passed from one generation to the next.
Annamal
I understand the reasons for the existence of the IRA but they’re in the same boat as the more extreme Muslim terrorist groups. They were in an awful situation and attempted to solve it by harming non-combatants (and potentially children).
Also, unlike the Palestinians or groups in South Africa, the IRA had sympathetic America to retreat to.
I mean we’re talking an organisation whose signature move was freaking knee-capping.
Lawnguylander
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t excuse anyone in the US for giving money to NorAid and groups like that but I don’t think too many of them were second or third generation. Definitely not close to ma majority. I don’t have any data on the subject but I say this as a first generation Irish-American who was frequently at events in the 70s and 80s where people like Michael Flannery were given the microphone to say a few words and kids like me were encouraged to go shake his hand, maybe get my hurley autographed. The people who were supporting NorAid were people like Flannery whose experience went back to the Civil War and their children.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
You should probably re-read what you wrote if you don’t think you just gave Peter King a free pass for his support of the IRA.
ETA:
And yet TNC didn’t use that as an excuse to support a violent separatist group in Scotland.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
It wasn’t my intent, although I was generally sympathetic to their goals if not many of the things they did to in pursuit of them. ( To be accurate, there was a substantial thug/criminal element in the PIRA, especially in the later days of the Troubles that was more interested in running contraband then fighting for their freedom. And yeah…the knee capping thing is pretty fucked up as well.)
Peter King gave unconditional support, which I did not, and he turned a blind eye to human rights abuses that were committed by the PIRA, which I refuse to do. Again, while I thought the goal was worthwhile, I do not go along with bombing the aforementioned pub in the Midlands to get there.
Stefan
I would love to know more about Pete King. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Ireland, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Ireland with an Irish father and grandfather, their view of the Easter Rebellion in Ireland is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.
scav
The cheap thing I always found about ‘mercan supporters of the IRA (and for that matter hardline supporters of certain Israeli positions) is that they get all the emotional juice of supporting the tribe and none of the downsides or real-world consequences. Armchair revolutionaries. Rubbernecking second-hand patriotism.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
I don’t think anyone was saying they didn’t understand why people in Northern Ireland might lash out violently. It’s the Americans like Pete King who support terrorism from their comfortable armchairs 3,000 miles away from the death and destruction they financed that are being criticized here.
A political solution to the troubles was blocked for decades by that money flowing to the IRA (and the unionists, too), because neither side had an incentive to come to a solution when they could get their guns and bombs financed for them. Once that income dried up post-9/11, suddenly both sides were willing to talk about a political solution after all.
Another example: I live in a city that has one of the largest Armenian populations in the US. Armenia and Turkey have had a contentious relationship for hundreds of years, what with the genocide and all, but they were both getting tired of the constant bickering and wanted to come to a political solution so they would have some peace.
And who opposed it and sent money to the people who opposed it? The Armenians living safely away from the violence in the US.
sublime33
” That story…and hatred…had been passed from one generation to the next.”
If your ambition is to gain power so you can exact revenge on the people who discrimminated or persecuted your parents and grandparents, your society will be mired as a second or third rate power. It is a lot of the problem in former Yugoslavia. Same for those who ostracize “snitches”.
Advanced societies don’t rationalize bad behavior for any group of people, even if they have an unsettled score. Did we have a crime wave by Japanese Americans in the 50’s? Did we gave the Black Panthers (the real ones from the 60’s) a pass?
Lawnguylander
The violence actually stopped for the most part long before 9/11 and the Belfast Agreement was concluded in 1998. And I’ve tried commenting multiple times on the statement that it was second and third generation Irish-Americans who were sending money to the IRA but FYWP won’t let me. It’s not true. The founder of NorAid was a veteran of the Irish Civil War and he was soliciting money from his fellow Irish immigrants and their children. Second and third generation Irish were not a significant source of money for the IRA. Lastly, I believe that the British could have been brought to the negotiating table more quickly with non-violent means than by blowing up British soldiers and civilians but getting weary of the toll the IRA was exacting is what ultimately motivated them to negotiate with Sinn Fein.
Brachiator
@Stefan:
Hahahaha (bitter, ironic laughter). You’ve got Huckabee spewing crap from the alternate birther tree about how Obama grew up in Kenya absorbing anti-colonialist lessons from his daddy. And about how strange it is. Un-American, even. Why, imagine, young Obama supposedly growing up being told to hate imperialist aggressors. But Peter King, supposedly hearing a variation of the same thing. Why, it’s the essence of liberation theology, as ‘murikkin as epple piety.
Oh, the irony.
celticdragonchick
@sublime33:
Is it bad behavior to fight back against violent racist tyranny?
I cannot really bring myself to condemn Stokely Carmichael or Malcolm X for saying the things they did. Were I in that position, I would have been shooting at the police with a .30-06 deer rifle and a good scope. Sorry, but that is how I see it.
Smurfhole
I support the IRA, but not their methods. But I do think people around here should pay a bit more attention to where those methods come in reaction to. The Protestants were no saints either, their militias murdered civilians too. The Shankill Road butchers kidnapped random Catholics and tortured them to death with power tools in the late 1970s. UDA gangsters would go on public buses and ride them, and shoot anyone they saw who made the sign of the cross as the bus passed a church. This doesn’t excuse IRA atrocities, but the Protestant militias shouldn’t exactly get off without mention either.
celticdragonchick is making good points. The Catholics tried nonviolent protests, and they were shot. What did people expect them to try next?
Anne Laurie
@nancydarling:
Long before Civil War, there was a class war going on between the “English” plantation-owners and the poor “Irish” hill farmers who couldn’t afford slaves. (That’s when the term ‘Scotch-Irish’ was invented, in hopes of differentiating Protestant refugees of the Highland Clearances from ex-prison bondservants & other lowlifes. The fact that no honest geneology could sort Cavalier remittance men from Highland economic refugees from London/Liverpool/Galway evictees was swept under the historical rug.) A friend who was raised in the Deep South explained she was taught in middle school that Scarlett O’Hara’s Irish Pappy was supposed to identify her as a mere arriviste, someone destined to remain one social rung below even a professional grifter like Rhett Butler, much less that flower of pure English-descended womanhood Melanie Whatsherdamage. As another Southern said, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”
Anne Laurie
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Go there? King was there, literally, hanging out with the ‘hard men‘ who ran those guns. Or check out Hitchens’ latest screed — he wants Obama to go assassinate Qadaffi yesterday, if not sooner, because Qadaffi gave both the IRA and the Pakistan government money for armaments.
sublime33
“I support the IRA, but not their methods. But I do think people around here should pay a bit more attention to where those methods come in reaction to.”
No sane person would deny that the Irish have a good reason to be angry. But if there is a never ending cycle of violence based on ancestral grievances, that society will be mired as a second tier society. Think African Americans aren’t still paying some price for the riots in the 60’s?
Look at the post WWII US. I don’t think there were many assaults on German/Americans by Jewish Americans. But my guess is that Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen had close to a zero market share in the Jewish communities for at least 35 years after the war.
priscianus jr
@Litlebritdifrnt:
priscianus jr
@RSR:
priscianus jr
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Brachiator
@Smurfhole:
Not really the point. It is the irony and the sheet unmitigated hypocrisy of someone like Peter King playing King Bigot with respect to Muslims while trying to explain how his stance with respect to the IRA is totally different.
And I am not holding celticdragonchick responsible for this, but I find it ironic as hell that King can pal around with the IRA and still be “American,” while Obama is slammed for totally bogus connections with his supposedly anti-colonialist father.
And oh, yeah, Charles Stewart Parnell will always be my main man.
Annamal
And on a completely different note, I suspect none of these IRA supporters would react terribly well if Native Americans took up arms to avenge their (pretty damned legitimate) anscetral grievances (seriously the British empire did some awful things but what was done to Native Americans rivals Britain at its very worst).
celticdragonchick
@Annamal:
No doubt about that. They actually did take up arms, as I recall, at Wounded Knee.
Asshole
@sublime33:
No doubt, no doubt. It’s a comparable situation, and the Catholics in Ireland were inspired by the African-American civil rights movement to try their own hand at it. They achieved even less, and the resulting violence was even greater.
That’s not really comparable, since you’re talking about (relatively) recently-transplanted, Americanizing, assimilating communities.
As I said, I support the goals of the IRA, but not their methods. But what annoys me about the subject on this blog whenever it comes up (which seems to be whenever that asshat King comes up) is the near-total silence about Protestant atrocities. Do we need to get a GOP leader who’s a former UVF supporter to act like a hypocritical asshole before most people around here start acknowledging that the Protestants committed at least as many atrocities as the IRA?
Asshole
@Brachiator:
Yeah, I was trying to focus more on Irish history and less on Peter King. Peter King is a complete asshole and a xenophobic hypocrite. There doesn’t seem to be too much disagreement on that one here.
Asshole
@Annamal:
I’d mostly just be impressed that there were enough Native Americans left to make an appreciable difference on American domestic life by engaging in terrorism. Other than that, I’d think they had a point, and I’d probably be open to the idea of giving them back some more land in the areas where native tribes still exist in any recognizable form.
Clearly, though, one can’t support anticolonialism anywhere in the world without supporting all of us returning to our ancestral homelands. I think that means the English have to go back to Denmark, too. And the French have to go back to northern Germany. And the Welsh and the Cornish get England, and form some super-Celtic confederacy with the Bretons and the Galicians and the Scots and the Irish that stretches all the way to the Romanian border. We’ll let the archaeologists draw the borders of the new Europe.
Or, if America sends a couple million settlers to Iraq, the Iraqis need to suck it up; and anyone American who whines about that should shut up lest the Iroquois start setting off car bombs in our neighborhoods. There’s no possible middle ground between total anti-colonialism and total pro-colonialism.
bob h
Has King even noticed that they just picked up the Spokane MLK Day bomber-would be? Does he even care about White Supremacist terror?