For Faith, Family and Country January 13, 2008
Posted by franklittle in Culture, Irish Politics, Media and Journalism, Religion, Secularism, The Right, media.trackback
It was the front page headline ‘Hilary Clinton, Cultural Marxist’ that did it for me. The January 2008 issue of The Hibernian warns that this year is a crucial one for Ireland, but points to hopeful signs of the ‘first manifestations of Catholic nationalism’ in an editorial from Gerry McGeough. Some of these signs are stretching it just a little. McGeough seems to claim that his candidacy in the Fermanagh/South Tyrone Assembly election had something to do with the decision by the Assembly not to extend the British 1967 Abortion Act to the North.
He also makes the claim that in the general election in May:
“politicians were surprised to find themselves confronted at the doorsteps by voters concerned about Catholic issues. It was also interesting to note that former Justice Minister Michael McDowell who was an ardent advocate of legislation favouring homosexual ‘marriage’ (So ardent that we’re not closer to it after ten years of him being in power), was not re-elected. The obvious lesson for all politicians is that they should stay well clear of this evil, toxic issue, unless they are prepared to tow the Catholic line on it.”
Somehow I suspect one of the most notoriously liberal constituencies in the country didn’t fail to elect McDowell because he claimed to support legislating for gay marriage. The 40 page magazine contains some of the usual bits and bobs you might expect to see in Ireland’s Own including lyrics to traditional songs such as The Star of County Down and even a jokes page including one unwieldy submission which attempts to insult atheists. The Desmond Rebellion in the late 16th century, a review of the shrine to Sister Lucia and a lengthy six page piece on a talk given by Bishop Bernard Fellay on the Moto Proprio Summorum Pontificum are all in there, and they even find space for an article on Katy French warning us that since ‘we can never know the day or the hour (Of our deaths) it behoves us to attend confessions regularly and pray that when our times comes we are in a state of Grace and ready to meet our God’. There’s the usual attacks on the EU and secularism and an interesting piece on ethical shopping under the heading Catholic Agriculture and Trade taken from the British Catholich magazine, Christus Rex.
There are a couple of political pieces. McGeough’s article on Sinn Féin is even pretty rational, pointing to the shambolic state of the party following the general election here and the resignation of Fermanagh MLA Gerry McHugh and makes a number of good, though not novel points about the failure to deliver the Irish Language Act and the lack of a strategy for ending partition. He goes off the deep end a little towards the end accusing the party of ‘fanatically promoting the Homosexual Agenda and preventing any of its members from joining the Assembly pro-life lobby’. He also seems to think the party shifted on immigration policy at its recent conference in Dublin though, as I pointed out here before, they actually didn’t say anything new.
Moving completely away from rationality, we have a piece from Cathal Ó Broin, who should really go with a byline photograph that makes him look a little less like a psycho if he is going to write like this:
“Patriots of Ireland, let us make 2008 a turning point…Irish Patriots, let us wake up and disturb this fatal cosiness which is strangling our sovereignty. Let us throw out the stale, and bring in the fresh…”
And my personal favourite:
“And how can we ever forget the injustice of the slander against the good name of ‘No to Nice’ campaigner Justin Barrett? This true Irish patriot of the finest order was painted in a very unfair light. Our degenerate media and despicable government showed their horns as they all ganged up on one person. Let us not be fooled – such people are the servants of the devil, and they want to bring us all with them to Hell.”
Yes indeed, those people who pointed out Barrett attended a conference of European fascists are actual servants of Satan himself.
The thrust of Ó Broin’s article is that we need to change our political class. Away with ’shrewd businessmen’, ‘nicey, nicey celebrity politicians’ and ’socialist revolutionaries…proposing a twisted system of self-imposed slavery’. No, what Ireland needs are ‘true philosophers – lovers of wisdom who think about the long term. We need men (Not women it seems) who serve the Divine Master. We need men who seek first the Kingdom of God. ‘
The Cedar Lounge Revolution: We read this stuff so you don’t have to.
The most curious thing about The Hibernian though, is its finances. What we have here is a 40 page magazine, about half of which is in colour. It is now been going for almost two years, no small accomplishment in the Irish printing world. There are three advertisements. One is for what looks to be a personally published book, Karl Marx: Prophet True or False? by Deirdre Manifold. The book promises to unveil the ‘esotheric (sic), sophistic and cataclysmic global impact of his writings and the insiderous effect that he has had on humanity’. I know I’ve ordered my copy.
The other is for another magazine called The Mass Rock, which is interesting because of the contact addresses for it. Complete subscription forms can be sent to the offices of The Hibernian in Drogheda, or to an American post office box in Naperville, Illinois. The magazine also occasionally publishes letters from US readers, including as it happens one from Naperville. Clearly there is some sort of distribution of the magazine in the US, but it’s not clear by whom. And even at that, how is the magazine staying afloat without advertising, at quite a low cover price? Even if a lot of the contributors work for free what salaries and expenses there are, as well as paying layout and design and rent of their premises, must all add up.
So who’s signing Gerry McGeough’s pay cheques?
Not that the CLR is implying anything, like…
I remember a relative of mine used to urge me to
read Deirdre Manifold’s books, saying they’d tell me “the truth about
the Freemason-Marxist plots.”
Another ultra-conservative Catholic rag is “Alive!” , a
freesheet edited by Father Brian McKevitt. The current issue
attacks the film “the Golden Compass” and claims global
warming is a hoax. Other issues I glanced at included
anti gay-rights material and advocacy of “intelligent
design” creationism.
There’s also the “the Irish Family Press”, and the
“Irish Catholic”. I don’t know if “Voice” is still going.
For highbow Catholic fundamentalists, there’s
the “Brandsma Review” associatied with the
veteran anti-abortion campaigner John O’Reilly.
I suspect some geriatric Francoist will probably
revive the “Catholic Bulletin” just to cash in.
Hillary Clinton is not just a ‘cultural’ marxist but, according to today’s Sunday Independent, she’s an old-style serious socialist, with Obama given the role of the trendy, frivolous Trot.
What does it tell us about Sinn Fein that a reactionary, counter-revolutionary, anti-republican such as McGeough was a member of its Ard-Comhairle for years?
What does it tell us about the so-called dissident republican faction that they continue to look to McGeough for leadership?
My only thought on the Golden Compass was… great trailer but when are they releasing the full movie? I don’t think an hour and forty five minutes ever sped by so quickly for me in the cinema…
Obama given the role of a Trot … hmmm, he’s more rightwing than Clinton on some axis…
I think Mcgeough is a Republican only because there aren’t
any descendants of the old High Kings he can put on
the Irish Throne ; ).
I’m critical of the IRSP/INLA, but at least they wouldn’t
allow anyone like McGeough into their group.
McGeough isn’t a republican, and only seems to claim it occasionally. He’s a Catholic Nationalist in his own description of himself and at least he’s upfront about it.
I do think his presence on the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle for a number of years is something the party would probably prefer not to have but the Republican Movement has always been obliged to be a very broad church.
If someone like McGeough was ready to put his life on the line as a member of the IRA and spend years in prison, I suspect the Shinners were hardly likely to chuck him out on the basis that he hadn’t read his Connolly. The problem this has created for the party is that with the GFA, the thing that brought together radical socialists in the cities and Catholic nationalists in rural areas, was gone. With the national liberation issue ’settled’, the political differences and internal contradictions in the party have quickly come to the fore.
And just on Starkadder’s last remark, in my experience in Dublin the kind of people involved in the IRSM are not the sort for anyone to boast about.
Frank,
If you think places like Ardoyne and the New Lodge are teeming with radical socialist members of the Provos you may well be in for a shock. And Mc Geough does describe himself as a republican – didn’t he stand as an independent republican candidate?
Anyway, here is a link to an article from the London Review of Books that I think all of the CLR’s readership will be interested in
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n01/lanc01_.html
Some of the most radical of Irish republicans came from the countryside-some of the best known, Peadar O’Donnell, Mike Quill
Manifold and the poet
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2004/11/28/story517.asp
This suggests that Deirdre Manifold is possibly the niece of Eoin O’Duffy.
Thanks for the link Garibaldy-a very interesting
article about the City of London and the banking system.
Ordinary people need to know some basic knowledge
about how economics work, otherwise they could be vulnerable
to stupid conspiracy theories like this one:
“International Banking, financed the Russian Revolution. .. Lord Alfred Milner gave 60 million in gold and sent MI6 agent Bruce Lockhart to shadow Lenin and controlled how he spent the money. .. …The Fairy Godmother of Trotsky was Jacob Schoff, he paid for his trip from France aboard the Monserrat, plus expenses and had him chauffeured about New York.”
From the Hibernian, Sep. 2007.
Garibaldy, I take your point. By ‘cities’ I meant urban areas in the South.
CL: I agree absolutely. But I’ve no doubt there’s the odd radical socialist from Belfast. Typically rural areas tend to be more socially and economically conservative. This isn’t always true. Sometimes in Irish history the exact reverse has been true. But I think it’s a fair enough assessment in modern Ireland. What left strength we have is in cities or towns.
One of Deirdre Manifold’s associates is be
Cornelia R. Ferreira, who belives the degeneration of the Church began at Vatican II, under the “combined forces of Masonry, Communism, Humanism and Modernism.” (quoted in her book”World Youth Day, From Catholicism to Counterchurch”).
A lot of these groups would be associated with organisations
like the Society of St. Pius X and other Traditionalist Catholic
and “Sedevacantist” groups (think Mel Gibson and his
dad Hutton Gibson).
You’ve got to be scared of people who think Pope
Benedict XVI is too liberal….
With regards to Starkadder’s quotation above, it isn’t just the loony (religious) right that falls for this sort of conspiracy mongering. The claim that international bankers (principally British) financed the Russian revolution is also included in Guido Giacamo Preparata’s book “Conjuring Hitler.”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conjuring-Hitler-Britain-America-Third/dp/customer-reviews/074532181X/
There seems to be a point at which leftist and rightist paranoia coincide. Didn’t Lyndon LaRouche start off as a Trot?
I think he did John. I loathe conspiracy theories like that. They always seem to me to hand agency away from collective and individual action and activity to unknown omniscient ‘others’. An excuse – in the end – for inaction.
Incidentally reading Robert Christgau yesterday (about Sonic Youth of all people) he had a great quip… it went something along the lines of ‘permanent revolutionaries… the definition of a non-combatative status’.
Has anyone here ever read Richard Hofstadter’s essay, “The
Paranoid Style in American Politics”?
There was a quote that struck me:
“….the modern right wing,… feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already
been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive
capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.”
If you replace “American” with “Irish”,
you might get a summary of McGeough’s mindset.
His conservative Catholicism and militant nationalism
have been largely abandoned, the homogenous
Ireland he wants is threatened by the GFA, immigration,
the EU and American globalization, and his
conception of gender roles has been displaced
by feminism, gay & lesbian rights, and
even the modern “metrosexual” man.
I’d have to agree with you on conspiracy theories,
WBS, they rob agency from actual historical
people and events.
PRA has a large accessible archive on the right and conspiracism
http://www.publiceye.org/articles/topics.php
Having said that… Starkadder, I’m always interested in them, like – I think – yourself. It’s just I hate those who cling to them…
Oddly enough this comes from a different place than politics. It’s UFO conspiracy which I know far too much about having taken an entirely sceptical but genuine curiosity as much in the phenomenon of those who believe as what they say they believe…
Thanks for the CL. There’s a lot of reading there…
I’d share your interest in conspiracy theories, WBS,but I’d
be more interested as to why people belive them. That’s
why writers like Hofstadter interest me (Fearghal McGarry
has applied some of Hofstadter’s ideas to Irish
history in his bio of Eoin O’Duffy).
Funny, but I think the success of shows like “The X-Files”
and “Taken” has a decline in public interest in UFOs.
I mean, now everyone knows the urban legend about
a UFO crashing in Roswell, New Mexico.And today it’s
mainly a subject for parody (see Futurama’s “Roswell that ends
Well” or the Roger jokes in “American Dad”).
Whereas 30 years ago only the UFO followers knew about
Roswell, and took it deadly seriously..
Starkadder-
“If Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”-Sinclair Lewis. Likewise in Ireland.
That’s something I hadn’t thought about Starkadder… that as the theory proliferates it dies. Certainly the resonance of the X-Files was completely different when I started watching it in the early 1990s when militias, etc, etc seemed to be in the ascendant than in the 2000s.
Great quote CL. And you’re right. Although perhaps with religion on the back foot perhaps there has been a shift…
I’ve always reckoned the interest in the X-Files etc had something to do with the breakdown of old certainies at the start of the 1990s and quite probably the approach of the millenium. The rise of the irrational continues to influence US politics though, except in Christian rather than conspiratorial mode. I also think the September 11 attacks caused a re-evaluation of the relationship between the right-wing nutters and the mainstream. Their patriotism found an new outlet, the target shifting from the UN etc (haven’t heard that term in ages) to the war on terror.
Ooops I deleted the reference to ZOG from the above post but left the bit in brackets about not having heard it in ages
I think there’s a lot in what you say Garibaldy. That mystical narrative seems to have entirely vanished from popular American culture, or to have been tamed… so we get process led entertainments such as 24 or Prison Break, or even Heroes where there are rational ‘explanations’…
To get back to Catholic fundie rags, the
Jan. 2008 issue of Alive (16pgs) has:
*An attack on Hugo Chavez as a tyrant, approvingly
quoting bishops who claim he is a “dictator
who wants to turn the country into a new Cuba.”
(Oh good, we can see Buena Vista Social Club 2!).
*3 attacks on contraception including a dig
at that fundie bugbear the IFPA and 2 attacks on
abortion (pg. 12 praises Youth Defence)
*2 claims global warming is a myth & a hostile
view of Al Gore claiming he “overcharged” and “bored”
speakers.
*An article attacking gay marriage claiming the “gay agenda’s” true aim “is to destroy Natural marriage and ultimately the Christian faith”.
It ends by urging people (pg.7)
to contact Brian Lenihan and protest (even gives his phone number).
*4 attacks on atheism, claiming it makes life “meaningless”.
*An attack on the Irish Times, claiming Geraldine Kennedy
Is promoting the liberal agenda inspired by John Locke (!).
*A hostile article on the BBC, which doesn’t mention religion
but may be linked to the BBC’s journalists repeatedly making
programs critical of the Vatican.
*An article gloating over the commercial failure of the
Film the “Golden Compass” and a plug for the next
“Narnia” film.
*An approving item on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ critique of
multi-culturalism
*Two items approving quoting Pope Benedict XVI’s claim
that society has degenerated since the Renaissance. There is also a piece that
the Protestant Reformation had “hugely destructive
consequences for Christianity and society.” (Someone should
show them the 1st “Blackadder” or “Monty Python and
the Holy Grail”).
*A bizarre article about how a 19th century priest St. John Vianney supposedly
beat off the devil (hope he had a tissue ready).
*There’s a feeble, supposedly funny piece,” Dumbag Writes”, presumably inspired by
C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters”. Here a
demon called Dumbag writes to his apprentice
Nettles whinging about the Pope making their life miserable.
It’s important to keep a eye on religious fundamentalists of
all denominations, because the left in Europe can become
complacent and ignore how influential they can be.
On the priest and the devil, I see Benedicto is organising an expansion of exorcists, and creating the equivalent of priestly special forces. Awesome.
In fairness, from a Catholic point of view, the Reformation did have a detrimental effect on Christianity and society, so nothing especially nutty there. Please let us know what they say about the Catholic church overtaking the C of E in weekly attendance in the next issue. Hilarious.
On a different note but tv related note previously discussed, recently watched the Battlestar Galactica special, Razor. Excellent.
I was just thinking: the attacks on Chavez, the Green
movement and gay marriage are actually the
stuff of mainstream conservatism in the US.
Alive! does try to rebut the stereotype of the Catholic
fundie as a middle-aged pub bore. They had a sympathetic
review of the film “Once”, an interview with a 21-year old
college student about her beliefs, and an approving
feature on World Youth Day.
There’s a SBP article on the magazine here:
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2001/07/22/story739411928.asp
To briefly drag our attention from Bertie’s resignation, there have
been several letters in the Irish Times complaining about
“Alive!” and its extremist views over the past week. Several
correspondents have claimed the paper publishes
scientifically inaccurate info, including claimed the contraceptive
pill causes cancer and miscarriages. In response, there have been two letters defending “Alive!”, one from Maria Mhic Mheanmain (Mar. 29th)
and Ivo O’Sullivan (Apr. 3rd), who works for something
called the “Family and Media Association”.
Oh Dear oh dear oh dear. The Cedar Lounge Revolution
has drawn an angry screed from one of the publications
mentioned above, the Brandsma Review.Issue 96
carried a whinge from a columnist called Stramentarius,
who denounces the CDL and this columnist in particular.
http://www.brandsmareview.ie/
Claiming we are “inaccurate” in our comments about
Alive!,the Hibernian and the BR,Stranmentarius also
smears all opponents of the Nationalists in the
Spanish Civil War as “Communists and their allies” *
(He’s clearly never heard of the
Barcelona May Days). Slashing
away at the straw men, Mr. S. refers to us
as “Nasty” and my posts- with quotes taken from copies of the
magazines in question-as “pompous and not very
well informed”. I know he is,but what am I?
*Between 1939 and 1945, the Francoist Ministry
for Justice executed almost 200,000 political prisoners.
Source: “Morir Matar Sobrevivir” edited by
Professor Julian Casanova.
I did not discover this information in the
Brandsma Review.
Ah, the only thing worse than being noticed is being ignored.
Good on you Starkadder.
As it happens I think we’re a very nice blog.
You know, I haven’t thought of the Brandsma review in years, decades perhaps…
Apparently, the Irish Family Press is ceasing print publication
as of September 5th , and
will be available on-line only. Sort of like Village for
Tridentine Mass attendees then…
[...] History”… perhaps a bid to attract support and finance from the US (although as noted here previously that poses interesting thoughts). Then there is a lash in another piece at Ancestral [...]
Between 1939 and 1945, the Francoist Ministry for Justice executed almost 200,000 political prisoners. Source: “Morir Matar Sobrevivir” edited by Professor Julian Casanova.
That’s an extraordinarily high figure, though I believe that Beevor, who is no leftist, thinks it may be accurate in his recent book on Spain. (I’ve not read it, so I stand to be corrected.)