“I don't know what I am for but I know what I am against/I'm sickened to death by men, I'm bored to death with myself/I'm sick of the narratives, I'm done with apologies/I'm sick of conspiracies, the truth is a dead disease/I can't breathe when I hate this much, I'm gonna burn all my fucking flags/I sound like a dying cause, I won’t listen anymore.” - Manic Street Preachers
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| Horns up |
New Horizons
Converge – Love is Not EnoughArguably the most influential hardcore act of the last two decades, Converge return with an album that is already a contender for album of the year. Utterly ferocious from start to finish. Particular praise should go to the Koller/Newton rhythm section which is turbo charged and gnarly, even in subtler moments like ‘Beyond Repair’.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
KMFDM – Enemy
23 albums in 40 years. Not bad going for a band whose name was once rumoured to stand for Kylie Minogue Fans Don’t Masturbate! Although some of the poppier moments are unadulterated cheese, the metal riffage is as euphoric as ever and the choice to adapt W.B Yeates “The Second Coming” is utterly bonkers but it works, surprisingly.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
Zenxith – 6 Weeks Holiday, Nowhere to Play
After releasing three albums last year, the prolific Daniel McGee carries on with his C86/indie pop sounds. Some awkward and angular rhythm playing in songs like ‘I Don’t Know Anymore’ hint at darker, experimental undertones yet to come to the surface while ‘I Just Want You’ is a perfect jangle pop song.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
Mandy, Indiana – Urgh
Manchester based group make their debut for Sacred Bones by producing an industrial tinged LP that blends protest cries over Gaza with concerns about toxic masculinity. Throw in a sound that can be funky as well as brutal and you find an apt metaphor for the LP: schizophrenic but reflective of the world we live in today. The album can be streamed and purchased here.
⏩ 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”.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
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| Image from internet |
The phrase ordinary people crops up a lot nowadays. It has been around for quite some time. You hear journalists frequently using it, but it came into vogue on the Left. Listen to any radio or TV show and you will hear representatives of Left organisations always using it. Cut backs affect ordinary people, apparently. The term is so ubiquitous that even people who use the term working-class sometimes slip in the phrase “ordinary people”. It is like those nonsense terms invented by right-wing economists, such as negative growth. Utter nonsense, if the economy is not growing it is shrinking, stalling, stagnating etc. but I have even found myself repeating such nonsensical terms.
So, who are these ordinary people? And how did they become so banal? Why is there nothing of note about them at all, why so ordinary? Is there nothing about them that stands out? Apparently not. Language matters and how we use it has an impact; it is part of a wider justification of policies and exclusions. In our modern “inclusive” society, you have to watch your Ps and Qs as the saying goes. Include a hundred and one letters in some alphabet soup invented by the middle-class, but never you dare include working-class people. They are just ordinary.
Once upon a time, when they realised there were good jobs to be had in toning down their speech, the middle-class representatives of Left organisations in many parts of the world, but particularly in Ireland and Britain began to drop references to the working-class, like it didn’t exist. Something similar happened in the US where the mainstream media cannot bring itself to talk of the working-class, there is only the middle-class, sometimes referred to as the working middle-class and then the rich. But in Ireland and Britain it is the Left that denies the existence of the working-class by talking about these mythical banal ordinary types that abound everywhere. They are, it is insinuated, in a difficult situation perhaps as a result of how ordinary they are, not because they belong to the working-class.
I took a look at the People Before Profit website as they are one of the main culprits and purveyors of this nonsense in Ireland as are their British masters in the SWP. I shouldn’t have been surprised, it is even in the name People Before Profit, not workers, not the working-class. Here is what they said about the new rental bill.
It is clear to everyone now that the Government is dancing to the tune of speculators and corporate landlords who are profiteering from the housing crisis and the misery it causes for so many. If only the Government would serve the interests of ordinary people with the same unwavering determination.[1]
If you substitute working-class for ordinary people you see how ridiculous their bended knee appeal to the government is. They do occasionally say the poor and I was surprised to see them say “ordinary working class” in one article, though these are exceptions in their public utterances. But it is not just them, across the board organisations on the Left, the mainstream media and even the right-wing parties in the coalition government use the term ordinary people.
Is this important? Yes, it is, one of the ways of telling people they are worthless and should bow to their “betters” (why is there no “worsers”?). It tells them they are ordinary, nothing but run of the mill. The corollary though, is that the rich are rich, not because they are the upper-class or bourgeoisie to use a Marxist expression, but unlike you, they are extraordinary, gifted, talented, clever. If you look at Donald Trump or Boris Johnson and see someone gifted or élite, then you need to see an ophthalmologist or psychologist. Simone Biles is a gifted élite athlete, those two, very much representative of their class are thick, banal gobshites, to use a local phrase. The extraordinary ones are the exception that proves the rule, though they are lauded in the media as somehow being the rule when it comes to the rich.
This nonsense crept in during the 1990s. It wasn’t some semantic shift, a new or better term, an expression that was easier to understand. It is thoroughly vague. The phrase does not describe the class of the people: it does not describe their relationship to capital and labour. Sounds a bit bible bashing or Capital bashing that last expression. So, let’s put it in simple terms, that even PBP/SWP could understand, it doesn’t say whether these people work for a living and are at the mercy of their bosses, or whether they are the bosses. They are just ordinary. Their class is denied. Lots of middle-class types have made a living talking and writing about this, feigning a sophistication and understanding they actually lack, regardless of the letters after their name: that’s a PhD to you, not the alphabet soup, though it may include their “pronouns”. The following quote is from one such commentator, typical of the ilk, and a former radio show host who describes herself as an activist and wellness entrepreneur (let’s not go there). She basically says the working class does not exist, in its place exists a Precariat.
The precariat is not a new word for the working class–it’s a fragmented, unstable, and deeply precarious class, whose members live on the edge of financial collapse. It is the adjunct professor teaching semester to semester, the rideshare driver navigating surge pricing, the freelance writer juggling contracts. What connects them is not the kind of work they do, but the conditions under which they labor: temporary, unstable, and without a safety net. This is not Marx’s proletariat; it is something new…[2]
Like many of the trendy liberals, she hasn’t much of a clue about Marx or even of history, no deluxe edition of some book on precarious work, strategically placed on the coffee table, whilst you sip whatever takes your fancy. This is exactly Marx’s proletariat. Stable working conditions, economic security were the conquests of the… yes, the working-class. They didn’t always exist and they never existed for everyone at any point, anywhere in capitalist economies. She is oblivious to how even at the height of the post war boom, some groups of workers in Europe and elsewhere queued up early in the morning to be hand-picked for jobs. These were not migrant workers, though this type of work was ruthlessly imposed on them as well and is still to be seen nowadays amongst agricultural workers in the US and even in Europe. Our latte sipping hipsters have no monopoly on insecurity. She also seems to think that all working-class jobs were the same before. They were not. Miners and dockworkers were as geographically and socially distinct as uber drivers and teachers are now. What united them was not some rubbish about perception, but the material reality of the class they belonged to. Italian dock workers recently shut down Italy in solidarity with Gaza. It was not because they do the same work as the Palestinian working class, it was a question of politics, solidarity and recognising their common enemy, which to the horror of the blue hair brigade is not the person who doesn’t use your pronouns, but your own capitalist class. She goes on with the following gem.
The great insight of Marx was that our material conditions shape our ideas. But what happens when those conditions are so diverse that they are no longer so easily categorized into binaries? What happens when race, debt, and identity intersect to fragment solidarity? How do we fight back when our enemies are algorithms, landlords, multinational corporations and financial institutions?
With the exception of the algorithms, none of this is new as racial exploitation and divisions are as old as the hills, as old as the slave trade, as old as all the attempts to divide workers along racial lines. Given her own racial background, she could hardly be unaware of this. Debt is not new either, nor is the lack of access to credit, and as for identity, well that sounds new. But it is not. It was the working-class identifying with the bourgeoisie, against the material reality of their existence, that allowed huge numbers of them to go to war and slaughter each other. Really, these arguments are so banal, so ordinary that I find it even more infuriating than when the middle-class refer to us, not by our class but as ordinary people. She is but one example. The internet is full of such liberal commentators and academia is awash with them. Of course, the Left organisations in Ireland and Britain are led by these types.
Another such commentator headlines his article as The Political Marginalization of Ordinary People. He half apologises for the term ordinary people as he uses it as a stand in for another term. No, not the working-class. This snob says that he is “using “ordinary workers” and “ordinary people” in lieu of the off-putting “less-skilled workers” and “less-educated voters.””[3] Though he does talk about class at times, but more in the sense of how we have moved away from class conflict, but it is nice to know that he uses this term instead of other terms we might readily identify as the insults they are: polite middle-class speak for useless and stupid. It brings to mind that horrible expression from social climbers, of which the Left is plagued with who say things like I am economically working class (the mortgage adviser set them right on that one) but I am culturally middle-class, i.e. they have a degree, like reading and watch art-house cinema, particularly films that depict the lives of the working-class. In fairness to him, his Think Tank the Niskanen Center actively argues for a capitalist welfare state, he doesn’t claim to be a socialist. The non-existence of the working-class is an age-old refrain. “Each decade we shiftily declare we have buried class; each decade the coffin stays empty.”[4] Though they only declare they have buried the working-class, the middle-class and upper-class are never declared to be dead. You have to be alive to cash in your ill-gotten gains.
Which brings us back to the Left talking about ordinary people. The working-class exists, unlike the IRA it really didn’t go away or disappear, but it was like them defeated. The rise in precarious work and bad working conditions is not some new hip gig economy for anxious middle-class types worried whether they will have to sell their deluxe coffee table editions. It is due to one simple thing: the defeat of the working class and mainly affects those without the deluxe editions. We no longer get good working conditions, stable contracts and benefits because the unions were defeated and then defanged, though in the case of many unions in Ireland like SIPTU it carried out its own tooth extractions before it was defeated. But in Britain we had huge struggles such as the miners’ strike in the 1980s, the Wapping dispute amongst others. These defeats were part of the return to Victorian style working conditions.
Despite the language of the middle-class spokespersons of Left organisations the working-class exists. We exist and there is nothing ordinary about us. Workers on the dole, minimum wage or even on what used to be considered good salaries struggle to make ends meet. Getting through to the end of the month in such circumstances is extraordinary. Dealing with and surviving a health system that simply prioritises profit over health is extraordinary (though not all make it). Actually, managing to get through an education system where it places every possible obstacle in your way is extraordinary. But even by middle-class standards, the working-class produce extraordinary people in the arts. But because most of them never enjoy any commercial success, in fact some don’t even seek it as such, but work away in their communities, it doesn’t count. But there is no end of people beavering away and some even grab the attention of those middle-class types who have made a career out of talking and writing about ordinary people without producing much that is extraordinary themselves.
Working class writers are not as visible or successful because the middle-class sets out deliberately, or in some cases just as the result of their default prejudice, to exclude them. Publishing in Britain for example is an upper-middle class industry. In 2014, only 12% of publishing professionals were from a working-class background and in 2022, full time writers earned just £7,000. “Publishing is not only difficult to enter for those from working-class backgrounds – it’s nearly impossible to sustain a career within.”[5] Their exclusion is such that one author, Douglas Stuart, a Booker Prize winner, felt impelled to set up a Working-Class Writers Festival to overcome the middle-class gatekeepers.
…working-class writers need to be a part of the conversation when it comes to those important decisions; about who gets to be published, who gets to be reviewed in magazines and newspapers, and who gets to be longlisted and shortlisted for literary awards. The conversation about access needs to be embedded in every policy of every literary charity and organisation, ensuring that working-class writers, both published and unpublished, are not held back by gatekeepers, but that we are able to become the gatekeepers, guaranteeing that the voices that need to be heard find their way to the top, not by luck but because there is a clear route to success.[6]
I fully agree with him. But could you imagine an author submitting a manuscript saying here I am, an ordinary person, writing an ordinary novel about ordinary people? The short shrift they might get would be less than ordinary. Yet, we accept that the middle-class spokespeople of Left organisations refer to us as ordinary.
The term ordinary people is an insult, an extraordinary insult. It is even more extraordinary that groups that claim to be socialist can rarely bring themselves to mention class in their public statements. There is not much point in having some long obtuse internal document that talks about the working-class if when given the chance to speak about it, they duck and dive and go for some amorphous insult like ordinary people. There are of course countries where the term working-class has not fallen out of use, or not as much as in Ireland and Britain. There are languages in which it sounds strange. And perhaps strangely enough, the term proletariat crops up in some parts and contexts. Though we might have to buy a dictionary for many members of PbP/SWP for that particular word. Meanwhile we exist and their service to capitalism by erasing us through language will serve them well when they go back to the career paths mammy and daddy laid out for them, or when they apply for government funding, which most of them do at some point and on occasions get funding to erase another group in society: women. They apparently don’t exist either, anyone who thinks they are a woman, apparently is one. These concepts are not unrelated. The working-class doesn’t exist and neither do women. But we will continue to exist, as will women, when these middle-class reprobates are consigned to the dustbin of history.
References
[1] PBP (11/02/2026) Richard Boyd Barrett Slams Government for ‘Ramming Through’ Residential Tenancies.
[2] Brown, P. (06/12/2024) The Precarious Majority: Why “Working Class” Is No Longer Relevant.
[3] Lindsey, B. (12/10/2026) The Political Marginalization of Ordinary People.
[4] Richard Hoggart cited in Merrick, J. (17/02/2020) Culture is ordinary: why the arts must not become the preserve of the elite.
[5] Flynn, C. (19/06/2025) Widening the literary landscape: Where are all the working class stories?
[6] Carthew, N. (14/11/2022) Our stories matter: why we need more working-class voices in quality fiction.
[1] PBP (11/02/2026) Richard Boyd Barrett Slams Government for ‘Ramming Through’ Residential Tenancies.
[2] Brown, P. (06/12/2024) The Precarious Majority: Why “Working Class” Is No Longer Relevant.
[3] Lindsey, B. (12/10/2026) The Political Marginalization of Ordinary People.
[4] Richard Hoggart cited in Merrick, J. (17/02/2020) Culture is ordinary: why the arts must not become the preserve of the elite.
[5] Flynn, C. (19/06/2025) Widening the literary landscape: Where are all the working class stories?
[6] Carthew, N. (14/11/2022) Our stories matter: why we need more working-class voices in quality fiction.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
In this week’s bulletin
⬤ Kyiv defies power grid bombing
⬤ Ukraine’s poisoned breadbasket.
⬤ Russia’s military ecology.
⬤ Torture cases.
⬤ Russia attacks healthcare and civilian targets.
News from the territories occupied by Russia
Deaths and medical torture through Russia's plunder and closure of hospitals in occupied Kherson oblast (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 30th)
The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Alim Karimov (Crimea Platform, January 30th)
PACE Adopts a New Resolution Addressing Russia’s Crimes in the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine (Crimea Platform, January 29th)
Increasingly absurd charges used for Russia’s monstrous sentences against Ukrainians on occupied territory (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 29th)
The Woman Who Didn’t Break. Part Three (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 28th)
Petra Bayr, Mentor to Political Prisoner Iryna Danylovych, Elected President of PACE (Crimea Platform, January 27th)
Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, January 27th)
Russia fabricates charges to imprison Crimean Tatar activists and as weapon for deportation from their homeland (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 26th)
News from Ukraine
“Everyone in shock”: residents without power, heating and water after bombing (Kyiv Independent, 31 January)
Who set the trap for Ukraine’s “Iron Lady”? (Meduza, 30 January)
Cedos works to strengthen institutional capacity to support Ukraine’s recovery (Cedos, January 30th)
Heated bricks, shared generators, and candles: How Kyiv survives without power and heat (The Insider, January 28th)
Russia guns down more civilians, attacks passenger train while TV propagandists gloat that Ukrainians are freezing (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 28th)
Volunteering in Wartime Ukraine: Interview with Daria Saburova (Posle.Media, January 21st)
War-related news from Russia
Cruel and Unusual (Russian Reader, January 31st)
Count updated: Russia’s losses in Ukraine (Mediazona, 30 January)
Monarchist media oligarch Konstantin Malofeev takes up teaching (Meduza, 30 January)
Savagely tortured ‘Kherson Nine’ sentenced to 155 years in grotesque Russian show trial (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 30th)
Russia’s oil and gas revenues are shrinking (Meduza, 28 January)
Dissidents by chance: The Kremlin has turned to labeling random people in Russia as traitors and terrorists (The Insider, January 27th)
Workers from Bangladesh sought jobs in Russia but instead got sent to combat in Ukraine (AP, January 27th)
Is 19-Year-Old Lyuba Lizunova a Terrorist? (Russian Reader, January 26th)
Memorial plaque to Anna Politkovskaya torn down for fifth time in a week (Meduza, 26 January)
Third staged 'trial' and 28-year sentence against Ukrainian prisoner of war (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 26th)
Russia deploys new high-speed drones that may contain western parts (The Guardian, January 23rd)
Analysis and comment
The Poisoned Breadbasket: Pesticides, Politics, and the Price of Agricultural Success (Commons.com, January 30th)
Ukraine: “Territorial integrity is a fundamental principle that safeguards the sovereignty of states.” — UN Secretary-General (Crimea Platform, January 30th)
Natalia Tikhonova and Zoe Komaroff: Military ecology and Russia’s war machine (Posle.Media, 28 January)
Why Minneapolis reminds me of what I once saw in Ukraine (Kyiv Independent, January 25th)
International solidarity
From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign on twitter, 31 January)
Solidarity from Gaza to Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, Minneapolis, and Leeds (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 28 January)
Demand Russia obeys its own laws and releases blind Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Sizikov! (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 27th)
A Fundraiser for Yuri Dmitriev’s 70th Birthday (Russian Reader, January 26th)
Fundraiser for FPV Chuyka drone detectors (Solidarity Collectives, 24 January)
Upcoming events
Thursday 5th February, 6.30 pm. Try Me For Treason: readings from speeches by anti-war protesters in Russian courts, and discussion. Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. REGISTER to attend here.
News from the territories occupied by Russia
Deaths and medical torture through Russia's plunder and closure of hospitals in occupied Kherson oblast (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 30th)
The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Alim Karimov (Crimea Platform, January 30th)
PACE Adopts a New Resolution Addressing Russia’s Crimes in the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine (Crimea Platform, January 29th)
Increasingly absurd charges used for Russia’s monstrous sentences against Ukrainians on occupied territory (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 29th)
The Woman Who Didn’t Break. Part Three (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 28th)
Petra Bayr, Mentor to Political Prisoner Iryna Danylovych, Elected President of PACE (Crimea Platform, January 27th)
Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, January 27th)
Russia fabricates charges to imprison Crimean Tatar activists and as weapon for deportation from their homeland (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 26th)
News from Ukraine
“Everyone in shock”: residents without power, heating and water after bombing (Kyiv Independent, 31 January)
Who set the trap for Ukraine’s “Iron Lady”? (Meduza, 30 January)
Cedos works to strengthen institutional capacity to support Ukraine’s recovery (Cedos, January 30th)
Heated bricks, shared generators, and candles: How Kyiv survives without power and heat (The Insider, January 28th)
Russia guns down more civilians, attacks passenger train while TV propagandists gloat that Ukrainians are freezing (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 28th)
Volunteering in Wartime Ukraine: Interview with Daria Saburova (Posle.Media, January 21st)
War-related news from Russia
Cruel and Unusual (Russian Reader, January 31st)
Count updated: Russia’s losses in Ukraine (Mediazona, 30 January)
Monarchist media oligarch Konstantin Malofeev takes up teaching (Meduza, 30 January)
Savagely tortured ‘Kherson Nine’ sentenced to 155 years in grotesque Russian show trial (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 30th)
Russia’s oil and gas revenues are shrinking (Meduza, 28 January)
Dissidents by chance: The Kremlin has turned to labeling random people in Russia as traitors and terrorists (The Insider, January 27th)
Workers from Bangladesh sought jobs in Russia but instead got sent to combat in Ukraine (AP, January 27th)
Is 19-Year-Old Lyuba Lizunova a Terrorist? (Russian Reader, January 26th)
Memorial plaque to Anna Politkovskaya torn down for fifth time in a week (Meduza, 26 January)
Third staged 'trial' and 28-year sentence against Ukrainian prisoner of war (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 26th)
Russia deploys new high-speed drones that may contain western parts (The Guardian, January 23rd)
Analysis and comment
The Poisoned Breadbasket: Pesticides, Politics, and the Price of Agricultural Success (Commons.com, January 30th)
Ukraine: “Territorial integrity is a fundamental principle that safeguards the sovereignty of states.” — UN Secretary-General (Crimea Platform, January 30th)
Natalia Tikhonova and Zoe Komaroff: Military ecology and Russia’s war machine (Posle.Media, 28 January)
Why Minneapolis reminds me of what I once saw in Ukraine (Kyiv Independent, January 25th)
International solidarity
From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign on twitter, 31 January)
Solidarity from Gaza to Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, Minneapolis, and Leeds (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 28 January)
Demand Russia obeys its own laws and releases blind Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Sizikov! (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 27th)
A Fundraiser for Yuri Dmitriev’s 70th Birthday (Russian Reader, January 26th)
Fundraiser for FPV Chuyka drone detectors (Solidarity Collectives, 24 January)
Upcoming events
Thursday 5th February, 6.30 pm. Try Me For Treason: readings from speeches by anti-war protesters in Russian courts, and discussion. Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. REGISTER to attend here.
🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.
We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.The bulletin is also stored on line here.
To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.
We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.
The bulletin is also stored on line here.
To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.
Christy Walsh ✍ Irish far-left politics likes to present itself as the moral opposition . . .
. . . anti‑imperialist without compromise, pro‑uprising by instinct, committed to gender equality, and internationalist by self‑description.
People Before Profit (PBP) gives this posture institutional weight because it holds Dáil seats and helps shape protest culture. On the fringe, Saoradh express the same instincts with fewer euphemisms.
The problem is not that Irish left condemn Western abuses. The problem is the optical defect: sharp moral vision when the oppressor is Western‑aligned, and selective blindness when the oppressor belongs to the anti‑West camp. If you want to see it cleanly, line up what is said about Palestine and Hamas with what is said, or not said with comparable urgency or qualification, about Iran’s repression of popular protest, and about Russia’s imperial war on Ukraine. The pattern looks less like universalism and more like a hierarchy of victims.
Palestine Is Not Hamas, And Liberation Is Not Islamism
Islamism is a political ideology that subordinates individual liberty to clerical authority and treats dissent, minority rights, freedom of conscience and women’s equality as negotiable. Where it governs, it usually collides with basic freedoms. Islamist movements are not synonymous with anti‑colonial liberation movements. Their programme is often theocratic and authoritarian, which places them in conflict with universal human rights, including women’s rights, freedom of belief, and political pluralism. Islamism is the coercive use of religion.
Palestinian self‑determination and a freedom struggle against occupation are legitimate political goals. The rights at stake do not depend on whether Hamas exists. Palestinians have the right to safety, equality, political rights, and an end to collective punishment.
But it is precisely here that much Irish activism commits its first analytical and moral error: collapsing Palestinian liberation into the political project of Hamas and Islamism. Hamas is not ‘Palestinian resistance’ in the abstract. It is an Islamist organisation whose goals are not Palestinian freedom. When the Irish left treats Hamas as the authentic or inevitable expression of Palestinian struggle, it launders an Islamist programme into liberation language and recasts religious extremism as the legitimate voice of Palestinians, including Christian and LGBTQ Gazans. The left silences valid criticism of Islam by adopting terms like “Islamophobia” into their vocabulary.
This is not merely a theoretical point. It goes to the heart of what solidarity is supposed to mean. A consistent pro‑Palestinian position can and should defend Palestinian rights while refusing to romanticise, excuse, or rebrand Islamist human‑rights abuses and atrocities as “resistance”. When activists cannot hold these two thoughts at once, solidarity becomes factional allegiance rather than principle.
Iran: Resistance Versus Repression
A large current in UK and Irish pro‑Palestinian politics frames Hamas as “legitimate resistance” that may fight back by any means necessary. October 7 is often handled as context, blowback, or the inevitable eruption of rage under occupation, rather than as a moral and political line. October 7 started as a well‑planned operation and descended into wanton terrorism because the goal was to spark Muslims around the world to attack Jews. Hamas atrocities are excused by whataboutary even when the victims are innocent Israelis and children.
That is the rhetorical move that matters, because it becomes portable. Once you learn to dissolve agency whenever the actor is in the “anti‑West” camp, you can dissolve almost anything.
Now place beside that rhetoric the Iranian “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising after Mahsa Amini’s death in custody. The protests were overwhelmingly non‑violent. Women, students, and workers marched, chanted, and defied compulsory veiling. Security forces responded with live ammunition, mass arrests, torture allegations, deaths in custody, and executions after flawed trials. If the moral doctrine supports popular struggle against oppression, Iran should have been a natural cause célèbre.
Yet this is where the cross‑eyed pattern appears. Violent Islamist militancy is elevated as “resistance” in Gaza, while non‑violent mass resistance in Iran is treated as secondary, awkward, or far less urgent to mobilise around. Treating armed theocratic violence as emancipatory while downplaying peaceful demonstrators shot in the streets is not a minor inconsistency. It is a collision between professed principles and real allegiances. We saw the left’s pattern of excusing a similar abusive and oppressive regime in Syria.
Support for Islamism differs from support for Palestinian liberation, which is a legitimate struggle. Left support for Hamas involves conscious blindness that sacrifices Gazan civilians to Islamism’s strategic goals. Hamas effectively strapped a suicide belt around the entire Gaza Strip, using Gaza as the fuse for a wider ideological war and not Palestinian freedom. When Irish activism fuses Palestine to Hamas, it does not strengthen Palestinian rights. It strengthens religious extremism and makes solidarity morally incoherent, and Iranian peaceful protest becomes an inconvenient contradiction. Self-determination struggles try to avoid civilian casualties; Hamas’ religious ideological war requires civilian casualties.
Gender Equality With A Blindfold
Irish left discourse advocates for gender equality unless Islamism is involved. Iran is the sharpest mirror because the uprising was triggered by the policing of women’s bodies by the morality police, and women were central to the protests against compulsory religious dress codes and gender oppression. The repression was not subtle or contested. It was a security state enforcing clerical power through violence.
If women’s liberation is a principle, then Iranian women resisting compulsory veiling should have been treated with the same moral clarity that Irish left activism claims for other causes. When gender equality is deployed with full force against one adversary but becomes hesitant or marginal when the oppressor is an anti‑West theocracy, the conclusion is unavoidable. The left overlooks gender inequality and other abuses because it is more committed to “anti‑West” resistance than to universal human rights.
The same point applies to minorities inside Iran. Kurdish, Baluchi, and other communities suffered disproportionately in protest crackdowns and long‑standing discrimination. An Irish left that makes anti‑racism central at home cannot plausibly bracket oppression abroad because the oppressor is useful against the West.
Workers’ Solidarity That Stops At Certain Borders
Irish left mobilisation leans heavily on trade‑union language and symbolism. Protests are dense with “solidarity” rhetoric. Yet Iran again exposes the selectivity. Labour activists and striking workers have faced detentions and harsh repression after protesting. If labour internationalism is real, Iranian workers and teachers facing a theocratic‑security dictatorship should not be an afterthought or expendable when “anti‑West” rhetoric is more important.
The same structural problem appears in how activists frame international law. On Gaza, Irish left rhetoric often invokes universal standards: collective punishment, war crimes, genocide claims, UN conventions, ICC referrals, diplomatic expulsions. Whatever one thinks of the exact legal characterisations, the rhetorical posture is universalist. But a universalist posture cannot coherently become selective when applied to Iran’s killings of protesters, torture in detention, and executions. If human‑rights law is universal, it travels. If it does not travel, it is not a standard. It is a weapon.
Ukraine And Russia, The Second Mirror Of Palestine
The Russia problem mirrors the Iran problem because it arises from the same “anti‑West” lens. In the UK, Stop the War‑style framing has often centred NATO expansion and “blocs,” sometimes sliding into narratives where Western policy becomes the primary culprit and Russia’s agency is contextualised into the background.
Similar impulses appear among the left, including a tendency to treat Ukraine as a proxy rather than a people resisting invasion, and to moralise primarily against NATO rather than Russia. The convenience of the left’s selective cross‑eyed view is stark here because it requires wilful blindness to Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression on a peaceful neighbour. Precisely the "imperialism" the left claims to oppose.
Set beside Palestine, the contradiction is sharp. Irish far‑left discourse demands self‑determination for Palestinians and insists that the dominated have a right to resist domination. Yet parts of the same milieu oppose military aid to Ukraine or frame Ukrainian defence as “escalation”, while treating Russian imperial acts as reactive or secondary. The left does not have a principled anti‑war ethic. It is a selective anti‑West ethic.
The rhetorical technique is also revealing. In Israel‑Palestine discourse, “both sides” framing is attacked as moral evasion because it obscures power and responsibility. The Left justify Russian atrocities as consequence of NATO provocations: Ukraine is an innocent party and not part of NATO. Symmetrical language becomes tolerable precisely where it disregards this unprovoked act of invasion. Invasion means invasion. The outcome is predictable: victims are downgraded whenever the oppressor is not Western‑aligned.
PBP are elected, visible, and influential in street politics. That creates a duty to be precise. PBP explicitly opposed €100 million in non-lethal military-mine sweepers, radar systems and anti-drone jamming devices to protect civilian population centres. When an organisation claims to champion self‑determination, gender equality, and workers’ rights as universal standards, its positions on Ukraine and Iran are not optional side‑issues. They are tests. If the emphasis repeatedly flows toward NATO‑bashing while the moral clarity reserved for Gaza is not sustained toward Russia’s aggression or Iran’s repression, the gap between principle and practice becomes political fact, not internet argument.
Anti‑West atrocities are rebranded as ‘anti‑imperialist blows,’ Islamist terror is dismissed as ‘propaganda’ or explained as difference in culture. Russia’s war framed as part of a “multipolar” resistance to Western power. In that form, the cross‑eyed logic is explicit. If it harms the West, it is resistance. If the West condemns it, it is propaganda. If the victim resists an anti‑West state, the victim’s cause becomes complicated, inconvenient, conditional, or ignored. Human rights are not universal where religious or cultural exceptions might apply. Groups like Saoradh show the endpoint of the same habit: universal human rights replaced by bloc loyalty, immoral support is framed as solidarity.
Viewing Gaza through the lens of the Troubles is emotionally resonant, but it is structurally flawed: the IRA was a secular nationalist movement, whereas Hamas -extremist religious ideology.
Three Explanations Account For The Pattern Of Contradictions
- First, politics is organised around US‑aligned versus US‑opposed states, with indulgence granted to the latter because they function as counterweights.
- Second, Islamist movements are miscast as progressive anti‑colonial forces, obscuring their religious extremism and turning critique into betrayal of the “anti‑imperialist” narrative.
- Third, Palestine/Gaza have close parallels with the Six Counties. But Iran’s internal struggle and Ukraine’s national defence do not fit as neatly into a simple coloniser‑colonised binary, so they receive less activist energy even when state violence is open and lethal.
A Hierarchy Of Victims
Hamas uses the legitimate Palestinian liberation struggle to piggyback religious extremism. The left collapses these categories, laundering Islamist ideology into liberation language and miscasting it as progressive anti-colonialism. Iranian women and workers resisting a theocratic police state deserve the same moral clarity routinely claimed elsewhere. Ukrainian civilians resisting annexation deserve the same self-determination principle invoked for Palestine.
Traditional Irish republicanism was always anti-imperialist and committed to self-determination. There is no consistent solidarity in supporting Islamist terror or Russian imperialism alongside it. Palestinian freedom must include freedom from Islamist extremism, liberation means nothing if it installs in Gaza the theocratic repression that Iranian women brave bullets to escape.
If the Irish far left wants to keep claiming moral leadership, the demand is simple. Apply the standard consistently. Condemn Iran’s repression with the same urgency used for Gaza. Treat Russian aggression as aggression, and treat Ukraine’s right to resist as the same principle you insist on elsewhere. If that cannot be done, the rhetoric has been exposed. It is not principled anti-imperialism. It is selective outrage.
For all the West’s faults and hypocrisies, the freedoms that make Irish and British protest politics possible are protected by liberal-democratic law. Those protections are precisely what authoritarian systems, including authoritarian Islamist regimes, suppress. It is morally indefensible for the left to enjoy those rights at home while minimising, excusing, or romanticising Russian and Iranian regimes abroad that crush them for others. The left exercises in Ireland freedoms (protest, speech, organisation) that would be extinguished under the regimes they defend or excuse. The left is not merely inconsistent - it practises moral hypocrisy.
⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
 |
The Army Foot Patrol (A Memory)
An army foot patrol
is walking down the street
Special rubber on their boots
so you cannot hear their feet
♞♜♝
They are away off in the distance
but I see them stop and weave
As the hair stands on the back of my neck
and start to heavy breath
♞♜♝
The night silence gets broken
with a noise that can only be one thing
The high pitched searing engine noise
of the army Saracen
♞♜♝
It slowly drives towards you
no lights to Avoid being seen
The steel back doors wide open
painted camouflage olive green
♞♜♝
They stop and question everyone
that is what they do
If you show any resistance at all . .
it’s an excuse to arrest you
♞♜♝
The put you in the back
and they take you to police station
Then take from the pig *
and start your interrogation
♞♜♝
This can go disastrously
depends on how it plays
You can turn around immediately
and go the other way
♞♜♝
But the minute they see you turning
then you’ve got something to hide
They will abandon what they are doing,
and soon be at your side
♞♜♝
You have to keep on walking,
keeping a steady pace
Trying to avoid glances
….in case one of them knows your face
♞♜♝
Then one of them spots you,
and asks you what’s your name
He already knows who you are…
part of the harassment game
♞♜♝
He asks you for you date of birth,
he knows you wont comply
He makes you wait for ever and ever,
as everyone else passes you by
♞♜♝
He asks you where you are coming from,
and where you are going to?
But it’s really just a stalling tactic
to see if the police want to arrest you
♞♜♝
The radio operator calls you name
out across the air waves
Response a short time later …
”Charlie one” is all it says
♞♜♝
The atmosphere changes intensely,
all friendliness disappears
Charlie one means you're
a suspected member of the IRA
♞♜♝
Take everything out of your pockets…
spread your arms and your legs
Some times they put you up against a building
with your hands above your head
♞♜♝
The search takes for ever,
different soldiers are brought over and shown your face
For future intelligence sightings…
so you get watched every place
♞♜♝
They can’t find anything on you,
disappointment on their face
But continue to keep you at the roadside
invading your personal space
♞♜♝
The radio crackles once more,
breaking the night silence and it’s cutting breeze
The radio operator gives the thumbs up…
they have to set you free
* Pig - large heavenly armoured troop carrier
⏩ Brendan Curran, Irish conflict poems 
2020
2020
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