Immigration ✎ Questions To Be Asked And Answered ✎ One Republican Viewpoint

Michael O’Rourke 🪶 The purpose of this essay is to contribute to a fuller awareness among republican supporters of the political issues arising in Ireland as a consequence of Western/NATO wars, its fallout internationally and here in Ireland.

In that context it stresses the urgency of developing and intervening from a revolutionary republican perspective into all of these issues. So when the question of immigration into Ireland is raised in the context of it being a crisis, it is usually by those actively concerned with ending it and portraying it as a takeover of the Irish race. This then invariably tends to be concentrated almost entirely on people arriving from countries destabilised by wars instigated by Western military interventions. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia and a series of other African countries that are undergoing Western military occupations and civil wars, some of which are financed by Western corporations. They are mostly the countries in question, though there are others swept into the migration towards Europe.

These wars, carried out by NATO in some cases or individual NATO member countries, have in one way or another been going on for over twenty years; the war on Afghanistan went on for twenty years, destabilising not just Afghanistan but also the surrounding countries. It is not difficult to see in these circumstances that war, as it has always done, will displace people and force them to seek a life where they can be safe and earn a living. Into this mix was President George Bush’s “war on terror”, stoking up fears of imminent terror attacks in the West by extreme jihadist terror groups, usually associated with Al Qaeda and Islamic State, both of whom are generally incorporated into the US/UK military aggression strategies in the Middle East and elsewhere. These jihadi forces were used by Western imperialism to overthrow the Libyan government and state, after which they were directly shipped into Syria having been fully armed with confiscated Libyan equipment, and further armed by US air drops, including fleets of Humvees.

Finance was provided to Islamic State and others by the West through their Gulf state partners, and by selling looted Syrian oil directly to Turkey, a NATO member whose policy at the time was fully in line with the US/UK to overthrow the government of Basher Al Assad. The jihadist fascist forces were provided with air support from the US Airforce in their battle against the Syrian Arab Army, while at the same time Western media, including the pro-NATO, pro-Unionist RTE continually pumped out lies about the “butcher Assad”. The refugee crisis in Europe is a direct consequence of all of that.

In the aftermath of the political capitulation by the republican and republican socialist movements, which was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the political vacuum that followed was entered into by a series of republican splinter groups. None of these parties, styling themselves republican, socialist republican or republican socialist, comprehensively acknowledged the fundamental changes of the objective political realities they were in. The left-wing republican parties who misguidedly verged on political idiocy and a total lack of political theory even supported the far-right British/Unionist Brexit project, when they went along with the British offshoot party in Ireland, People before Profit, and under the guidance of the Anglophile Communist Party of Ireland.

Meanwhile, in objective reality the Provos and the smaller Republican Socialists were actually politically defeated, but continued to be induced to believe along with most people that the situation was a stalemate on the military side — however that also was not correct. It would be more correct to say it was a military defeat though not an absolute one insofar as the republican forces were still capable of continuing the struggle, but continuing only as a politically defeated force. It was, objectively speaking, a demoralising defeat and a victory for British duplicity, which has taken many years for the ramifications to be fully revealed. An exception to this political farrago is perhaps the small stream of revolutionary republicans still representing Ireland’s revolutionary tradition and historical mission in the world to achieve a sovereign thirty-two county republic, and to whom this article is mostly concerned with and addressed to.

The above paragraphs are a summary of the political background to which we should assess the state of political and class forces in our country at this time. Moreover it is clear that there is a general attack on the political principle of achieving a thirty-two county sovereign republic and totally removing British imperialism from Ireland. Sinn Féin no longer speak of it; instead they defer to the disguise of “Irish unity”, which includes the possibility of an open invitation to imperialist deception and domination, or uniting the NATO occupied six-counties to a NATO occupied twenty-six; i.e. British military hegemony over all of Ireland. One peculiarity of the new Sinn Féin cringe-worthy sycophancy towards US/UK imperialist projects is it allows others (far-right racists) to flagrantly degrade icons of the Irish Republic, the flags and other symbols, in their protests against immigration, and to hijack the term patriotism.

However saying, this is not simply to deny problems will arise with refugees being located in working class areas and in equally under-resourced rural parts of the country, where people are frustrated seeing the government respond to the requirements of US/UK-EU but not to theirs. Neither is it the fault of refugees or immigrants. It is the Irish government following the policies handed down to them by: the US far-right Biden junta, the far-right EU Commission, and Britain’s far-right Labour government.

Are these rulers all far-right? Yes! Their current belligerent orientation is far-right regardless of other posturing. They all unequivocally support the fascist Kiev regime and the fascist, genocidal Israeli regime. The Irish government this year have begun to send €454 million to Zelensky’s utterly corrupt Nazi, Kiev regime as part of their adherence to the West’s policies and the NATO proxy war on Russia; and 454 million would go a long way towards resolving some of the issues surrounding refugee locations and immigration. They do this while foisting woke fake-equality and an incongruous version of inclusivity onto communities and people whose material needs they ignore while preparing police-state rule to curb “far-right” hooliganism they themselves have created.

But to be clear on the question of who or what is far-right? The Irish people are not racist or far-right; we are republican and egalitarian. One of the greatest founders of Irish freedom was James Connolly, republican socialist and Marxist. Our republican ethos rejects sectarianism and all other racism. Sectarianism and racism are by-products of the British Empire extant in the six-counties, represented by the Unionist entity and enforced by the Unionist paramilitaries comprising Orange death-squads who act on behalf of the British ruling class and its far-right wing. It follows consequently that the biggest concentration of far-right fascism in Ireland is located in the north under the moniker of Loyalism, which is essentially the fascist essence in defence of British imperialism. In the colonial world, fascism is imperialist rule; in Europe and the West fascism is imperialist rule brought home — a regime based on monopoly finance capital that destroys independent working class political organisation. It is a direct opposite of socialist and Marxist doctrines of class struggle. The idea of society existing as it does in class struggle is replaced with the doctrine of the nation. To achieve this, a fascist regime will physically crush all political opposition and independent working class organisation in the name of the nation and race. Racism is in its legal code and methodology. Fascists in Britain and elsewhere view Irish republicanism as their bitterest and number-one enemy.

The recent anti-immigration riots in Ireland have seen the emergence of far-right racists actively attempting to co-opt working class communities into their agenda. Utilising criminal elements and fastening onto the frustration and objections to government plans for the relocation of asylum seekers, fascist elements from Britain intervened along with the tiny Irish based groups. The burning of buses in Dublin city centre during the riot was carried out by two Brits, who were recorded in the act. British far-right internet channels are energised with the prospect of gaining a foothold in Irish politics through their tutoring of Irish racists, whose only actual open policy is for Ireland to leave the EU and re-join Britain in their racist inspired opium dream of resurrecting the British Empire through Brexit. The same people in cahoots with British fascists and using their algorithm intervened again in Coolock. Not only were they in cahoots with British fascists but also with its cousins in the Unionist paramilitaries. In doing this they demonstrated the absolute treachery of racist fascists in Ireland, who will partner up with the absolute enemies of Ireland and Irish independence.

Fascism is tied by its DNA to monopoly capitalism and imperialism, and we have witnessed these essential traits in action with the depraved element from Dublin joining in with the UVF, displaying the Irish flag alongside the UVF flag in a show of unity on the Shankill Road, Belfast, as they prepared to go on a rampage of violence against Asian and other identified non-white people and properties. It did not matter to the Dublin racists that the same people they were standing beside were burning the Irish flag only weeks before, or that they had been convicted of murdering Catholics and of burning out Catholics with the same vitriol they have for immigrants in Belfast.

By far the biggest number of immigrants into Ireland are Ukrainian, British and others from eastern European EU states. Yet the far-right racist groups focus only on people of non-white or Muslim origin. Slogans saying: “the country is full up”, “they don’t assimilate”, and “Irish culture is being diluted”, are often heard among other more sinister charges.

So let us consider assimilation: but assimilate into what? Irish society is sharply divided into classes: the ruling capitalist class and the working class. In between are the various layers of the middle class. Is there assimilation between the classes? No. There are no problems with foreigners not assimilating into the middle and upper classes or the country being full up; these “problems” are preserved for the working class. In the recently held local elections, the mainstream political parties put forward many candidates of foreign extraction, and some were elected. No problem with assimilation there! Without labouring this point, it is obvious the candidates were selected purely on their equal status as upper middle-class with corresponding political values. Race was certainly not an issue, and rightly so. But race is being used as a dividing instrument for the working class, because the working class are the main inheritors of the Irish nation’s revolutionary heritage of the struggle for complete independence.

Though again it may be necessary to say this does not mean there are no problems surrounding locations for asylum seekers or related issues. There are. Moreover we can expect the government to only use half-hearted measures in dealing with these problems – but without ever admitting that they are not concerned with anything divisive in the working class, and they will treat the divisive activities of the criminal racist elements in a manner conducive to their own class and political interests.

Therefore, republicans and genuine socialists will need to develop and expand their agenda independently of all of the above. We should avoid falling into echoing the slogans of the political enemies of Irish republicanism. This would include those left-wing/stage-socialist parties, opponents of republicanism, whose appeal mainly is to the state and to middle-class liberalism; or to the Antifa element, an open door to state intelligence provocateurs. All of the issues mentioned above are interrelated, and it is not plausible to single out one aspect, and apply a simplistic slogan and find a lasting solution. This is the methodology of the current, non-republican actors competing in the political arena to whom we should not look upon as genuinely representing the interest of the Irish people and Irish working class. It is not politically sectarian to state this: it is simply asserting the political reality.

In conclusion, the questions of immigration and providing international refugee asylum are geo-political in nature, just as increasingly more of the political space and issues facing us now are. The government will continue to implement policies based on its support for Western wars and destabilisation of whole countries thereby guaranteeing a continuation of the tremors Western and NATO instigated wars will trigger. And whatever issues arise as a consequence, we can expect they will be dealt with in much the same way by the government as in the current situation. This will pose difficulties for republicans and socialists, whose natural base of support, the working class and other progressive layers of Irish society, is encroached upon by the anti-republican elements cited earlier in this essay. It is surely then incumbent upon republicans to address the dearth of political leadership in what is our natural support base; to clarify the complexities of the issues now impacting in the country, and to reassert the revolutionary and progressive republican principles of our tradition. And most importantly in the process, to expand and develop republican leadership.

🖼 Michael O’Rourke is a former POW imprisoned on behalf of the INLA.