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Showing posts with label Carrie Twomey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carrie Twomey. Show all posts

Carrie Twomey ✍ For some reason, perhaps a combination of reasons including the malign influence of the Trumpian "hard man" era, Sinn Fein decided a few years ago that to demonstrate they were serious players, being angry and shouty was the way to go.

This decision happened around the time of Mary Lou McDonald's first serious electoral kick-in-the-teeth and was devised as a response to criticisms that their form of opposition was not perceived as strong enough and that was why they lost. So it was decided to turn the volume up and their front bench has followed the leader in shouting at the government ever since, at every turn.

It's been a few years and a few elections since this strategy was deployed. Now it has become their brand and is openly observed in the media. Feedback from voters criticising the approach is consistent - being angry and shouty has worn thin.

First of all, being in opposition does not mean one should always be angry, disappointed, or shouty. Secondly, being on the left also does not mean being the loudest or most aggressive is how to express your views. For some reason, perhaps because of the "hard man" tradition Sinn Fein comes from, it was decided both those things were true - despite the reason for party leader Mary Lou McDonald's previous popularity was her being seen as a nice, relatable middle class mother who bought her prawns at Supervalu. Following the loud and angry opposition model has had her increasingly play against type to the point her softer nature is no longer visible.

Pearse Doherty fares no better. He is like the coach you never know when you're going to get a clattering from, only that you're always going to get one from him.


The awfulness of this strategy, that opposition equates anger, and shouting is how to show you are serious, is evident in Sinn Féin's inability to garner enough votes to enter government. Other aspects of that failure, the disingenuous nature of their politics, the being-all-things-to-all dubiousness of their shifting positions, have been covered elsewhere.

The main reason that this strategy fails is that it is abuse.

The first few times someone yells at the government, it feels good. It feels like, "Yeah, finally! Finally someone is telling it like it is!" and all sorts of guff about speaking truth to power gets trotted out. But when every time the government does anything, the millionth time it is "shameful" and all the other negative shouty words deployed, it crosses the line from standing up against a true injustice into abuse for the sake of abuse. It becomes narcissistic, performative, and more about how the shouter is perceived than the issue at hand: "Look at me being tough on the government".

The problem is, in a democracy, which Ireland still very much is, the 'government' is made up of your neighbours and community. The government represents the country, all of its people, and must act in the best interests of the nation, no matter which political parties are at its helm.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and even Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can get some things right once in a while, because even they are made up of people who want to make their country function better, just like the people who make up Sinn Fein and all the other parties.

Pantomime politics may play to the galley, but the real work of democracy is in negotiations and working together. Which all parties do, behind the scenes, every day.

In choosing to highlight only the pantomime, democracy gets undermined. The pantomime is the gateway for the far right, who have no nuance whatsoever.

Worse, what is happening is that this shouty type of politics is felt as an abuse of the nation. It is instinctual in a nation that has suffered collectively from decades of historical abuse that are still within living memory. Being yelled at is not new. Never doing anything right, always being a failure, always being shamed - this is a refrain too many Irish people know far too well.

A true oppositional party who cares about the nation would tend to it like a loved child. Praising it when it did good, supporting its best efforts, directing and guiding it into better choices, and deploying anger rarely, only when necessary. Aggression and bullying would not be tactics it deployed.

Aggression, bullying, and abuse are tactics that create damage, and do not shape a healthy nation. It creates a mean nation, a fearful nation, ungenerous to self or others. A nation that does not believe in itself because it has always been shamed, criticised, and repeatedly told it can never do anything right.

Voters hear this abuse, too, and internalise it. It colours not just how they see "the government" but also themselves. Because, after all, the government ultimately represents them.

This is not an argument against criticising government policy, or in defence of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. Sinn Fein would be as abusive if the government were headed by Labour and the Social Democrats. Mary Lou and Pearse would bully and hector Ivana and Holly just as they have always done all other Taoiseachs and Tanaistes. It is now their nature and culture.

Being angry, critical, and shouty doesn't translates to votes, however, despite how popular it appears in polls. People like to be able to shout at politicians inbetween elections, to keep the government of the day on its toes. But they vote for those who will take care of the nation, not abuse it. Sinn Féin's approach has no generosity or sense of care, only anger and leaders who can never be pleased.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

The Shouty Politics Of Sinn Fein

Carrie Twomey ✍ Why Sinn Fein, and the government parties, need to ignore the siren song of the far right if they want to win elections.

Historically - even since inception - the Provisional version of Sinn Fein has always had tensions between its rosary brigade and Marxist leaning revolutionary wing. This was not a major problem while the conflict was hot. As the peace process continued, SF was able to manage those political tensions with casting the process as another form of struggle, utilising the differences between northern and southern political experiences as a sort of fudge for how it pitched itself in the south in the first decades of the new century.

Now that the peace process is as old as the conflict, and the IRA retired north and south, the rise of the far right has brought these tensions to the surface for the party. While Sinn Fein plays a deft hand in the sectarian fishbowl of northern politics - where bread and butter issues are rarely, if ever, campaigned on - it has not found firm footing in the southern milieu, despite its popularity in opinion polls.

This inability to translate poll popularity into consistent electoral gains has allowed the party leadership to become spooked by far right noise, deciding that pandering to its rosary brigade was a winning strategy. This has proven to be anything but, and government parties would do well to learn this lesson if they too do not want fractured by MAGA minions.

Had SF decided instead to lead with a genuine commitment to left wing principles (genuine and principles being two words not often associated with the party, though many of its members and supporters may be), along with keeping a focus on its pursuit of a united Ireland, the majority of its rosary brigade, being committed nationalists, would have done what they have always done: held their noses and continued to support the party as the only vehicle they see heading towards the promised land. Most of those voters are pragmatic in the sense that a United Ireland must always come first, the details can be fought over later.

Instead, as Sinn Fein has moved away from its committed pursuit of a United Ireland - even talk of politics as part of the struggle has been jettisoned as the active phase of the peace process recedes further into the past - it has split its personality between burnishing its left wing halo and playing footsie with farmy council hard men.

This has left the rosary brigade, who stuck with them through hard times because they were the ticket to a United Ireland, to not trust them on social issues and seeing the abandonment of the national question as a betrayal. That view has been easily exploited by the far right who are seeking to claim the mantle of Irish nationalism, and no longer have an IRA stopping them from doing so successfully.

The left wing of the party feels betrayed too, when it sees Sinn Fein consistently fail to follow through on basic tenets such as abortion rights, as was illustrated recently. Combine this with the dog whistling being done by senior figures on immigration and a general lack of leadership when it is needed to stand firmly against the worst kind of craven politicking, and dissatisfaction grows. Holly Cairns did not miss the mark in her quip about Sinn Fein needing to iron out its policies. People can feel, and see, the disingenuous nature of their inconsistency.

SF has fundamentally misunderstood its own base. Like many people the world over, it has let social media propagandists pull the wool over its eyes.

Thinking from what has been visible online in Ireland for the last few years that the far right was going to become the dominant destination for voters is a fatal, and dangerous, mistake. Many centrist and centre-left parties across Europe have discovered this to their detriment - as Labour in the UK is finding out.

The embrace of "Blue Labour" politics by the Labour Party is a good example of how moving right in response to populism is utter madness in this age of chimera. Setting aside the insanity of thinking millionaire advisers have their finger on the pulse of any average voter, in times of instability and crisis, the longer the crisis goes on, the more voters want competence and stability. The far right, by its nature, does not represent nor present as stable or confident. It rides on waves of discontent and thrives on whipping the waves higher. They are expert problem spotters, never problem solvers.

Tacking left in time of crisis - because the left is primarily concerned with equitable economic issues - while it may seem counterintuitive is the smarter move. The Greens in the UK understand this and are now mopping up support from the larger bulk of Labour's traditional working class base, the people who found themselves politically homeless when Labour steered right.

This is now Sinn Féin's problem, and potentially the problem of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael if they too follow the siren song of the far right fringe.

The lesson is in the fact that left voters voted Fine Gael to keep the far right out in Galway, and this led to victory for Fine Gael. Had Fine Gael attempted to compete with Independent Ireland as a peer, Independent Ireland would likely have taken the seat, with Fine Gael, like Sinn Fein did, losing its own voters to Independent Ireland as well as crucially failing to gain the necessary support of left transfers.

The majority of people in Ireland do not, and will not, support the far right. They do not, and will not, vote for the far right. They do, and will, vote for political parties that are not far right, and who will keep the far right from gaining power.

This is the consistent trend line in elections. Even with the small gains of the far right, the majority of voters are voting against them, not for them. Their gains are strongest when there is not a viable, competent left leaning alternative. When that is the case, their loss is greater. To win elections, parties must concentrate on being that alternative.

As much as Irish people love to give off about how terrible this, that, and the other are, the majority of the country wants stability and competence in charge of their government. They want fairness, and lean more to the left than they do right on social and financial issues.

Fringe parties are a safe outlet voters use to give off with, but not to install as the nation's stewards. The parties that recognise this and resist the urge to pander to inflated populist outrage - and who tack away from that outrage back into sanity - will always come home the winner. The ones who don't will end up wrecks on the shoals.

Sinn Fein, once seen as a bright promise because of its seemingly winning combination of left wing politics and a United Ireland vision, in abandoning both, is now turning into the biggest loser and a busted flush politically.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

The Electoral Siren Song

Carrie Twomey ✍ writes of the stereotypical Irish content being farmed by MAGA accounts on social media to Irish American audiences

My family, who do not support Trump or MAGA, often send videos me they come across related to Ireland, videos fed to them by the Facebook algorithm alongside Irish dancing and travel videos. 

The last 6 Facebook videos I was sent from family in the United States (all about the fuel protest) were from far right MAGA influencer accounts spreading propaganda. 

The far right in Ireland is being supported by MAGA, Steve Bannon, and the US State Department under Trump (Sarah Rogers). 

They want to create an Irish Trump - they were hoping they could get Conor McGregor elected and that's why he was at the White House St Patrick's Day in 2025. 

They want to manipulate Irish Americans with propaganda presenting Ireland and stereotypical Irishness as being MAGA and pro Trump, so they push these false narratives on social media like these posts and videos. 

There's millions of Irish American voters they are targeting with these fake accounts pushing this. 

They are also working to destabilise the government here ahead of Ireland holding the EU Presidency. 

Ireland has a lot of tech companies' EU headquarters here and is in charge of the data regulators. 

The US wants to stop the EU from regulating tech companies. 

It also wants to build more data centres and exploit Ireland's energy resources. It's all about money. 

We had a week of a handful of farmers and truck drivers do "go slow" protests on major highways (just like the MAGA protest in Canada) and then they started blocking the ports which was becoming a national emergency. Gas stations ran out of fuel and stores were starting to empty. 

At first people supported it because they thought the protests were about everyone's cost of living going up. 

It quickly became apparent that this was a far right stunt for propaganda purposes and that the farmers and truck drivers involved were only interested in protecting themselves. 

First, they were only focused on the Irish government. They called for our Taoiseach to be killed and drove gallows through Dublin. They said nothing about the war in Iran, or Trump, despite that being the reason fuel prices are going up. 

Secondly, they stopped the protest as soon as the government deployed the police and agreed to a tax reduction for farmers and haulage. 

In a couple weeks that reduction will be gone because the price of fuel will be rising further (Europe has less than 6 weeks reserves left). So it was a pointless protest for the Irish people as a whole. It gained nothing while creating fear and division ahead of a crisis. 


But on Thursday, Trump's ambassador to the EU, Andrew Pudzer, met with Irish officials in Dublin to urge the government to keep using and investing in fossil fuels (which the protesters had advocated), and to keep fuel prices down. 

Had the protests not just taken place (and almost bring down the government), the ambassador's reception would have been very different. 

Ireland would have been more confident heading in a direction similar to Spain's, who are no longer majority dependent on fossil fuels, now relying on renewable sources of energy. 

The protest scared officials and helped create a receptive atmosphere for the ambassador instead. 

When you're looking at Facebook and Irish content, be very critical. The majority of it is either AI slop or far right propaganda designed to trick you. 

Especially if it's Irish related, it is usually wrong and posted by really bad (and racist) accounts. They used to be the Qanon, anti-vaccine Covid denier type accounts. 

Now they are using Ireland, its culture, and history, to further spread their disinformation and harm. The manipulation is to make Irish Americans feel proud they are carrying on 'Irish tradition' being MAGA.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Paddywhackery Propaganda

You've been had, writes Carrie Twomey 

Want to know what American interference in Irish politics looks like? How an American attack on Irish democracy operates? 

Last year at St Patrick's day in Washington DC, President Trump invited Conor McGregor to the White House, where he was introduced to senior members of his cabinet such as Elon Musk, and met Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon. Musk maintains a fondness for Irish far right accounts on his social media platform, often boosting their posts to his millions of followers. 

McGregor was even given time at the White House press podium, something no Irish Taoiseach has ever been afforded, where he outlined his vision for Ireland. The official meeting with Ireland's actual, democratically elected leader was brief and far less sensational. 

Many viewed the McGregor invitation as a calculated insult. It was a blatant indication of the direction the Trump administration would prefer to see Irish politics go in. It was also thought at the time that the Trump administration was preparing to support McGregor as a candidate for the Irish presidency. The invitation to the White House and facilitation of high level introductions was a powerful endorsement of McGregor and his views. 

Upon return to Ireland in April, McGregor was being interviewed by Tucker Carlson at the Freemason's hall. Carlson was also feted at McGregor's pub. 

By the end of the year, Steve Bannon was openly declaring that Ireland was going to have an Irish Trump, and that an Irish MAGA movement was being created. 

These markers are the fins of the shark surfacing as it hunts. 

The American influence on and connections with the Irish far right has been evident for years, mainly having come in via religious support on anti-abortion. 

Since Trump first came to office in 2016, that influence has intensified, being visible in the language and tactics used by anti-vaxxers during Covid, anti-immigration rhetoric, protests, and increased racism and racist attacks. 

The predatory, profiteering nature of social media data capitalism has enabled the spread of toxic propaganda, turning local Facebook and WhatsApps group into vectors of disinformation. 

One of the first official acts the new Trump appointed, MAGA supporting US Ambassador did upon arriving in Dublin in January was attend a far right conference featuring the likes of Malachy Steenson, Una McGurk, Jana Lunden, and Eddie Hobbs, who has been a guest on Steve Bannon's internet show. Ambassador Walsh showed up to this conference a couple weeks after Bannon's 'Irish Trump' comments. 

Who arranged his attendance? 

In March of this year, the US State Department issued a directive to all US Embassies and consulates to "recruit local influencers, academics and community leaders abroad to carry counter-propaganda messaging, an approach designed to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed". 

In other words, to launch MAGA internationally, as Bannon had signposted previously. 

It would be foolish to look at the April fuel blockade and not question what part the malign influence of the US government is playing in the protests. 

The rhetoric and accompanying propaganda is heavily Americanised, even down to ridiculous attempts to compare the Gardai and Irish Army to ICE. The tactics employed are the same was what was done in the 2022 Canadian "Freedom Convoy", which was referred to then as "Maple MAGA" and heavily funded from American donations. 

It is obvious by even a causal check on social media sites that massive amounts of bots are posting support of the blockade - click on the profiles and they reveal themselves with follower lists in the double digits and multiple name changes. Who is paying for this online campaign? 

Most telling, in terms of analysing the amount of American influence in this protest, is where the protesters are focusing their ire, and where they are deliberately not. They are not protesting the war which has caused the rise in fuel prices. They are not blocking the US Embassy or Shannon airport, or US companies that are connected to the war, and they are nowhere near Trump's golf course in Doonbeg. 

Instead they are driving handmade gallows on trailers up and down O'Connell Street calling for the deaths of the Taoiseach and Tanaiste. For as many things that you can complain about the Irish government for, starting a war in Iran that halted global supply of oil is not in their gift. 

They openly declare they want to bring the Irish government down - to be replaced with what? To what end? 

The Americans would benefit from a weakened Ireland and an Irish government in chaos. 

Ireland is geographically strategically important. It is economically important with its tech and pharma multinationals. It punches above its weight diplomatically, acting as an important bridge. It is a trusted and respected partner in the EU. 

Ireland is also one of the most vocal and visible supporters of Palestinians. This support has long drawn the attention of Israel, who used to send Nazi hunters to Ireland in the 1970s. Ireland's presence in Lebanon as UN peacekeepers has also been a longstanding annoyance to Israel. 

Ireland is also a strong supporter of Ukraine. This has continually irritated the Russians, who currently probe the seabeds around Ireland looking for data cables and sail their shadow fleet tankers near Irish waters. 

Both Russia and Israel play key parts in the American MAGA movement, and in the global far right network the Irish far right is part of. Russia and Israel also share antipathy towards the EU. 

Ireland has powerful, fascist enemies. The United States, Israel, and Russia need a weakened Ireland to achieve their goals. 

A strong Ireland helps the international resistance to fascism. It pushes the EU to stand up against Israel in its genocidal activity in Gaza and its push into Lebanon. It helps keep the EU united against Russia's aggression and imperialist desires. It has the ability to regulate and enforce legislation against American technologies. It can and will advocate against supporting the US's war on Iran. 

That is the Ireland the blockade protesters want to topple. That is the Irish government the manufactured protest is targeting. 

It wasn't the Irish government that caused the rising fuel cost. It was Israel, and the United States, with their war on Iran. As pressure on fuel resources increases, Russia also stands to benefit, which will help its war expansion. 

These protests are vampires sucking up the very real fear, anxiety, anger, and concerns Irish people have about rising costs, economic pressure, housing, healthcare - all the same issues working people are suffering from around the world because of the excesses of capitalism. 

The protests are diverting the energy of the Irish people away from focusing on actions that would bring tangible changes and deflecting the blame from the warmongers causing the problems. 

Don't fall for it. Blockade Doonbeg. Boycott and protest the Irish Open. Expose the grifters who are profiting from attacking the country. These people will walk Ireland into a fascist state if you let them. 

If you feel like this blockade protest is an attack on the nation, you're not wrong.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Duped Again

Anthony McIntyre ☠ It is a while since we had been abroad, France in 2019 when I gave a paper at the Cergy-Pontoise University not far from Paris.


Then we stayed in the French capital, my wife Carrie engaging with some of the city's canvassing politicians at a Sunday market. Politics, sometimes the bane, other times the passion in our lives, is never far away.

As ever, with her fastidious attention to detail coupled with a a prodigious organisational talent, she selected a great hotel. Paris, she loved, whereas I found it visually skanky, its grayness deepened by the persistent rain. I even managed to get interviewed by a West Belfast anti-sobriety campaigner for Charlie Hebdo! We had earlier visited the scene of the theocratic fascist mass murder of Parisian journalists and cartoonists.

Majorca was much different, as it invariably is. Sombreness, if not sobriety, is jettisoned over the Pyrenees. Wednesday of last week saw us on a 0600 flight headed for our favourite spot on the island, its beach right at the end of the line. We both love the area, having been there on a few occasions. It was where I helped my son learn to swim, my daughter having previously attained that status at home. This time we were in Majorca and child free. 

Every day was spent swimming in the Mediterranean. The waves at times so powerful I had to be assisted to my feet twice - no deeper than a half metre of water - by a lifeguard, much to the merriment of my wife. Years ago a German woman did the lifeguard's job when my inebriated battle with the waves was lost then too.

On our last day the dreaded sun attacked me. Despite being copiously protectively smeared by Carrie before plunging in, I spent far too long in the Med in my successful endeavor to be the furthermost swimmer from the shoreline. A risk perhaps better taken at 67 than at 17, youth having so much more to lose if it all goes wrong. I will end up at the bottom of the Med eventually, within viewing distance of the gentle bay, but hopefully not before I am ash. 

We watched the Germany-Spain game in 'our bar' across the street from the hotel. It was packed with Spanish supporters. The bar facing it was where the Germans had congregated. Each time a goal was scored one set of fans would taunt the other but not in an aggressive way. I felt it would take more than the width of a street - the Spanish police public order unit - to forcibly separate the tribes had England fans been on site. The police don't always keep the peace, often applying their own violence to secure order.

We watched the England quarter-final in the midst of England fans. They were fine and in jubilant mood at the end once Trent Alexander Arnold had converted the penalty that saw their side through to last night's semi-final clash with The Netherlands. That I watched at home with my son, feeling that the best team won despite the dubious penalty award.

Holidays are always great for reading. My wife got through four books. I started three which I have yet to complete, each from genres that hold a particular interest for me. For a long time I had been intending to read Alexander Werth's Russia At War. What put me off was the length. The flight over seemed as good a place as any to start. Then it was onto The Purity Of Vengeance by Scandi Noir writer, Jussi Adler Olsen. The final one was Harold Louis Mencken's Religious Orgy in Tennessee. There was no disappointment for me in any of them. I even had my enjoyment of the Mencken one lubricated by some Frank Spencer-type on Facebook howling 'fascist' at me, seemingly in defence of Christian nationalism.

We still managed to keep abreast of the news, particularly the British and French general elections. We rejoiced that the Tories were mauled without siding with Labour which under Starmer seems as committed to Tory policies as Conservative Central Office ever was. We were delighted to see the perch the French far right were about to settle on pulled away from it on the home straight. Great food, dining out, swimming, reading, boozing, chilling in the heat, and best of all - my wife's companionship.

Despite the break, TPQ didn't lose out. It was kept going by having been formatted and scheduled a week in advance. All I had to do was upload any comments.  Now back to the greyness and the grinding stone.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Majorca

Carrie Twomey 🎤 Sinn Fein has lost the rosary brigade. 

A substantial rump of the party, the Rosary Brigade was for a very long time the unwavering faithful, showing up without fail at graveside commemorations and the polling booth. What Gerry Adams did or didn’t do was no matter to them. The point was their belief in a United Ireland – Ireland for the Irish, if you will – and for a long time the IRA and Sinn Fein was the vehicle of transubstantiation. 

The tensions between the Rosary Brigade and the Marxist revolutionaries within the Republican Movement has always led to the sort of duality that Adams embodied; depending on where you were in the room the picture shifted. Catholic Nationalists intent on overthrowing the state, which would also include the shackles of the church. The contradiction, while it did chafe, never broke through as long as there were Brits to fight or a peace process to pursue. 

Sinn Fein’s main reason for being has always been financial. The Republican Movement has a strong property portfolio, a multi-million pound income stream funded by various government schemes, businesses, donations, and other sundries. Sinn Féin’s role has been one of accountancy. In this regard, its politics and policies don’t actually matter, as long as the books are kept in order. The momentum of the peace process was enough to keep it going without having to get too serious about actually being a viable political party. 

Now the era of the peace process is over. The IRA as it was is gone, existing now as old men directing younger enforcers more concerned with cooking the books than the bombs or ballots. It is not the Catholic Church alone that lacks a surfeit of priests. Without the conflict and without the peace process, Sinn Fein does not have a fig leaf to hide behind that fits. This has become more evident since the retirement of Gerry Adams. 

Mary Lou McDonald came into leadership painted as a fresh face to take the party into the future. She rode the promise of the peace process dividend into popularity. In the South, however, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail aren’t exactly the Brits. Taking them on in opposition as if they were only took Sinn Fein so far. As the peace process ended, Sinn Fein could not figure out how to politic in absence of it, and kept running the same script: everyone and everything else bad, ourselves alone good. Without a proper foil – which the British and unionists most definitely are – that type of opposition does not work. It becomes hectoring, predictable. In the absence of presenting viable policy alternatives and a clear vision, it is merely the bellows of populism. 

The necessary self-importance of the peace process led to the pretentious policy of acting as the Government-in-Waiting. This was the outworking of having every previous utterance treated as historic. That led to an arrogance that assumed every future utterance would of course also be historic, and a need to behave accordingly. 

But how historic can a populist opposition party be? No longer having a clear vision of what it wanted to be – apart from in government – and only defining itself against what it didn’t want to be on any given day, the contradiction within its support base could not longer hold together. The tension reached breaking point, and the Rosary Brigade, whose faith in miracles proved more unwavering than its faith in the old messiah, was lost. 

It is likely, barring the resurrection of the IRA in the theatre of conflict, the Rosaristas are lost for good, finding their new messiahs preaching the old testament of “Ireland for the Irish”, a hymn they know the tune of, if not quite the new verses. 

The Marxists aren’t happy, either, with the undecided nature of new Sinn Fein. The policies being enacted by the party north of the border aren’t exactly the worker’s paradise promised. The pandering done to protect its nationalist flank from hemorrhaging completely only served to alienate its leftist base. A change of leadership is only deckchair rearrangement, delaying the inevitable acceptance that the ship is sunk. 

Like the Worker’s Party before it, Sinn Fein will atrophy but remain a zombie party as long as the finances continue to need the cover the existence of the party provides. As for the Rosary Brigade, charge as it might on its new horses, it still remains the rump of the rump. 

Despite the pretensions of the first female Taoiseach-to-be, Sinn Fein never became, and now won’t be, the Government it thought it would. Maybe they will achieve a junior status in a coalition, but it won’t be as historic as what it believed it was entitled to. At its best, SF never reached majority status. The New Nationalists have captured Sinn Fein’s rear and will be unlikely to do better. The New Nationalists represent a regressive strain of politics that has always been in Ireland. They are what enabled the Catholic Church, the mothers and babies homes, the misogyny, the sexual oppression, and the cover-up of child sex abuse. 

As the old messiah used to say, they haven’t gone away ye know. That doesn’t mean they represent the majority, any more than Sinn Fein’s claims that it was the Government-in-Waiting meant that it was the Government. While the New Nationalists may appear to be novel, earning new money for old rope only lasts so long before the con is up. The electorate has already made clear it’s not going to be buying these wares in bulk.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

The Charge Of The Rosary Brigade

Carrie Twomey ✍ writes about The Secret Army.

Darragh MacIntyre’s BBC documentary, The Secret Army: The True Story of a Film Made Inside the IRA, was fascinating not least for what it left out. The threads are there for a curious journalist to pick up should they be so inclined.

The era that The Secret Army takes place in has yet to be deeply examined in the wider public realm, pop culture having spent more time on the European front of the Cold War, and not so much in the Middle East, African, or Latin American spheres.

As a somewhat myopic result of focusing on the East-West conflict, the intelligence battles involving the revolutionary groups of the 1970s and 80s often gets overlooked as a footnote to the bigger war.

The Secret Army is the curious tale of a possible Mossad-led intelligence operation in Northern Ireland that used unprecedented access to the IRA provided by a CIA consultant. However, if The Secret Army was the product of intelligence activity, the film itself would not have been the end goal. Nor would the IRA have likely even been the actual target of the operation. The Provisional IRA instead would have been a back door to the real prize: Gaddafi.

At the time of filming, the CIA had been badly burned by British intelligence and did not trust them. They had warned the Brits about the Cambridge spies and were spurned, leading to disaster for the US’s Russian operatives. They were dealing with Vietnam and had little support from the British on that front. The “special relationship” was full of distrust and suspicion, and did not lend itself to the spirit of intelligence sharing that is more common today. Additionally, sentiment in America at that time was far more sympathetic, if not to the IRA, to the raison d’erte of the IRA.

Plane hijackings were a regular occurrence during this time, which also shifted and concentrated the CIA’s focus. Africa and the Middle East would have far more interest than Belfast or Derry – except for where they intersected. In the early 1970s, that overlap was in Libya.

Rather than The Secret Army film being a CIA driven operation, it is more likely, however, that the CIA consultant J. Bowyer Bell's access to senior levels of the IRA was the prompt for activity that Mossad agent, the Nazi hunter Zwy Aldouby, engineered.

Prior to his book about the IRA, Bowyer Bell had written extensive histories on Israel and the Arab world. This cannot be a coincidence vis his relationship with Aldouby, who had built up a legend as an Arab American journalist with radical ties. Was Bowyer Bell aware of Aldouby’s Mossad history?

Certainly he was not introducing Aldouby to his IRA contacts as a Mossad agent. Aldouby’s legend would have been a door-opener, especially when meeting and interviewing men like Joe Cahill, who is seen in the film. From what MacIntyre has discovered in chasing The Secret Army, it appears Mossad had the senior agent in this operation.

Mossad’s interests in a mission of this kind are obvious. An opportunity to track weapons, routes, players, and training levels at the end point would be of immense interest to Israel.

Gaddafi expressed support for the IRA in August 1971 after seeing Joe Cahill give a press conference about internment. A Pan-Celticist activist in Ireland, who had been a Nazi collaborator in Breton, Yann Goulet, long friendly with various IRA figures, was asked by the Libyans to connect them with the Provisional IRA. He introduced Joe Cahill to their Algerian emissary in December, 1971.

All of this would have immediately attracted Israeli attention, and could have been a possible catalyst for sending Aldouby the Nazi hunter to Ireland with Bowyer Bell the international historian under the pretext of a film that was never intended to be released.

Many questions arise from MacIntyre’s research. The documentary mentions the film being sent to London for processing. Did Mossad have The Secret Army film developed in London as a way to stop the weapons flow? If so, it would appear the British response, typically, was to use the proffered intelligence goldmine to cultivate agents instead of taking definitive action. Did Aldouby sell the film to the British? Was the intervention of British intelligence a cover story given by Aldouby?

Whatever occurred may have likely contributed to the poisonous relationship between Mossad and MI6, which would continue to deteriorate throughout this period as both sides consistently withheld vital information from each other.

Mossad retained more than a passing interest in the doings of the IRA, related to gun running from Arab states, and would later be involved in surveillance that led to the Gibraltar SAS shoot-to-kill operation. Rather than deal with the British directly, they passed their information to the Spanish, who then relayed it to the British.

For the IRA, the film was a potential fundraising gift; a piece of propaganda guaranteed to raise hundreds of thousands, if not more. The downsides would not outweigh the prospective profit. The thing about the so-called Secret Army was that it was never that secret. The IRA would be running the same risk doing what they were doing whether it was on film or not.

As it turns out, regardless of whether the film was used to turn people, it wasn’t used to prosecute anyone so the immediately visible cost was nil. Long term, it is hard to say whether anyone who may have been turned by the British because of the threat of arrest due to the film evidence wouldn’t have been turned at some other point by a similar threat of arrest. It also raises questions about exactly who people may have been cultivated by, for surely it would not have been the British alone using the film as leverage.

Apropos the overall intelligence value of the film, the damage potentially done - not solely to the IRA - is incalculable. Whether the British were turning people for their own ends, or Mossad was cultivating assets and information as an alternative route to Gaddafi, the PLO, and others, the leverage created by this film could be immense.

A fascinating history is yet to be written about the IRA, the PLO, other factions and revolutionary groups, Mossad, the CIA, the British, and the competing intelligence wars. Much more detail needs to be confirmed to make any definitive conclusions. If the iceberg of the Stakeknife saga is any indication of what was actually going on at the time, this hidden history – the sheer amount of agents running around – would be a destabilising shock.

Perhaps MacIntyre’s documentary should have been called The Secret Battle, given The Secret Army film was a set-piece in service of a much larger secret war.

⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

The Secret Battle

Carrie Twomey 🎤 speaking on LMFM.

“Racism is not the answer” says Drogheda resident Carrie Twomey McIntyre.

She joined Michael Reade to discuss the D Hotel being turned into accommodation for International Protection Applicants.


Racism Is Not The Answer


⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)

Racism Is Not The Answer

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