Book Launches

by Turps Thu May 07, 2009 01:58

It's not about the pigmentation and general appearance of the American (or west European) population; it's about the body of core cultural values - referred to as western values - that people of white ethnic origins (Irish, Greek, German, Italian, Scandanavian, British etc) brought with them to USA over two centuries of immigration. These values of the dominant groups, notwithstanding hypocrisy over slavery and assertions of democracy, were at the heart of asserted American (and European) cultural values until around the 1960s. Then the so-called white liberal vanguard began to question them until finally the establishment both republican and democrat gradually took them on board. Family values were among that core. People like Obama and Colin Powell have, by sheer talent and hard political graft, risen to the top of the political establishment. In doing so they personally have embraced many of the new replacement values of what the author of Bonfire of the Vanities calls The Power. The hispanics, the blacks and the asians in America generally have held on to the idea, if not always the practice, of pre-1960s family values, and large sections of white middle americans (sometimes called rednecks) too. In last year's presidential election in California the Paragraph 8 referendum supporting the idea of marriage as being between a man and a woman (an old value) was carried with huge support from newly registered black voters who also voted for Obama. White american liberals and republicans have also embraced other new values about culture, arts, crucifixes and christmas trees, schooling, war and intellectual debate;so it's not just a big blush-up over sex matters.

I too am curious about Fennell being in the company in recent times of the Stalin-admiring B&ICO remnants. He, BICO, Limerick TD Jim Kemmy and CCO'B all formulated their views on Irish nationalism and the British nationalism of Ulster unionists quite independently of each other. There were nuanced differences of emphasis between these people and they would never have agreed to appear on the same platform. Fennell was a declared Irish nationalist but clearly revised the concept of that nationalism and urged other nationalists to do so. BICO seemed to favour British nationalism over Irish nationalism (and have done a U-turn in recent years), and CCO'B and Jim Kemmy probably regarded themselves as post-Irish nationalists (recovering Irish nationalists if you like).

As I don't live anywhere near North Dublin I won't be going along to the book launch in the Parnell Square venue, but I'll certainly order a copy from my local bookseller.

by Abbie Lane Thu May 07, 2009 00:26

Who gives a f. what colour Americans, Irish, or the entire human race will be in 50 yrs?
Racists that's who. The ancestors of Europeans came from Africa. Here's a recent, forensic anthropological reconstruction of what they looked like.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1683473/forensic_s...pean/

by Northside Observer Wed May 06, 2009 21:41

"This points to an exit from western civilization (in the US) , which he thinks has been a cultural trend in western Europe too."

Ahem. So Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Jesse Jackson (for a start)
aren't representatives of Western Civilization then? Fennell conflates ethnicity with a
civilization. And besides, I find Fennell's ideas disturbing close to those of conservatives like
Mark Steyn, with their warning that Muslims in Europe are "outbreeding" Christians (so every
Muslim born in Europe is going to turn in a fundamentalist then?).

As for Jack Lane, Brendan Clifford and their books on Bowen and the Manserghs (Nicholas and
Martin): they've been very critical of them in the past, and I think it's because they don't like the Anglo-Irish as a social group.

Lane said something about the AIs not taking part in the building of the Irish state
in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Also, Bowen and Nicholas Mansergh Senior both did some
work for the UK government during the Second World War,which Clifford believes proves
neither were truly Irish.

Also,something else-I read somewhere that Nicholas Mansergh wrote an essay in the
1950s which was critical of the Edwardian "two-nations" argument for Ulster Unionism

Come the 1970s, Clifford and Co. made a whole career out of mixing that same "two-nations"
argument with Stalinism. Fennell,the Cruiser and Jim Kemmy peddled similar concepts, and
I wouldn't be surprised if Eoghan Harris was influenced by these ideas.

Despite their belligerent attacks on Roy Foster, Harris, Unionists et al, Clifford & the Irish Political Review still call themselves two-nations supporters rather than
Irish Nationalists or Irish Republicans. How that squares with their call for a United
Ireland I don't know.

by Turps Tue May 05, 2009 13:24

Fennell probably wouldn't call himself a leftwinger either. During his writing career since the seventies he seems to have bestraddled an intellectual tightwire suspended aloof from traditional concepts of left and right, offering his decentralization views to provo Sinn Fein and the SDLP and the unionist lawyer Desmond Boal. In 1967 he had letters in the Irish Times asserting that Ulster unionists felt themselves to be ethnically British and that southern Irish nationalists had been unable to convince them that some day they would wake up and realize that they were 'really' Irish. During the turbulent seventies he described the Catholics in NI as "the Irish nation in Ulster" and he described the Protestants as the "Ulster British". He proposed federal government as a way of squaring the ethnic identity circle.

On the matter of caucasian Americans not reproducing themselves and heading for ethnic minority status in a future USA where blacks, Asians and hispanics would collectively outnumber the whites, well, he was referring to a statistical fact. He surmised that a cultural death wish among whites may be influencing the lack of will to maintain numbers by upping the birth rate to 2.1 per married couple. This points to an exit from western civilization, which he thinks has been a cultural trend in western Europe too.
Whether such an analysis is Right or Left is something activists can discuss, if they think demographic trends are worth discussing. But if demography is thought to be a politically incorrect topic for discussion then there will be a taboo on discussion.

My view is that Fennell is not of the right or the left as we conventionally understand such terms. He is first of all an independent thinker, philosopher and cultural critic. His independent stance has puzzled and annoyed many people on the left and right. His writings have provoked several Irish people into thought (something that CCO'Brien did in his unique way too) and for me that is reason enough to read his writings.

What is the birth rate in the Irish republic currently? Is it worrying or not?

by Martinson Sun May 03, 2009 16:20

That is the same Des Fennell that wrote the infamous article about the " the white population is not reproducing itself" and
getting rid of “the "politically correct” rules that bear on women’s lives, and particularly on motherhood" last year.

Not a left-winger at all, and I wouldn't want to read his new book if it contains similar obnoxious sentiments.