Today is St. Patrick’s Day, which is when people around the English speaking world celebrate having driven the Irish from their community. Businesses dust of the old “Irish Need Not Apply” signs and post them up. People mock the Irish by getting drunk and starting fights in public. Everyone wears green. Going out for corned beef and cabbage is a big thing, even during the pandemic. The meal is capped off by leaving a small tip in the tradition of the flintiest people on earth.

This is not true, of course, but it would probably be a better way to respect the Irish people than the current way of celebrating the day. St. Patrick’s Day in America is mostly just another version of Cinco de Mayo. That is, a reason for restaurants to roll out some themed specials and college kids to wear silly outfits. The difference is the college kids will not get in trouble for making fun of the Irish or for culturally appropriating them by wearing stereotypical Irish clothing.

The Irish are, however, a good topic for dissidents to study. Ireland struggled through a long and unpleasant occupation by a people who sounded a lot like them and looked like them but were not them at all. The Irish were ruled for a long time by clever, resourceful aliens. Crushing Irish resistance became an obsession with the British at times, even when it was not in their interest. This is, of course, the situation for white people in America now, just without an armed resistance yet.

How the Irish fought the British and how the British fought back is something highly relevant to modern America. The Irish eventually won their independence by driving up the cost of occupation. This came at a heavy cost to the Irish, as well. There are more people of Irish descent in America than in Ireland, because the long battle with the British made living anywhere else better for most Irish. There is also the fact that Ireland was never and will never fully united under the Irish flag.

Ireland is also a great example of how negative identity can destroy a people much faster than a conqueror. The Irish during the struggles became a people defined by their hatred of the British and their long history of oppression by the British. This made them wholly unequipped to go into the world as a full independent people. Ireland was immediately consumed by globalism. First it was the boom-bust of global economics and then it was the homogenization of global culture.

Starved of its ancient enemy, the Irish had no reason to exist, so the Irish ruling class joined the global ruling class, in spirit if not actuality. What that means for Europeans is embracing a plan of self-eradication. They elected a gay Indian as their ruler and set about importing as many nonwhites as they could find. Ireland’s Project 2040 promises to import a million Africans. If you do the math, they plan to make the Irish a minority in Ireland in this century. It is a plan for national suicide.

There is a popular meme where you see American soldiers disembarking on D-Day being told their kids will be trans or some other equally vulgar fad. The idea is that if our ancestors knew what defeating the fascists would lead to in a few generations, they would have refused to fight. One suspects that if Michael Collins could have seen Leo Varadkar, the gay Indian prime minister of Ireland, he and his compatriots would have turned their guns on their own people.

It is no surprise that the Irish have often called themselves the blacks of Europe, as they share the same sense of identity as American blacks. The Irish think the comparison works because they are both musical people, but it works better in the context of negative identity. Both the Irish and American blacks are defined by their long struggle, real and imagined, with another people. Without that struggle, the Irish have ceased to exist in a meaningful way. Like their memories, Irish is history.

There is a lesson here for dissidents across the West. It is not enough to hate the ruling class and hate the liberal democratic system that sustains them. Hatred is a powerful motivator and a powerful rallying cry. It can only be a tactic in the larger strategy for national independence.  It may feel good to hate a person or a group of people, but it can never come to define you or your people. By rooting identity in the relationship with another group, you become that group’s slave.

This is why Jews have survived as a tiny minority, often among people who hate them, without having to assimilate. Jewish identity is a positive one. It is largely the same in all times and all places. They adjust to the host population or in the case of Israel, the relative strength of her neighbors. Otherwise, Jewish identity in 19th century Russia is the same as in 21st century Manhattan. The people and places change, but Jews and the complaints about them remain the same.

This is why “Yes, But Is It Good for the Jews?” is an old punchline to jokes. Jews are famous for always thinking first about whether some situation, even a disaster, is good for them and their people. They joke about it among themselves. No one ever asked, is it good for the Irish, but plenty of Irish wondered if it was bad for the British. They were, in effect, putting the interest of the British ahead of their own. Because they have a positive identity, Jews never think this way.

If the pubs are open in your part of the hellscape that is Covidian America, enjoy a green beer and some inauthentic Irish culture. Everyone, even the Irish, are entitled to have some fun when the chance arrives. In between points of green beer, think about why Irish has been reduced to a trashy holiday and how best the fight for national sovereignty can avoid the fate of the Irish. If freedom means infinity Africans and gay Indian prime ministers, what is the point of the struggle?

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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