Last paragraph is the best. I've had a lot of fun on Twitter informing "woke" British people of the American origins of pretty much everything they say. What's really hilarious is that these people, being Americanized, have adopted the chic Anti-Americanism of elite Americans, which itself is a deeply American thing, so when you tell these America-bashing Americanized uncompensated functionaries of the American Empire just how Americanized they are, including by detailing the American origins of all their little Americanisms, they tend to get pretty angry. I imagine the newly "cosmopolitan" Irish are much the same.
They all seem to think that Americanism amounts to something like "supporting the Republican Party."
From my position here in the imperial metropole, all these would-be cosmopolitans in provincial capitals like Dublin and London look like hilariously aspirational-yet-clueless rubes whenever they parrot prestige American ruling class gunk like "systemic racism" or "white fragility". A bunch of hicks, really.
Oh I've read it before, it's a classic. Thanks for linking it, I'll reread it and use it as a springboard for further cruel ridicule of Americanized Dubliners when I get a minute.
Speaking of Irish-Americans, I now live in a comically affluent suburb called Dublin, Ohio which really goes overboard with celebrating its partial Irish origins. We have the world's biggest Irish culture festival -- I actually play a bit of Irish fiddle myself and have posted videos to YouTube (don't worry, I don't do the plastic Paddy thing).
Yep. My personal favorites are the ones who built an entire political identity during the Bush years on opposition to American military imperialism and its attendant death and destruction yet went on to be vocal supporters of Hillary Clinton, of all people. There's just zero sophistication to their "sophisticated" opinions.
Fantastic piece, truly. The stuff on how Ireland appeared to you as a kid looking on was particularly striking. Really interesting.
A couple petty points:
“While at school the Tiger Economy was already emerging, a product of a highly educated workforce, a natural flair for the sort of schmoozing that is so important to business in the 21st century, an absence of post-industrial problems, and the English language (‘now wouldn’t we be nicely fucked if they had succeeded’, the Dublin novelist Roddy Doyle is supposed to have once said when discussion of the Gaelic revival movement came up).”
Hate to be a jerk, but you forgot “Shamelessly lowering corporate tax rates, making the island a notorious international tax haven, beloved by behemoth US tech companies and others.”
This was key. You can’t neglect it and just go full Tourist Board on how attracted Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. were to Ireland because of its vibrant, young, educated workforce. It’s like saying male tourists from around the world flock to Thailand for its food. Sure the food’s good, but still.
“There is also an argument that Irishness is attractive to some Americans because it has that rare sense of white victimhood.”
Alas, it’s a very bad argument. Irishness is attractive to many Americans because we find the accent really cool. Pathetic but true. After that, it‘s pretty much all kitsch. We like the kitsch
Most people in the US think Africa is entirely black and would be surprised to learn it contains Arab counties. We’re not that strong as a people on world history, geography, etc. With the exception of some aging citizens of Irish descent (Biden, etc.) few, if any, Yanks imagine Ireland could even enter a victimhood contest, much less get past the first round.
Educated Americans (a minority) likely view Ireland less as a tale of centuries of oppression and more by the late 20th C history in the north: the epitome of a senseless, unnecessary violent conflict that made the natives’ lives shit. A conflict that was romanticized by remarkably foolish Americans in Boston who wanted in on the cool of violence and political indignation.
In any case, it’s 2023 and in America (and I would bet the vast majority of the world) the lingering effects of 1800s British policy on what is now an affluent, white European Island with a smaller overall population than NYC just doesn’t resonate. There’s just been too much subsequent history and suffering around the world for Ireland to be reflexively viewed by other nations the way it still often is by itself, the UK and a tiny subset of aging Irish-Americas. V.S. Naipaul was particularly scathing on this point. Might be worth googling his brutal take.
“Yet the problem for Ireland’s cultural establishment is that their modern vision of Ireland seems pretty similar to the ‘modern’ vision of Britain dreamed up in the Blair years — which is essentially an ideal imagined by America’s coastal elites.”
Oh, man. I’m ambivalent about commenting on this. I think it’s both a fine rhetorical strategy and a good morale-boosting way to look at things. I very much want you to be strong and confident when you fight the invasion of the woke, but I also think it’s short sighted and risky.
The current pernicious language, beliefs, attitudes & assumptions of American coastal elites are not innate to them. They arose when women, two very large succeeding generations of young people, academics, diversity hires, lawyers and Human Resource people gained control of major institutions in America.
Alas, many of these groups and forces exist abroad. Wokekess may just spawn naturally from them in the 21st century. Beware!
My mother was Irish, brought up in India, and through the war in Belfast. I, along with my siblings spent many summer, Easter and Christmas holidays with Granny at her home on the Newtonards Road right through the high point of the 'troubles'. They only really impinged after going to University and dating a Catholic boy who lived on the Bogside in Derry. Me, an English Protestant was welcomed into his circle of family and friends one magical summer in the early 80's. When I talk to family and friends still in Northern Ireland, they like me, have little recollection beyond the same freedoms we had here at home in England - we could go where we wanted, do what we wanted and were rarely aware of anything going on in politics beyond the checkpoints going into the city centre. I still spend a lot of time in and around Belfast.
This article reflects my own family. I was born into a half English half Irish family just as the troubles were coming (mercifully) to an end. My mothers family came from county Antrim and my Grandmother was fiercely Republican (much to my England Rugby supporting dads amusement). Though my Grandparents were farmers, my aunts and uncles would go on to have careers all over the world. Having visited Northern Ireland nearly every year of my life, its just remarkable to see how much has changed even in my lifetime, let alone for those who lived through the troubles from beginning to end.
As Dad was from rural Donegal- I had to travel via Northern Ireland. I remember British Soldiers on a checkpoint making faces at us when we were small One year we had to be guided out of Belfast Airport by the RUC, there were still barricades errected from riots the night before. My cousins would sometimes get a new school mate who was from across the border - The parents had been advised to leave their town
(There were a lot of people from the North of Ireland in my High school. Ulster West of the Bann, and Donegal- This may have due to the fact that the owner of one of the local construction firms was from there- ) Kudos Ed on noting that the West of Scotland is different- The West of Scotland is different because the immigrants Glasgow and Dundee got, were from the North of Ireland When the typical Irish American is from Connaught or Munster. Excepting Philidelphia which is the lost twin of Easterhouse Argentine footballers with an Irish surname-Wexford pale. Someone really needs to write an Albion's seed style book on the Irish diaspora
Also I think the Irish being super progressive is overdone. Firstly Greater Dublin is not Ireland- but is a damn big part of it. Secondly there has been since independence in Conor Cruise O Brien, Ruth Dudley Edwards et al- a type of Irish Person who is so desperate to show they are not a bog man or fish eater that they end up singing the Sash.
So the Google-- Pride worship is not a new trendv
There are points where Ireland diverges frim the progressive consensus- most notably neutrality. Where you see Irish progressives basically say the country has not got the state capacity of Slovakia. Imply that Norway and Iceland are pawns in the sides of the militarists and that the problems between Greece and Turkey are lesser than the dreary steeples . Oh and that India and Pakistan will be refrained from a genocidal raganork because a People Before Profit TD makes a tweet- There is both self loathing and hubris there.
Finally seeing how quick a lot of young Irish people are so quick to judge an elderly widow in Kilburn for being nervous and confused about the changes to her neigbourhood makes my blood boil.
Ireland of my childhood was poor, shockingly poor. The country had failed utterly at growing the eco int and the nadir was the supremely economicky inept government of Garret Fitzgerald, aneconomist of course.
Great stuff Ed. There really is a world of difference between the two. You seem to think that Dun Laoghaire is in Ireland - first time I’ve ever seen a fada on the U. I think they watch BBC Wales … 😜
I visited Ireland in 1984. I was 12. While I was there, I bought a book of Kerryman jokes. I was fascinated. At least two-thirds of them were disparaging jokes I already knew from the Auburn-Alabama football rivalry. So while not all white Americans are actually descended from the Irish, and we don't play the same football, we do seem to have inherited the Irish sense of humor, somehow.
I remember a murder similar to or perhaps the same as Ed describes. But it was Des Lynam (then on the BBC?) and a flash to the two soldiers being pulled out of their car and lynched - in the literal sense. Lynam shook his head and said something "like this really makes the football look trivial..."
It's not the tech hub of Europe. The big tech companies like Google book their European revenue (including UK) through Ireland in order to capitalise on the 12% corporate tax rate. This totally distorts the Irish "GDP per capita": Ireland also isn't "fantastically rich", their actual median disposable household income is comparable to the UK.
Is this true? I've seen the claim made but also counter-claimed. All I can is that anecdotally Ireland feels very wealthy, and not just the Southside of Dublin.
I'm not sure how we compare in terms of median income, but we in Ireland suffer from a lot of the same problems that you, Ed, like to highlight regarding England. Cheap luxuries, expensive necessities. Insane house prices, especially in Dublin. GP appointments that are getting harder to book, and more expensive to attend. An asylum crisis which the government is unable or unwilling to control. An overpriced, inefficient public transport system (each time the tram breaks down, I'll alarm my wife by announcing "If this happens one more time, we're emigrating to Norway!"). Dublin city centre is increasingly given over to junkies, migrants (and not the hardy Polish builder type of migrant, either) and British bachelor party-goers (who do cheer up the place a bit). Dubliners of my parents' generation stay in the suburbs, where they now have 900 satellite channels to distract them from the gnawing sensation that something is seriously wrong with the country ...
Sorry about the gloom. I should probably have responded on a sunny morning after a fry-up instead of at the end of a long day in the office. Note to self: reflect first, post later! XD
Oh, I could write a book (hopefully I never do) entitled 'Airport Bus Journeys From Hell.'
In London, by contrast, I once took the Tube from Heathrow to South Kensington, heard Low Mass at the Brompton Oratory, then zipped back to Heathrow ... and made my connecting flight. Not a stunt I'd attempt in Dublin xD
Perhaps it has changed but 5 to ten years ago I had the impression that on visiting Belfast the standard of living was higher there. Anecdotally, friends in their 20s were buying cars and houses while those in the republic were still renting in house shares. Consumer prices also significantly lower.
I now live in Germany where the difference is even starker in terms of quality of public infrastructure and services. But the same comparison applies to the UK v continental Europe.
Wonder if that's the phenomenon written about here, that general quality of life is better away from the economically most active parts of south-east England because of housing costs
Interesting, that might apply more to Britain, as far as I can tell all of Ireland seems to have similar housing costs. The multinational boom is pretty easily spread out, think of Cork or Galway.
I have the sense that in Britain the regional economy is weak compared to the South East.
Last paragraph is the best. I've had a lot of fun on Twitter informing "woke" British people of the American origins of pretty much everything they say. What's really hilarious is that these people, being Americanized, have adopted the chic Anti-Americanism of elite Americans, which itself is a deeply American thing, so when you tell these America-bashing Americanized uncompensated functionaries of the American Empire just how Americanized they are, including by detailing the American origins of all their little Americanisms, they tend to get pretty angry. I imagine the newly "cosmopolitan" Irish are much the same.
They all seem to think that Americanism amounts to something like "supporting the Republican Party."
From my position here in the imperial metropole, all these would-be cosmopolitans in provincial capitals like Dublin and London look like hilariously aspirational-yet-clueless rubes whenever they parrot prestige American ruling class gunk like "systemic racism" or "white fragility". A bunch of hicks, really.
Angela Nagle's piece I linked to at the end is so good.
Oh I've read it before, it's a classic. Thanks for linking it, I'll reread it and use it as a springboard for further cruel ridicule of Americanized Dubliners when I get a minute.
Speaking of Irish-Americans, I now live in a comically affluent suburb called Dublin, Ohio which really goes overboard with celebrating its partial Irish origins. We have the world's biggest Irish culture festival -- I actually play a bit of Irish fiddle myself and have posted videos to YouTube (don't worry, I don't do the plastic Paddy thing).
The same people who sneer at any American product or service as mass-produced come up with the most mass-produced American political opinions.
Yep. My personal favorites are the ones who built an entire political identity during the Bush years on opposition to American military imperialism and its attendant death and destruction yet went on to be vocal supporters of Hillary Clinton, of all people. There's just zero sophistication to their "sophisticated" opinions.
Fantastic piece, truly. The stuff on how Ireland appeared to you as a kid looking on was particularly striking. Really interesting.
A couple petty points:
“While at school the Tiger Economy was already emerging, a product of a highly educated workforce, a natural flair for the sort of schmoozing that is so important to business in the 21st century, an absence of post-industrial problems, and the English language (‘now wouldn’t we be nicely fucked if they had succeeded’, the Dublin novelist Roddy Doyle is supposed to have once said when discussion of the Gaelic revival movement came up).”
Hate to be a jerk, but you forgot “Shamelessly lowering corporate tax rates, making the island a notorious international tax haven, beloved by behemoth US tech companies and others.”
This was key. You can’t neglect it and just go full Tourist Board on how attracted Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. were to Ireland because of its vibrant, young, educated workforce. It’s like saying male tourists from around the world flock to Thailand for its food. Sure the food’s good, but still.
“There is also an argument that Irishness is attractive to some Americans because it has that rare sense of white victimhood.”
Alas, it’s a very bad argument. Irishness is attractive to many Americans because we find the accent really cool. Pathetic but true. After that, it‘s pretty much all kitsch. We like the kitsch
Most people in the US think Africa is entirely black and would be surprised to learn it contains Arab counties. We’re not that strong as a people on world history, geography, etc. With the exception of some aging citizens of Irish descent (Biden, etc.) few, if any, Yanks imagine Ireland could even enter a victimhood contest, much less get past the first round.
Educated Americans (a minority) likely view Ireland less as a tale of centuries of oppression and more by the late 20th C history in the north: the epitome of a senseless, unnecessary violent conflict that made the natives’ lives shit. A conflict that was romanticized by remarkably foolish Americans in Boston who wanted in on the cool of violence and political indignation.
In any case, it’s 2023 and in America (and I would bet the vast majority of the world) the lingering effects of 1800s British policy on what is now an affluent, white European Island with a smaller overall population than NYC just doesn’t resonate. There’s just been too much subsequent history and suffering around the world for Ireland to be reflexively viewed by other nations the way it still often is by itself, the UK and a tiny subset of aging Irish-Americas. V.S. Naipaul was particularly scathing on this point. Might be worth googling his brutal take.
“Yet the problem for Ireland’s cultural establishment is that their modern vision of Ireland seems pretty similar to the ‘modern’ vision of Britain dreamed up in the Blair years — which is essentially an ideal imagined by America’s coastal elites.”
Oh, man. I’m ambivalent about commenting on this. I think it’s both a fine rhetorical strategy and a good morale-boosting way to look at things. I very much want you to be strong and confident when you fight the invasion of the woke, but I also think it’s short sighted and risky.
The current pernicious language, beliefs, attitudes & assumptions of American coastal elites are not innate to them. They arose when women, two very large succeeding generations of young people, academics, diversity hires, lawyers and Human Resource people gained control of major institutions in America.
Alas, many of these groups and forces exist abroad. Wokekess may just spawn naturally from them in the 21st century. Beware!
My mother was Irish, brought up in India, and through the war in Belfast. I, along with my siblings spent many summer, Easter and Christmas holidays with Granny at her home on the Newtonards Road right through the high point of the 'troubles'. They only really impinged after going to University and dating a Catholic boy who lived on the Bogside in Derry. Me, an English Protestant was welcomed into his circle of family and friends one magical summer in the early 80's. When I talk to family and friends still in Northern Ireland, they like me, have little recollection beyond the same freedoms we had here at home in England - we could go where we wanted, do what we wanted and were rarely aware of anything going on in politics beyond the checkpoints going into the city centre. I still spend a lot of time in and around Belfast.
This article reflects my own family. I was born into a half English half Irish family just as the troubles were coming (mercifully) to an end. My mothers family came from county Antrim and my Grandmother was fiercely Republican (much to my England Rugby supporting dads amusement). Though my Grandparents were farmers, my aunts and uncles would go on to have careers all over the world. Having visited Northern Ireland nearly every year of my life, its just remarkable to see how much has changed even in my lifetime, let alone for those who lived through the troubles from beginning to end.
Excellent
Thanks for the shout out re Acton.
As Dad was from rural Donegal- I had to travel via Northern Ireland. I remember British Soldiers on a checkpoint making faces at us when we were small One year we had to be guided out of Belfast Airport by the RUC, there were still barricades errected from riots the night before. My cousins would sometimes get a new school mate who was from across the border - The parents had been advised to leave their town
(There were a lot of people from the North of Ireland in my High school. Ulster West of the Bann, and Donegal- This may have due to the fact that the owner of one of the local construction firms was from there- ) Kudos Ed on noting that the West of Scotland is different- The West of Scotland is different because the immigrants Glasgow and Dundee got, were from the North of Ireland When the typical Irish American is from Connaught or Munster. Excepting Philidelphia which is the lost twin of Easterhouse Argentine footballers with an Irish surname-Wexford pale. Someone really needs to write an Albion's seed style book on the Irish diaspora
Also I think the Irish being super progressive is overdone. Firstly Greater Dublin is not Ireland- but is a damn big part of it. Secondly there has been since independence in Conor Cruise O Brien, Ruth Dudley Edwards et al- a type of Irish Person who is so desperate to show they are not a bog man or fish eater that they end up singing the Sash.
So the Google-- Pride worship is not a new trendv
There are points where Ireland diverges frim the progressive consensus- most notably neutrality. Where you see Irish progressives basically say the country has not got the state capacity of Slovakia. Imply that Norway and Iceland are pawns in the sides of the militarists and that the problems between Greece and Turkey are lesser than the dreary steeples . Oh and that India and Pakistan will be refrained from a genocidal raganork because a People Before Profit TD makes a tweet- There is both self loathing and hubris there.
Finally seeing how quick a lot of young Irish people are so quick to judge an elderly widow in Kilburn for being nervous and confused about the changes to her neigbourhood makes my blood boil.
Ireland of my childhood was poor, shockingly poor. The country had failed utterly at growing the eco int and the nadir was the supremely economicky inept government of Garret Fitzgerald, aneconomist of course.
Greetings from Limerick. Absolutely spot on, if depressing, summary our present circumstances here. A bizarre affectation indeed.
Great stuff Ed
thanks!
Great stuff Ed. There really is a world of difference between the two. You seem to think that Dun Laoghaire is in Ireland - first time I’ve ever seen a fada on the U. I think they watch BBC Wales … 😜
I visited Ireland in 1984. I was 12. While I was there, I bought a book of Kerryman jokes. I was fascinated. At least two-thirds of them were disparaging jokes I already knew from the Auburn-Alabama football rivalry. So while not all white Americans are actually descended from the Irish, and we don't play the same football, we do seem to have inherited the Irish sense of humor, somehow.
I remember a murder similar to or perhaps the same as Ed describes. But it was Des Lynam (then on the BBC?) and a flash to the two soldiers being pulled out of their car and lynched - in the literal sense. Lynam shook his head and said something "like this really makes the football look trivial..."
That must have been the same one. It was definitely on a Saturday but perhaps later than I remember
There is a Loyalist mural of the two men:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205095395
found it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8WsD7SJdPw&ab_channel=TVArchivesNI
It's not the tech hub of Europe. The big tech companies like Google book their European revenue (including UK) through Ireland in order to capitalise on the 12% corporate tax rate. This totally distorts the Irish "GDP per capita": Ireland also isn't "fantastically rich", their actual median disposable household income is comparable to the UK.
Is this true? I've seen the claim made but also counter-claimed. All I can is that anecdotally Ireland feels very wealthy, and not just the Southside of Dublin.
I'm not sure how we compare in terms of median income, but we in Ireland suffer from a lot of the same problems that you, Ed, like to highlight regarding England. Cheap luxuries, expensive necessities. Insane house prices, especially in Dublin. GP appointments that are getting harder to book, and more expensive to attend. An asylum crisis which the government is unable or unwilling to control. An overpriced, inefficient public transport system (each time the tram breaks down, I'll alarm my wife by announcing "If this happens one more time, we're emigrating to Norway!"). Dublin city centre is increasingly given over to junkies, migrants (and not the hardy Polish builder type of migrant, either) and British bachelor party-goers (who do cheer up the place a bit). Dubliners of my parents' generation stay in the suburbs, where they now have 900 satellite channels to distract them from the gnawing sensation that something is seriously wrong with the country ...
Sorry about the gloom. I should probably have responded on a sunny morning after a fry-up instead of at the end of a long day in the office. Note to self: reflect first, post later! XD
The housing situation is just insane.
Also Dublin should have had a proper metro underground network years ago. shouldn't have to rely on an airport bus.
Oh, I could write a book (hopefully I never do) entitled 'Airport Bus Journeys From Hell.'
In London, by contrast, I once took the Tube from Heathrow to South Kensington, heard Low Mass at the Brompton Oratory, then zipped back to Heathrow ... and made my connecting flight. Not a stunt I'd attempt in Dublin xD
Perhaps it has changed but 5 to ten years ago I had the impression that on visiting Belfast the standard of living was higher there. Anecdotally, friends in their 20s were buying cars and houses while those in the republic were still renting in house shares. Consumer prices also significantly lower.
I now live in Germany where the difference is even starker in terms of quality of public infrastructure and services. But the same comparison applies to the UK v continental Europe.
Wonder if that's the phenomenon written about here, that general quality of life is better away from the economically most active parts of south-east England because of housing costs
https://inthesightoftheunwise.substack.com/p/episode-one-deano
Interesting, that might apply more to Britain, as far as I can tell all of Ireland seems to have similar housing costs. The multinational boom is pretty easily spread out, think of Cork or Galway.
I have the sense that in Britain the regional economy is weak compared to the South East.
Well, for Instance, Ireland’s GDP “grew” 26% when Apple moved their tax residency to the Emerald I. in 2015.
I think it is true, this is from the OECD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income