“We never had any intention of creating a new political party. We are about creating an ancient political party. A party that is so old that it is older than this fake republic. It is older than the Free State, it is older than Unionism, it is older than England itself. For as Pearse said there is ‘no truth but the old truth, no way but the old way, history records no other… reason and experience suggests no other.’ We know what the wheel of Irish nationalism looks like. We don’t need to re-invent it.” — Justin Barrett, Ceannaire an Pháirtí Náisiúnta
Providing an Alternative
While the Dublin Bay South bye-election is ostensibly a story about whether globalist Sinn Féin may or may not take a seat from globalist Fine Gael, the real dynamic of Irish politics has become the careful process of freezing out the nationalist right. In a political system that is increasingly conformist, this is the only issue truly at stake.
The “Other” in Irish politics, as in politics across the West, is undeniably nationalism. It is the only visible alternative, the only viable opposition and the only force that actually represents a different point of view. The ideas of homeland and belonging stand in distinction to the multinational values of openness and relativism that wage war on all notions of rooted identity. Having a place in the world and not just being a cog in the machine is now fundamentally at odds with the project of Liberal Ireland.
There is a peculiar discrepancy in the way the Irish State and the institutions of power in Irish society behave towards the National Party. On the one hand we are treated as completely irrelevant. On the other hand we are treated as something imminently threatening. The energy which has been exerted in attempts to frustrate, demoralise, censor, distort and in general destroy this movement, is worthy of satire. The extent of their open hostility is disproportionate to any impact they claim the National Party can affect. It could be that they are simply fanatics and that even the smallest heresy must be crushed. But more plausible is that they view Irish nationalism (liberated from Liberalism) as a long term viable threat; something that must be stamped out before it gets any bigger.
They cannot face the reality that, by their actions, they are creating the constituency for nationalism. In warring upon nationhood, whether they like it or not, they have made the Irish People homeless. It is not just individuals within Ireland that cannot afford a home, Irish people as a whole have been made homeless. Their motherland has been taken from them and sooner or later a great many of them are going to feel that loss. This feeling will not pass away as older generations die off. The loss of nationhood is something that endures through the generations. Indeed, it is the younger generations who will feel it more intensely than anyone.
Nationalism is a force in the world, not because somebody invented it but because it is within us, and as long as it is within us the forces of globalism will war upon us. Whoever wins this bye-election, whether it be Fine Gael or Sinn Féin or Labour or whichever of the system parties, they will continue their war against Irish nationhood. In government or out of government they will continue to push the same common agendas, and through it all every vote that is cast for Justin Barrett and the National Party, every show of support, every sign of growth or instance of publicity, the very continued existence indeed of the National Party will be treated as a potential viable threat to their anti-Irish project.
Consensus Politics
The manifestos of the main parties are all manifestos of globalism, all of them requiring the total eclipse of Irish nationhood. The assertion of positive values, the centrality of family formation, the moralisation of the native population, the focus on homes for the Irish People, all of these things are eschewed. Looking into the future, the possibility of a debt crisis looms with the threat of social upheaval in its wake but none of that is evident in the mainstream coverage of this bye-election. All we have are the system parties promising the Irish people a way out of crisis that is not in their power or their interest to deliver. All we have in this bye-election are apocalyptic denouncements of the “far right” by professional nation wreckers.
Eighteen months or so into an era of lockdowns, rolling restrictions, vaccination controversies and immense escalations of police powers, the seductive gleam of globalisation has surely softened. But it still represents the hegemonic order. All the system parties have acted, as you would have expected them to act, towards the consolidation of the dominant paradigm. The so-called parties of opposition have called for measures which no sane opposition would call for. No true party of Left opposition would call for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to implement an even more draconian lockdown. That would be dangerous to a real opposition which of course they are not. They are not threatened by power because they are in power. These are not parties of opposition, they are wings of the same political project.
The parties of the Left are less incensed over the policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael than they are over the mere existence of the National Party. They are less concerned with the forces who currently wield power in Ireland than they are with a party which, on the face of it, wields no power. They don’t go around taking down the posters of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. They don’t create dedicated counter canvassing teams to warn the voters of how evil these other parties are. Fianna Fáil might have overseen the destruction of the Irish economy, the country’s humiliation at the hands of the Troika and the scattering of our young people across the world, but at least they aren’t the “far right.”
They agree on most things but above all else they agree that you must not vote for the National Party. About that they are unanimous with a rage that has no equivalent in contemporary Irish politics. In no other case does the mere existence of a party, which they claim anyway to be irrelevant, evoke such a hysterical reaction. That is where the passion is or at least that is where the risk factor is. The politicians know it, the media hacks know it, the organs of the State know it and the mega-corporations know it. And to a greater and greater extent, the “man on the street” knows it. He knows that to vote in a certain way is to put himself beyond the pale and in so doing to put himself beyond the polite, the boring, the hypocritical and the mundane. He knows that to vote in a certain way will cause the institutions of Irish public life to cry out with one voice. He knows that even a single vote for the National Party strikes at the heart of the Irish establishment. He may or may not vote for the National Party currently. But the point is he knows.
Fear of Change
The only vote that can affect, in any way, the trajectory of this country is a vote for the National Party. We know this and they know this. At the so-called Le Chéile “anti-racism” demonstration last week that was very clear. They don’t care who you vote for as long as it’s not the “far right.” They don’t care who you vote for as long as you don’t do something meaningful with your vote. These are after all the people who have supported mass-immigration into Ireland, never questioning the economic motives of the sitting governments or of entities like IBEC. They have supported the importation of American style identity politics. They have supported the conditions for that type of polarising, racialised culture to emerge and they derive grant money for politicising it. They make a living out of turning Ireland into America.
Their morality is entirely a function of marketing. They don’t care what sort of person you are or what sort of life you have led, just so long as you couch your words in the right way, just so long as you bow your head at the right time, just so long as you tell the right lies. And if you negotiate the demented social minefield they have constructed, you get a certificate of moral superiority. It is evident that some of the most evil people in the country are walking around with such a certificate.
What is it about a political movement that resists replacement migration, corporate monopolies, interest capital, EU federalism and the killing of our children, that so infuriates them? What is it about a political movement that views the Irish People as something more than an economic calculation and views Ireland as something more than a global hub for a transient population, that so angers them? What is it about the National Party that Liberal Ireland cannot assimilate?
The truth, of course, is that the positions we hold are heretical to the contemporary economic and social order. To use the word “heretical” in this context is not to evoke religion as a metaphor but as a fact. It is simply a fact that this economic and social order is undeniably unified through a religious zeal. There has never been less of a separation of powers in Irish life than there is today. There has never been a greater intersection of religion, arts and politics as there is today, such that it is difficult to tell apart the politicians, the artists and the priestly class. But then it matters less and less the telling of them apart, and more and more the bowing to their commands. The first commandment is, “Thou shalt not vote for the National Party.”
All of the parties in Leinster House, including Aontú, are less independent political operators in the ordinary sense than they are a bulwark against a different form of social order. A vote for one of them will not change anything in Irish life. It will not precipitate anything that will not happen anyway. In fact, were you to remove all of these parties tomorrow (and not replace them with anything at all) the State would continue much in the same way as before. The trajectory would not change. EU federalism would continue, replacement migration would continue, the housing crisis would continue in one form or another, the lockdowns would continue. The Rainbow flag would still fly over the streets of Dublin like the Union Jack once did, symbolising the subservience of Ireland to the Global Order.
Parties of the System
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have been parties of Lockdown because they have been parties of the System. They have been parties of mass-immigration for the same reason. No Sinn Féin politician ever got up in Dáil Éireann and condemned the ongoing plantation of Ireland; that is the conscious demographic transformation of the last twenty years which constitutes one of the most significant occurrences in Irish history. They had nothing to say except to defend it at every opportunity. The idea that such a transformation might have any negative significance whatsoever, was unthinkable or at the very least unsayable. Further to this, they made it impossible for others to do so. Of course a party that made its deal with the East Coast establishment of the United States in the 1990s could never have been expected to address the real challenges facing Ireland in the twenty-first century. The money was too good for that.
Behind the trappings of loose ideology, these parties share the same rootless, reductionist and materialist worldview which would be as at home in London or New York or Brussels as it is in Dublin or Belfast. Their morality is the same, their first premises are the same. Where there is a difference, it is a difference within a controlled political spectrum. A difference between Keynes now and Friedman later, or Friedman now and Keynes later; all of it packaged in populist mantras that play one side of Irish society against another for short-term gains. And what’s more, all of it will soon be redundant in the face of what is to come.
As political machines the main Irish parties are mafias, ruthlessly dedicated to achieving office. But as players within the international scene, they are gatekeepers. They stand up together and condemn Viktor Orbán in Hungary for refusing to poison the minds of school children, for instance. When a nation diverges from the “one true path” they call for regime change or for it be cast out of the EU “paradise”. They bow to the same gods and to the same interests, the same symbols and the same banners. Moreso than even the flag of EU federalism, the Rainbow flag has come to represent this global hegemony, or rather that which emanates primarily from the money powers inside the United States.
The ultimate test of force is the ability to openly corrupt a nation’s children. If they can can do that, financial domination is a mere formality. This is why so much is at stake for them in the case of Hungary. Whereas Brexit nationalism was dangerous but incoherent, the situation in Hungary cuts closer to the bone. It challenges not simply the geopolitical games of globalism, the games which pit Atlanticism against continental Europe, but the very moral foundations of the ruling order.
Breaking the Consensus
This has implications for every policy platform of every major party. When Sinn Féin and Fine Gael talk about Irish Unity, for instance, what do either of them actually mean? Both of them have rejected the only basis of national unity which is the existence of the Irish People. It doesn’t matter how “civic” your concept of nationalism is, there is no possibility of a viable nation within the constraints of contemporary political mores. You cannot “unite” what will no longer exist. After all, everything in favour of nationality is now counted a great evil while everything destructive to nationality is counted a great good. Any body of culture or identity can be overwhelmed from without. There are no exceptions to this.
It is only appropriate then that Fine Gael try to outflank Sinn Féin on the issue of unity. Why not, after all? The Fine Gael concept of unity is the same as that of Sinn Féin. It is a reductionist political caricature within a body of larger interests. It is not Irish unity at all. It is a power game rigidly constrained by larger power games.
Irish people today are very good at doing what they are told. They are very good at trusting the government. They are very good at trusting the media. They are very good at going along to get along. But if the last eighteen months have taught us anything, it is that there is no escape in conformity. There is no escape in minding your own business. There is simply nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The coming social upheaval will spare nobody and certainly not your assets, your savings and everything else you take for granted. The times have become radical. The norm has become radical. It is about time that Irish people started doing something other than what they are told to do by the current political establishment. It is about time they broke the first commandment of Liberal Ireland and voted for the National Party.
This article was submitted by a National Party member. If you would like to submit an article for publication on the National Party website, follow this link.
Some Love for Sandwith Street, Inner City Dublin