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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   874 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 18, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Something I've wanted to ask you for a while is how much of the Irish obsession with Israel you think can be explained by Jew hatred (probably at least some) vs widespread Irish enthusiasm for horrific gratuitous violence as some sort of spectator sport. The fact that a band like Kneecap can name themselves after a torture procedure and have backing from the country's elites is pretty remarkable to me as someone not from the country - I can't imagine even the most gung-ho Americans would want to be publicly associated with a band called something like "Waterboarding".

The USSR was funding a lot of left wing groups. They did this throughout the west. Irish groups got / took more money because Ireland was seen as opposing the UK and thus NATO.

When the USSR ended the money dried up, but wealthy Muslim governments & individuals took over funding anti-Israel activism. So many left wing groups pivoted to focussing on Israel.

Oh, I'm a good old Rebel soldier, now that's just what I am. For this "Fair Land of Freedom" I do not give a damn! I'm glad I fought against it, I only wish we'd won. And I don't want no pardon for anything I done.

Three hundred thousand Yankees are stiff in Southern dust! We got three hundred thousand before they conquered us. They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot. But I wish we'd got three million instead of what we got.

I hate the Yankee nation, And everything they do; I hate the Declaration and the Constitution too; and I hate the glorious Union, and it’s flag red white and blue;

I can't take up my musket and fight 'em now no more. But I ain't gonna love 'em now that's for goddamn sure! I do not want no pardon for what I was, and what I am. And I won't be reconstructed, and I do not care a damn!

That’s a folk song from the southern United States from the late 1860s. It regularly got thrown into albums and collections of charming old songs from ye olde bygone Civil War era. It’s not played much anymore but it was regularly getting covered until the 1990s. But you can hear the violence in it, the “killing rage” as Eamon Collins would call it. Being exposed to intense political violence leaves a scar, and it’s a scar that can last a long time. I don’t think it’s just because the drunken violent Hibernians love violence.

wunderground.com has tens of millions of daily users, and it is named for the terrorist group The Weather Underground. It's an app that tells you the weather, it's not a rap group where you expect some edginess or weird politics.

Banana Republic has over 400 stores worldwide as the higher end brand for gap, and it's named for brutally repressive corrupt right wing Latin American dictatorships.

I don't think Kneecap is all that surprising in a world where Snoop Dogg, former crip, is a color commentary correspondent for the Olympics.

Ireland is also unique in Western Europe for being a state with a very recent myth of national liberation. In many ways, it's surprising that the IRA isn't more prominent in Irish culture.

I can't imagine even the most gung-ho Americans would want to be publicly associated with a band called something like "Waterboarding".

The name "Kneecap" specifically refers to the IRA torturing suspected informants. I think this scans rather differently to torture committed by agents of the state, which is the first thing people think of when they hear "waterboarding". A lot of Irish people still carry a residual fondness for the IRA (hell, one of our most popular political parties is literally the parliamentary wing of the IRA). I agree that American politicians would probably not want to be publicly affiliated with a band who named themselves after a torture technique used by agents of the state. But there are plenty of Democratic politicians who are eager to sing the praises of hip-hop musicians, many of which describe murdering e.g. their rival drug dealers in their lyrics.

The name "Kneecap" specifically refers to the IRA torturing suspected informants. I think this scans rather differently to torture committed by agents of the state, which is the first thing people think of when they hear "waterboarding". A lot of Irish people still carry a residual fondness for the IRA (hell, one of our most popular political parties is literally the parliamentary wing of the IRA).

Sure, but is this disagreeing with my point? The fact that there's plenty of support for the IRA and Sinn Féin suggests a lot of the Irish openly favour extreme violence against their perceived enemies in a way that I don't see as usual in other first world nations. My question is whether the fact that the typical Irish person's attitude towards Israel seems indistinguishable from that of Hamas/Hezbollah is a consequence of this type of attitude being redirected towards an easy new target more than a consequence of anti-semitism per se.

The fact that a band like Kneecap can name themselves after a torture procedure and have backing from the country's elites is pretty remarkable to me as someone not from the country

I interpret their name as a straightforward imitation of the violence (real or bragged about) in hip hop culture generally, plus the obvious fact that the IRA used to kneecap people.

As to why they have backing from the country's elites, I'd say this article puts its well:

This is Kneecap: they steal valour from physical-force republicanism to give their bien-pensant ‘West Brit’ views the lick of radicalism. They pull on a balaclava to hide the truth that their every utterance is likely to get the Trinity grads at the Irish Times rattling their jewellery in vociferous agreement.

It’s the performative nature of Kneecap’s radicalism that endears them to so many bourgeois youths in Britain and Ireland. I would wager that a majority of the people leaping up and down at Kneecap gigs as they rap ‘Brits Out!’ and ‘Fuck Israel!’ are kids of privilege. Indeed, the Irish Times published a piece earlier this year titled: ‘A middle-class millennial at a Kneecap gig: am I just cosplaying at republicanism?’ Yes, you are. But you’re not alone. Disguising milquetoast guff in radical garb is all the rage. So where posh young Brits will don Novara Media’s 25-quid earrings that say ‘Literally A Communist’ before wanging on about how fucking dumb ‘the gammon’ are, Kneecap fans will pull on a t-shirt featuring a Mick in a balaclava before wringing their untoiled hands over how pitiably traumatised the Irish are. Everyone hides their class prejudice behind class politics these days.

They express quintessentially bourgeois views with a fake veneer of working class radicalism.

Water boarding seems like a plausible enough metal band name to me.

In any case, brain dead anticolonialism is genuinely popular in Ireland as a shibboleth for anti-British sentiment, which they hold for historical reasons. Don’t know if they’re genuine antisemites or not.

Water boarding seems like a plausible enough metal band name to me.

A punk album, but close enough.

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