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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   873 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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A few weeks ago I spoke about Ireland's new President, the outspoken leftist Catherine Connolly. So far, her presidency is going about as expected:

President Connolly hosted a visit from Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg to Áras an Uachtaráin* today, while also greeting runners taking part in a Gaza solidarity fundraiser organised by a member of Kneecap** in the Phoenix Park.

I didn't think it was possible to be so annoyed by a single sentence.

*The President's residence in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

**A hip-hop band from Northern Ireland who were recently facing charges in the UK of incitement to violence and offering support to proscribed organisations, owing to their conduct at various gigs in which they urged attendees to "murder [their] local MP", chanting "Up Hamas" and leading attendees in chants of "Ooh! Ah! Hezbollah!"

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".

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.

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