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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   26547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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The Karen Sleeper Cell Has Activated

A woman in Kansas City attempted to set fire to a warehouse that was alleged to be an ICE facility of some sort. Or, maybe, it was planned to be an ICE facility in the future. Or something.

I suppose there's room to quibble over this being a technical act of terrorism, insurrection, or just normal arson. Despite my tongue-in-cheek title, I also don't think this is some sort of a flashpoint for semi-organized violence on the part of lefty activists. Probably, it's just one individual who took a leave of their senses and did something dumb, pointless, and illegal.

But it is worth speculating on, on the internet, the mental processes that led to this behavior. One product of the many, many, _many, comments on the Minnesota ICE shootings was the idea that a large part of what's going on is an extreme from of LARPing. Some of these protestors see themselves literally as the inheritors of the Civil Rights Movement, the American Revolution, and The Rebels from Star Wars all in one. They are of The One Right and True Cause and, therefore, all of their actions have inherent justification.

When that line of thinking gets to compound on itself for long enough, people start to burn things.

I've always been suspicious of the "radicalized online" idea. Aside from a few already very mentally odd individuals, I don't buy the idea that you can read enough schizo posts that, one day, you decide to up end your life and do something drastic. I think it's far more likely you just spend more and more time online and indoors engaging in fantasy conflicts.

But I do believe in radicalization as a concept more broadly. Cults and mass social movements exemplify this. At a lower stakes level, simply hanging out with a certain "scene" (think metalheads, goths, punks, whatever) can meaningfully change a person's behaviors and beliefs.

I wonder to what extent the various Minnesota-like organized protesting is now seriously breaking contain for lefties - many of them female - who would, otherwise, mostly vent their aggravation by doing their own kind of schizo posting on Facebook or elsewhere. If this is the case, then we're dealing with something a lot more like a cult or, more geopolitically relevant, something similar to how ISIS spread so quickly after their initial emergence. That does concern me.

Irish-related news about ICE, there's an Irish guy in detention and complaining long and loudly about how he's being held in a concentration camp, etc. Turns out our friend has a bit of a criminal record back home, as he skipped off to the USA instead of facing drug charges in Ireland back in 2009. He overstayed (probably deliberately, you would have to imagine) a tourist visa and did what a lot of illegal Irish do: settle down in Boston, get a job, and establish a life.

Well, it's all caught up with him now. So ICE at least are not only persecuting brown people, they're persecuting white people too! 😁

Seamus Culleton, the Irish man who has spent months in a Texas immigration detention centre, failed to appear in court in Ireland in 2009 on drugs-related charges.

A bench warrant for his arrest was issued in April 2009, one month after he had moved to the United States.

Mr Culleton, 38, has been in custody in El Paso, Texas, almost 4,000km from his home in Boston, after he was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last September.

Originally from Glenmore in Co Kilkenny, he had previously been undocumented in the US, and was in the final stages of receiving his Green Card and had a valid work permit, according to his lawyer.

It has now emerged that Mr Culleton had been charged with the unlawful possession of drugs, possession for sale and supply, as well as obstruction in relation to an incident on 17 May 2008 in Glenmore.

After he failed to appear at a sitting of New Ross District Court to face the charges in April 2009, a judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest.

Turns out I'm not the only one less than sympathetic to the guy (he could have gone the legal route, and the fact that he knew he had criminal charges in Ireland meant that he wouldn't be eligible means he deliberately broke the law and kept right on breaking it and hoped that he could continue to lie and get away with it):

Alarm bells should have rung when Seamus Culleton said he was being held in a “modern day concentration camp”.

The ­Irishman was detained by US Immigration and Customs ­Enforcement (ICE) agents last ­September and sent to a ­facility in El Paso, Texas, while he fights ­deportation.

Speaking on Liveline last week, he reported that the toilets and showers there are filthy and the portion sizes of the meals served to detainees are more suitable for children.

Unpleasant, no doubt. You certainly wouldn’t be giving the place a five-star review on Tripadvisor.

Historians of the Nazi period, however, have tended to place the fact that the jacks could have done with a squirt of Toilet Duck at the lower end of the scale of offences in Auschwitz.

Nor were inmates offered a free flight home and $3,500 (€2,950) in cash to leave, which Culleton turned down. As a result, US authorities deny he is being detained at all, since he could leave at any time.

...In due course, it turned out that Culleton had other reasons for worrying about returning home.

Sleuths on social media dug up the inconvenient fact that, back in 2009, the Kilkenny native had failed to appear in court on various charges, including the unlawful possession of drugs for sale and supply.

A warrant was issued for his arrest. Now, it could be there is a perfectly innocent explanation for the drugs he allegedly had in his possession all those years ago. Had he chosen to go to court at the time, we might have heard it.

...All the same, Culleton has little cause for complaint. Had they known about the drugs charges at the time, he would not have been allowed into the US in the first place. Immigration desks at US airports are not famed for their happy-go-lucky attitude, after all.

He went to the US on a visa waiver programme, which allows tourists to stay for up to 90 days. No extensions are permitted, and work or study is forbidden. The rules are clear. By playing hide and seek with the authorities, Culleton got a generous portion of ­extra years in the States.

...Faced with a man who turned out to be a victim of nothing other than his own bad choices, we are apparently meant to wring our hands and rend our clothes and demand that ­Something Must Be Done.

Something is being done in ­Culleton’s case. He has received “due process”. An immigration judge last September said he must leave.

As Foreign Minister Helen McEntee told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday: “We can’t interfere in another country’s immigrations laws.”

Precisely. We deport people who are here illegally too (albeit nowhere near enough for many voters’ liking).

For Micheál Martin to use his visit to the White House on St Patrick’s Day to unfurl a “Free Seamus” banner — as many seemingly want the Taoiseach to do — would be the height of hypocrisy, not to mention a waste of a rare opportunity to raise matters of far greater urgency to the Irish people.

Illegal Irish immigrants are ­simply experiencing what Mexicans and others have experienced for years — something from which they had largely been spared because of the powerful voices in the States lobbying on Ireland’s behalf.

The real reason for the hue and cry over Culleton, of course, is that the latest deportations by ICE are ­happening under Trump.

Though one of Trump's ex (and embittered) officials seems to be trying to stir the pot:

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has said the Irish man who has been detained for months in the US will be released soon because “he’s white”.

...Scaramucci said on his podcast: “So, what is the elephant in the room? He’s white. He’s blanco de blanco, OK? And these [ICE] guys are on tape saying [to immigrants], ‘Well, I don’t like your accent’. These guys are on tape in their masks, aggressively going after brown and black people.

“Trust me — when this services to Donald Trump, he’s going to look at the guy and say, ‘This guy’s white! What the hell are you guys doing?’ And that’s the facts. Now, we can skirt around them and we can pretend that’s not happening, but it is happening.”

Scaramucci said “the Irish Government will likely make an appeal on his behalf, and it will likely be accepted” and Mr Culleton “will likely be released”.

...Meanwhile, an Irish-American att­orney has raised fears that ICE agents will target undocumented Irish at St Patrick’s Day celebrations in the US.

James P Cavanaugh, an attorney and county commissioner in Omaha, Neb­raska, said there was “considerable fear” last year in the US on the Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo.

Mr Cavanaugh, who works with individuals seeking to ascertain rights to overseas citizenships, said ICE agents have attended public events.

“Folks who have maybe not perfect documentation would be very, very leery to go out to St Patrick’s Day,” he said. “There will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, nationwide coming out, and it’ll be very interesting to see how that plays out.

...Brian O’Dwyer, the chairman emeritus and founder of the Emerald Isle Immigration Centre, said he has heard of cases of Irish immigrants being held in ICE detention centres for months.

“It’s not unusual, five, six months. I’ve heard of people that have been kept in detention, who I know of, who agreed to be deported, and they still kept them in detention until they figured out a way to get them out of the country,” he said.

Mr O’Dwyer, a prominent advocate for immigration rights, knows of families who have been separated by deportations during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and said it has had a chilling effect on the undocumented Irish living in the US.

“They just get on a plane and go home,” he said. “They see the writing on the wall, and particularly they hear all these horrible stories about the detention, and they say, ‘I don’t want that to happen to myself or to my family. I have health problems. I certainly don’t think I could survive 30 days or 60 days in detention’.”

And you know what I say about that, as an Irish person? Good! If they're there illegally and breaking the law, go the legal route or get out. What's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander, and if under Trump crackdowns are being impartial as to who is getting cracked down on, then that's the right way to do it. You can argue about how they're doing it, but not who they're doing it to, if 'blanco de blanco' get the same treatment.

He overstayed (probably deliberately, you would have to imagine) a tourist visa and did what a lot of illegal Irish do: settle down in Boston, get a job, and establish a life.

That bit was funny, I have to admit.

We were not sending our best there! 😁 Scooted off to Amerikay around age 21 to dodge drug and assault charges at home. Probably only a very small fish re: the drug dealing, but he didn't stick around for the court case. He broke the law so he should face the consequences. It may well be tough, he may well be a solid citizen in the USA, but if the authorities had known about his criminal charges back then, very very unlikely he would have been permitted to immigrate.

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