If the Taoiseach is calling for the removal of a statue of a republican accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, should he not be apologising for his party’s fascist past?
Early Fine Gael is steeped in racism and anti-Semitism.
Indeed Oliver J Flanagan, former Defence Minister and father of the current Justice Minister, urged the Government to follow the Nazis’ example and “rout the Jews out of this country”.
Seeing that modern history is being revisited and revised – much of it through brazen virtue signalling – it’s time attention was turned to the rampant racism in Ireland’s political past.
This week the Taoiseach said the statue of IRA leader and Nazi collaborator Sean Russell in Dublin’s Fairview Park might have to be taken down.
If that’s the case, then many other monuments
to prominent republicans might also have to be removed as the prevailing attitude during WW2 was “Britain’s enemy is our friend” – even if it meant having Nazis as pals.
If we want to go back further, didn’t the leaders of the 1916 Rising want a German prince to run the hoped-for new state, even though Germany had been involved in numerous atrocities in Belgium and was using slaves in its West African colonies?
But seeing that Leo Varadkar is leading the anti-slavery and anti-racism charge, it might be time he addressed some of these issues which have haunted Fine Gael.
The Taoiseach and his Justice Minister might
apologise for his party’s flirtation with fascism and for the anti-Semitic statements made by leading party members.
At the height of the Holocaust, in May 1943, as the gas chambers consumed millions of innocent men, women and children, Oliver J Flanagan spoke of Ireland’s own Final Solution.
He promised to rid Ireland of the Jewish stranglehold when he stood as a candidate in Laois-Offaly.
This twisted bigot was speaking to a receptive public as, after a landslide victory, he demanded emergency orders “against the Jews who crucified Our Saviour 1,900 years ago and who are crucifying us every day of the week”.
The phoney excuse that no one here knew what was taking place in Germany at the time is exposed when, as the incinerators at Auschwitz blazed, the Fine Gael Defence Minister added: “There is one thing that Germany did and that was to rout the Jews out of their country.
“Until we rout the Jews out of this country, it does not matter a hair’s breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are, there is the honey and where the Jews are, there is money.”
And lest we forget – although Leo and co would like to – the party’s early leader Eoin O’Duffy raised a Blueshirt brigade to fight with Franco’s fascists in Spain only for them to be sent home due to incompetence and drunkenness.
Hitler’s pal would rule the dictatorship that was Spain with a fascist iron fist for more than four decades but when he died in 1974, then Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Liam Cosgrave would be among the first to express condolences over the mass murderer’s passing.
More recently, Enda Kenny used the word “n****r” in the punchline of a racist joke about the murdered Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba.
He claimed it was taken out of context but failed to explain how a black man and the “N” word came to be in the same sentence. Maybe Leo can.
Micheal Martin will no doubt want to forget that former Taoiseach Eamon de Valera went to the German embassy in Dublin to express his condolences on the suicide death of Adolf Hitler in May 1945.
Think about that one for a moment. The world was rejoicing that the earth was rid of a psychopath who murdered six million Jewish people and
who headed a regime which enslaved millions more, yet Dev was lamenting this evil monster’s passing.
The smashing statue craze is likely to continue but will do absolutely nothing for those who are enslaved.
Indeed, there are more slaves in the world now than there were in the 19th Century or in the Roman era.
Why not break up the priceless sculptures of leaders and aristocrats from ancient Greece and Rome as they undoubtedly had many slaves?
The reality is it’s easier for the likes of Varadkar to talk about getting rid of a few statues and plaques but harder to undo political mindsets that have permeated his party and Irish politics down the decades.
