identity politics

C’mon guys, the culture wars are over. Let’s make a proper peace.

Brian Walker on July 2, 2022, 5:26 pm

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The phrases “culture wars” and “identity politics ” are comparatively recent imports from America but people are using them as if they’ve been around forever. On the whole they are pejoratives, used by rightwing politicians to denigrate or “gaslight “ the slow march to freedom of women however described, and ethnic and social minorities, by creating “wedge issues” to stir up alarm and so divide and rule. Ireland as a whole was ahead of the game long ago. The rise …

Brexit is hard enough to live through without the Irish going bananas about the end of Britain

Brian Walker on May 6, 2019, 5:57 pm

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Joan Redmond is a high achieving young Irish historian who took a master’s in Cambridge and now teaches in King’s College London. She also tells us she’s married to an Italian. In the Irish Times she gives an account of how Brexit is making her feel insecure. While Irish history has always had a presence in Cambridge, it is something of a declining force – for the worse, as we have seen with the current standard of debate and knowledge …

The English, with an identity problem to die for

Brian Walker on May 29, 2017, 11:25 am

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As a little Bank Holiday sidebar, I nick part of Libby Purves’ meditation on Identity in the Times (£) today which laments a lack of the English variety and compares it mournfully with the rosiest possible version of the Irish kind. Being English, she actually thinks north and south are much the same – imagine! Libby, a broadcaster and journalist of my slight acquaintance is also a keen yachtswoman. She put into Schull in west Cork for the Fastnet film …

How Would Rory McIlroy Vote? And why that’s important.

Soapbox on April 29, 2015, 12:46 pm

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Predicated as it is on avarice and greed and standing as a monument to the necessity for mandatory wealth re-distribution, the most useless supplement of the year reappeared last week. The Sunday Times Rich List likes to rank all the people in the country who have more money than you. And expects you to pay for the privilege of reading about them. Not surprisingly, a certain young County Down sports celebrity –always keen to reassert his affinity with his place …

NI21’s ‘tús maith’ !

Concubhar on April 22, 2014, 11:31 am

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One swallow doesn’t make a Summer and one bilingual billboard can’t erase the generations of anti Irish language unionist politics – but the bold initiative by NI21 to include the Irish language in its election campaign has to be hailed as a breakthrough of sorts. Look at any of the unionist party websites and you will note the absence of any Irish language content and, on top of that, any reference to the Irish language is invariably hostile. The …