Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Tom Hayden's wedding speech

Tom Hayden is an American left-wing activist, particularly well known for his part in the political campaigns of the 1960s. He was married at one time to the actress Jane Fonda and they had a son together whom they named Troy O'Donovan Hayden. The "Troy" was in honour of Nguyen Van Troi, a Viet Cong assassin, and the "O'Donovan" was for Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, an Irish Republican who organised dynamite campaigns in English cities.

The son is now called Troy Garity. A few years ago he married Simone Bent who is of African descent. It has been reported in the May 9th issue of The New Yorker that Tom Hayden honoured his son's marriage in the following manner:

As the evening progressed, the parents of both the bride and groom made speeches. Speaking off the cuff, Garity's father, the political activist and politician Tom Hayden, who was Fonda's second husband (neither parent want Troy to bear the weight of a famous last name), said that he was especially happy about his son's union with Bent, who is black, because, among other things, it was "another step in a long-term goal of mine: the peaceful, nonviolent disappearance of the white race."

Tom Hayden wants the white race to disappear. Not all the races - just the white one.

Why? The likely answer is that Tom Hayden sees the world through a left-liberal lens. Liberals assume that autonomy, or the power to do as we will, is the good that defines us as human. Therefore, if one group has more such power than another (if it is "privileged") then it is denying human equality in the most literal sense.

Left liberals have a theory as to why such inequality exists. They believe that the dominant group is socially constructed to win for its members an unearned privilege. Because whites were dominant when such theories were being formed, whites (and particularly white males) were assumed to be the source of inequality, injustice and oppression in the world.

If the left-liberal theory were correct, then you can see why Tom Hayden would want whites to disappear. Whiteness, in the left-liberal theory, is simply a pathway to privilege (or supremacy) which causes others to be treated as less than human.

You can see this left-liberal mindset at work in Hayden's book discussing his own identity (Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America). Hayden grew up in a middle-class family of Irish descent but of mainstream white American identity. But when he became a political activist in the 1960s, he turned back to an Irish identity:

After a decade in the civil rights movement, I associated being "white" with either supremacy or emptiness. Then, in 1968 ... I saw marchers in Northern Ireland singing "We Shall Overcome" and, in an epiphany, discovered that I was Irish on the inside.

But there's a problem. If the Irish are white, then they too must be classified as "supremacist" according to the left-liberal logic. Which then makes them illegitimate.

So Hayden is very keen to keep the Anglo-Saxons as the villainous privileged supremacists. He warns the Irish against assimilating into the white mainstream, preferring them instead to help defeat the whites by assimilating into coloured minority groups.

Because the Irish harbor a racial memory, however fogged by amnesia, of what it means to be treated as nonhuman, there still remains the possibility of Irish solidarity with people of color. When the Irish leave whiteness, there goes the neighborhood.

....To be genuinely Irish is to challenge WASP dominance and to assimilate ourselves not only into advanced Western societies but also into the non-white, non-English speaking world. (p.6)

Why not identify with whiteness? Because Hayden believes that those who identify as white do so to embrace privilege, just as the Ulstermen in Northern Ireland identify with Britain for their own advantage:

To identify with the Union with Britain - as with whiteness - is to embrace economic, political and cultural advantage. (p.7)

Here is Hayden once again proposing a "deeper" Irish assimilation not with the white mainstream but with a coloured multicultural America:

a deeper assimilation will mean assimilation into the nonwhite world with whom we share a common experience of colonialism, starvation, poverty and threats of extinction.

The only alternative to this reassessment will be our shallow incorporation into the Western establishment. Then we will lose the historic opportunity to play a meaningful role in the emergence of multicultural America. (pp. 29-30)

Finally there is this from Hayden:

In our long day's journey toward success, Irish Americans are in danger of becoming lost souls ... We can reap the privileges of being white or, remembering the shame of being classified as simians [i.e. as nonhumans] and asking what is whiteness but privilege?, we can transcend the superficiality of skin color to join in solidarity with the majority who are darker than ourselves. (pp.268-269)

It's clear that Tom Hayden's wedding speech to his son was meant sincerely. It was not spoken as a throwaway line; it reflects Tom Hayden's deeply held beliefs about how the Irish in America should act morally in the world to bring about justice.

But look at where Tom Hayden's left-liberalism has brought him. He wants the Irish to assert themselves as an ethny, but to do so as non-whites - in fact, to do so by assimilating into the non-white peoples of the world. But this is, at its heart, a denial of Irish ethnicity, one which ultimately would leave little trace of the Irish in the world.

And look at what he writes of whiteness: "what is whiteness but privilege?". That's the left-liberal theory in a nutshell. Being a white American has no meaning at all to Hayden apart from its connection to privilege or supremacy.

Left-liberalism is not exactly a subtle instrument when it comes to issues of identity. The culture, the achievements and the sacrifices of whites in America are all smashed into oblivion with the idea that whiteness was constructed as a means to privilege.

For something to survive, it's little use trying to appeal to those who already operate with the left-liberal assumptions. The assumptions have to be brought into the light of day and criticised.

51 comments:

  1. Hayden teaches at Occidnetial College, President Obama's Alma Mater.

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  2. "For something to survive, it's little use trying to appeal to those who already operate with the left-liberal assumptions."

    The question is; can those who operate within the left-liberal framework that results in feminism and multiculturalism be persuaded, or are their political-philosophical positions the result of genetics that predisposes them to that outlook from which they can never be reasoned away from?

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  3. His advice to the Irish American community about "Irishness" [lol] is a lot like Marxist advice to workers.

    Invest all of yourself in an identity, and then do everything you can to make that identity not exist.

    I think at base left-liberalism is nothing but a disguised excuse for self hate.

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  4. i.e.

    http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/cat_brain_politics.html

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/28/political-allegiances-brain-structure-study

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110407121337.htm

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  5. Mark Richardson, than you for addressing this.

    Many of your best posts, like this one and the ones on "moral liberalism" and how to counter it, are among the most recent.

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  6. @James

    "I think at base left-liberalism is nothing but a disguised excuse for self hate."

    The Unabomber manifesto

    http://www.newshare.com/Newshare/Common/News/unifesto1.html#1

    said the exact same thing about leftists.

    Granted the guy was crazy, but I think when describing the psychology of leftists he did hit somewhere around the mark for atleast some of them.

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  7. Chris,

    I do believe that genetics can have an influence.

    Even so, the situation we have today is that those who ought to be genuinely conservative often end up trapped within the left-liberal/right-liberal spectrum.

    For example, a person who reacts against the outright hostility to whiteness demonstrated by a left-liberal like Hayden might look around and find a right-liberal who says "I think the West is great and everyone should be free to immigrate here and we should spread the West everywhere around the globe."

    If it's only Hayden and the right-liberal who are on offer, the conservative minded person might opt for the right-liberal. After all, the right-liberal does at least not bash the West at every opportunity.

    But the result in either case is still a liberalism which undermines the West.

    What that conservative-minded person needs is an encouragement to political clarity, so that he makes a clean break with both left and right liberalism.

    That's not so much an issue of genetics, as of making a sustained effort to break an intellectual impasse.

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  8. Daybreaker, thanks.

    James, what you wrote really is true of Tom Hayden's Irishness:

    Invest all of yourself in an identity, and then do everything you can to make that identity not exist.

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  9. Mark,

    I don't think the issue is necessarily one of making your identity not exist, because Hayden is happy to identify as Irish. Its about making "unfairness" not exist, in all its manifestations. Unfairness as the great enemy of human kind yadda yadda. This appeal to "fairness" has wide support to some degree amongst the public, although not to the extent he's advocating.

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  10. Chris, I think many mental qualities are heritable, such as intelligence, energy, aggression, ethnocentricity, and so on.

    But heritable differences in brain structures directed to specific political positions that haven't been options till recently? That is a counter-intuitive idea.

    I could see something like this. There is a heritable disposition to root and branch aggression against one's own social group, reflected / physically expressed as a different brain structure, and those who are very high on desire to harm those similar to them are drawn to a movement that provides a lot of the buzz they are looking for.

    (Inter-ethnic competition provides enough reason for the existence of such movements in the first place. Those with social suicide prone brains would not have to construct movements destructive to their own kind, just be eager joiners of them.)

    But to make that theory convincing, you'd have to dot every "i" and cross every "t". You would have to be extra thorough.

    And I would want to know how a trait like that evolved. Under what circumstances is it adaptive to destroy in-groups one is a member of, preventing in-group cooperation and inviting out-groups in to bust up ones extended families and diminish their numbers and success? How does a heritable trait replicate efficiently through generations when its main form of expression is destruction for its bearers' kin?

    Until I see convincing answers to objections like that, I would rather discuss ideas than brain structures. (Which I am not qualified to discuss anyway.)

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  11. @Daybreaker

    I was thinking in terms of say, leftist people having a genetic prdisposition to say lots of empathy/sympathy, high levels of naivete, low levels of threat detection, low levels of in-group identification, and lastly low levels of agression.

    Some of these characterisitics mentioned have been shown to have actual locations within the brain which would thus mean they could be mediated by genetic variants that might occur at different frequencies for different people.

    So a person with a brain with the characteristics described above would basically perceive the world in a manner that would make them likely to adopt leftist beliefs.

    i.e. a person high in empathy and low in threat detection would be the prototypical 'bleeding heart liberal.'

    "How does a heritable trait replicate efficiently through generations when its main form of expression is destruction for its bearers' kin?"

    Simple, if each trait by themselves is fitness enhancing, yet its only when all traits combined together that they are deleterious to fitness, then provided that the fitness enhancing benefits is greater than the deleterious effects when all traits are combined together in the one organism, you should expect to see those characteristics exist/evolve in the population. (Mind you though I'm no evolutionary biologist.)

    Don't get me wrong, when it comes to leftism I think the source of it is likely to be other things as well, but I wouldn't rule out an inherited susceptability to adopting the belief system to be part of the equation.

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  12. OT but you may find this interesting regareding autonomy of fahters: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/07/jilted-ex-boyfriend-puts-up-abortion-billboard/?test=latestnews
    A man took out a billboard to protest his ex-girlfriends abortion of their child.

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  13. also I forgot to also add in response to

    "How does a heritable trait replicate efficiently through generations when its main form of expression is destruction for its bearers' kin?"

    that technology has changed the environment vastly over the last century or so, so it's possible that the particular fitness benefit/disadvantage calculation could have changed to the effect that the combination of all those inherited factors that on their own aren't deleterious but when combined are, could now result in a greater fitness cost then it previously did, i.e. people with the deleterious combination can now more effectively spread the ideas/ideology that they are susceptible to through the media or academia, and thus resulting in a much greater negative impact on everyone else now than they would have been able to in the past.

    (But I must qualify all of this as pure speculation.)

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  14. @ Daybreaker
    And I would want to know how a trait like that evolved. Under what circumstances is it adaptive to destroy in-groups one is a member of, preventing in-group cooperation and inviting out-groups in to bust up ones extended families and diminish their numbers and success?

    Have you read Stephen Jay Gould's essay on spandrels? I highly recommend it. Basically many traits are not specifically selected for, they just arise as a natural side affect to other traits.

    Assuming this trait is linked to some specific gene that is not wide spread in humans, their may be other characteristics like leadership or dominance linked to it that promote its survivial. Further, this trait does not lower Hayden's likelihood to pass on his own genes. Alternately, it could be widespread in the population but only manifest itself after exposure to particular stimuli.

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  15. chris: "I was thinking in terms of say, leftist people having a genetic prdisposition to say lots of empathy/sympathy, high levels of naivete, low levels of threat detection, low levels of in-group identification, and lastly low levels of agression."

    How does building one's identity and life around a cause of vernichtung for the White race count as a low level of aggression? This makes no sense to me.

    Where is the empathy in seeing White people as bearers of unjust privilege and otherwise "empty"?

    Where are the historical examples to show that leftism in charge, in the Soviet Union for instance, is soft and fluffy? I don't buy it.

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  16. Liesel: "Have you read Stephen Jay Gould's essay on spandrels?"

    Yes. My reaction was more cautious and less enthusiastic than yours.

    Liesel: "Further, this trait does not lower Hayden's likelihood to pass on his own genes."

    Tom Hayden's actions are harmful to his chances of passing on his own genes. Ending the White race, which he wants, ends people like him genetically.

    His grandchildren will be much less like him genetically, that is in effect much less related to him, than they could have been if all his children had married within their own race and ethnicity.

    I think this needs to be discussed at the level of culture and ideas.

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  17. I mean I'd like to say it's because of liberal autonomy theory....but I don't think so

    I dated a guy from Dublin and he acted the same way as this Hayden person. He is currently dating a non-white female.

    Personally I think a certain subset of the Irish are insane. There's a reason why the Irish and English hated each other...Maybe this is the reason?

    You can tack theories all you want, but for them to hate the English so much to Want to Go Extinct...

    That's some weird genetic tendency that goes so beyond rational thought.

    On the bright side, the guy I dated started crying upon reading a book written by an Irish woman and she kept describing her blue-eyed Irish children (beautiful book in the wonderful literary tradition of the Irish.) I couldn't understand why he was so moved by her writing, yet hated me so much.

    You know what...now that I'm writing this.....

    The Irish have a beautiful fairytale tradition. That shows that they are prone to "Idealism and Frou-Frou thoughts" They are not Rational, but Emotional Beings.

    There you go...it's not liberal autonomy theory...

    The Irish speak in Emotions, not Rational Thought.

    That's the problem.

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  18. I'd also tack on to my last post an inability to plan ahead for future generations.

    Hence why they kept losing to the English :)

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  19. I'd love to think this was only some genetic flaw in the Irish, because then nobody else would have such ideas. But that's not the case, is it?

    This has to be addressed at the level of ideas and not only genes for another reason. We need to be able to counter arguments with arguments. When the challenge is thrown down with "the white race is the cancer of human history" and when people like Tom Hayden accept that and follow through with a strong desire to eliminate Whites, and when White people object to proposals that will have grave long term consequences for Whites and the harsh challenge comes, "why should White people continue to exist?" I've noticed that White people generally have no answer. They were never taught that we have a right to live, and they were never given reasons why, and they were never taught to counter accusations and proposals for action that amount to slow genocide for Whites.

    It is no counter to even terrible ideas to say, "oh you must be Irish", at which point Susan Sontag, the author of the "white race is the cancer of human history" quote says "no, fool, I'm Jewish". It's no answer to say "oh you must be Jewish", at which point Tom Hayden with his plans to (non-violently!) wipe out the White race says "no, fool, I'm Irish". And if you say "oh you must be Irish or Jewish", the next one may be German or half-Swede, half Korean. And all of them can say, "so what? You've taken a guess at my ethnicity, but you haven't got a counter to my ideas. White people must be ended!"

    Same with the idea that liberal brains are different. The obvious counters are: "you don't know how that works, so how do you know it's true?" and "yes liberal brains are different - they're better!" and in the end, simply, "you've speculated about my brain structure, but you haven't got a counter to my ideas. White people must be ended!"

    Programmatic, genocidal hostility cannot be laughed off, it has to be countered. If not, action follows, and it has been following for decades, with terrible consequences slowly unfolding around us.

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  20. To say white men shouldn't exist is like saying injustice, (or primitive attachments to race and and the race's advancement), shouldn't exist. So by itself that's not that controversial statment to an intellectual. If you look at Jews they're the "tribe" and they represent a still more primative form of humanity that still clings in a storng way to a cultural/racial identity. The Irish as described by Hayden are an "anti" group. Meaning that they're defined as not white, so they would then effectively cease to exist if the whites went away. Consequently both groups don't take up a situation that is viewed as similar to the whites.

    Whites and white men today are the existential bogey men and so its deemed good that they should go.

    Why is this? In part because they're the top of the tree and everyone sees the underdog as a nonthreat and the master or boss as the enemy.

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  21. We need to be able to counter arguments with arguments. When the challenge is thrown down with "the white race is the cancer of human history" and when people like Tom Hayden accept that and follow through with a strong desire to eliminate Whites, and when White people object to proposals that will have grave long term consequences for Whites and the harsh challenge comes, "why should White people continue to exist?" I've noticed that White people generally have no answer. They were never taught that we have a right to live, and they were never given reasons why, and they were never taught to counter accusations and proposals for action that amount to slow genocide for Whites.

    Well put. At the moment it's nearly all one way traffic. Students will spend years of their life being indoctrinated into the idea that whites are dominant oppressors of other races. They will watch and analyse films; read and analyse books; be asked to give presentations; write "sonnets on racism" (no kidding, this was part of the curriculum of one school I taught at); write essays about dispossession and so on.

    The most spirited of students, when they are finished with all this, will still be unpersuaded of the full programme. But their resistance has usually been broken down to smaller, defensive objections ("Sir, we're not as racist as Mrs X says we are").

    At some point, a deeper and more confident counterpush has to be launched. Until that time, it's unreasonable to expect that much progress will be made on this front.

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  22. Hayden believes that those who identify as white do so to embrace privilege,

    Personally, I *do* embrace privilege whenever I can. Yet my "white privilege" hasn't done much for me as far as I can tell.

    assimilation into the nonwhite world with whom we share a common experience of colonialism, starvation, poverty and threats of extinction

    Why would I want to "assimiliate" with that?

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  23. Mark said,

    "At some point, a deeper and more confident counterpush has to be launched. Until that time, it's unreasonable to expect that much progress will be made on this front."

    I think one of our best arguments will be that if you keep whinging you'll kill the golden goose. The left don't actually want us to die because they're co-dependant. They just want us to keep passing "under the yoke".

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  24. The WASPS made a major error in allowing the Irish to immigrate to the USA. The Irish may be white skinned but they are temperamentally different from the British and a substantial percentage of them cannot function effectively in WASP society hence the reaction against WASPS and their affinity with other Third World peoples.

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  25. The most spirited of students, when they are finished with all this, will still be unpersuaded of the full programme. But their resistance has usually been broken down to smaller, defensive objections ("Sir, we're not as racist as Mrs X says we are").

    I will make it a priority to not let my child be indoctrinated with liberal philosophies in their childhood and teenage years.

    At some point, a deeper and more confident counterpush has to be launched. Until that time, it's unreasonable to expect that much progress will be made on this front.

    Laying off the public school system and making homeschooling a very viable option would be a start. Another option would be obligatory academic learning from infancy until the 9th or 10th grade (only learning the basics such as mathematics, languages, sciences and arts) followed by vocational learning. Private schools are another option as well.

    In the next few years I will start a major project and I will invite as many conservatives as I can to aid me. It will basically act as a 'counter-enlightment' to the liberal theories spanning from the 18th to 20th centuries in the Western World (includes responding to major movements such as the Enlightment and the French Revolution). I need serious advice about this course of action.

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  26. I will make it a priority to not let my child be indoctrinated with liberal philosophies in their childhood and teenage years.

    That's a good response Elizabeth. If people aren't able to homeschool, then they should be keeping up with what texts their childre are studying in school, particularly in English and history.

    If these texts (books, films, textbooks, speeches) show a consistent pattern of bias, then the parents should be attempting to counter the indoctrination in some way.

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    Replies
    1. What would be a good way to do this Mark? a recommended alternative reading list?

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    2. Yes, a reading list could be part of it for older children. For instance, if slavery keeps being thrown at them I have a copy of "White Gold" about the enslavement of Europeans in North Africa. There's also a new book out about indentured labour that was sent, mostly from the UK and Ireland, to America in the 1600s. Inculcating a pride in one's own tradition is also part of it. This can be done in conversation, but perhaps also means searching out earlier history books. For Australian students, it might be worthwhile keeping a copy of some of Keith Windschuttle's work if claims are made about the treatment of Aborigines.

      I'm sorry this isn't a very specific response, but my own son just isn't quite of the age yet where he is getting much indoctrination (it will kick in soon though).

      I think it's important to ask what specifically is being taught in English and history; ask to see the textbooks and their exercise books; make sure that a one-sided, negative view of the Western tradition isn't being promoted; if it is, then counter with conversation, information, arguments and books of your own.

      Delete
  27. There's some serious Irish hating going on here. Is this a catholic/protestant thing?

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  28. The widespread desire for autogenocide is just one of the many reasons why Western civilization is doomed to go quietly into the night. Or actually, it already has disappeared.

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  29. Gwallan,

    I imagine its a British/Protestant thing.

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  30. ""There's some serious Irish hating going on here. Is this a catholic/protestant thing?""

    Three of my Grandparents are from Eire or the north so no hate here.

    Plus Mark is Catholic I think.

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  31. I'm 5/8ths Irish, but I identify with the American Anglo-Puritan culture for one simple reason: IT WORKS. Why the hell does Hayden feel so compelled to reject success?

    He's damn right that I embrace "economic, political, and cultural advantage". Copying the successful, is the surest road to success. IOTTMCO

    Where he's dead wrong, is the idea that this "privilege" is (a) morally illegitimate, and (b) restricted to whites. It works because it's RIGHT, and it works for ANYONE who follows it.

    Still... I'm grateful for his admission. It has long driven me batty, that the actions of the "American" Left seem to be consciously, intentionally designed to destroy the white race, and yet they seldom admit it. Hayden at least admits it.

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  32. Plus Mark is Catholic I think.

    That's right. My ancestry is not Irish but I grew up in a middle-class Catholic milieu which was nearly entirely of Irish Catholic descent. But by the 1970s the identity was a straightforwardly Australian one and I don't recall a single incident of Anglo hating.

    The point of my post was not to suggest that the Irish are responsible for our difficulties. It was to criticise the left-liberal politics of Tom Hayden.

    Hayden's take on being Irish is lethal in both directions: to the Irish and to the English. It leaves WASPs as the illegitimate oppressor group and it forces the Irish to assimilate into radically dissimilar traditions.

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  33. "But by the 1970s the identity was a straightforwardly Australian one and I don't recall a single incident of Anglo hating.

    The point of my post was not to suggest that the Irish are responsible for our difficulties. It was to criticise the left-liberal politics of Tom Hayden.

    Hayden's take on being Irish is lethal in both directions: to the Irish and to the English. It leaves WASPs as the illegitimate oppressor group and it forces the Irish to assimilate into radically dissimilar traditions."

    The identity of Australia is WASP. Australia as a nation was created by the British and founded upon British Protestant traditions and values. The Irish Catholic population are immigrants as they are in the USA.

    Hayden's take on being Irish may be lethal but it is characteristic of the Irish in the USA, UK and everywhere else where Irish immigrants are to be found living in British cultural countries. It is Hayden's values which are the driving force behind much of the Ulster civil war.

    The Irish are temperamentally different from the British and the majority of the Irish are not able to function effectively in WASP Th countries. They tend to regress into substance abuse, criminality and unemployment. Large numbers of Irish like blacks struggle in WASP countries hence their resentful attitudes

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  34. The Irish are temperamentally different from the British and the majority of the Irish are not able to function effectively in WASP Th countries. They tend to regress into substance abuse, criminality and unemployment. Large numbers of Irish like blacks struggle in WASP countries hence their resentful attitudes

    Really? I can believe that there are subtle differences in temperament but I haven't observed an inability to function successfully. And what worries Tom Hayden is not so much that the Irish can't succeed but that they have succeeded and so won't identify with the non-white third world.

    My own position here is very different to yours. Although there do exist some ethnic differences between the Irish and English (particularly when it comes to religion and history) I see them as closely related peoples who would hopefully look out for each other.

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  35. "Really? I can believe that there are subtle differences in temperament but I haven't observed an inability to function successfully. And what worries Tom Hayden is not so much that the Irish can't succeed but that they have succeeded and so won't identify with the non-white third world."

    There are major differences between the Irish and the British in terms of temperament, ability, culture, society and the type of institutions formed in society. The Irish as a group lack the drive and resilience of the British. As Britain industrialised and advanced its Empire, the Irish remained a backward agriculural people. Ireland today is stil effectively a Third World country on the verge of bankruptcy. The Irish are as different from the British as the Greeks are different from the Germans.

    The Irish have not succeeded collectively as a people in the WASP countries or indeed in their oown country. There are individual successes but the Irish are on average less well educated, poorer and less successful than the WASPS with higher incidences of welfare dependency, substance abuse and mental illness. The Irish are less entrepreneurial than the WASPS - do you know any major Irish brand names? Do you know any major Irish scientific discoveries or inventions? There is no Irish Newton or John Logie Baird.

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  36. The British contributed greatly not only to conservatism (Christianity, Empire, Monarchy) but liberalism as well (Darwin, etc).

    The Scottish seem similar to the British (and the French) in their contributions to the Enlightment --- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment

    Are Irish really all that different from the British? Are Irish different from Scots as well?

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  37. The Irish as a group lack the drive and resilience of the British. As Britain industrialised and advanced its Empire, the Irish remained a backward agriculural people.

    I am of English extraction, and I disagree with this. The "backwardness" of the Irish is not unrelated to the fact that the English were constantly kicking their asses. How could Ireland have an Empire if the English were occupying their home country? How could the Irish develop industry when the English denied them the resources to do so? Left to their own devices the Irish would certainly have done a lot better.

    The Irish are as different from the British as the Greeks are different from the Germans.

    Nah. The achievements of the Protestant Ascendancy refutes this.

    There is no Irish Newton or John Logie Baird.

    No great Irish thinkers? Nonsense. Just from wiki:

    "There have been notable Irish scientists. The Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is considered the father of chemistry for his book The Sceptical Chymist, written in 1661.[47] Boyle was an atomist, and is best known for Boyle's Law. The hydrographer Sir Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), an Irish naval officer of Huguenot descent, was the creator of the Beaufort scale for indicating wind force. George Boole (1815–1864), the mathematician who invented Boolean algebra, spent the latter part of his life in Cork. The 19th century physicist George Stoney introduced the idea and the name of the electron. He was the uncle of another notable physicist, George FitzGerald."

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  38. The Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland was English and most of the "Irish" scientists you mention were geneticaly English. They may have lived in Ireland for part of their lives, but that does not make them part of the irish race. The Irish have been notable in Europe for their minimal contribution to the development of science, art, music and culture.

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  39. "The "backwardness" of the Irish is not unrelated to the fact that the English were constantly kicking their asses. How could Ireland have an Empire if the English were occupying their home country? How could the Irish develop industry when the English denied them the resources to do so? Left to their own devices the Irish would certainly have done a lot better"

    The English did the same to the Scots but this didn't stop the Scots from inventing Economics and many of the major inventions of the 18-19th Century and developing a world class industrial structure. And how would colonisation have caused the failure of the Irish to develop their country since their independence in the 20th century? Singapore was a British colony as was Hong Kong until 1997 but that did not stop their rapid industrial and economic development.

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  40. Some believe the people of the British Isles are very similar: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00EED91431F935A35750C0A9619C8B63&pagewanted=all.

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  41. The thinking of Tom Hayden is quite bizarre and illogical. As for its morality, ask yourself.

    If Mr Hayden wishes to eradicate the white race, what is the point of being "Irish"? The Irish can only exist as part of the white race, because like the English and Scots they are part of the white race.

    Genetically, ethnically there is little difference between the native groups of the British Isles. The early (1200s - 1300s) major success of the English had a lot to do with geography and their early social culture. At this stage the Irish kept to themselves.

    Today, if the English are exterminated, the Irish won't be far behind likewise.

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  42. "....The Irish have not succeeded collectively as a people in the WASP countries or indeed in their oown country. There are individual successes but the Irish are on average less well educated, poorer and less successful than the WASPS with higher incidences of welfare dependency, substance abuse and mental illness...."

    Ummm..... what planet are you on? We totally KICK ASS here in America; we are richer on average than AngloSaxons. This is the promised land, Tir na nOg.

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  43. If Mr Hayden wishes to eradicate the white race, what is the point of being "Irish"? The Irish can only exist as part of the white race

    That's a good way of putting the point I was trying to make in my post. Hayden wants to be ethnically Irish but because of his politics he can't accept that the Irish are white, but that then means that the Irish have to become something that they aren't.

    Today, if the English are exterminated, the Irish won't be far behind likewise.

    Again, well put. That's why I'm not exactly thrilled by the English vs Irish debate. Sure there are some differences in ethnicity, but the fates of both are threatened by the same political forces - and it's time for a common resistance.

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  44. @Anonymous troll

    There is little genetic differentiation between the Irish and the British (aka Scottish, English, Welsh)

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/09/genetic-differences-within-european-populations/

    "The Irish are as different from the British as the Greeks are different from the Germans."

    Bullshit.

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/08/genetic-map-of-europe-genes-vary-as-a-function-of-distance/

    Nearly all of the Irish genetic cluster overlaps with the British genetic cluster.

    List of noteworthy Irish people.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_people#Writing

    Ones that stick out for me are; James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats.

    Also, I remember reading a genetics paper a while ago which determined that all the people of the British Isles today, were predominatly descended from the indigenous Britons who lived there thousands of years before the Celtic migrations into the British Isles. If I recall correctly the proportion of indigenous British in each British ethnic group was approximately (Give or take 5%); English 86%, Welsh 88%, Scottish 90% and Irish 93%.

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  45. The Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland was English and most of the "Irish" scientists you mention were geneticaly English.

    I knew you would say that, and it's wrong. They were genetically Irish.

    The Irish have been notable in Europe for their minimal contribution to the development of science, art, music and culture.

    LOL this is laughably wrong and ignorant.

    The English did the same to the Scots but this didn't stop the Scots from inventing Economics and many of the major inventions of the 18-19th Century and developing a world class industrial structure.

    The Scots only had industry because the English built it there.

    how would colonisation have caused the failure of the Irish to develop their country since their independence in the 20th century? Singapore was a British colony as was Hong Kong until 1997 but that did not stop their rapid industrial and economic development.

    There was gigantic foreign investment in Singapore after 1961, and vastly less investment in Ireland. So, the underdevelopment of Ireland relative to Singapore had little to do with the supposed genetic inferiority of the former.

    You should be embarrassed by the stupidity of your trolling, not least because as others have noted, the Irish and the English will share the same fate in the future.

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  46. The person is most likely a leftist troll seeking to divide up European ethnic groups against each other.

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  47. The person is most likely a leftist troll seeking to divide up European ethnic groups against each other.

    Agreed.

    The Irish were doing quite well for themselves before Ireland's entry into the EU. Now they're paying for the Greeks.

    From Easter 1916 to present, the Irish have gotten most of what they wanted; all that's left is a sliver of Ulster. Revolutionaries and secessionists take notice.

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  48. no way 'Anonymous' is a mere troll;the writer possesses formidable gifts of expression,and deploys these in a quest for truth,as far as I see it. By the way,has anyone ever lived near a (usually overcrowded and ALWAYS festooned with empty alcohol containers)apartment occupied by Irish?
    In our block(in St Kilda)they're (unofficially of course) BANNED. Could this be a result of 'experience'?

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  49. Rambler,

    Sorry but I don't think the rank and file Irish deserve that. I know plenty of Australians of Irish descent (O'Reillys, O'Mahoneys etc) and they come across to me as fairly standard, mainstream Australians.

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