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Irish Holocaust Denial and the campaign against "Sinn Féin/IRA"

category national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis author Monday August 28, 2006 16:35author by Donnchadhauthor email donn2010 at hotmail dot com

The denial of genocide as a modern political weapon

Irish Holocaust denial, or genocide denial, which refers to itself as revisionism, has evolved over three decades of propagandising as an important "cutting edge" ideological weapon in the ideological war against the IRA after 1969.

"The political commentator, the ballad singer and the unknown maker of folk-tales have all spoken about the Great famine, but is there more to be said? If man, the prisoner of time, acts in conformity with the conventions of society into which he is born, it is difficult to judge him with irrevocable harshness. So it is with the men of the famine era. Human limitations and timidity dominate the story of the Great Famine, but of great and deliberately imposed evil in high positions of responsibility there is little evidence."

Editors R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams writing in "The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845-52"

"Firstly the Great Irish Famine is not a generalised illustration of the dangers of "unrestrained" capitalism, rather it was a freak natural occurrence that was in many ways exacerbated by flawed government policies. Secondly, the Irish Famine was very different from the tragedies which have recently being witnessed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thirdly, the fundamental cause of famines in the late twentieth century is not Western "injustice" and "indifference" but are rather the actions of third world governments and their armed political competitors.

On a superficial level the proximate cause of the famine can be readily identified; the fungus phytophthora infestans which destroyed a large portion of Ireland's potato crop over the period 1845-9. Indeed it has been convincingly shown that the pre-famine Irish economy did not contain the seeds of its own destruction and that there was nothing inevitable about the famine had the potato blight not occurred. The famine was an unpredictable ecological freak; in words of the Dutch historian and scientist Peter Solar it was a case of "Ireland as having been profoundly unlucky" rather than being the inevitable product of market forces run wild (or of unrestrained population growth)."

Learning the Wrong Lessons: Governments, Hunger and the Great Irish Famine By Gareth G Davis

Irish Holocaust denial, or genocide denial, which refers to itself as revisionism, has evolved over three decades of propagandising as an important "cutting edge" ideological weapon in the ideological war against the IRA after 1969. While appearing on the surface as a scholarly challenge to the well-established record of English genocide against the Gaelic nation since the Norman invasion, Irish Holocaust denial serves as a powerful theory uniting otherwise disparate groups (e.g., Ulster Unionists, Southern Neo-Unionists, 26 county free staters, the British establishment, British public opinion, etc.).

On the surface, Irish Holocaust deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth." Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimise their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft.

These so-called revisionists assert that the premise that the British Empire engaged in a premeditated campaign of genocide against the Gaelic people of Ireland is one that does not stand honest scholarly scrutiny.

They do not deny that the British government engaged in persecution of and discrimination against the Gaelic population. They even admit the frequency of famine and prevalence of discrimination in occupied Ireland. They assert, however, that the anti-Irish actions of the British government were in large part a legitimate response to Irish misdeeds and disloyalty. As such, the measures taken were not qualitatively different from similar actions of European powers of the time.

Irish Holocaust deniers seek to plant seeds of questioning and doubt about the Irish Holocaust in their mass audiences. While Holocaust denial has become an article of faith among many in the 26 county establishment, its success does not depend upon conversion to that faith among the general public. The spread of scepticism about the scope and historicity of the Irish Holocaust among a critical mass of public opinion would be considered to be a significant ideological triumph in and of itself.

Genocide denial has been widely embraced within the otherwise disparate contemporary Neo-Unionist movement because it serves as an ideological cement that meets a very contemporary political need. In particular, it provides a sanitized envelope for the latter-day occupation of the six counties of north eastern Ireland by seeking to show that the heinous crimes ascribed to British rule in Ireland never took place. As such, much of the barrier preventing the legitimisation of contemporary British rule in Ireland from making a strategic breakthrough by appealing to a more mainstream audience would be removed. Accordingly, Holocaust denial provides contemporary legitimisation through posthumous rehabilitation. It is no accident that some Southern establishment parties are avid propagators of genocide denial ideology. The core message of the Irish Holocaust deniers is even more insidious.

They recognize the fact that most people believe that the Irish Holocaust / Artificial Famines were man made. (There were nine "famines" between 1740 and 1880. And incredible amount of pure incompetance, timidity, or profound bad luck?) How can it be, they ask, that the great majority have come to accept as truth an historical assertion which is in actuality a total falsehood?

They answer that most people have come to accept uncritically the story of the Irish Holocaust because they have been systematically propagandised with deliberate lies for over one hundred and fifty years. These lies include materials inserted by De Valera into the educational curriculum; the content of Holocaust-related folk lore and song; a vast Irish Holocaust literature; public rituals of genocide remembrance etc.. They picture a vast shadowy conspiracy, led by Sinn Féin/IRA and Fianna Fáil dupes that manipulate the institutions of culture in order to disseminate a false mythology.

The purpose of this genocide mythology, they assert, is the delegitimisation of the British state in Ireland and a legitimisation of the IRA campaign. This legitimisation is used to advance the IRA agenda of Irish Unity and total independence from England.

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author by Donnchadhpublication date Tue Aug 29, 2006 17:30author address author phone

Here is an interesting article by James Mullin with makes the point more clearly:

Ireland's Revisionist Historians: A Generation of Vipers

James Mullin
May 11, 2006

The traditional view of Irish history is based on the premise that the Irish people had a moral right to fight for their political, economic, social and cultural independence from Imperialist Britain.

According to Dr. Christine Kinealy,(A New History of Ireland, This Great Calamity, etc.) an opposing view began to emerge in Ireland in the 1930s, when a number of leading Irish Academics, following the lead of earlier British historians, set an agenda for the systematic revision of traditional Irish History, which they claimed was rife with "nationalist myths". Their declared mission was to replace this so-called mythology with objective, "value-free history".

In her essay, "Beyond Revisionism", Dr. Kinealy says that the revisionist movement gained a new prominence in the battle for Irish hearts and minds during the 1960?s when the IRA campaign intensified: "Challenging nationalist mythology became an important ideological preoccupation of a new generation of historians".

A strong opponent of the revisionist school is Peter Berresford Ellis, author of Eyewitness to Irish History, and A History of the Irish Working Class, and many other historical works. In his essay, "Revisionism in Irish Historical Writing", Ellis argues that a more correct term to describe revisionists is "neo-colonial" or "anti-nationalist".

"In its mildest form, this school of thought apologizes for English imperialism, and in its strongest form it supports that imperialism," he wrote. These anti-nationalist historians accept the thesis that Englands invasion and conquest of Ireland is not a matter for moral judgment. It is simply a fait accompli.

One of the most popular arguments of the revisionist school is that there was no Irish national consciousness when the invaders arrived. Ireland was a land of divided, warring factions, '"and the arrival of one more such faction is not a matter of importance nor of moral speculation."

They argue further, that English colonial rule in Ireland was beneficial to the Irish people, although their imparting of civilization was at times, a bit too brutal.

Finally, these revisionists use their interpretation of history to justify the status quo in Ireland today: "The Six Counties of North-East Ulster are depicted as a democratically formed unit in which the political majority is represented by Unionists. Partition, imposed by bloodshed and violence, and threats of bloodshed and violence by Britain against the democratic wish of the Irish nation is not considered in such histories." (Ellis)

Two books emboldened the revisionist movement in the early 1970's: States of Ireland by Conor Cruise O'Brien, and Towards a New Ireland by Garrett Fitzgerald. Both books made peace with British imperialism, maintaining that the real Irish independence tradition was a '"home rule" philosophy.

"The lesson they attempted to hammer home", according to Ellis, "was that separation from England was never a popular concept in Irish historical development - that the republican tradition was a minority view." These revisionist authors would have us believe that the Irish People simply "wanted a greater say in their domestic affairs within English colonial structures." (Ellis)

O'Brien wrote that the 1916 rebellion was despotic: "a putsch with no pretense of popular support." His words are echoed by a contemporary revisionist, Ruth Dudley Edwards. In her book, Patrick Pearse, The Triumph of Failure, she portrays Pearse as a deluded romantic obsessed with a desire for revolutionary "blood sacrifice" and heroic martyrdom.

Pearse "glorified war", she says, and "sanctioned the sacrifice of self and others." He was "part of a despotic tradition" and "acted and died for a people that did not exist."

Dr. Marianne Elliot's book, Wolfe Tone, Prophet of Irish Independence, continues in the same revisionist vein. One reviewer, Dr. Anthony Coughlan, called her work, '"a fundamentally hostile interpretation of Tone", saying, "the author evidently has little sympathy for the ideal of an All Ireland Republic which Tone and his fellow Protestants came to adopt in the 1790s."

The work of these anti-nationalist historians has been accurately described as, "the historiography of the Irish counter-revolution", yet they want the public to believe that they hold the moral high ground above all nationalists and unionist factions. "They disguise their partisanship under the cloak of academic objectivity," says Ellis.

Today, the unchallenged demigod of the anti-nationalist school is Roy Foster, head of the Irish History Department at Oxford University. Born in Waterford in 1949, he burst on the academic scene in 1989, with the publication of the 600-page revisionist tome, Modern Ireland: 1600-1972.

The book was hailed as "a work of gigantic importance" by the Irish Times, "a revisionist milestone" by the Irish Literary Supplement, and a "masterwork" by many historians who reviewed it. Foster has read these press clippings, and now believes he has been given a divine gift of historical interpretation.

Desmond Fennell, an Irish critic, said the underlying message of Modern Ireland was Foster's revisionism, which he called, "A retelling of Irish history which seeks to show that British rule of Ireland was not, as we have believed, a bad thing, but a mixture of necessity, good intentions and bungling; and that Irish resistance to it was not, as we have believed, a good thing, but a mixture of wrong-headed idealism and unnecessary, often cruel violence."

Discussing the aftermath of the Easter Rising, for example, Foster wrote: "The draconian reaction of the (British) authorities to the rebellion should be understood in terms of international war and national security."

Maybe the execution of 16 Irish Republican leaders had nothing at all to do with the history of Britain in Ireland!

Foster is the author of The Oxford History of Ireland, and the Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, and other quasi-historical works. His fluid writing style and talent for omitting entire periods of Irish history because they do not conform to his revisionist thesis, have made him an author much in demand.

In his strangely titled work, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it up in Ireland, he adopts the patronizing position that the Irish have "misused" their own history. It seems that the mischievous Irish have taken the great events of their history - the 1798 Rising, the Famine, the Celtic Revival, Easter 1916, the Troubles - and dropped them into a fanciful narrative that includes elements of myth, folklore, ghost stories and romance.

The result, according to Foster, is nationalist fiction - the "Story of Ireland" - complete with the novelistic elements of plot, drama, suspense, and a heroic victim. One review of the Foster book concluded that traditional Irish history is "manipulated for political ends, and Irish poverty and oppression are sentimentalized and packaged."

In The Irish Story, Foster claims that "the new modernized and liberated Irish consciousness feels a sneaking nostalgia for the verities of the old victim-culture, which was also, in its way, a culture of superiority. The concept of a perennial victim produces a very emotionally powerful and emotionally coherent story, but it also leads to a kind of denial that any other elements in the Irish Story have any part to play."

Christopher Shea of the Boston Globe obviously bought into Foster's attack on the simple, myth-filled narrative about Ireland. In his review, Shea wrote: "That story stars a holy island nation. It suffered under English rule for centuries, nearly died, and then rose, liberated and reborn, in 1922, with partial independence. The story, in its basic shape, mirrors the life of Christ. And the story, in Foster's view, has bred boatloads of sloppy thinking and historical myopia - and a whole lot of wallowing."

One of Foster's acolytes is Irish author Colm Toibin. In a 1993 piece for the London Review of Books he recalled the heady days of his youth when he first read Foster:

"I became a revisionist, I remember feeling a huge sense of liberation. I was in my late teens and I already knew that what they had told me about God and sexuality wasn't true, but being an atheist or being gay in Ireland at that time seemed easier to deal with as transgressions than the idea that you could cease believing in the Great Events of Irish nationalist history. No Cromwell as cruel monster, say; the executions after 1916 as understandable in the circumstances; 1798 as a small outbreak of rural tribalism; partition as inevitable. Imagine if Irish history were pure fiction, how free and happy we could be! It seemed at that time a most subversive idea, a new way of killing your father, starting from scratch, creating a new self".

Then he gets to the real heart of historical darkness: "This revisionism is precisely what our state needed once the North blew up and we joined the EC, in order to isolate Northern Ireland from us and our history, in order to improve relations with Britain, in order to make us concentrate on a European future. Foster and his fellow historians' work became useful, not for its purity, or its truth, but its politics."

Here is a revisionist historian who puts politics on a higher plane than the truth. Foster's disciple makes it clear:"value-free history" is nothing more than a euphemism for partisan political propaganda.

author by upmayopublication date Wed Aug 30, 2006 16:23author address author phone

Of course they are well helped by Independent Newspapers and RTÉ.

author by Flynn - agrescon@agresconpublication date Thu Aug 31, 2006 16:01author email agrescon at agrescon dot nlauthor address author phone 0031102102055

Great and learned articles above and many thanks, but from my own Anglo Irish History in the NW of England, the immigrants were housed in caverns under Liverpool, in their thousands, and in Preston and in the NE Hull areas,ironically in the same hovells as the Negro Slaves use to be kept, I,m sure a Historian of your Calibre could enlighten us all on the Myths, and Legends of these events, Great and Tragic as they must have been, but at the time Children were up Chimleys and down Coal Mines, and Getting their limbs ripped off in Satanic Mills. Comments Please? Flynn O Flynn

author by Donnchadhpublication date Fri Sep 01, 2006 18:45author address author phone

Im not sure if you are being ironic in saying that I am a historian, Im purely an interested amature. Sadly, I dont have much information on the dreadful conditions suffered by those fleeing from the artificial "famine" in Ireland. If you could give us some it would be great. Of course, the English poor suffered greatly at the hands of the same parasites who created nine famines in Ireland between 1740 and 1880, and kept the Gaelic population in a state of endemic deprivation, depriving them of the means to lead a healthy life. But, the English poor were not subject to genocide as defined by Article 2 of the Genocide Convention 1948. The Gaelic nation was.

author by Jimmy from Ballygomartinpublication date Sat Sep 02, 2006 12:31author address author phone


Do you just use Irish language texts for your historical research Donnachadh?

author by Donnchadhpublication date Sat Sep 02, 2006 16:13author address author phone

A strange thing to say, given that I have given the full text of an article in English.

But I know where you are coming from. Given that genocide denial is so prevalent in the revisionists texts, one could be forgiven for thinking that nobody was telling the truth in the English language. But do a web search and you will see that there is a huge body of research on the genocide in Ireland - by academics who are not afraid to call a genocide a genocide.

author by Donnchadhpublication date Sun Sep 03, 2006 22:30author address author phone

Given the huge resistance many Irish people put up to the the fact that their nation was subject to a genocidal extermination, it would be interesting to have a look at some study done on the psychological satisfactions and rewards of genocide denial.

Here is a brief introduction to an article on the subject. I give the URL for the full article below:

Abstract
Denials of known genocides are not only the work of bigots, such as antisemites and neo-nazis who deny the Holocaust or Turkish ideologues who deny the history of the Armenian Genocide, but are voiced by many people in all walks of life, and even by bona fide respectable academicians. It is important to understand the motivations and thinking and mind formulations through which such denials are constructed and promoted. The present paper focuses on a concept of 'innocent denial' where the denier really may not be consciously entirely aware of the facts and not necessarily aware of their personal interests in choosing to join with deniers of a known genocide. However, it is emphasized that one must be alert to deniers who pretend 'innocence.' Five "thinking defense mechanisms" or ways of constructing and justifying denials are analyzed in a comparative analysis of two examples of denials, by German professor Ernst Nolte who denies the Holocaust, and Jewish professor Bernard Lewis who denies the Armenian Genocide. Interpretations are also given of David Irving a denier who denies being a denier, and Noam Chomsky who stands adamantly for the free speech of deniers in their relationships to denials of the Holocaust, and two case histories of denial of the Armenian Genocide in Israel are presented.

For full text see:

http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=27

author by Donnchadhpublication date Tue Sep 05, 2006 17:26author address author phone

The following paragraphs are taken from a talk 'Starvation and Emigration: colonial landlordism in Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries', which Peter Berresford Ellis gave at the Marx Memorial Library, London, November 22, 2004. It leaves no doubt about the genocidal intent of the English government towards the Gaelic population:

In fact, between 1722 and 1879 there were no less than twenty-nine 'famines' and the feature of each one of these great mortalities to the Irish nation was that the great estates of Ireland were producing and exporting to England sufficient produce to feed three times the Irish population.

We have to ask whether these events were acts of God, the stupidity of the majority of the Irish population in being solely dependent on the potato as a staple diet, or were they due to English colonial mismanagement or, indeed, was there some more sinister motive? The word gorta can imply a deliberate starvation.

John Mitchel, in his The Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps), Dublin, 1861, was the first to argue the case for genocide. He wrote:

"A million and a half men, women and children were carefully and peacefully slain by the English Government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance, which their own hands created…"

There can be no argument that genocide, the eradication of the Irish nation, was the official policy of the English conquests from the end of the 16th and through the 17th Century, through the implementation of the transplantation schemes.

An idea proposed by the English Viceroy, Sir Arthur Chichester, writing on 22 November 1601, to Lord Burghly. Elizabeth's chief adviser, was specific:

"I have often said, and written, it is Famine which must consume them; our swords and other endeavours work not that speedy effect which is expected for their overthrow."

It was during this period, these devastating conquests that the Irish became reliant on potatoes as a staple diet.

The potato found its way into Ireland in the 1590s. Two decades previously, it had been brought into Spain from the New World and by 1600 was regarded as a popular vegetable in many parts of Europe. As the English conquering armies fought back and fro across Ireland, driving people from the land, and, of course, with the notorious transplantation schemes first approved of by the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor, the Irish became a society on the run. There was no time to grow wheat and corn, to herd cattle, pigs and other livestock that could be captured, driven off or destroyed by the English.

The discovery of the potato was a godsend. It yielded more food per acre than other crops, was highly nutritious, and introduced security for the people. It grew underground and was thus hidden from the rampaging soldiers so that when they left the area, the people could return and dig it up. It was the perfect food for a country with an army of occupation, persecuting and despoiling the natives.

By the 18th Century over half of the Irish population was solely dependent on the potato. But the life saving tuber was also a means of destruction.

With the Williamite Conquest and the introduction of the Penal Laws, 95 per cent of Irish land was in the lands of the conquerors. The Penal Laws applied not only to Irish Catholics but also to all Irish Dissenting Protestants. Only Anglicans had rights in Ireland.

During the 18th Century, some 1,500 absentee landlords owned 3.25 million acres of Irish land, and they lived in London. A further 4.25 million acres of Irish land was in the lands of another 4,500 absentee landlords who chose Dublin as their home. It was after the 1801 Union of the colonial parliament with London, that Georgian Dublin was reduced from a 'capital' to a provincial city and these landlords made for London where, by the 1840s, 6,000 were living and their average income from their Irish estates was between £25,000 and £30,000 per year.

The Irish were reduced to a serf population, working on the great estates, usually for middlemen who managed the estates for the landlords. Initially, they let out to tenant farmers - these were usually Anglican farmers because Catholics and Dissenting Protestants could not take out leases on land.

It was not until 1771 that an Act was passed allowing Catholic Irish to lease up to 50 acres of unprofitable bogland, at a distance of not less than a mile from any major habitation, and for no more the 21 years. The condition was that they had to reclaim the land from the bog, if they did not they were immediately evicted without compensation.

Descriptions of what life was like in rural Ireland for the native Irish during the 18th Century are numerous. Arthur Young in 1776 is often quoted but as an English traveller he had no axe to grind in over emphasising conditions. He was describing a vicious medieval feudalism.

The landlord and his agent were feudal seigneurs. The people had to obey their every whim and order, otherwise they could be punished from merely a beating with a cane or horsewhip to being hanged on the spot. The landlords and agents could summon the wife or daughter of one of their workers to their beds and if refused could punish the worker physically, breaking their bones or worse.

Landlords, driving down roads, could have their servants push peasants' carts into ditches to make a passage for their coaches. Reading such accounts as Young's one is remind of the scenes of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859) as the Marquis of Evrémonde rides over the peasants in the streets in his carriage and summons a servant girl to his bed. This was the reality of life in Ireland.

The first significant 'famine' began in 1722. Blight attacked the potato crop. Rural workers could not afford to buy food from the landlords at the commercial prices and so began to starve to death. Bishop William Nicolson of Derry describes how a horse hauling a wagon dropped dead and fifty people fell on the carcass and began to eat the meat there and there. At the same time three wagons of rich farm produce, guarded by a dozen soldiers with sabres drawn passed by on their way to the docks enroute for England.

Deaths from the famines of 1722, 1726, 1728 and 1738 were measured in the tens of thousands. But in 1741 half a million people died from malnutrition and related disease.

That year of 1741 became known as Bliadhan an Áir - the Year of the Slaughter. The author of a pamphlet The Groans of Ireland, records:

"Want and misery is in every face, the rich unwilling to relieve the poor, the roads spread with dead and dying bodies. Many, the colour of the docks and nettles which they feed on…"

Other famines followed in 1765, 1770, 1774 and 1783. Again the deaths were counted in the tens of thousands and figures barely recorded. More famines followed in 1800, 1807 and 1822.

It was the same old story. As William Cobbett wrote in his Political Register, July, 1822:

"Money, it seems, is wanted in Ireland. Now people do not eat money. No, but the money will buy them something to eat. What? The food is there, then. Pray, observe this: and let the parties get out of the concern if they can. The food is there; but those who have it in their possession will not give it without money. And we know that the food is there; for since this famine has been declared in Parliament, thousands of quarters of corn have been imported every week from Ireland to England."

If people thought that Catholic emancipation and the likes of the right-wing, monarchy loving, Daniel O'Connell, would save them, the attitude was succinctly summed up by John O'Connell MP, the son of the so-called 'Liberator': "I thank God I live among a people who would rather die of hunger than defraud their landlords of rent!"

So yet another death-dealing 'famine' occurred in 1830 more or less lasting through to 1834 and then another in 1836 before the 'Great Hunger' of 1845-48.

It was the London Times of June 26, 1845, that pointed out:

"They are suffering a real though artificial famine. Nature does her duty; the land is fruitful enough, nor can it be fairly said that man is wanting. The Irishman is disposed to work; in fact, man and nature together do produce abundantly. The island is full and overflowing with human food. But something ever intervenes between the hungry mouth and the ample banquet."

That 'something' was the colonial landlord who used the army and also armed police to protect the ample produce from the starving people. Read through the newspapers of the time and you will find harrowing tales. A cold November in 1849, a starving woman was crossing one of the fields of Sir George Colthurst of Ardrum, Co Cork. She saw a single turnip overlooked on the soil and picked it up. She was spotted, arrested and brought before the magistrates at Blarney. Found guilty, she was fined twenty shillings. She had probably never seen so large a sum in her life. Unable to pay, she was transported to the penal colonies.

And between 1845 and 1853 alone records show that landlords evicted 87,123 families because they could not afford to pay their rents.

Even after this terrible devastation, the colonial landlords became ever more severe in their dealing with the rural workers. And, of course, the artificial 'famines' continued. The next one of significance was in 1879 but that was the spark that produced the Land War.

For full text see:

http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/anonn-is-anall/irish-fam...ines/

author by Jack McCrackenpublication date Tue Mar 20, 2007 21:44author address author phone

As Tosh points out in The Pursuit of History, “In all spheres of life, from personal relationships to political judgements, we constantly interpret our experience in time perspective”, or in other words our contemporary values are indelible to our interpretations of history. As a sixth form student of the Great Famine, i make no bold claims whatsoever to hold unique or revolutionary knowledge of this topic; i can simply offer my interpretations of the imformation placed in front of me. With the greatest respect, all i see before me, with regards to this extensive dialouge of nationalist interpretations, amounts to little more than what is usually referred to as propaganda. This represents as greater a misuse of history as that of Aryan mythology employed by Nazi Germany purely to invoke nationalist sentiments. History should never be reduced to the tool of journalists or activists but seen as the active search for the truth of such a catastrophic event.
What famine revisionism represents is modern scholarship as opposed to nationalist oral tradition. To place claims of genocide on the doorstep of the British is devoid of any vaguely complex interpretation. The term 'genocide' in itself when applied to the Great Famine is above all, worryingly simplistic and perpetuates ingnorance at the most basic of levels. This is ultimately why, if revisionism is so inextricably linked to 'Irish holocaust denial' as this url proclaims, i am infinitely comfortable to place this ridiculous title on myself.

author by Cowardly Tom - Also sacked by ITGWUpublication date Wed Mar 21, 2007 22:27author address author phone

Will deluded people stop calling the so-called Famine a Famine and refer to it TRUTHFULLY as what it was, a STARVATION.

This word will make people QUESTION why it's used - whereby Famine does not, EVEN thought its wrong - and is well MIS - understood by the educated LIARS.

More food was exported from Ireland to England during the STARVATION than in the five years
preceding and following it.

This FOOD Barley, Wheat, Corn and all root vegetables, Turnips, Carrots ETC were used as CHEAP fodder for farm animals.

Surely everyone knows where the Irish Times, Foster, Edwards and the rest are coming from. One simple crop failed due to a Blight. All their LIES cannot make this not TRUE.

The word is STARVATION.

Let them try and explain away the STARVATION.


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