Ireland

Thoughts on the Gaels

I am mostly of Irish and Scottish ancestry. I don’t consider myself either, as I’m American and somewhat mongrelized between the peoples of Europe, but I can’t deny the connection I have to these places. It’s not easy. I have felt uncomfortable with my Irish heritage for the longest time. I often wish that I was born an old-stock WASP. I tuck my head in shame every time the Irish brag about how they were “colonized” for “800 years”, and promote sympathy for the third world as if the Irish are “trauma brothers” with the military-aged male Somalis who come to rape and steal. However, because I am significantly of Irish ancestry whether I like it or not, and because the Irish are a race pure like none other, I do also have to fight regularly on the side of the Irish against those who really do genuinely hate the Irish and view them as inferior.

And yes, the Irish are a very pure people, as in pure descendants of the Beaker Folk. There has been pretty much no large migration into Ireland since the initial Bell Beaker invasion of the British Isles. Britain has experienced multiple, most famously the Anglo-Saxon and Norse invasions but perhaps more significantly was the Celtic invasion from mainland Europe. For whatever reason, Ireland did not get a similar influx of DNA richer in Neolithic ancestry like Britain did. It may have to do with the Gaelic language, which split from other Celtic languages fairly early (probably even earlier than the Balto-Slavic split). Keep in mind, those more EEF-rich continentals were also descended from Bell Beakers, so the difference is not very significant. Two very similar culture groups. Continental Celts also did not seem to leave a significant legacy in Y-DNA, as a large majority of Irishmen are R1b-L21, which probably originates among British Bell Beakers.

It is possible that the Irish do have Celtic DNA, it’s just so similar to their Beaker DNA that it is hard to distinguish. After all, pretty much everyone in Western Europe is Beaker-descended, it’s just a matter of which Bell Beaker group. Regardless, despite the differentiation between Gaelic (Goidelic in general) and other Celtic languages, the Irish retained a cultural connection with other Celtic groups through the Druidic religion. As I discussed in my previous post, the Druids were not just local priests. They were a highly interconnected social elite across the Celtic world, functioning as priests, jurists, oracles, philosophers, and doctors. The Irish had Druids, and the Druids existed until Christianization. Druids are regularly regarded as existing past Christianization, as sorcerers in the wilderness. I do wonder if Celtic language was actually introduced to Ireland as a sort of liturgical language for this religious class. Although, just to clarify, Druids were not celibates like the monks who would later come to rule Ireland.

The Irish have their own very interesting myths of ethnogenesis. I’m sure many of you are aware of the myth involving the Tuatha De Danann fighting the Fomorians in a similar fashion to other Indo-European wars of foundation. Such as how the Olympians fought the Titans, or the Aesir-Vanir War. They were not the first races to settle Ireland, there were others before them. But the final race to settle the island is the Milesians, who are the ancestors of the Gaels. The Milesians are said to come from Scythia, and have spent many years wandering the world to end up in Spain, at which point they traveled to Ireland.

A lot of these races of Ireland are attributed an origin in Iberia, and I’m not sure why, but the Scythian origin was a very common trope in the Middle Ages and not necessarily indicative of knowledge that the Irish actually did technically come from the region of Scythia (along with all Indo-European languages). The myths were also clearly influenced by the Bible and a desire to write an origin narrative with biblical lore and parallels in mind. But, anything’s possible I suppose.

Now that I’ve set the scene on where the Irish people come from, let’s talk about Ireland today. The beginning of foreign intervention in Ireland comes during the Viking invasions, but is no where near as penetrative as it is in England, where the Danes conquer large swathes of Northern England. The Normans, however, end up conquering both England and most of Ireland. Due to their small numbers, it is unlikely they left a sizeable genetic impact on England or Ireland outside of elite haplogroups, but they did leave a massive cultural impact. The Normans in Ireland integrated heavily into the local elite and became the Hiberno-Normans. This is a completely distinct group from the later Anglo-Irish, who themselves are different from the Scots-Irish. And this is where the nonsense about “800 years of oppression” gets shown as ridiculous. First of all, the Irish did this first. The Irish, as we all know, invaded Scotland and established Scots Gaelic and the Dal Riata, but they also invaded Wales and the Isle of Mann even earlier.

The Normans were no more foreign to the Irish than they were to the Anglo-Saxons, and were largely autonomous from the English. In fact, the issue of Normans becoming little more than other Irish chiefs accelerated the loss of English land in Ireland, and eventually the English started taking countermeasures to avoid any assimilation between English and Irish under The Pale. The English, at this time, did have negative views of the Irish, viewing them as barbarous.

“They use their fields mostly for pasture. Little is cultivated and even less is sown. The problem here is not the quality of the soil but rather the lack of industry on the part of those who should cultivate it. This laziness means that the different types of minerals with which hidden veins of the earth are full are neither mined nor exploited in any way. They do not devote themselves to the manufacture of flax or wool, nor to the practice of any mechanical or mercantile act. Dedicated only to leisure and laziness, this is a truly barbarous people. They depend on animals for their livelihood and they live like animals” —Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica

Honestly, that sounds pretty keyed to me. No stinking longhoused old peasant women nagging you. No backbreaking labor. Just sitting around watching your cattle, waiting for someone to try and take them so you can launch a spear at their face. But the sentiment that the Irish were stinky barbarians was pretty common, even among the English Pope Adrian IV.

I’ll get to the actual English influence on Ireland in a bit, but just to clarify, the Gaels are something of a common ethnic group. The Irish left a strong genetic impact on Scotland. So much so that, as can be seen here, a fair amount of Scots (presumably without recent Irish ancestry) actually cluster closer to the Irish than other Scots.

Also, the English and Scottish impact on the Pale of Settlement is visible as well. It’s not very visible in this PCA, but if you look at a map of Germanic Y-DNA…

R1b-U106 Represent!

Many Scots during the early modern period also viewed themselves as the same race as the Irish. King James (a Scottish Stuart) was viewed positively by many Irish as a Gaelic unifier of the British isles, as expressed by the Irish bard Ferghal Óg Mac an Bháird. Of course, James ended up overseeing the infamous Ulster Plantations. Say what you want about those, I guess, but the the Stuart reputation among the Irish was saved by the Catholic James II, and for the next few centuries the Irish would be strong proponents of Jacobitism. The goal was not independence from Britain, because Ireland technically wasn’t part of the Kingdom of England or Scotland. It was its own kingdom, with the same ruler as those kingdoms, and was in theory ruled as an entirely separate state. The goal was, having Ireland (and subsequently England and Scotland) under the crown of a (preferably Catholic) Gael.

The real issues for the Irish, in my opinion, only truly started after Act of Union in 1800. Albeit, the Irish were described as exceedingly poor by Americans like Ben Franklin before this, but Ireland was described as a poor backwater place before it was ever controlled by the English. I don’t think the Ulster Plantations were the travesty that Irish people act like they are. You guys invaded Scotland. Now the Scot decides to invade you back? And somehow it’s an injustice? Give me a break.

The English, to the chagrin of many Irish, introduced massive amounts of wealth to Ireland. Yes, they did exacerbate the Potato Famine, and they did endanger Irish Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic too). But the entire reason the Potato Famine happened in the first place was due to Ireland’s population exploding, which was due to English stimulation of the Irish economy.

It’s the same silliness with India, but I don’t think I need to make a post on India’s “ruined by the UK” myth. The British justification for withholding support from Ireland was Malthusianism, not a premeditated interest in erasing the Irish. Malthusianism, by the way, is not “debunked”. We didn’t beat Malthusianism with technology, we have only staved it off by sacrificing certain possibilities for our life and civilization before industrial life. When we are living in the pod and eating the bug, I don’t think I will be cheering about how we beat Malthusianism. Yes, thank god we have made our civilization irreparably attached to technology and the “global supply chain” and a system of pollution so that billions of useless mouths can continue having more useless babies in some third world country. But I digress… The English, while good for the Irish economy, did end up taking large swathes of the Irish (and Scottish, but that’s for another day) elite and assimilating them into the Protestant Ascendancy. Catholics were often barred from high positions in society. This created a brain drain effect, which was made worse by Irish immigrating to the United States (that’s my grandparents!). This probably explains some of those “low Irish IQ scores” in the past, although it might also just be less reliable studies. Cremieux suggested that the entire Flynn Effect was due to this a while back. I don’t remember where he said it THOUGH. Anyways…

While I really do view the marginalization of Gaelic culture and language as a travesty, the Irish seem to have failed at revitalizing it. This is not an impossible task. The Israelis did a great job revitalizing Hebrew, albeit it took some authoritarian methods. The Irish seemed to be on the right track for a while, but alas Gaelic revival seems to have failed. Immigration has probably played a role. Most immigrants in Ireland probably know English as a lingua franca. They wouldn’t waste their time learning the nearly dead language of the country which is just a cash cow to them.

Which brings me to my list of grievances with Irish Republicanism…

Irish Republicanism in the beginning wasn’t that bad. Even some of the more economically left-leaning members still had a head on their shoulders. Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein, had some rather keyed views on Jews, Black people, and Indians. Viewing it as shameful how many foreign colonial subjects were fighting in Europe for the British Empire. I would prefer, however, if the Irish had stopped at Home Rule, but I understand that the British forced them to make a more ambitious move. Because the Irish oriented themselves a lot of the time on not being British, they did avoid a lot of the stupid things the British did during the early-mid 20th century. Like World War II. The Blueshirts were… Meh. They were not that different from the Integralists in Spain. Nothing to write home about, but it always makes the Sinn Fein types today really flustered when you mention how big the Blueshirts were.

Things really get bad during the post-war era, where the IRA becomes much more left-wing and sympathetic to Communist countries like the USSR. It strongly associates itself with the “Anti-Imperialist World” during The Troubles, and this is where Irish Nationalism becomes cringey. Let’s get one thing straight: Never, EVER, excite Left-Nationalism. It will always end in pozzed behavior, because Leftism is pozzed and at its core only uses Nationalism as a means to an end. This is especially the case if you’re White. That is why Sinn Fein today has become totally pozzed. Yes, spend 30 years fighting the closest possible ethnic group to Irish because they are “foreigners” only to let in an unending supply of Nigerians. Fucking hell. And just to clarify, I don’t care for Irish Unification. The Scots-Irish have been there for as long as they’ve been in Virginia at this point. At least some 57% of the Northern Irish population wanted to stay in the Union in 1973. Yes, you can say Northern Ireland is “gerrymandered” (retarded high school level polisci sophistry) but I don’t really see the big deal. If being under British control was so catastrophic for these Catholics, then how come Northern Ireland has only been increasing in Catholics? It isn’t exactly a big country. No one in Northern Ireland has to move far to be in Ireland-Ireland. And yet, this is what people were carbombing each other over? Meanwhile, today both sides are being invaded by Somali rapists? Did all of that violent energy just disappear?

So much of the argumentation is stupid and a result of the Protestant Reformation. Uhh, speaking of which, I probably should talk about Cromwell in this post. Because he contributed a lot to the loss of Irish power in Ireland. I don’t support him at all. I don’t know why some people think he was “based”, he was fighting against the Aristocracy and also was a friend to the Jews. Much of his policies would spur on the democratization of the UK. Not to mention the things he did in Ireland. I know I joke about Sigma Calvinism but Congregationalists both have a boner for Jews and like to pretend they themselves are Jews (even moreso than other Christians).

As far as Irish Americans go, I think the right gives them too much flack. First of all, as I have talked about in posts on here before, the Irish assimilated maritally and economically at about the same rate German-Americans did. They were not difficult to assimilate and Anti-Irish sentiment was mostly either spurred on by English immigrants or was just Anti-Papist sentiment. Also, Irish Catholics have been here from the start. Huge amounts of indentured servants and penal colonists (from Cromwell’s wars) heading to the South (often through British plantation colonies like Bermuda) were Irish Catholics. Not Scotch-Irish, not Anglo-Irish, but 100% Gaels. It’s just that they converted to Anglicanism and their Gaelic identity fell into the past. Some of them didn’t. I’ve met a fair amount of Southern Irish Catholics online.

The Irish did have some negative political attributes like shilling for Immigration (it got really bad with the Kennedies, except for their Father and Joe Jr.) and building up corrupt urban political machines. But, people always talk about this and never talk about how libtarded German immigrants were. Sure, Irishmen like JFK and Hart were helping drive civil rights, but Germans were the ones driving the Republican Party in the 1850s and eventually the radical Republicans in the 1860s and 70s. Meanwhile at this time, the Irish (who were drafted unwillingly into the Union Army while Blacks got to dodge this) were sympathetic to the Confederacy and in some ways this was connected to the old Jacobite spirit. Southerners viewed themselves as the descendants of the Cavaliers while the Yankees were Puritan losers and suckers. The Irish launched a violent riot largely aimed at New York City’s draft-immune Black population in 1863, and were heavily in favor of George McClellan over Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

The Irish would go on to serve as the backbone of White retaliation against both Asian immigration on the west coast and in the Northeast, perpetrating most of the so-called “Red Summer”. The decision of the Klan to pivot away from Black people and towards Catholics was honestly a huge mistake and may have influenced the shift in Irish attitudes on civil rights culminating in Kennedy and his cronies.

But, unfortunately Irish-Americans are pretty big libs today. I could write more and I could have written this more fluently but I am tired. Goodnight