SMASH COMBAT 18

( I am NOT Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey NOR am I connected to her in any way. I discuss naming it after her in the "notes" post)

I found this video on YouTube. It basically describes how the IRA is going to smash Combat 18, an armed Nazi organization.

Some notes on the video before you watch it:

1. The UVF is a loyalist (Protestant/Pro-British) paramilitary.
2. The guys with heavy weapons and/or camoflauge are the IRA.
3. The video quotes an Irish National Liberation Army statement. As far as I can tell, the creator of the video (who is awesome) is close to the Republican Socialist Movement. I don't support them today, I flirted with supporting them in the late 90s, and I believe that from 1974-1982, they were amazing. I might post more on that later.
4. Although I'm sure the creator is anti-racist, it's disapointing that the video says nothing about loyalist/Nazi violence towards people of color in the North of Ireland.
5. The music is "Bash the Fash" by Oi Polloi. It pushes a message I only agree half-way with- that the best way to deal with fascists is through violence. I agree with Billy Bragg (the popular British left-wing singer-songwriter) when he says that although there are much better ways of dealing with fascists than beating them up in the street, he also does support beating them up in the street.

The youtube page of the creator is here



I appologize for the dificulty you'll probably have with some of the text.

Slaytanic Wehrmacht

( I am NOT Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey NOR am I connected to her in any way. I discuss naming it after her in the "notes" post)



(As far as the anti-bigotry part of this blog, I decided at some point early on that I wanted to work around the edges of battling bigotry, offering ideas and information that most people are unaware of but which might help them here and there with anti-bigotry work. So that’s why there are a lot of posts that seem a little weird, including this one)

I'll be honest, I'm not much of a Slayer fan (Slayer being one of the world's top 4 speed/thrash metal (as far as I can tell, speed and thrash are the same thing) bands, known for their dark and often satanic lyrics). I LOVE "War Ensemble," "Seasons In The Abyss," and "Skeletons of Society"; I used to listen to the Seasons in The Abyss album pretty often, I bought and listened once to Divine Intervention, and I like "Disorder." (I frequently listen to, today, those four songs, and might possibly listen to more of their stuff).

So, I can't really expect Slayer to care what I think, but I'm going to write this anyway, maybe I'll convince some of their more dedicated fans who will then contact Slayer. Also, although I'm only a little bit of a Slayer fan, I'm a huge thrash fan and am concerned about racism in Metal (when Ice-T wrote the lyrics to Body Count's "There Goes The Neighborhood," I don't think he was imagining racism in that scene, and although that was a long time ago, I have good reason to believe that it's still a serious problem) . Anyway, here's what I need to say about Slayer.

There have been accusations against Slayer of racism and/or anti-semitism. A very tiny but significant minority of their fans are Nazt skinheads.

My theory is that there's a very small chance Slayer is racist. And even if I was 100% certain they're not racist, they need to do A LOT to balance out the stuff they've done which has probably fueled racism among their fans. (based on what I know about bigots doing things that you wouldn't normally think they'd do, all of the information I have falls a bit short of making me 100% certain that Slayer are not racist at all- they probably have a greatly exaggerated sense of how common anti-white racism is and probably are more interested in making money than making it clear to their fans that racism is wrong (I'd say any band that attracts Nazi skinheads at their shows should make it very clear that the Nazis are not welcome- that's what Black Flag did and it probably makes it less likely that the Nazis will recruit from among the band's fans); The odds are very high that all Slayer needs is an attitude adjustment). (UPDATE 5/18/11 Also, Fugazi, at least some of the time, would refuse to play at a concert if there were Nazi skinheads in the audience)

First a series of minor things on each side of this argument.

SLAYER IS RACIST
1. Probably some very tiny minority of their fans are Nazi skinheads.
2. Apparently in response to the criticism they recieved as a result of "Angel of Death," they temporarily adopted a symbol some have said is based on the Nazi "Eagle Atop Swastika," and Jeff Hanneman placed some SS stickers on his guitar.
3. Although I can't figure out what it is, they seem to have some connection to "Death's Head Music." The Death's Head is a symbol of the SS unit primarily responsible for Holocaust.
4. Their official fan club (and a lot of unofficial fan stuff refers to this as well) is called the "Slaytanic Wehrmacht." The Wehrmacht was the non-SS military of Nazi Germany. But there are two big problems with this. First, the Waffen-SS (the military part of the SS) was under the same national command offices that the Wehrmacht was, you could almost say they were part of the Wehrmacht. And if it wasn't for the Wehrmacht, the Nazis would have been defeated earlier and millions of people who died in the Holocaust wouldn't have. So FUCK the Wehrmacht.

SLAYER IS ANTI-RACIST
1. For about 1-2 years they were signed to Def Jam, a record label primarily about black rap music. The co-founder of that label, who is Jewish, produced most of their albums.
2. Tom Araya is Chilean and Dave Lombardo is Cuban. I'm not sure that proves it, as some of Chile is White and 65% of Cuba is white. Plus, the Nazi Low Riders, a white supremacist group, was known (according to the Southern Poverty Law Center) to include Latinos. On a related note, 1-2 members may be Jewish, but that's not too impressive either- it's not like there aren't racist Jews.
3. Two members were briefly in a band with Rocky George of Suicidal Tendencies.
4. One band member, at one point, had a Dead Kennedys sticker on his guitar (probably not a lot of racist DK fans out there).
5. When I became curious about this, I did a search for "slayer" and "racist." The first thing to come up was a discussion thread on Stormfront.org. Although I think it's mostly American, it's the world's leading White Supremacist web forum. Tons of Nazi skinheads love Slayer, but the general consensus was that Slayer is NOT racist (the scum were SO disapointed). (UPDATE 1/9/09- The discussion was started by someone asking if Slayer was racist, it seemed like about 1/3 of them thought Slayer might be racist)
6. In general their lyrics fail to take a position on horrible things, so their two songs about the Nazis ("SS-3" about Reinhard Heydrich of the SS and "Angel of Death" about Joseph Mangele, Concentration Camp doctor) unsurprisingly are not explicit condemnations of their subjects. This used to be in the RACIST category, but new information makes me certain that they're anti-, see the second set of updates at the bottom. (There's also a third song "Behind The Crooked Cross" which, I discuss below)

The two big things:

1) On an album they did which was mostly a bunch of punk covers, they did "Guilty Of Being White," by Minor Threat. As far as I can tell, when that was written Minor Threat were anti-racist and nowhere near as tainted by the sort of stuff I mention in the first category above. The vocalist who wrote the song was inspired by apparently being beaten by black kids at his mostly black school; apparently he had good reason to think (or maybe KNOW) that it was racist. Also, unlike with Slayer, I feel comfortable assuming that at Minor Threat shows and in interviews the vocalist Ian MacKaye, made anti-racist statements (I'm basing this on the politics of Fugazi, on a report that during the Minor Threat era MacKaye was a big fan of Bad Brains, he was close to Henry Rollins, and I found a pro-SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) video on youtube that had music from 4 Minor Threat songs (no, I'm not familiar with Minor Threat, for all I know they have several anti-racist songs)).

Slayer's version changed the last line from the song title to "Guilty of being right." It's not real clear, but they seem to have admitted that, although they were just trying to be controversial, yes, it was supposed to be interpreted as racist.

(UPDATE 3/6/12 this is replacing an earlier paragraph on the same subject, which was pretty low quality)Even without that lyrical twist at the end, there would still be a problem with this. I'll probably do another post on this later, but let me say, sure, there's anti-White racism. But it's safe to say there's tons more people who reflect one or another shade of white supremacy. A few years ago I looked at FBI figures on hate crimes for the preceding 10-15 years. At first I just looked at murders, then I looked at the numbers for hate crimes in general. I found that according to the FBI, for every anti-White incident, there were about six incidents motivated by white supremacy. I had heard that there are a lot of hate crimes unreported to the FBI, so I made it seven. I have had trouble figuring out what percentage of the population is White (this is complicated by the fact that I’m pretty sure there are a lot of white people classified as “Hispanic/Latino” and when I last looked at this it would have been the 2000 Census data), but I’d say around 75%, making people of color around 25%. I then did some math involving those figures, but I can’t remember what I did. I DID conclude that shades of white supremacy were about twice as common among white people as anti-white racism was among people of color (that is, if 50% of whites are racist, 25% of people of color are racist). I have since learned that the Department of Justice believes that for every hate crime that is included in the FBI’s figures, there are 20-30 more that aren’t. I don’t know how they came to that, but it makes sense. There are two main reasons for believing this- 1) Many, MANY law enforcement agencies do not send hate crime figures to the FBI. Undoubtedly, such areas would be very racist, and there would be a lot of racist crimes; 2) There must be a HUGE number of homophobic crimes unreported partly because there are so many gay and bi-sexual people who are more or less still in the closet, and because you take what I wrote in #1 above and change “racist” to “homophobic.” I can’t remember how I did the math earlie, but it makes me think that racism is about 10-20 times more common among white people than anti-White racism is among people of color. (this whole thing is based any kind racist incident, the sort of thing that pretty much everyone is physically and financially capable of doing). (I have mixed feelings about this, but I am right now defining racism as a belief- I am certainly not talking about how oppressed people are (the gap on that is more or less infinite, since the ways in which anti-white racism is exercised do not add up to white people being oppressed at all), just how widespread a belief is, compared to another belief, as indicated by actions that pretty much anyone can take). When there isn't an appropriate amount of hostility towards white supremacy to balance it out, discusing anti-white racism can easily lead white people to think that anti-white racism is a greater problem than it is, which can lead a lot of white people to become racist. (This affects the number of things Slayer should do)

There's also, the racist twist of the lyrics and some of the other things I've mentioned. So, Slayer ought to do AT LEAST seven things of equal significance to challenge white supremacy. As far as I can tell they have done 1.5.

2) Slayer recorded a song (a medley of three songs by The Exploited) called "Disorder" with Ice-T. Some of the lyrics were altered to apply to American politics in the early 1990s, and some of it was anti-racist. It's made very clear that they're referring to the Rodney King Riots of 1992, when they sing "Injustice drives you crazy, it drove LA insane."

But it was on a soundtrack. There were probably some Slayer fans who didn't even hear about it, but did hear Slayer's cover of "Guilty of Being White."

So Slayer really ought to do more to balance out their condemnation of anti-white racism with stuff of similar significance that rejects white supremacy. It seems quite possible that a number of Slayer fans (thousands in America throughout Slayer's history) have become racist or had their racism strengthened by Slayer. With that in mind and the fact that Nazi skinheads often interact with Slayer fans at concerts and possibly in other forums, it's quite possible that in America during Slayer's history something like 500 people have become Nazi skinheads partly because of Slayer. (I should point out that the stuff in the "RACIST" column is more visible to Slayer fans than the stuff in the "ANTI-RACIST" column). (UPDATE 1/10/09 That Stormfront.org discussion I mentioned I had read about 2 months before I wrote this post. I just looked at again. Although about 75% of the posts on this question indicated that Slayer is NOT racist, about 5 posts indicated that Slayer HAS influenced people to become racist)

Slayer, I imagine, might not be around much longer. They should do some stuff to balance out the (likely) damage they've done. They could do explicitly anti-racist songs, more collaborations with rappers (especially those who are people of color), do benefit concerts for anti-racist organizations, make explicit, detailed anti-racist statements that go well beyond simple denials of racism, do tours with groups that are mostly/completely people of color, (they did do one tour with Suicidal Tendencies, that counts as half, so that's why I say they've done 3 of the seven things they ought to do) etc.

I'd also like to say that if it were JUST a small amount of controversial imagery and their lyrics occassionally made it very clear they're anti-racist, that'd be fine. I haven't thrown myself into their stuff yet, but I am pretty sure that most Sacred Reich lyrics are progressive (certainly "One Nation," "Surf Nicaragua," and "Blue Suit, Brownshirt" are). I've got no problem with their name, especially because it's hilarious considering the politics in their lyrics.

That's about it. A note for all the Slayer fans who will hopefully read this. First, if you know of stuff I haven't mentioned, please let me know. If you're going to point to Slayer's denials of being racist, don't waste your time or my time. That'll barely affect my theory that there's a small chance they're racist, and it barely does anything to discourage racism among their fans.


UPDATES 2/8/09
1) It seems that the OFFICIAL fan club is called Slatanic Wehrmacht, without the y.
2) Although I more or less knew this earlier, I left out 1-2 bits of evidence that they aren't racist. Kerry King did a guitar solo, specifically for the Beastie Boys song "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," and I could swear I read about a member of Slayer doing vocals on a BB song. Anyway, the Kerry King thing seems pretty well confirmed, and if so that seriously erodes the claim that they're racist because A: it was a BB rap song, and B: the BBs are Jewish- a major part of the arguement that Slayer are racist is the accusation that "Angel of Death" is pro-Holocaust, but that seems very unlikely. (Also, King appeared in the video for that song, and did guitar work on "Fight For Your Right")
3) The URL for the Stormfront.org discussion is here.
4) I wonder if I wasted my time with this, but I became very interested in the question of whether or not Slayer is racist, and I think that if they turned anti-racist, that would help a lot. As I explain, there's a good argument for them to do so, to make up for the very likely damage they've done- the key is to put the right kind of preassure on them- if all you do is attack them over "Angel of Death," (a song that many have mis-interpreted as being pro-Nazi) that won't work; if you approach them based on what I've written on this blog, and the preassure from a minority of their fans and a lot of anti-racist organizations is overwhelming, they'll become anti-racist.
5) To be honest, the last 12 years I have paid almost no attention to new music at all. But I have very good reasons to still have an interest in this- I still listen to old Thrash, I used to be really into that scene (my favorite band in High School was Megadeth), I'm listening to more Slayer, I'm anti-racist, for lots of reasons I don't like Nazi Skinheads, etc. And although for all I know 1-2 bands Slayer has toured with are mostly/entirely people of color, or they've done something else to make up for the damage they've done, I'm confident they're still short of 7, which the absolute minimum. And I have plenty of reason to believe, besides common sense, that there's still a problem with racism among their fans.

UPDATES 4/8/09
1. A good source confirms that Jeff Hanneman is Jewish and is very interested in WWII and that would explain the two songs about the Nazis since he wrote them.
2. Apparently the song "Behind the Crooked Cross" is anti-nazi, although I can't imagine more than some small minority of their fans know that because I'm very interested in Nazism and I only just now learned that "Crooked Cross" is another term for swastika (if the video I found on YouTube, which makes it clear it is about WWII, is official, then that goes up to some very large majority, but I cannot find anything indicating it's official, so I assume at this point the video is unofficial, made by a fan).
3. I have lowered my estimate of the liklihhod that they're racist from something like 20% to something like 10% and am now saying they have done 3 things to balance out "guilty of Being white" and counter the damage they've done (I'm not giving full credit to those three songs- they're not explicit enough). They still have to get up to 7, at the very least. I have made a couple changes to the material above.
******

Some of my sources for some of the more controversial claims:
Slayer's page on Wikipedia, and related pages for specific band members, songs, albums (I've looked at TONS of stuff on Wikipedia and have yet to find one thing that I know is innacurate, and a lot of what I've looked at includes info I was already aware of)
Slayer and Nazi Skinheads- well known that the latter love the former (multiple sources, just do a search on it)
Minor Threat and related Wikipedia pages

In general, I doubt anyone will seriously question the facts I've presented. I'm sure plenty of Slayer fans will disagree with my analysis, I'm pretty sure the facts are not in dispute.

There is an earlier discussion of this here.

American Democracy

( I am NOT Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey NOR am I connected to her in any way. I discuss naming it after her in the "notes" post)


First, let me address something. I know sometimes when people talk about making America more democratic, some people, either because they're anal, or because they oppose making America more democratic, respond by pointing out that America is a Republic, not a Democracy. Although I consider myself some kind of amateur political scientist (a significant part of my degree, Ethnic Studies, is poli-sci and I took a PSCI course outside ETHN) I struggle a little with this. But I looked at it recently and decided that technically it does make sense to talk about making America more democratic. And if it doesn't, I don't care. I'll start caring once America's political scientists convince more than 1% of America's elected politicians to stop talking about America as a democracy (or at least referring to America as "democratic") (I recently found a few sources saying that a Republic is simply a state that is not a Monarchy, and that they can be democratic or undemocratic).

How do we make America more democratic? There are several ways. Some of which are complicated and I'll only touch on briefly, others can be briefly mentioned, and others I'll go into a bit. And I'll be honest- although I'd support greater democracy anyway, there's reason to believe that what I'm proposing would benefit the liberal/progressive/left side of politics.

1. Proportional Representation. Although I prefer the form where there are many districts with something like 3-5 members elected from each, and I also prefer Single Transferable Vote (you rank the candidates based on your preference and your vote is transferred depending on how each candidate does at each stage of the counting), it'd be great to see some kind of PR for one part of the Congress.

2. Let felons vote. Although there's probably tons of people in correctional institutions who shouldn't be there, I'm willing to concede that some small majority of them probably should. But their punishment is that they lose their freedom, they don't lose their citizenship. Also, it's not insignificant that felons barred from voting are disproportionately people of color. At the same time, they're counted in census counts that shape congressional districts. Under slavery, slaves were counted as 2/3 of a person for this purpose. Now it's 100% and they still can't vote. Also, to some small degree, since a lot of these institutions are in rural areas, it may mean more rural (conservative) districts.


3. Instant run-off voting for President. I wouldn't say this is the most important. I kind of feel that 3rd parties like the Greens should just ignore the Presidential race and focus on races they have some chance of winning (I might later on post my thoughts on progressive 3rd party electoral stuff), but the fact is they aren't going to ignore it and will continue to act as potential or actual spoilers. IRV will allow them to vote their conscience without throwing away their vote.

4. Statehood for DC. The residents of Washington DC, a mostly non-white city don't have a voting member of the House and have no one at all in the senate. The population of DC is bigger than that of Wyoming. They should have a voting member of the House and two senators.

5. There's probably a bunch of things relevant to this that I'm going to skip (i.e. shortening the work week so people have more time for activism/civic involvement, taking money out of politics, etc.); although I'll probably miss a couple, I want to focus on what could be called more structural reforms. So the last item, and in fact the one that prompted me to write this in the first case, is about the Senate.


(UPDATE 6/10/09 The stuff about how the process of amending the constitution works, and the general population and racial demographic figures come from Wikipedia)

Our Senate is ridicuously undemocratic. Each state has the same representation regardless of how big or small they are. To look at the extremes, Wyoming and California, if you take 2 and divide it by the number of either eligible voters or the number of citizens in each state, it means that the tiny fraction of a vote that each Californian has in the Senate is MUCH tinier than the one that people in Wyoming have. This is wrong. Also, however you define "small" the small states are mostly conservative. Even if that changes, it would still be undemocratic, and it's not likely to change- in fact, it's unlikely to change because progressive reform which could sway people away from supporting conservative politics is limited by the senate.

The reform should be that each Senator gets a number of votes based on how many seats in the House their state is entitled to.

What will be needed is a constitutional amendment. Probably the best approach to the first part (proposing the amendment) would be through the Congresss (a 2/3 vote of both chambers); then 3/4 of the states would have to ratify it- in that second part, the best approach would be to do it through the legislature. That's because during both parts, HUGE amounts of preassure would have to be put certain politicians in/from certain states, and it's easier to put preassure on elected politicians than it is to put preassure on the general population. Obviously the first steps are organization, education and lobbying to get sponsors. The preassure to be applied should be in the form of rallies, marches, petitions, probably lots of civil disobediance, and as much international preassure as can be gathered (if it seems like around 1/2-2/3 of America is behind such a reform, it'll probably be pretty easy to get international support, since it's an issue of DEMOCRACY, not policy on a specific issue).

UPDATE 1/30/09 The way to get international support is to explain the part about Wyoming and California, and then describe a situation where the American President is directly elected by the people, but the people in Wyoming get something like 60 votes and the people in California get 1 vote. It's not a solid analogy, but the Senate is roughly as powerful as the President, which strengthens this arguement. Also, it occured to me that, not only are the people in the smaller states likely to be conservative, they're VERY likely to be white, another arguement that can be used to get international support (it's actually close, but when considering this, if you give weight to CA with it's huge population, and weight to the really small, really white states, this is a significant problem, and is also another reason to reform the Senate).

UPDATE 1/31/09 Some thoughts on getting this passed:
1. The small states that are liberal will probably support it, but the large state that's solidly conservative, Texas, will probably oppose it.
2. Preassure can be put on certain states and districts by getting corporations, foreign and probably even a significant number of American ones, to boycott or at least threaten to boycott.
3. The federal people from certain states will be easier to preassure than the state legislators from those states, but the federal ones can be preassured to make statements putting preassure on the state people to vote the right way.

UPDATE 2/23/09 This is a little awkward because the last 4 years I have been significantly outside the loop of the American Left, and the three years before that I was slightly outside of it. I might be missing something, but so far when I have asked senior/semi-senior people on the American Left about this they have indicated that I am not missing something. I can't understand why the liberals and the Left aren't prioritizing this, making a fuss about it, getting people interested, etc. Based on what I have said- all the arguements and tactics I describe above (I wouldn't be totally surprised if some of that has escaped some of the people who are interested in this), I think it's likely that we'll win. And right now is a good time to do it. We don't know for sure who will win the White House in 2012, but we do know that right now, with minimal pushing, the President will be on our side, which will be important.

UPDATE 2/23/09 I recently did a fairly scientific look at this, and as far as I can tell, it's true that the liberal-left would benefit. If the presidential election results were the same for the Senate, the voting power of the Democrats in the Senate would be more than TWICE that of the Republicans- they'd have about 70% of the votes. Also, depending on various factors, roughly 55-60% of the small states are conservative, and about 60-75% of the big states are liberal, the biggest (by far) being solidly liberal California. Also, as I point out in the earlier updates, you could say something similar about the racial demographics of the small and large states. Going back to the political strength of the Democrats (and possibly others who are more or less liberals or even leftists) and I'll probably risk offending people with this, but I wonder if they forget that even though it will only give the liberal-left a small boostb strength, that will be present in EVERYTHING the Senate does, from votes on bills on the floor, to Supreme Court confirmations, committee votes, even committee chairs. It will almost definitely be worth it- plus the stuff about democracy and people of color being represented (you might be able to make a similar comment about LGBT people, since it seems like the two biggest concentrations are NY and CA).

UPDATE 2/23/09 I've also become even more convinced than before that getting the Constitutional Amendment passed will be more than possible, as I explain in the earlier updates. Actually, here's a few thoughts I've developed since then:
1) Texas might actually support it without preassure.
2) The states that are in the middle will probably support it without preassure, except the conservative ones.
3) In the small, conservative states, a significant minority of conservatives (and a large number of centrists) who believe strongly in democracy will support it.

On a related note, something should be done about the Electoral College. I'm not sure if we should get rid of it, but at the very least it should be reformed so that it eliminates the 2 votes each state gets from the Senate.

Having said all that, what am I going to do about it? Right now nothing. Although in the past I did a ton of activism and I was good-very good, for mostly personal reasons I've done less and less the last 7 seven years and at this point am pretty far from throwing myself into working on an issue like this- and even if I was active, I'm not a GREAT organizer and wouldn't take the lead on this. But it would be a good idea if someone did.

Anti-racism and Republicans

( I am NOT Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey NOR am I connected to her in any way. I discuss naming it after her in the "notes" post)


(the URL and the original name of this post are questionable, so I changed the name, but kept the 2nd paragraph below because of the URL; it's discussed on the Notes post, item #5)


I've apparently developed a habit of naming stuff after living people. But Liam Quinn kind of represents what this posting will be about. He was born to an Irish-American father and a Mexican mother and grew up in America. He joined the IRA and spent some time in prison. As far as the appropriateness of referring to him, as far as I can tell, he represents the main intersection of PROVISIONAL republicanism and anti-racism; that is assuming his mother is more or less non-white.

Sinn Fein is a very anti-racist organization It's almost that good for the Nationalist (Catholic) community in general (based partly on a N. Ireland Life and Times 2008 survey that says: 51% of Catholics are more or less anti-racist and 15-29% are non-racist) (the SDLP and Alliance are probably just as anti-racist as SF (racists in the nationalist community are probably disproportionately unaffiliated to any political party)). About 1% of N. Ireland is people of color, about 5% of the Republic of Ireland is people of color. There's always been a fair amount of white supremacist racism in the North, often resulting in violence, almost all of which emenates from the loyalist/unionist side (based partly on Northern Ireland Life and Times surveys, I'd say there's a large minority of unionists who are racist). There's some in the South as well.

There are/have been strong connections between loyalist paramilitaries and British Nazis. For example, see this. One time I saw a Confederate flag in a loyalist area of North Belfast.

In all fairness, it appears that the Loyalists are not anti-semitic. In recent years, in response to republicans putting up Palestinian flags in their areas, Loyalists put up Israeli flags (these were temporarily taken down when British Nazis came to visit). Later on I'll write something about anti-semitism and Jews in Ireland, as well as something about homophobia.

The Ulster Unionist Party has a history of racism. Two bits are:

1. About 6 years ago, in Portadown, UUP Councilors opposed the construction of a mosque.

2. In the 60s and 70s there was a British Tory MP named Enoch Powell. He made a notorious speech known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech attacking immigration from the Commonwealth and the civil rights Race Relations Act. Six years later when he left the Conservative Party over Europe, he was elected as an Ulster Unionist from South Down, and was an MP with them between 1974 and 1987.

The Democratic Unionist Party also has a history of racism. Two bits are:

1. It's founder and until recently long-time leader, Ian Paisley, was close to Bob Jones University, an American university with a solid reputation as racist, at least until recently.

2. After 9/11, the Muslim community in Ballymena approached the local council (on which the DUP were the largest party) with some artwork as a gift. The council said that after 9/11 they could not accept it.

Getting back to Sinn Fein, here's some facts that more or less support my statement that SF is very anti-racist.

1. In the 70s and 80s probably about some very large minority of them had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement. The NI CRM was based very much on the American one, to the extent that they would often sing "We Shall Overcome."

2. When Gerry Adams first came to America in 1994, he met with Rosa Parks. On another trip around 2002, he spoke at a black church.

3. Gerry Adams has spoken at at least one anti-racist rally, and Sinn Fein representatives held a meeting between SF MEPs and representatives from anti-racist and people of color organizations in the Republic of Ireland.

4. At the 2002 National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth, there was a panel discussion attended by everyone (there was not a competing event) about multi-culturalism in Ireland. Two of the speakers were people of color.

5. In 2003, SF councilours launched a campaign to get Northern local councils to adopt anti-racist programmes.

6. Also at that time, the editor of the Andersontown News, a republican/SF-aligned community paper in West Belfast, wrote about how the nationalist community was exxagerating how anti-racist it is (I assume that was referring to claims that the nationalist community was 100% anti-racist).

7. There's probably about 40 murals in republican areas of N. Ireland that celebrate 3rd world liberation struggles, African-American political figures, that explicitly condemn racism, or that compare the experiences of nationalists with those of people of color.

8. Sinn Fein's newspaper often contains anti-racist material, and also material about the struggles of people of color in other parts of the world.

9. Sinn Fein gets along great with the ANC, and does a lot of work to support the Palestinians.

10. When I was at the 2002 National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth, I was representing the Anti-Racism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America. They all knew that and I was invited to attend the private part of the conference and hung out with them 2-3 nights at a pub during the conference. This was despite the fact that early in the conference I criticized SF in front of 100 people (well, they might have agreed with my criticism, but it could also be that they valued my presence there as an anti-racist supporter so much that even though I had just publicly criticized their party they still wanted me around).

Some things that indicate that there's probably a small minority of SF who are racist:

1. There is that article about how the nationalist community is less than 100% anti-racist, and I've found polls indicating that's definitely true. A 2008 Northern Ireland Life and Times poll found that, in response to the statement "in relation to colour and ethnicity, I prefer to stick with people of my own kind" 5% of Catholics strongly agreed and 16% agreed.

2. I'd estimate that some small minority of their American supporters are racist (that's counting half the shades of grey; there's probably no white supremacists who would be considered SF supporters), that has probably rubbed off on a small number of SF members.

3. There's a guy named Gerry McGeough who was something like 1/15 of SF's National Leadership for something like a few or several years around 2000. His publication The Hibernian, has published some racist articles. He's also associated with Justin Barrett, pretty much confirmed as Ireland's leading fascist, who has strong connections to explicitly fascist organization in Europe.

I'm not saying it's confirmed McGeough is racist, but it's very likely he is, and at the very least he's soft on racism. At some point around 2005 he left the party, partly because SF was too liberal for him. Also, his extremely conservative publication started AFTER he left SF, although they probably had some idea of where he stood before that.

4. At the 2002 National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth, I met a SFY member who told me that he was racist (I had significant conversations with about 10 members total).

Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey

( I am NOT Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey NOR am I connected to her in any way. I discuss naming it after her in the "notes" post)


This is my first blog. Not sure exactly what I 'll be doing, basically offering my thoughts on various political issues, some history, etc. I'm an American democratic socialist (democratic marxist/left-wing social-democratic), and more or less an Irish Republican (I largely support Sinn Fein).

I'm not sure it was the best idea to name the blog after a living person (thank god she's still with us!!) and I'll change it if she requessts it, but my ultimate favorite hero is Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey, whose politics largely (not totally) reflect what this blog will be about- socialism, republicanism, and opposition to bigotry.

Her Wikipedia page is here. There's more here.

She was a major leader of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland, and was with the Peoples' Democracy, a student, militant and left-wing section of the CRM. She took part in the 1969 Belfast-Derry march by PD, which was based on the Selma-Montgomery march in the American South. Over 3-4 days they were repeatedly attacked by loyalist/unionist (Protestant/pro-British) militants and given a hero's welcome in Derry.

In April 1969, she was elected as a Unity candidate to the Westminster Parliament from Mid-Ulster. In Aug. of 1969, when the police, followed by a loyalist mob, tried invading the Catholic Bogside neighborhood, they were repulsed by local youth, with Bernadette providing great inspiration. She ended up serving a brief jail sentence for her role.

She remained an active leader of the civil rights movement and was present at the Bloody Sunday shootings in Jan. 1972. The next day, in Parliament, when she wasn't allowed to speak despite having witnessed the event under discussion, and when a British Minister justified the shootings, she hit him.

She lost her seat in the 1974 Westmisnter election (she stood as an Independent Socialist) when the Social Democratic and Labour Party ran a candidate and split the anti-Unionist vote, allowing a Unionist to win.

In 1974 she helped found the Irish Republican Socialist Party with Seamus Costello. She left a year later when she felt that the armed wing, the Irish National Liberation Army, was being given priority. However she spoke fondly of Costello when he was killed in 1977.

In 1979 she ran for the European Parliament, largely as a supporter of IRA and INLA prisoners who were demanding status as prisoners of war. In 1981, largely because of her work in support of the prisoners, loyalist paramilitaries almost killed her and her husband.

In 1988, when a coalition of people who had been involved in the civil rights movement in the late sixties organized to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the civil rights movement, she wrote and narrated a documentary called "OFF OUR KNEES: 1968-1988 From Civil Rights to National Liberation."

More recently she has become fairly critical of Sinn Fein and is an opponent, on republican and socialist, not militarist grounds, of the Good Friday Agreement. She continues to be active in various efforts of republican, socialist, and generally progressive causes (anti-raccism, feminism, gay rights, etc.). (I largely support SF and the GFA, but she does not).

In addition to the above, what I also greatly admire about her is that when she first came to the United States (and on subsequent visits) she continued to support progressive causes. Most importantly, even though her first visit involved fund-raising from (mostly) Irish-Americans in 1969, she stood up against racism consistently. When she was given the key to the city of New York, she passed it on to the Black Panther Party. She also met with Angela Davis in jail. In 2003 the Bush administration had her deported, because, as Anthony McIntyre put it, she knew too much and said it too well.

Anyway, that's a good intro to one of Ireland's top 3 republican-socialists. Like I said, I named the blog after her because it will mostly reflect her politics.

Note: The appropriateness of naming this blog after someone still alive, without their permission, is discussed on the "notes" post, item #5. The main point is that, with the original three themes of socialism, opposition to bigotry, and republicannism, there doesn't seem to be anyone of significance who is dead and who represents those three themes the way she does. On the other hand, I want to appologize as it's likely she isn't too fond of me naming the blog after her.