Statue of Nazi ally vandalised

Henry McDonald
Sunday January 2, 2005
The Observer

An unnamed group in Dublin claimed responsibility last night for vandalising the statue of an IRA leader linked to the Nazis in the Second World War.
The group said it had severed the head and right arm of the statue in Dublin's Fairview Park in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

They said that as Europe prepares to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, they could no longer tolerate a statue in honour of Sean Russell.

Russell was commanding officer of the IRA during the Second World War and conducted a campaign of assassination and sabotage in both Britain and Ireland, aimed at damaging the war effort against Hitler.

Although an open ally of the Nazis, Russell is still honoured by the modern IRA and Sinn Fein. In September 2003, Sinn Fein MEP Mary Lou McDonald spoke at a rally to commemorate Russell in the north Dublin park. The same rally was also addressed by veteran IRA man Brian Keenan.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1382163,00.html

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htm


Charles Lindbergh attending Nazi party in Berlin - 1935

A number of prominent and wealthy American businessmen helped to support fascist regimes in Europe from the 1920s through the 1940s. These people helped to support Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, as well as Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler.

Some of the primary and more famous Americans and companies that were involved with the fascist regimes of Europe are: William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Kennedy (JFK’s father), Charles Lindbergh, John Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon (head of Alcoa, banker, and Secretary of Treasury), DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil (now Exxon), Ford, ITT, Allen Dulles (later head of the CIA), Prescott Bush, National City Bank, and General Electric.

It should be noted that businessmen from many countries, including England and Australia, also worked with the fascist regimes of Europe prior to WWII. The fascist governments were involved in a high level of construction, production, and international business.

because fascism = corporatism (Benito Mussolini)

wrong....

and please tell me why they don't fly many of the tsunami victims the hell out of there where roads and infrastructure allow for the distribution of aid... rather than try and perform a miracle on site?

I say move many of them to safer areas where it would be easier to care for them. I mean WFT. Why not?

ruined??

businessmen are just their evangelists. Faith on investments returns is the dogma. Banks and stock exchanges are its churches and holy sites. How's that for an analogy?

Now seriously, the buck trumps everything is American society. That's all we seem to care about.

of the gospels. I think the fundies have been very successful at interpreting the Bible which ever way it's most convenient for them. They seem to have this gun-toting, pro-capital, anti-poor, pro-hate version of the Bible that sometimes truly boggles me. Likewise, they are very good at ignoring those passages they find inconvenient.

Pat Robertson, with his mining sweatshop operations in Africa, is a perfect example of this.

:grr:

... i will leave a critique of Henry McDonald and the Observer until another time.

For now, here is what the Socialist Worker, Issue 207, had to say about that commemerative service in 2003:

http://www.geocities.com/niswp/mccann_archive2.htm

Why honour a Nazi collaborator?

Just because Kevin Myers (Irish Times), Eilis O’Hanlon (Sunday Indo) and Henry McDonald (Observer) attack something doesn’t mean sensible people have to defend it.

Take Sinn Fein’s annual commemoration of ex-IRA chief of staff Sean Russell at Fairview Park in Dublin last month. The usual media suspects—-rabid supporters of political violence when it suits them, including the killing of innocent civilians—-wound themselves up to the peak of high dudgeon to pour down vilification on all concerned.
Russell was a Nazi collaborator who travelled to Berlin during World War Two to try to persuade Hitler to help the IRA, they pointed out. He was on his way back to Ireland with plans to link up with Nazi agents and foment revolt in the North when he died from natural causes and was buried at sea.

How could people who advertise themselves as progressive gather reverently to mark the death of such a man? Even though it’s reactionary wretches who are doing the asking, this is a good question. Why, indeed, did Brian Keenan, Marylou McDonald and Ciaran Mac Anraoi step forward in turn to deliver eulogies to a Nazi collaborator?

An Phoblacht described Brian Keenan’s speech as “the main oration” and quoted him: “I don’t know what was in the depth of Sean Russell’s thinking down the years, but I am sure he was never far from Pearse’s own position, who said, ‘as a patriot, preferring death to slavery, I know no other way’... There are things worse than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them. We are not and will not be slaves.”
A moment’s thought about the millions enslaved by Nazism puts the repulsiveness and sheer stupidity of this remark into perspective. So what aspect of Irish Republicanism prompted Keenan to make it?

Watchword

We can take it that Keenan is in no way soft on Nazism. But we can take it, too, that, generally speaking, he holds to the old Republican adage, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”—the exact sentiment which sent Russell on his mission to Berlin: before setting out, in October 1939, he’d spelt it out plainly: “‘England’s difficulty, Ireland’s opportunity’ has ever been the watchword of the Gael.”

For Russell, driving the Brits out of Ireland took precedence over everything else. No consideration of class differences within Ireland, nor of solidarity with persecuted peoples elsewhere, no thought of the implications for the 4,500 Jewish people living in Ireland, nothing could be allowed to cloud the shining vision of an Ireland freed of British rule. In this perspective, the question of what force it would be proper to ally with was secondary.
Russell’s willingness to collaborate with Nazis, then, did not stem from a fondness for Nazi ideas but from the intensity and exclusiveness of his Nationalism. The Nazis were at war with Britain—-and so was the IRA. Ideological affinity didn’t come into it. If Hitler would help get the Brits out of Ireland, it would make no sense not to avail of that help...

Myers etc. suggest that the Russell commemoration exposed Sinn Feiners today as, if not sympathetic to Nazism, at least well-disposed to Russell’s collaboration with Nazism. But what the Fairview Park event actually revealed is simply that Sinn Fein hasn’t broken with the notion that the “national cause” takes precedence over everything else.

The most important practical application of this notion in 2003 came not at Fairview Park but in Hillsborough Castle in April when the SF leadership gladhanded the leader of US imperialism even as his bombers revved up for the Iraq runs: the interests of Irish freedom, now deemed to be enclosed within the Belfast Agreement, took precedence over all else. If staying close to George Bush would advance the Nationalist cause, opposition to Bush’s imperialism had to be put in abeyance.

Herein lies the link between the perspective of the Repubican Movement in Russell’s time and the politics of Sinn Fein today.

it obviously makes sense that IRA members would fight against the UK during WWII.

When the enemy of my enemy can kiss my ass too. Backing the Nazis, on the theory that they'll stop with invading England, would be at best a really bad strategy.

Trying to think which other groups around that time we're in a war for national independence...

Oh those guys that met up with Nazi envoys in 1943 in Beirut...they signed a alliance...oh what were their names...

On the tip of my tongue...

My bad...need to read before I write. ;)

JB