Ireland/England: La Difference est morte

I haven't dealt much with matters political on this blog, so many people do a far better job of it, that I leave it to them. It's not that I don't have strong opinions, for I do. Suffice it to say they are forged from much raw experience and informed by the reading of recent and ancient history.

I have found it especially informative to read the histories of the disenfranchised and oppressed, because from this one learns the priorities and tactics of the oppressor. As a minority friend of mine has pointed out to me many times, "We understand you far better than you understand us. We need to understand you in order to stay alive. You don't need to understand us, you can afford not to. We don't have the luxury of not knowing the ways of the oppressor."


And so it is, in these times that we all should school ourselves in the ways of those we see as our oppressors.

As a white American, I grew up enjoying the luxury of believing myself as neither oppressor nor oppressed. To be oppressed in this land of freedom and opportunity would be no one's fault but my own. That was the logic we were given, and is still the logic by which many of the dominant majority judge those minority groups still struggling to gain a firm foothold on the jagged slope of the economic playing field.

The most accessible and therefore instructive culture to learn from outside of the USA was Ireland. Partly because it's my ancestoral home and the native home of my husband, I have spent a lot of time thinking and learning about Ireland. Most Irish Americans have strong feelings for Eire. Many of us harbor a deep and unfathomable hatred of the English and the Anglo Irish who oppressed our a forebears, and ultimately were the key reason for them leaving our homeland.

That wound is something we carry around with us. I've come to think of it as each persons private Ireland, that little private wound and that is often shared, but rarely discussed. In Ireland itself, 400 years (or more depending on when you count from) of oppression translated into a way of life where playing it straight between the lines would make a patsie of you. The craic, as its known, is all about having your fun at the expense of the authority, the oppressor.

I believe elsewhere on this blog I posted thoughts on the end of "old" Ireland. Today though, my thoughts are on the cessation of military activities by the IRA. Perhaps this long lead in is the result of being uncomfortable with the idea of the IRA stand-down. And yet I'm appalled that I, a person who claims peace as the way, has a sentimental attachment to the long fight against the Unionists. The pointed questions from NPR reporters to Sinn Fein members about whether the IRA was giving up its weapons and if this was truly surrender made me extremely uncomfortable. The question is barbed. Then, listening to Tony Blair and his sanctimonious speechifying yesterday, I just wanted to slap him. His patronizing tone was in itself the very kernel of the reason so many of us, deep in our hearts, celebrated every IRA victory, and wept at their funerals.

And it is here that I arrive at the real reservations I have regarding this stand down. When I think of the enormous disinformation campaign, and justification of shoot to kill measures which let the English soldiers, and the RUC (the sectarian local militias in the North) attack and kill suspects and then, if they didn't kill them on sight, to hold them without trials. The war in the North was dirty, and while the English tried to keep an image of being above the fray, of clean hands and civilized behavior, anyone whose read the background, knows that they were savage.

I'm not trying to defend the IRA. The volunteers were guerilla fighters from the first. And the battles were extremely local, extremely vicious. ( Nothing could make me want to live in the North of Ireland with the level of bitterness and animosity that thrives there. Where there is such hatred, life becomes a bitter poison)

The London bombings were dreadful, but I believe that they will be used to justify levels of state sponsored violence far far worse than the bombings themselves. I believe that what we have witnessed taking place before our eyes this past month is the framing for the justification of a new broader dirty war against Islam. But more than that, its the wake up call for the old line conservative oppressors to redouble their efforts to disenfranchise and oppress their subjects. From Northern Ireland, we learned that the English authorities will fight dirty but talk clean. They are at it again now, in league with the Bushite Neo-Cons, and we are all of us being invited to be the willing co-conspirators in our own oppression and the domination of the world.

The role we are being given, and the role which I suppose the IRA leaders have at least accepted, is to be regular citizens in a civilized society. All of Ireland is now behaving in the manner of the dominant culture. They've drunk the kool-aide, just as we have over here. Our houses will be clean, are cars will be sleek, but the deeds we've allowed to happen in our name will surely need to be redeemed. Yes indeed, we're all of us English now.