Ireland's OWN: History

 

January 2001 The Political Use of Hate —by Sean Noonan Reprinted here with permission The concept that hate is divisive to the group even if it is directed at the group's “enemy” isn't even true in a psychological sense (suppressing anger leads to passive aggressive behaviour, depression and other health problems both mental and physical). When you say people should not hate under any circumstances you are saying people shouldn't have likes and dislikes or at least limit them to a very narrow range — so that people have a lack of affect — itself a symptom of mental illness. But politically, and Irish Republicanism is a political project not a psychological self-help group, this is completely false. Hate strengthens the bonds between "US" in shared antipathy against "THEM" This is a basic dynamic of racism and sectarianism as well as means of organizing against it. More specifically it is far more important to describe and explain the objective causes leading to the oppression in the first place and then use your hate to fight against those causes. How else do you get someone to smear their own shit on the walls of their cells, in resistance against a fascist state, without hating their enemy? When the oppressed don't hate their oppression they are already defeated. Nationalists should hate the fact that their unemployment rate is twice the protestant unemployment rate. African Americans should hate the fact that 1 in 3 black men is under the yoke of the U.S. criminal justice system. Read George Jackson's Prison Letters or Blood in My Eye for a good example of the transformation of a black man who hates himself and his family for what they are into a revolutionary filled with rational rage aimed against capitalism and imperialism, the real objective causes of his oppression and hardship. You can see this process of coming to aim the hate in the right direction in almost every liberation struggle. It is politically effective and even humanizing to hate your oppression. The key is to point your hate in the right direction. This is one of the advantages of the oppressed. The oppressor is trapped in how the world merely appears on the surface, as it is right now. On the other hand, the oppressed always have the potential to see beyond the mere appearances of the status quo. Since the oppressed have to know two world views, that of the dominant oppressor and that of their own suffering and hardship, the oppressed can at least imagine that things might be different - more just, more equal, more free. I think this goes a long towards explaining why both unionism and loyalism are politically a dead end. They remain trapped in the fascist mould of the Ulster statelet. Unionism and loyalism, the people who benefit from the oppression see themselves as constantly under siege from nationalists and will be ultimately betrayed by Westminster. Be it war or the new Stormont — unionism and loyalism are always in crisis, trapped in a world view that began to lose its objective basis 30 or so years ago (for mostly economic reasons) and continues to erode away today. It turns out that capitalism and imperialism are fickle lovers. The unionists and loyalists offer their support for the British state and imperialism but the Brits don't really care for Ulster itself but only use Ulster as a means to secure other goals. This contradiction is played out when crown forces take action against loyalists and unionists. In order to defend the union loyalists have to fight British troops and the RUC. Clearly for unionism and loyalism there is no acceptable way forward into a new future, there is only the declining present to defend. On the other hand, working class Catholics in Ulster have no vested interests in maintaining an economy and a state where they are always given the short end of the stick. They know this system and participate in it because to some extent they have to, but they also know how unjust it is. From this it is possible to build a vision of how things might be different in other circumstances and work to bring those new conditions about. That Sinn Féin is accommodating to the eternal present is one matter, but for at least 200 years, Irish Republicanism has offered a vision of a possible future that is radically at odds with the status quo. Overall it is much harder for upper class Catholics or Protestants to come to republicanism because they do (even minimally and relatively) benefit from the oppression of the current system — though there have been notable to this and speaks to the universalism of Republican ideology. Page updated 1 Feb 2009 Ireland's OWN Logo by Eamann Website Design and Celtic Background by Míchealín Daugherty Copyright © 2009 Ireland's OWN All Rights Reserved.