As an Englishman [not ‘British’, English; the only Britons in these islands live in Wales] I rather suspected this would descend into to a lot of masturbatory tripe about the Irish. The unaccountable ‘WASP’ elite was bound to make its presence felt too. The image of an ‘Anglo Saxon establishment’ beloved of class warriors everywhere actually changed several decades ago, having been successfully targeted by Jewish and other influences, but don't let facts get in the way of a good story. History? I got history. For the record today’s southern Irish fetched up around the 2nd century AD [not much before the first German tribes arrived in what is now England]. They were pirates. Their first act was to lay siege to the north east of that land and the native Uliti people who occupied it [from where we get the term ‘Ulster’]. As England was being built they turned their attention to raiding English coastal towns and villages, stealing women, cattle and whatever else they could pilfer. Hostilities started here. They went on centuries, these attacks on our newly-won lands, though it rarely merits a mention in the victimology handbook because well, you know, everyone knows the English are to blame for everything. Englisc [Saxon spelling] tribes occupied and ran Lowland Scotland from the 7th century. Lowland Scots or ‘Lallands’, the ‘language of Burns’, is almost pure Anglo Saxon, so when James II cleared the border lands on both sides, transporting families [of which mine was one] to Ulster, he was in fact forcing migration on a population of English people. The term ‘Scots-Irish’ is a misnomer, a lie, contrived to write us out of the historical narrative. The English raised over 10 million pounds by public subscription when the famine struck – that’s around a BILLION pounds, or about 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS, in today’s money. I’m sorry but Americans reserve uncritical admiration for a people they actually know nothing about, have little or no real experience of, and who behind their backs actually return all the generosity and goodwill with the most astonishing contempt. I realize this is all bound up to some extent with egalitarianism and victim culture but it would be a shame if years being perceived as the world’s baddie made Americans align themselves with professional victims in the forlorn hope that a little of the martyr’s stardust will fall their way. I mean India too threw off the 'yoke of English rule'. I don’t see Americans making common cause with them. The Good Shepherd, and the lines given to Joe Pesci, reflect anti-English sentiment [and a misrepresentation of the English themselves] of a kind Hollywood has promoted repeatedly over recent years in order to feed hostility to white society in general. Maybe, as Clint Eastwood remarked cryptically, ‘it’s just your turn’. Maybe, but spare me the pieties. Understanding of Irish nationalism is slightly flawed your side of the pond by the way. The IRA is a Marxist, internationalist organization. A creature of the shadow government it was put together to initiate the break-up of the United Kingdom as a prelude to the introduction of monolithic, trans-national governance. Hollywood’s insistently romantic portrayal of the ‘struggle’ is just part of a wider political deception that brings in a great deal of money, albeit to an organization that is very far from a friend to decent Irish people.
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