Was VFR’s discussion about the Irish in England bigoted and hypocritical?

Poor Dennis Mangan, through no fault of his own, finds himself again in the line of fire of the anti-Auster obsessives. A commenter named Pat Hannegan charges that I am a hypocrite because, while attacking Hannegan’s beloved anti-Semitic website, Majority Rights, I recently posted “bigoted” comments by Karen from England and by Howard Sutherland about how the large Irish population in England has had the effect of moving British politics further to the left than might have otherwise been the case. In addition to Mr. Mangan’s comments (as a person or Irish Catholic ancestry he thinks there’s something to Karen’s and Mr. Sutherland’s ideas), I also felt it was worthwhile replying to Hannegan on a couple of points to straighten the record.

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Karen writes from England:

This is typical. Any criticism of the Irish or discussion of their attacks on Britain and the British state always leads to accusations of bigotry from them. Pat Hannegan’s comments about Howard Sutherland’s “gratuitous insults” is laughable. His comparison with Jews is irrelevant. The Jews have not formed a terrorist organisation (and political party) to mount repeated attacks on British society and military personnel. The terrorist attacks on British soldiers this weekend were the work of the IRA and they have admitted that. All IRA Real and otherwise are under the control of Sinn Fein, which meekly and cynically condemned the attacks as an “assault on the peace process,” and followed up with, “British soldiers must be removed form Ireland.” Irish support for the IRA is greater than their loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 09, 2009 04:15 PM | Send