Comments by "Taint ABird" (@taintabird23) on "William C. Fox"
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Europe has had nothing but one war after another for centuries. The EU is based on the premise that if all countries in Europe are interdependent on one another economically, war between these states (particularly France and Germany) would never happen again. It initially started at the European Economic Community and gradually evolved over time as it expanded from 6 founding states to 27 today. During that time through various treaties, the countries have become more integrated. So barriers to trade and movement of people have been removed, and you can move freely to work, study and live in any other member state. Most states have adopted a common currency called the Euro. Poorer member states received transfers of money from the richer states to help develop their economies and to increase prosperity, so that they could afford to buy more goods from the richer countries. By all member states sharing sovereignty as a bloc in the EU, the EU is able to negotiate trade deals with countries that are much larger than most of the member states, to get better trade deals.
The British left because they are country dominated by the English, and the English are in the midst of an identity crisis. They lost their empire and they can't find a role for themselves in the world. Many English people would be much happier if Britain was in charge of the EU, but that is not possible. So they invested a narrative where they believed they were oppressed by the EU and they wanted their sovereignty back. They believed that they were so important to the EU that Britain would get a deal that gave them the benefits of membership without the responsibilities. That turned out not to be the case. Having escaped an imaginary oppression they are now disappointed with their freedom, because it is also imaginary. They're just worse off.
I come from Ireland. EU membership has transformed my country's economy and amplified our sovereignty. The EU is far from perfect, but it is a force for good as the people of Europe now work together instead of being in conflict.
It is worth remembering that the British fought all their wars against either the Spanish, French, Germans, Dutch, Italians and so on, and never felt comfortable in working with them.
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@KR-us9pj But you don't explain WHY you wanted those EU additions gone. Why feel resentful of it? One of the characteristics of Brexit was that in 2016 the British people were told that they could have all of the benefits of EU membership without being bound by any of the rules. So, there must have been something about being in the EU that Brexiters liked.
I also see the EU and Europe as very different things: the EU is a group of countries that work together and share the benefits of that membership, and Europe is the EU and countries not in the EU that want to join it. My identity is Irish and European; I am a citizen of Ireland and the European Union. That shared EU identity is something I am conscious that I share with 450 million others and it does not dilute my Irishness in any way.
The UK plays on 81 teams and the Irish play on 67. The idea that Ireland will not be a member of more teams in the future though, is speculation as the trend is the other way. It is interesting that you chose G7, G20 and NATO as examples: these make English people feel important, exclusive - being part of an exclusive team or a team where militarism is at the forefront. I think it is this exclusivity and the promise of special treatment that made Brexit attractive to voters in areas such as yours. The English are exceptionalist and don't see themselves as equal to their neighbours. The thing is, thanks in part to Brexit, you won't be in the G7 for much longer.
The UKs support for Ukriane is an opportunity for the British arms industry and a way of looking good in front of the cameras while dragging your heels providing refuge for Ukrainian civilians. It was important also to try and get one up on the EU. Even outside the bloc, the Brexiters are still obsessed with the bloc.
It took you a while to bring up WW2. i'm always curious about its effect on the English mindset, as the UK was never invaded and was on the winning side in WW2 and yet today it is the English people who seem to be most traumatised by the experience. Talk to an Englishman about the EU for long enough and eventually 'the war' gets mentioned. When will the English get over it?
What was 'shameful' about it Irish neutrality? You didn't say. The whole of Europe declared neutrality in 1939, and Irish did the same. Other neutrals such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and so on, had their neutrality violated by the Nazi's but Ireland didn't. Initially, the British supported Irish neutrality, but when it faced invasion in the summer of 1940 it resented it. In 1939 the war started out as a just another spat between the European super powers - Ireland had no place in it; by the end the war, or perhaps shortly after it, it had been recast as a simple war of good v evil and a great myth was born
Irish people chose to stay out of WW2 purely as an expression of sovereignty - sovereignty is part of the reason for Brexit. Ireland had a divided population: half of the population resented the British for the atrocities committed in Ireland during the 1920s, while the other half were more sympathetic to the British. All were agreed though - even Irish volunteers to the British armed forces - that neutrality was the best option for Ireland. It was a sovereign and democratic decision for an unarmed nation.
During WW2 the British and American democracies, in the 'war for democracy', did not respect Ireland's democratic decision to be neutral - even though Ireland was secretly co-operating with them. In 1945 in an attempt to humiliate Ireland, the allies demanded that Ireland hand over the German and Japanese Ambassadors and their documents - a breach of Irish neutrality. It was in that context that de Valera paid his condolences to the German Ambassador and offered him and his family asylum (he refused).
On the downside, the Irish obsession with sovereignty did nothing to develop the economy or make the lives of people better, so they left in their droves during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Sovereignty is great, but you can't eat a flag. The true value of sovereignty, you will learn, is how you use it to better the lives of your people. Hoarding it in an Ivory Tower as Brexiters have done will butter no parsnips in the long run and will ensure that the UK will return to the EU in due course. Is your life better now that you are out of the EU? Do you have a higher standard of living because of it? I already know the answer. The UK will be back in the EU in about 20 years time.
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@ Scott Bowman
That's not being honest, by any stretch of the imagination.
'Lets be honest':
The border issue is not 'harder than it needs to be', it is emphatically at odds with the Good Friday Agreement, carried by two referenda in both Irish jurisdictions by far greater numbers than the Leave vote in the UK. The hard border reflects an 'attitude' toward the Nationalists community, who are Irish and therefore EU citizens, even after March 2019. Northern Ireland not like any other part of the UK. It is not 'as British as Dorset' as Mogg has hilariously repeated over and over again.
'Lets be honest':
Even the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee agree in their report on the border issue that there can be no open border with the Republic, as proposed by those heading up Brexit; without the agreement of the rest of the WTO - ‘We note that WTO rules prevent the UK from unilaterally creating an open border with Ireland without offering this to the entire membership of the WTO’. - The Land Border between NI and Ireland – Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
'Lets be honest':
The Brexit issue in NI has added a further division to the two communities there - Nationalists wish to Remain, while Unionists are backing Brexit. Its a winner takes all situation, something the GFA had successfully removed from politics there, at a time when there will be a Nationalists majority in NI in the next 10 years or so.
To be honest, the Irish border issue is simply the Brexit chickens coming home to roost.
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Yes, it was in the Irish national interest.
Churchill never gave the Irish an assurance that the UK would not invade Ireland in its own national interest. Churchill, an old imperialist, did not recognise the right of the Irish to be neutral on a personal level.
In the event of a German invasion, there was an agreed plan that the Irish would invite the British army and RAF into Ireland. In the event of a British invasion, there was a tacit understanding with the British that Ireland would invite German assistance.
The declaration of neutrality in 1939 was the first free decision made by an independent Irish people, and it reflected a broad public consensus, which even included the Anglo-Irish, whose sons were in the British armed forces. Only one Irish MP ever spoke out against Irish neutrality during the war, and his constituents were appalled.This was because the Irish population was split between those who were hostile to the British and those who were sympathetic to them and national unity less than 20 years after the Irish Civil War was required.
You would think the Brexit British would understand the value of independence better than anyone these days, but Brexit has really only revealed the true depth of ignorance that exists about Ireland on the other island. There seems to be an underlying belief among many across the Irish Sea that Ireland is still an appendage of the UK.
Remarkably, after nearly a century of Irish independence, English people seem to think that only THEY ALONE understand the value of national sovereignty...
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Figure for WW1: 200,000 with 30,000 killed; some say that this is an underestimate and that 350,000 served. This is based on a more recent figure of 35,000 killed in a war with 10% fatalities, apparently. It is a figure for both North and South, obviously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_and_World_War_I
Figure for WW1: 100,000 from Ireland (North and South) https://www.scotsman.com/news/full-scale-of-irish-wwii-death-toll-revealed-1-1208756.
This suggests that your assertion, '200,000 Irish served With British/Allied Forces WW2' is incorrect. Given the facts my assertion 'Wrong war. That was WW1', still stands. However, you are in good company - people often mistake the numbers served in the First war with those for the Second.
There is no excuse for ignorance, plenty of libraries, bookshops.
I can recommend a reading list if you require one.
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'what English Nationalism is it you're claiming has been inflicted upon the Celtic Nations?'
Language, Customs, Laws, Religion, Plantations/Colonisation, etc
A starting point for the English could be learning their own history. Anglo-centric Britain has been a force for good in the World, but also some pretty appalling behviour which has had negative consequences Both have shaped the world. Acknowledge it.
In conjunction with this, the English could start 'standing up for themselves' by standing up TO themselves: admit you are a nation like everyone else and establish a regional assembly for England. The British establishment, dominated by the English elite, are blocking this - they see Westminster as their own Parliament and the regional assemblies as a sop to the Celtic nations. These people see Britishness as a conduit for English nationalism and have done since 1707, now the English lower orders are realising that all is not well with this paradigm. Leaving the EU will do nothing to change this.
This English elite have co-opted their inferiors to fight wars and create their wealth all through history, and now they've used the likes of yourself to leave the EU. The expectation for most Brexiters is that life will be better for them: it will not - most of the social and economic problems in England are home grown.
The Celtic Nations have been on to this lark for centuries - starting with the Irish, and more recently the Scots. Welsh nationalism is weaker but it know their history too.
Throwing the toys out of the pram will get you nowhere - you need a coherent vision for a future England, and the English are nowhere near establishing that yet.
There is nothing cuddly about English nationalism at present - it is binary, militaristic, confrontational and based on exceptionalism. Its about 100 years out of date and might as well have a football hooligan has a mascot - because that is what it looks like.
Personally, I have nothing against the English as a people and I fully support the notion of an English nation. If telling you some truths about your nationalism makes me a 'racist' then I will happily wear it.
It is a measure of the crisis in English identity, the sense of helplessness at the heart of it, that you feel victimised by those living on the periphery of a British Isles which has England as its focal point.
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Of course there is a crisis in English identity - the leave campaign presented requirement to leave as membership of the EU was lethal to your identity!
England placed its identity in the unions with Scotland, in 1707, and with Ireland, in 1800, which gave rise respectively to Britain and to the United Kingdom.
The dismantling of the British empire in 1945 by the US was a traumatic blow to the psyche of the English, from which you have never recovered England also didn't recognise that it was now essentially a vassal of the United States, dressing it up instead as a 'Special Relationship'.
The end of empire meant the end of the English pretension to have and need no national identity of their own. Once they admitted their empire was no more, the English would have to become just another nation like everybody else, with a specific, limited identity, a specific history, neither specially honourable nor specially dishonourable, with limited weight, limited resources, and limited importance in the world, and on the Atlantic archipelago which they shared equally with those 'oppressive' Celts.
That is the terrifying truth that membership of the EU presents to you and other English people and from which for centuries the empire insulated them: you have to live in the world on an equal footing with other people.
In Scotland, in contrast, to vote for the EU was to vote for the distinctness of Scotland as a legitimate fellow occupant of the island of Great Britain and for its equality with England as a fellow member, alongside Germany and Malta, France and Cyprus, of a larger union than that centred on London. Its the same in Ireland - Irish national identity has thrived since it joined in 1973.
Only the English could not see the EU in these terms. Because only the English could not see themselves as a nation at all.
And that Dave, is why you need an Assembly to call your own. A Parliament can come later, but you need to walk before you can run - because after all, as you know, not all English people have travelled as far down the road with your ideas as you have. And as for the English victimisation at the hands of the Celts - it really only proves my contention that English nationalism is still in an incoherent state - still searching for a legitimate 'Them' to bolster the 'Us' - and is currently inventing 'oppressors'.
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Well, if your starting point is that the English were oppressed by the Celtic Nations then it must indeed seem incoherent. But the facts suggest otherwise, I am afraid.
1) It was a British Empire dominated by the English. Sure the Scots played their part, particularly as administrators, but it was the Church of England, the Established Church, that was used as a tool of Imperialism, and it was mainly English cities that benefited from the Slave trade; it was London that became the centre of world finance, it was English that became the lingua franca, it was English Common law that was spread around the world; the industrial revolution was English. You can waffle on about bloodlines all you like - the English projected their nationalism through a Union with Scotland and later with Ireland.
2) You never lost your national identity - and I never said that you did - English identity lived vicariously through the United Kingdom and the British Empire using English tools of colonialism and reaping the benefits, some of which are listed above. It did so through the dominance and subjugation of the Celtic peoples, inferiors co-opted in what became an English project. England was successful in largely replacing the cultures of Scotland, Wales and Ireland,with their own, reducing the Celtic cultures to some sort of biscuit tin version by the end of the 19th century.
3) The English are unable to see themselves as equal to everyone else and the 'equality' that you proclaim is vindictive and spiteful. The English will continue to have special status in my country, which they never lost considering how much we 'oppressed' and 'hate' them. Other EU countries are more open to outsiders and don't feel their identity is threatened by people to immigrants in the same way as the English are. That's something you still can't admit to and therefore you are not yet viewing English identity as equal to other nations - to you its exclusive.
4) Of course you know you are English, but you no longer know what it is to be English. The Empire is gone, the United Kingdom, your nationalist conduit harnessed so successfully by your ancestors, is slowly breaking up. Your industrial base is gone, and huge swathes of your country resents Westminster but blames the EU for successive poor domestic policies; militarism is important to the English identity and your armies were essentially defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing to an end any notion of a new Anglosheric hegemony; Since devolution, it is clear there is no longer a demos in the UK. Many Scots don't identify with the UK at all; a majority there identify with the EU and feel secure with it unlike the English; Northern Ireland has the power to chose to leave the UK whenever it likes - indeed the people there can chose Irish or British identity or both; the Welsh language speaking minority voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. All of this feeds into an English Nationalist Crisis of Identity.
The Celtic nations do not share the binary notion of identity that the English do. That is why the English can live among us and there is no crisis of identity, and you can't live with them in your country..
Do you need me, a Celt, to hate you to bolster your sense of national self worth? I don't require it of you.
Sorry the Celtic nations have been such a disappointment to you, but I suppose we're just not willing to be dominated by the English. When you accept that then you will not longer feel hated and you will genuinely feel equal to the Scots, Welsh and Irish.
And then English nationalism will be coherent.
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