Posted on 05/02/2022 5:03:19 AM PDT by FarCenter
A century after its fraught foundation, Northern Ireland looks set for a constitutional earthquake this week with the pro-Irish party Sinn Fein on course to win regional elections.
Apart from periods of direct rule by London, pro-UK unionists have monopolised power ever since Britain carved out a Protestant-majority statelet in 1921, when the rest of Ireland achieved self-rule.
But pollsters expect victory on Thursday for Sinn Fein, which was once the political arm of the paramilitary IRA, in polls for the devolved assembly in Belfast.
The party took the deputy leadership in a power-sharing deal with unionists when Northern Ireland achieved peace in 1998, after three decades of sectarian bloodshed.
Across the province, high streets and junctions are festooned with election posters. In Newry, near the border with Ireland, a Sinn Fein billboard says that "Irish unity" is "the solution to Brexit".
"There has been a seismic change in society, particularly in the aftermath of Brexit, something that we didn't vote for, but which has been foisted upon us," said Sinn Fein leader Michelle O'Neill.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
Ireland, as relevant as Greenland but with better beer.
Ireland looms large in the American imagination, especially in some parts of the country.
Greenland -- not so much.
Sein Finn is communist. Always was, at its core.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/communist-link-will-not-affect-us-support-sf-1.1148985
So. now the socialists are National Socialists. Great, just great...
Sinn Fein is democratic socialist.
The Marxist-Leninists split off in 1970 and formed what is now The Workers’ Party.
Don’t worry. If their American supporters can turn a blind eye to their terrorist bombing campaigns and the way they ruled nationalist communities like the Mafia unleashed I am sure they can do so for their communist associations.
Actually, that's not true. Sinn Fein was originally a strategy, before becoming an organization. And not only was it originally not Communist, it wasn't even republican. Founder Arthur Griffith advocated a "dual monarchy" on the lines of Austria-Hungary.
Somehow the 1916 uprising got labelled the "Sinn Fein" uprising (though Sinn Fein wasn't involved that much), and after that Sinn Fein became the republican party it is today. Sinn Fein did proclaim the Irish Republic in 1919.
The 1916 'rising was a huge wingspread from right to left. But it eventually became a hard left party, which it has been for most of its history.
Stupid American Irish who idealize Catholic Ireland have supported the radical left republicans despite all their anti-morality positions and will probably continue to do so.
I think this development was only a matter of when, not if.
No difference.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union started as the Social Democratic Labor Party of Russia.
Griffith broached the dual monarchy idea because he felt it would have been more palatable to the British; he himself was not a monarchist. He was also a proponent of proportional representation, the very kind that would create tyranny of the majority.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood, out of which Sinn Féin and the IRA grew, was indeed communist in spite of their oath invoking the Almighty; their sworn goal was to found a “democratic republic” in Ireland (which is socialist). Prominent members such as James Connolly sought to foment a communistic revolution in Ireland, seeing the 1916 Rising as exactly that; there was cooperation between the pre-Soviet communists in Russia and plenty of support for the IRA out of the USSR for decades afterwards.
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