The Irish Holocaust

reply to post by Freeborn


Of course no one should blame the current British Kingdom for the disasters of the Irish Famine. That would be ridiculous, especially when the Irish where just to blame for the casualties. Different peoples in a different time.. any grudge held is ridiculous.

reply to post by Dermo


I suggest you read the post by BlackOps 719.
Maybe you might begin to understand why there is such an upsurge in English nationalism at present.

The Irish-American thing has become an embarressment.

For the record:
My grandparents were born in Ireland.
I was born in England.
I am English.
I suspect I have much more Irish heritage than the vast majority of 'Irish-Americans'.
But I repeat; I am English.

reply to post by Freeborn


Nationality is transparent, not opaque. The land you identify with is the land you belong in .. your English, doesn't matter what your heritage was, or perhaps your Irish, that would depend upon what you see when you look into your self.

America is devoid of culture. Sure, you see America all over the place, but most American's directly identify with another nation that, deep down or right up top they directly identify with. Essentially many American's are American first, German/Irish/French/African/Mexican/English/etc second. Some, like Italians and the Irish identify more so with their "other half" ..

In the end, this is not our native land, we where sent here for various reasons .. and I find it a testament to the Human Soul that someone descended from a distant land can hold an internal connection with that land.

I might have been born in America, but I fly an Irish flag next to my American one, and when I visit Ireland I identify with the people and the culture far more then the Godless and cold naked streets of America.

44 million American's descended from just a few million Irish. And there has always been a strong American connection to Ireland. In may-Sept. in my region we hold over 20 Irish festivals celebrating Ireland.. far more then any other nationality, and far surpassing festivals celebrating being American.

reply to post by Freeborn




Sorry if you took my post as some sort of bash against your native country. I am a couple of generations removed and I would agree that it was a different time and different circumstances.

My point is that you rarely ever hear much about it. Im not blaming anyone for anything, just stating a fact. When it comes to the suffering of the Irsh as well as the Scots at YES the hands of the English rulers of that time, it just isnt something that we hear a lot about in the states. The fact is that you are no more responsible as a modern day Englishman for what happened in 1800's Ireland than I am for being a causasian American who had no hand in American slavery.

And just so you know I have personally traced my familial roots back to my Scottish and Irish roots so I am not just speaking as someone who is some sort of American Irish wannabe who doesnt know where my family hails from.

I am an American of Scots-Irish ancestry and do not pretend or claim to be Irish or Scotish. I apologize if you cannot make the distinction between the two.

reply to post by Freeborn


That is fair enough.

I wasn't attacking your heritage, nationality, country and especially not your nationalist ideals, in fact, to me, that says a lot about a persons character. Also, the idea of some kind of apology being due in regards this history cannot be justified in the slightest.

I can understand why people like yourself will stick to your guns to defend your national pride, especially seeing as the UK gets slated quite a bit about the unsavory aspects in its history but that is easily counteracted by the obvious good aspects.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
Famine victims where mostly Catholic .. and I feel it important to note that the Quakers gave much more in aid then the Catholic Church ever did.

Yes, this is completely true. The Quakers raised huge quantities of Indian meal and shipped it to Ireland. They raised the equivalent of €30,000,000 in today's terms.
However, some Quaker soup kitchens would only feed those that converted to their variation of Christianity. People who fell under this category were known as 'Soupers'. This slightly tainted the massive efforts of the rest of the Quakers who emerged to the peasants of the period as a "new breed of protestant" (ie. their agenda wasn't to wipe out Celtic Catholicism).
To this day, Quakers are viewed with admiration for their efforts.

The Vatican was involved in huge fundraising which was then filtered through local priests to the starving of their Parishes. This money was used to repurchase some of the food that was being removed by the Landlords.
The Vatican's work during this period is rarely noted because this kind of activity was the norm even before the famine period, the only new factor was the huge increase in the amount of money involved. Clicky

A fact which surprised me quite a bit is that Lionel de Rothschild was one of the biggest fundraiser's of Aid for the Irish during this period.

Growing up in westpark cleveland ohio I was surrounded by Irish. A very healthy and family oriented folk. The love of my life was Irish/Lithuanian.
But they kind of trip me out in way I cannot quite describe.

On the devils dance floor. You would not believe the nightmare I had regarding that. Nude sawdust linedancing. Not my happy place.

Originally posted by jpm1602
On the devils dance floor. You would not believe the nightmare I had regarding that. Nude sawdust linedancing. Not my happy place.

LOL ... was this is regards to my Sig??

Yes Rocky. That conjured up some major bad ju ju for me. One of worst nitemares of my life.