A senior Irish politician has decried nationalism, apparently without irony, on the anniversary of his own country taking up arms against Britain in the hopes of becoming independent.
Ireland’s deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar took to social media on Sunday evening to decry nationalism exactly 106 years to the day since his own countrymen took up arms in the hopes of becoming independent of Britain.
Varadkar made the denunciation in response to the victory of Europhile French President Emmanuel Macron over his populist rival Marine Le Pen, congratulating the incumbent head of state in what the Irish politician saw as a victory for Europe.
He then went on to praise Macron’s triumph as a defeat for populism, nationalism, and for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Congratulations Emmanuel Macron. The first French President to be re-elected in 20 years!” the senior politician wrote online.
“A victory for Europe, for France, for democracy and for the political centre,” he continued. “A clear defeat for populism, nationalism and for Putin.”
“Merci La France,” the Fine Gael leader went on to add.
What is particularly notable about Varadkar’s denunciation of nationalism is its timing, with the Irish Deputy PM publishing the post exactly 106 years to the day after his nation’s 1916 Rising, during which a relatively small group of armed nationalists occupied prominent locations in the capital of Dublin and beyond and declared independence from Britain.
While the revolution was ultimately quashed by crown forces in a matter of days, with many of the leaders being subsequently executed in prison, the Rising is largely credited as the catalyst for Irish independence, with the Irish Free State being founded on December 6, 1922, after another armed struggle.
While denouncing nationalism on the anniversary of your country’s struggle for national independence is probably not the wisest move, Varadkar is not the only senior Irish politician who should probably be questioned over their unfortunate sense of timing.
On the same day Varadkar chose to post an anti-nationalist tweet on social media, Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheál Martin declared that he was doubling down on his open borders response to the ongoing migrant crisis in the country, emphasising to the public that he was not even contemplating capping the number of arrivals into the country.
This is despite the fact that a poll published on that very same day found that the vast majority of Irish people wanted to see a hard limit put on the number of foreign arrivals coming to the country ostensibly as refugees fleeing Ukraine.
What’s more, many respondents to the survey conducted by The Times said that they wanted to see the cap be put at 20,000 people or less, despite the fact that the Irish state has already taken in at least around 25,000 people as of last weekend.
Nevertheless, despite public opinion seemingly being against him and the fact that Ireland’s state and social infrastructure look like they will soon buckle under the crisis, Martin has confirmed that the notion of capping the number of arrivals was not even being thought about.
“I’m not talking about caps, I am not contemplating that,” Martin said regarding foreign arrivals ostensibly from Ukraine, which it is believed could reach as much as 200,000 people, or around four per cent of Ireland’s current population.
“We are part of a European-wide response and first and foremost, we are not a military power, the thing we can do best is humanitarian… it’s a shared humanity,” he continued seemingly in an attempt to justify his apparently unpopular open borders platform.
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