The Sean Russell statue saga – The hypocrisy of those who fail to condemn Imperialism, and those who lie, confuse and obfuscate history in its service.
Last night, unknown actors defaced the Sean Russell statue in Fairview Park, Dublin.
We view this as a senseless assault on the Irish Republican anti-imperialist tradition in the wake of Leo Varadkar’s recent attempts to associate the Sean Russell statue with the wave of anti-racist protests taking place across the world.
While taking the opportunity to reaffirm Sean Russell’s own emphatic denial that he was himself a Nazi, neither by ideology nor sympathy – we also remind people that all of the progressive forces in Europe who eventually aligned to defeat the Nazi machine were at the same time as Russell also involved in deals and pacts with Hitler and the German Nazi regime.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact being one such example, and perhaps most pertinent of all the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 being another. This agreement between the British Empire and Nazi Germany was that which permitted Germany to begin rebuilding its navy, including the U-boat upon which Sean Russell died after succumbing to a burst stomach ulcer.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan have in recent months been doing their best to pervert and obscure history – creating a fantasy narrative which seeks to criminalise those who fought imperialism, and by association those today who resist real racism at home and abroad.
Leo Varadkar and Charlie Flanagan are cardinal figures in the institutional racism which holds sway at the heart of Irish politics in its cruel upholding and maintaining of the Direct Provision system. Charlie Flanagan is also the champion of Imperial enforcers and murder gang, the RIC – as well as being one of Irelands principal cheerleaders of the despotic Zionist state of Israel in today’s Middle East.
This of course is not to mention their Fine Gael Party pedigree of being the political inheritors to a tradition that gave us the homegrown Irish Fascist movement of the 1930s. The Roman Saluting, Swastika waving Army Comrades Association – The Blueshirts. Needless to say, or perhaps we should repeat the fact, as it may well be lost on those who chose to attack the Sean Russell statue – that those were the same Fascist Blueshirts which Sean Russell and the IRA physically confronted and defeated on the same Dublin streets that you so shamelessly disgraced last night.
It is not lost on us that these distractions, and attempts to launch a US style ‘culture war’ is a well laid trap by Leo Varadkar and his government. It is an attempt to distract us from the economic assault currently being waged on the working class in the wake of the Covid19 pandemic.
We are not fooled. The organised working class must align forces and face down the economic onslaught and ignore the fake psychological war-games of those attempting to provoke and distract.
The IRSP finally would like to congratulate the National Graves Association for the clean-up job and restoration, that they are today carrying out in Fairview Park.
