In this piece, Omar Afzal briefly examines the South Asian middle class in Ireland, criticising their attachment to the FDI regime and maintenance of the pervasive ‘culture of silence’ that acts as a barrier to true integration. The author suggests public disruption of this ‘culture of silence’, critical support to the South Asian Left, and migrant unionisation as first steps.
An Irish socialist perspective on ICE, weaponised innocence, & the pedigree of exclusion.
The bourgeois press does not defend democracy or the national interests, it defends property. Its moral outrage is selective. When power drops bombs, it calls it “defence”. When the powerless resist, it calls it “terrorism”. When elites break laws, it calls them “reforms”. When ordinary people rise up, it calls them “riots”.
A new report examining the extent of corporate influence over Irish public policy and everyday life was launched at an event in Dublin this week, drawing activists, researchers and independent media to discuss what authors describe as a growing democratic deficit in Ireland.
Interview with IWU media spokesperson from Northside Homecare Services healthcare assistants on strike.
The first-order consequences of imperial wars, most evidently the mass displacement of peoples, have direct effects on Europe’s material conditions, including migration pressures that people debate about yet too rarely trace back to their structural causes.
This universal mission still has meaning in the 21st century, a century of unparalleled greed. This is a century of capitalist turmoil and naked imperialism, a century of ever increasing inequality. The goal of Vatican II remains.
From the moment Two Jags Prescott declared, “We’re all middle-class now”, people like Gerry simply ceased to exist in the eyes of progressive and left-of-centre hacks. For a while, this cost progressive politics nothing: people like Gerry didn’t engage anyway. Until they did: with votes for Brexit, with a cruel witch hunt of Trans people, with wildfire riots on the streets of Stockport.
Woke left ideology begins when the movement stops centering the worker in their socialist activism. Protecting the rights of minority workers is always going to be of the highest importance but that struggle can only be fought by acknowledging people not just as whatever minority group they are part of but acknowledging them as a fellow worker and as comrade in the struggle for a 32 county democratic socialist Irish republic!
