The Irish Example

War is the greatest testament to the fallen state of man. I hate it. We begin wars due to our corrupt nature and then, before the bodies turn cold, we begin to rationalize the reasons for doing it.

That being said, I come from a people who are good at war. There is no doubt that many an Irish Catholic found himself on the ugly end of grandpa’s pollaxe. In fact, my paternal line leads to a group of people from the Welsh borders who were used by Cromwell himself, in the days after the English Civil War, to squash the rebellions on the Emerald Isle. So, it is not without some careful consideration that I pen this essay.

I am an Anglo-Southerner. My people, though many have called Ireland their home, are English-speaking Protestants, not Gaelic-speaking Catholics. The struggle for Gaelic Irish independence is a highly emotional one on both sides. Though my emotions tell me to side with my Protestant Ulster cousins in the north, I believe that one of the strategies adopted by my Gaelic cousins, in the west and south, may be the one that is best suited for my brothers in Dixie, given our current situation.

The strategy that I speak of is a non-violent one. It does not involve car bombs and snipers. There is not many people in America that brag about being one quarter Irish because of their ability to blow up children. In fact, it was that violence that the British were able to use for propaganda and justification for more counter-forces.

No, what it was, was an ability to turn the Gaelic culture into something trendy. Something that people wanted to be apart of – when that happened, people began to sympathize with their cause. Let’s face the facts: it is just not trendy to be a Dixian in the Current Year. As much as we men of the Righteous Right (Dissident Right) may be immune to that, our family and friends feel it. Especially, our young ladies.

Dublin is a tourist hot-spot. And, on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is proud to be “a little bit Irish.” But, it wasn’t always this way. When the Irish first began to come over in great numbers, in the lead up to the War on the South, the only ones who welcomed them were the politicians. Now, to be “Celtic” is cool and to be Anglo is boring, by pop-culture standards.

So, how were the Irish able to change the hearts and minds of others in the way people looked at their culture? I am going to propose that it was an “inside out” strategy that concentrated on changing how their own people viewed themselves. The goal was to reinforce an identity all of their own that was distinct from their neighbors.

How can we Dixians take their model and apply it to ourselves? First, we have to show our own people that today’s pop-culture is inauthentic trash that will give them nothing in return for their attention. Then, we give them something that belongs to our people and our people alone.

The Irish used folk music and we can use ours. Commercial country music is useless for this job, but the independent country artist are better now than I have ever seen in my lifetime. We need to turn our friends and family on to them and away from the corporate garbage. Country music belongs to us. Period. We also could use a few more “rebel” songs to keep up moral in the dark days to come.

Gaelic football and hurling were sports that were used by the Irish to reinforce an ethnic identity. For the Southerner, the country sports of hunting and angling have strong connections to our past. Our forefathers, the Angles tribe, were a fishing culture. Their name is derived from a low Germanic word that means hook. It either derives from their homeland (which was shaped in the form of a “hook” in the Jutland peninsula), their fishing culture, or even more likely, both reasons. The root of the word angler is found in them. The hunt for large game was reserved for the English nobility in years past. Let us remember them when we teach our children how to stalk and kill with honor and respect for the tradition.

The Gaelic language is taught to most Irish students to give a strong cerebral connection to their culture. This is a very effective technique, because it takes a lot of brain power to learn a language. Modern English is the language of global trade, but we, as Anglo-Saxons, have a mother tongue of our own. Old English/Anglo-Saxon can be learned by a speaker of modern English easier than a speaker of English can learn Gaelic or any other language, for that matter.

But, more than that, we are Southern. Our culture has been under relentless attack for generations at this point. One area particularly harmed by modernity is our language – our accent. Despite what the media portrays (think the denigrating “redneck” accent, paired with a bumbling fool persona), most people love a genuine Southern accent. It’s authentic, it’s old, it’s traditional and it’s alien to the bland, homogeneous accent of Strip Mall America. We must not only retain our language, but encourage its growth.

The Irish Catholic Church undoubtedly has an enormous affect on the culture of its parishioners. Religion in Dixie is just as important to its adherents, but it is more difficult to make it a point of cultural unification. We are mostly Protestant and divided into our separate denominations at the current time. We all tend to hold strong emotional, even if sometimes strained, connections to our differing faith practices. For this, I would suggest our mutual rallying point be the Holy Bible, and more specifically, the King James Version. The reason I propose the KJV is different than most other Christian Fundamentalist. I do not make the claim that it is the version that is best for all people, only that it is best for OUR people.

No one ever spoke the language of the KJV in their own vernacular. This was done on purpose as to not show deference to one group of Anglos over another. However, it was written to, and for, ethnic Anglos and for that purpose it is extremely useful to us as a people as our source of moral guidance in an ever darkening world.

Persecution is coming. We must be smarter than our enemies. Look to the Irish.

Deo Vindice

-By Dixie Anon