The A.R.I.S.E issue for the month of February is Anti Racism and Anti Sectarianism, two deadly evils which have been heavily promoted and fostered by Imperialists and neo-colonialists to divide the respectable working classes.
The Imperialist weapon of divide and rule has been used to deadly efficiency, with its devastating effects being witnessed globally in Pakistan, Palestine, the US, Africa and Ireland amongst many others.
The Imperialist’s stoked up racial and religious tensions in order to propagandise that they where honest brokers helping ‘police’ warring tribes.
In Ireland we witnessed at first hand the brutal actions by the Brits in promoting Sectarianism, allowing stark inequality in the formation of the Northern state – facilitating 2nd Class Citizenship, and standing shoulder to shoulder with the Unionist Stormont Government in their bigoted assertion, ‘A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People.’
The Brits stood idly by throughout 40 years of bigotry, intimidation and murder in the Sectarian Northern state – but in 1969 where forced, under international scrutiny, to supposedly mediate when Loyalists facilitated by the State went on murderous rampage and burnt down entire Catholic Streets.
The last 35 years have witnessed continuous attempts by the Brits to portray themselves as independent brokers, as the person in the middle trying to sort out a dispute between two troubled parties – but as evidence clearly shows this was part of Britain’s military and propaganda war, Prime Minister for Britain in the early seventies Edward Heath said to Widgery as he was ‘investigating’ Bloody Sunday,
"It had to be remembered that we were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war."
Today in Ireland racism is on the rise, sectarianism is still evident in both communities. The legacy of a conflict and of a British Government not willing to come clean as an active participant in the conflict has stoked this.
Alarming especially is the rise of racism in loyalist working class areas, although a new book ‘Loyal to Racism by Jenny Bourne’, tries to explain this,
But, conclude the authors, one should not blame Loyalist communities for racism, but blame the state. It is the state which refuses to confront racism and holds to a useless and outmoded 'community relations' model. It is the state that does little to prevent racist policing; it is the state which imprisons asylum seekers and teaches the population to fear them; it is the state that denies basic rights to migrant workers (a Ukrainian worker, forced to sleep rough, lost her legs to frostbite); it is the state that colludes in racist violence.
'Where states lead, others follow. It is hardly surprising that the most pro-state, pro-British communities in the north of Ireland begin to manifest their "loyalty" to that state by mimicking British state racism and "defending" communities in the same brutal, racist way.'
Racism and sectarianism must be ended, and must be tackled across Ireland and globally – we as young Irish Republicans must tackle these abhorrent evils in our own communities but also across society.
The month of February should be used to highlight the wrongs of hate division; we should be promoting the politics of equality, as the 1916 Proclamation states,
“Cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.”
Actions should include protests, information stalls, leaflet drops, petition signing, attending Anti – Racism, Anti Sectarianism or ethnic minority events to promote solidarity.
On Valentines Day, Wednesday 14 February, there will be an Ógra Shinn Féin National Day of Action titled ‘Kissing away Sectarianism/Racism’, we are asking all cumann to get active across Ireland in promoting our message, we will be encouraging people to promote tolerance, equality and solidarity instead of hate.
In the words of Martin Luther King,
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
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