This New Yorker piece about the Irish Famine has several paragraphs I found literally jaw-dropping (positive). This is a book review!! Good god!!!
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https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rule-law/due-process
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rule-law/due-process
Not to mention they deported 10s of thousands of Scots to North America and Australia as part of their charity efforts.
And they were Presbyterian.
There was ample food for anyone with money. https://www.ucc.ie/en/news/archive/2015press/cork-1849-a-city-of-feasts-and-famine.html
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921?i=1000698636408
And were enacted across the then United Kingdom not just in Ireland.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/17/rot-padraic-x-scanlan-book-review
A) the vast, vast majority of Trump supporters don’t deserve to die, despite their culpability. It’s a social problem.
B) as this very story teaches us, they’ll do their best to make sure that their nationalistic out-groups—PoC and women this time—will bear the brunt.
Obv I’m just a novice American citing wiki, but idk, seems clear:
I wouldn't agree with o'Toole personally here even if I think his writing is otherwise brilliant and appropriately scathing of how the British responded
1. The British government had the means to greatly lessen the suffering among their citizens.
2. They chose not to.
That said, Ireland's quasi-colonized status drives home the central problem with that framework: the mainlanders (Great British...?) didn't see them as true peers
> [In 1847], the [New York?] Times reported that Britain had permitted in Ireland "a mass of poverty, disaffection, and degradation without a parallel in the world. It allowed proprietors to suck the very life-blood of that wretched race".
Now imagine 90% of the landlords in California identified as Texan…
It’s similar to withholding food and electricity from flowing to a famine-stricken population — a genocide, despite being technically rooted in willful inaction.
It's much more a combination of factors,...
The notions we take for granted, of at least occasionally...
I don't want to absolve the UK Government, or those who profited off the misery of the Famine (or the clearances of tenants in following decades), but it's dangerous to assume others would've been better.
bars
There is still a very strong belief that poverty, & also illness, are moral failings & self inflicted
So yeah they hated/hate all their colonised but they hated/hate their own poor too
I'm not disagreeing that the English landlord class hated the Irish poor, I'm just saying the poor part is a big part of the hate & they didn't hate the wealthy Irish
& It hasn't changed much
& Thought they should be able to subjugate them
I'm also not sure it's changed that much
"Is piléar é gach focal Gaeilge a labhraítear ar son saoirse na hÉireann". - Kneecap -
Cannot recommend highly enough
https://bsky.app/profile/louisathelast.bsky.social/post/3lkrqhukizk2g
If you have an hour and three-quarters to spare, the documentary I reference here is a good way to learn all you need to know about the #Famine in Ireland.
It copiously cites the Atlas mentioned in Fintan's review.
#speirgorm #spéirgorm
*looks inside*
*whitest dudes and redheads*
"whiteness" is a social construct that is selectively conferred, hence why nazis don't consider slavs or finns "white" despite them being whiter than anyone.
The British were propagandized to view the Irish as backward, subhuman people to avoid having any natural empathy.
The locals are a bunch of animals and they can't rule themselves.
We have to kill them to make them civilised