This from the editor of Irish Music magazine, July 2005, page 5.
“… Reports are coming back from America that a small number of touring Irish bands have been offered gigs at what are ostensibly European Cultural Festivals, but which are “Neo Nazi fun days out”, run by White Supremacist groups. We all know the history of music on this island of Ireland is often played along sectarian lines, and the music is lot more than an entertainment, but that it should be used by someone for their political ends and done by stealth, well that’s simply unforgivable.”…
He goes on to briefly discuss concerns about traditional music and conservatism.
…
I guess I’m not really surprised. I think it’s always a bad idea when folks try to grab cultural or community symbols and claim them for a narrow point of view. I always resented the conservatives for claiming they owned the flag, values and freedom and I will acknowledge as a lefty that we don’t own peace and justice. Traditional music is a wonderful link to all of our pasts. I hope the comments in the magazine represent a passing blip and don’t become a trend.
Being that many people with an interest in Irish music are at least partly of Irish descent (i.e., caucasian), it doesn’t surprise me that white supremacists would flock to the ITM scene.
Hey, the KKK has been burning St. Andrews crosses for years, except on lawns not hillsides.. I am sure the festival types hit up the Scots first.
The fact is that a whole generation of young kids have had multi-culti extremist views poured over their heads in public schools. The diversity crowd has emphasized cultural, racial differences but there is always an underlying message that the European type is somehow more evil and responsible for the world’s woes.
Consequently, there is a rise in these Aryan groups, skinhead youth, etc. and ethnic tensions in schools. I truly blame the educational system and deep thinkers for this unintended consequence of their parochial social engineering.
But along with extremism, there are legitimate people out there asking: what about European-Americans? if you are going to pigeon-hole everyone else into groups, celebrate and therefore emphasize group identity, what happens to Euro heritages?
At my sons’ school, where I was PTA Board member, I unsuccessfully attempted to get a Celtic heritage festival going around mid-March. I should point out that the schools ethnic breakdown was anbout 55% black, 30% white, 17% Hispanic and the rest Asian, Pacific Islanders etc etc.
The district (through the Principal who was their hand in the deal) was not interested in supporting it, even though they have Black History month, Cesar Chavez day, Asian Awareness Week, etc etc. The parents were ambivalent as they were either: not interested because they were non-white and victim-group agenda driven, non-white and just not interested, white but hesitant. The small group of interested parents felt threatened by marginalization and accusations, so the effort ceased.
So try not to get too worked up and throw everyone in the same boat for wanting to celebrate various European ethnic heritages; you might wake up one day and find no acknowledgement whatsoever in your community.
In California, self-identified white people are no longer the majority. The whole notion of “minority” groups has been thrown into limbo as so much social thinking is wrapped around a no-longer existing status quo. As usual, supposedly “open-minded people” are very reluctant to give up their cherished notions and adapt to this new reality.
And what really is mind-bending, when it comes to Irish culture, is that it occupies a strange place of having been a victim of the same white cultural, linguistic and religious oppression within the bigger picture. But other groups, who you would think would have sympathy, USUALLY do not see beyond freckled faces in their ideologies and have no interest in the oppressed Irish as fellow victims.
To many who consider themselves socially conscious, the idea of a European-American Festival sounds outrageous, elicits the liberal eye-roll and must be suppressed at all costs.
I think this is the wrong approach. The more you smother, the more things get perverted attempting to survive.
This is perhaps slightly unrelated, but the Irish language television channel, TG4, showed a programme within the last 2 weeks where an Irish-speaking presenter and crew visited one of these festivals, filmed proceedings, and talked to people who were attending (through English). I found it to be a very disturbing programme, but the interviews were quite funny to watch (one of the few funny moments occured when one of the white supremacists was talking about how Africans had never developed civilisations. The interviewer asked about the pyramids. The answer was: “I don’t know where you learned your geography, but last time I checked, the pyramids were in Egypt”. Intriguing). It was also interesting that the presenter was free to comment on events as they happened, to the camera, because he was speaking in Irish. It seems odd to me that they would want Irish music/musicians there, considering the religious statistics in Ireland and their issues with Catholics.
Dee, that’s why I mentioned that they probably hit up the Scots first. It is curious but it shows you that this movement has exceeded the usual original suspects, i.e. the Southern white supremacists to a larger, more varied following, with definite varying degress of education.
I did have to laugh at the Egypt thing though. For those who live with large African-American populations in their community (like me), the actual racial makeup of the ancient Egyptians is quite the political football. On the one hand, you have white supremacists, who will do anything to deny that the Egyptians were black, then you have these African nationalists, who claim that Egyptians were solely African, built the pyramids, used electricity, and operated GLIDERS, flying over the country. There is a video production that pops up on our mandatory public access local television channel that has this very serious looking guy explaining all this.
As far as I can tell, the latest word from the anthropologists is that ancient Egypt had a mixture of various people, including Africans and other Mediterranean caucasians…
Man continues hating fellow man, after all these years, doesn’t he? So often seems like they all tell the same wild stories, only difference was which race did all the ancient wonders, and which race covered it up.
Seems to me like there have been some marvels of culture among all sorts of races, whether the advances of China or the wonders of the Incas, whether the marvels of Great Zimbabwe or the ancientness of the Australian Aboriginals. Even the Texans have contributed to the world’s heritage… I just can’t remember how, right now.
But, yeah, I can see there’s little wonder that Irish traditional music would appeal to white American racist groups. Racist idealogies have always had a use for music and an appeal to a romantic vision of their superior ancestors, and with a large number of white Americans claiming Celtic heritage it stands to reason that they would wish to have music of “their” heritage to reinforce their “revolution.”
You been on the Moonshine Lix?,
There is no way on Gods Earth that Christy Moore would align himself with Nazi scum and Tommy Sands is a bit left of centre…Don’t know about the Tones - I was always suspect of that crowd
if you are going to pigeon-hole everyone else into groups
So try not to throw everyone in the same boat
As usual, supposedly “open-minded people” are very reluctant to give up their cherished notions and adapt to this new reality.
elicits the liberal eye-roll
Boy, you don’t pigeon-hole people, do you? Not unless they’re “liberal” or part of the educational system you folks on the right like to blame for everything. Now that rightwingers have put an idiot in the White House you would think that they would be satisfied, but that is the trouble with people on the right, they are never satisfied.
I would think that most Scottish bands would turn down this kind of gig, given that most of the traditional musicians in Scotland tend to be “a bit left of centre” as dubhlinn puts it.
Dear Whistling Pops:
I paid a lot of dues in my neighborhood here in a diverse urban area with an urban school district here in California; board member of a neighborhood council, on PTA executive board, was chair of the school site council and helped revise the school level plan, select textbooks, plan events, fought major issues that often had ideological turf side issues. In every thing I did, I was concerned for every child and I see very damaging policies that destroy neighborhoods, divide people into ethnic camps and in the meantime, the overall level of education drops. Do I want someone to blame? yes, I guess I do because there is a definite lack of pragmatic thinking in so many areas among the cognoscenti, who are often preoccupied with loftier notions that leave the children in the dust, to be cared for later by the prison system and other social agencies. There are winds of change, but there is still a lot of damage from ideological policies that are bearing fruit as the kids reach voting age.
Who knows, maybe a lack of critical thinking resulted in many people voting for Bush??? I am not encouraged by his mangling of the bi-partisan No Child Left Behind program either, fwiw.
The other Weekender is a public school teacher and faces the b.s. from the administration every day. Teachers are put upon not only by education bureaucrats who supposedly support the schools, but by critics of the system. They are also pressured by traditional victim groups and resources and precious teaching time is spent making everybody happy. Am I a critic of outcome-based education? You bet. Am I a critic of extreme multi-culturalism, as practiced in the schools? Yes.
Now, there is this new overlay of absolutist testing (brought about my right-wing pressure) that has many teachers crying in their pillows at night so in a way, perhaps there is a diminishing of so many social mandates.
Just bear with me for a moment. Imagine you are a multi-racial child (of which we have many in California). You are a student at Berkeley High School. At graduation, there is a formal ceremony for everyone who chooses to attend, a special one for African American kids, and a Latino one. Which of your halves attends which ceremony? Now ask yourself: what Republican dreamed up separate commencements ON SCHOOL GROUNDS? Wrong question. This was facilitated by deep thinkers, who happen to be on the left side of the aisle and it stinks. How can I help but generalize? If it happens that libertarian or right-wing thinkers agree that seprate commencements are a crock, it sorta leaves another certain group that support them.
Despite years of progressive influence, many of our schools have huge racial tensions. We have had two beatings in the last week that were videotaped as they happened, and yes, race and cultural identity were a part of the reason.
How can that be?
At any rate, through my years of service, I always thought of a multi-racial kid and made my recommendations based on what would work for that child, especially in the Level Plan revisions. They are the children of the future and we better damn well not make them feel bad for not “fitting” in with identifiable groups.
I have earned the right to my opinion. I never mentioned Bush, you did. I am talking about what goes on at the local level. California has had a Democrat majority in the Assembly and Senate for years. For a while, we only had one Republican in a statwide office, while the majority in Legislature was Dem as was the Governor, till he got recalled. I live in a District with all-Dem representation, state and federal and its been that way for years. We have had countless ballot issues, locally and statewide to support education, but this one huge aspect of racial diviseness continues. What is wrong with the picture?
This is one you can’t pin on the Republicans or the right-wing.
But l am NOT saying that Repubs have better ideas for all education. I am talking about this one cultural aspect that I feel is screwing up my country and until I see people pull off the blinders of what makes them feel good to support and see what its doing to the kids, I will continue to identify the ideological polarities.
that must be either Christy Moore, the Wolfe Tones or the Sands 
, just in case…)
