Professor of Migration and Social Policy at UCD. His recent books include Diverse Republic and Public Morality and Culture Wars: The Triple Divide.
Conservatives in Ireland appeared to have lost the battle of ideas that now shapes the country. They were defeated by a cosmopolitan liberalism which set itself the task of dismantling the remnants of Irish Catholic identity. But a course correction may be under way.
Many of the early twentieth-century champions of eugenics were social democrats and feminists. All shared a belief that science and technocracy could re-engineer society for the better. Attempts to institutionalize eugenics coincided with the emergence of welfare states and infrastructure to monitor the ‘feebleminded’.
The ‘Irish slaves meme’– assertions that Irish immigrants to the US were once slaves – has been mobilized by the alt-right to promote a white nationalist agenda based on claims of victimhood. Yet its popularity cannot simply be blamed on the online propaganda of white supremacist groups, argues Bryan Fanning.