For Ireland’s progressive government, transgenderism and other “LGBTQ+” talking points have become central elements within modern St Patrick’s day celebrations.
“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” So says, William Butler Yeats, one of the greatest artistic minds my country has ever produced. The line comes from a poem titled “September 1913”, a work that mourns the degradation of Ireland as the island slowly but surely became wealthier. At a time when many living on the island were finally starting to see some sense of financial prosperity, Yeats felt that they were becoming less and less like the heroic souls who came before them, and perhaps more and more like their then-fellow subjects living in Britain.
If Yeats found the Irish of the early 20th century of questionable character, he would surely find those of the early 21st completely unrecognisable. Though Ireland is now an independent nation-state, its politicians have largely lost interest in the national question.
The political class of the legendary poet’s period largely occupied itself with the independence of Ireland, fighting tooth and nail in order to establish a sovereign republic with complete control of every corner of the island.
Such political ambitions have long since been cast aside though, with the modern Irish elite more concerned with pushing progressive values onto the rest of the world, whether they like it or not. It has used its minor position on the world stage to push left-wing ideology, bolstering those who support progressivism and lashing out at those who don’t, frequently using its very identity as a currency to achieve these aims.
Like almost every other aspect of Irish culture, heritage and history, St Patrick’s Day has become just another weapon with which the island’s political class can further this progressive agenda.
Ireland’s current progressive obsession is that of transgenderism. Ministers across all of the government parties have adopted the view that the tenants of gender ideology must be taught as fact within the country’s elementary and high schools.
Understandably, this has not only greatly upset many parents in the country, but a number of schooling and religious associations on the island to boot. Amid talk that children in Ireland would soon be told that they would be able to change gender, the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA) — a body representing 89 per cent of the country’s elementary schools — came out to denounce the plan, arguing that there was “no scientific or medical consensus” for such gender ideology.
The group was soon joined by the Irish Muslim Council, which also attacked the measures for being “not appropriate” for school children, backing the claim that there is “a lack of scientific consensus” about the issue.
None of this appears to have dissuaded politicians in the country though, with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, along with a host of other ministers, coming out to vocally back teaching transgenderism to children in response to the CPSMA’s criticisms.
“Trans people exist, they’ve always existed, and I think it makes more sense in schools to just inform children about the world around them,” Varadkar claimed in response to the widespread backlash against his agenda.
Meanwhile, sitting Minister for Justice Simon Harris insisted that the gender ideology was necessary as it was simply teaching kids about the “facts” and the “science”, despite multiple organisations saying that experts have yet to come to any scientific consensus on transgenderism.
Such a hardline progressive mentality — often buttressed by farfetched claims about “facts” and “science” — has well and truly leaked into Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Although authorities in the United States will likely be spared the most sanctimonious of the progressive preaching, with the issue of Brexit and Northern Ireland instead expected to take centre stage this year, the island itself is nevertheless due to celebrate an LGBTQ+ St Patrick’s Day.
Progressive ideology has been front and centre in the state’s plans for Paddy’s Day. Official Ireland has been forthright in describing the holiday as being about promoting “diversity” and “inclusivity” rather than any notion of religion or nationhood, with the government rolling out drag queens and foreign dance groups.
The state even went so far as to host an LGBTQ+ St Patrick’s festival on Thursday night, converting Collins Barracks — a former British military instillation in the country’s capital of Dublin — into a venue.
According to the official Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day website, the event starred drag queens, cabaret artists and “performers from across the LGBTQ+ community”. It even sported a progressive version of a céilí, Ireland’s traditional kind of dancing and folk music gathering that has been held in the country for hundreds of years.
Described as a gay-lee by the organisers, the event reportedly included, of course, an “army of drag performers”.
Pushing transgender politics on Ireland isn’t for just one day a year, however. With Paddy’s Day soon to be behind us, the government is already reportedly moving on other initiatives to promote left-wing causes.
Proving that nothing is sacred to those currently in power, the government has announced that it will even attempt to change the country’s constitution this year in the hopes that rewriting it will put it more in line with modern progressive ideals.
The document — admittedly a shadow of its original self due to previous government-sponsored meddling — has been deemed to be “outdated and sexist” by activists within state-funded NGOs. While there have been many parts that such state-funded non-state entities have balked over, the most offensive line in the document right now is the one mandating that the government must protect a woman’s ability to be a stay-at-home caregiver if she so choses. The government has now announced that a referendum will be held on removing this clause later this year.
Although the exact wording of the referendum has yet to be announced, many fear that the government will use the vote as an opportunity to remove the only use of the word “woman” in the entire legal document, a move that some have linked to the state’s pro-transgenderism push.
“It’s about gender confusion, and erasing the word ‘woman’ from the Constitution,” Irish Freedom Party President Hermann Kelly told Breitbart Europe at the time of the announcement, describing the move as “woke nonsense”.
Woke nonsense or not, however, the vote looks almost certain to succeed. A whole host of other government efforts to see the constitution changed to suit modern progressive ideals have succeeded without much of a fight, with there being no indication that things will be any different this time around.
That is not to say the country has grown completely passive over the last number of years. While for many, it did appear that Romantic Ireland had been dead for some years, early 2023 has seen the previously comatose nationalist scene sputter back into life. While attempts to challenge transgender ideology have yet to truly take hold in the country, resistance to mass migration grew to a fever pitch in the country over the space of just a few weeks, with the arrival of illegal migrants into the country going from a non-issue politically to a potential general election decider.
Sparked by state authorities trying to sneak a large number of non-Ukrainian migrants into a disused office in a working-class area, a widespread protest movement has erupted across the country, with large swathes of the general public in Ireland now expressing the belief that the state’s open borders approach to immigration simply is not working.
Politicians are now desperate to stamp the movement out, with many members of the ruling coalition advocating for planned hate speech laws to be rushed into force in the hopes of smothering attempts to resist mass immigration. Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins, described those protesting the arrival of thousands of migrants as “unforgivable“.
Higgins even went so far as to dedicate a large amount of his St Patrick’s Day address on Thursday to decrying the growth of “racism” and “poisonous xenophobia”, arguing that the Irish patron saint’s status as a foreign former slave makes him similar to today’s migrants.
Some officials appear eager to move beyond simple rhetorical attacks though, with politicians going so far as to suggest that attending the mass migration protests be made a criminal offence. Others have advocated for foreign migrants — both legal and illegal — to be given special protections from harsh words or criticism under Irish law in order to curb the working-class backlash against open borders.
To make matters worse, the ostensible opposition in the Irish parliament, Sinn Féin, has been all but absent from the scene when it comes to the issue of immigration, abandoning their hitherto working-class base to deal with the crisis as the party goes hunting for a piece of the progressive vote. So bad has the situation gotten that at many of the demonstrations against open borders, you will not be hard-pressed to find a placard emblazoned with the visage of party head Mary Lou McDonald with the caption “traitor” scribbled underneath it.
“Sinn Fein used to be a nationalist party opposed to the foreign occupation of Ireland. Their catch cry was once ‘Brits out’,” explained Kelly, who hails from the UK-controlled northern region of the country where the issue of Irish nationhood and independence remains central to this day.
“But the party has been transformed by Woke Leftism and a newfound love of the European Union so that it is now completely pro-mass immigration without restrictions,” he continued. “Its immigration policy is summed up as ‘Brits out, everybody else in’.”
With both the country’s government and opposition parties in lockstep regarding progressive politics, it is clear that left-wing ideology will continue to have hegemonic control of the country long after this St Patrick’s Day. While thankfully still a holiday that average families can enjoy, it is beyond doubt that the core state celebrations of the day are now fueled by a left-wing agenda fully bought into by the country’s political class which remains alien to the average Irish citizen.
As Europe drifts rightwards by the year, this almost certainly looks set to change. As a country, Ireland is always late to the party politically speaking. Society here adopted the tenants of progressivism far later than those in neighbouring western countries, and will likely be one of the last EU states to see populism truly start to rise as the coming decades come.
So, with all this being said, would Yeats’ assessment be correct when it comes to 21st-century Ireland? Is the nation lying there, festering, next to the long-lifeless bodies of dead Fenian revolutionaries?
Well, if not dead, it is comatose for now.