Posted on 01/25/2021 2:05:05 PM PST by Ennis85
We like to claim Ernesto “Che” Guevara as one of our own. Guevara was an Argentina-born guerrilla fighter who helped Fidel Castro overthrow the American-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He had an Irish ancestor, Patrick Lynch, who was born in Galway in 1715. So thrilled are we by this connection that, in 2012, a Che statue was proposed by Galway city council, and a stamp was issued here in his honour five years later.
The uncomfortable reality that Guevara killed lots of people does not count against him in Ireland. Revolutionary violence has always had a certain romantic allure for those of a socialist persuasion, and helps explain why that famous image of him by the artist Jim Fitzpatrick has adorned the walls of so many student flats down the years.
One of Guevara’s jobs was to maintain discipline during the anti-Batista struggle, so he was in charge of killing deserters and defectors. When Castro was installed, Guevara presided over the execution of the defeated enemies of the new regime. The fact that he executed or murdered people seems only to add to his appeal for some, however. But that should not be surprising in a country that is sending Sinn Fein to new heights in the polls even though the party, far from repudiating the IRA, continues to honour the terrorist organisation.
Like the IRA, Guevara was so committed to his ideals that he was willing to kill and be killed for them. He was shot dead by Bolivian soldiers in 1967, leaving him on the “right side” of history.
We are much slower to claim a son or daughter of the auld sod when we don’t approve of their politics. Richard Nixon had Irish ancestry — his mother’s side came from Quaker stock in Timahoe, Co Kildare. It’s not something locals tend to boast about. Nixon visited Timahoe in October 1970, and a little plaque in the nearby Quaker cemetery marks the occasion. At that time, Nixon was halfway through his first term of office. The Watergate scandal was still a few years away. He would go on to win a landslide victory in the US presidential election of 1972, beating his challenger, George McGovern, by over 20 points.
But we didn’t take Richard Milhous Nixon to our hearts, not like we did John F Kennedy just seven years earlier. The crowds that greeted Nixon were far smaller and less rapturous. He didn’t have an Irish-sounding name, of course, and he wasn’t Catholic. But, maybe more significantly, he was a Republican, who had run our hero Kennedy close in the 1960 presidential election.
The next American president to have a strong Irish connection was Ronald Reagan, whose great-grandfather was born in Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary. Reagan’s father was Catholic, but the future president adopted the religion of his Protestant mother.
Despite his Irish sounding-name, we didn’t take Reagan to our hearts either. Like Nixon, he was a Republican. There were protests against him when he visited Ireland in 1984. They were led by the likes of Michael D Higgins and the bishop Eamonn Casey. They hated Reagan’s policies in Latin America where, dreading the emergence of another communist regime like Cuba’s, he backed right-wing military dictatorships as a countermeasure.
Higgins has always liked Cuba and, as president, paid an infamously fawning tribute to Castro when the dictator died in 2016. I would be surprised if he didn’t also have a soft spot for Castro’s buddy Che. In Ireland, we tend to like communist dictatorships more than democratically elected US Republicans.
A short time after his visit to Ballyporeen, Reagan won a second term as US president, winning a landslide victory the equal of Nixon’s. Unlike Nixon, he remains popular in America, but that cuts no ice with us.
Barack Obama has a very remote Irish connection, one he wasn’t aware of until 2007. He was, and is, much more interested in his Kenyan heritage through his father. But we claimed him anyway. There was even a corny song by the Corrigan Brothers entitled There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama.
Joe Biden loves to proclaim his Irish heritage and visited us most recently in 2016, as US vice-president. A great-great grandfather on his mother’s side was born in Ballina, Co Mayo, and emigrated to America in 1850. He has other Irish connections in his family tree, especially in Louth, but Biden is actually of English and French as well as Irish stock. Almost all Americans can claim multiple heritages like his.
What draws Biden to the Irish side? Maybe it’s because he was raised a Catholic, and is still devout — he attended mass on the day of his inauguration. He is probably considered more Irish than Nixon or Reagan simply because neither of those men embraced their Irish roots to anything like the same extent. The fact that both were of Protestant faith perhaps weakened their sense of connection to the auld sod.
Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s vice-president, has a stronger and more recent connection with Ireland than Biden. Whereas the new US president has to go back as far as 1850 to find an ancestor who lived here, Pence has to go back to only the 1920s. His maternal grandmother was from Doonbeg, Co Clare, and his maternal grandfather from Tubbercurry, Co Sligo.
Pence made several visits to Ireland before he became vice-president. Clearly he likes the country, and is proud of his Irish roots. But Pence is an evangelical Christian, a social conservative and a Republican. He also worked for Trump, only splitting with the former US president at the death. On its own, the Trump connection would not be a deal-breaker for us. Any one of the first three would be enough for that.
In short, our willingness to claim someone as Irish is extremely conditional. It doesn’t matter how strong your connection is, how often you visit the country and how proud you are of your Irish roots — your politics overrides everything. If you’re American, you have to be a Democrat as well. That is the only kind of Irish-American we’re really willing to embrace. We’re faster to acknowledge a killer like Guevara as an Irishman than an American Republican.
It doesn’t matter that millions of Irish-Americans now vote Republican, or that lots have served as ministers or officials under Republican presidents. Those Irish-Americans are the black sheep of the diaspora family, an embarrassment to us all. No céad míle fáilte for them.
It seems that with Irish ancestry as with everything else, the issue is not the issue, because the issue is always the revolution.
(My gggrandparents came from Co Donegal to Philadelphia in 1860 and the gggrandfather immediately joined the Union army; all that eventually resulted in 1/4 Irish me, but I won’t get a plaque either I guess.)
This is a bunch of random unrelated stuff about Presidents with Irish heritage and then out of the blue “I hate republicans so their not really Irish. The End.”
Huh? whose death he is referring to?
Commies everywhere. Just becsause the author of the article is Irish, doesn’t mean he speaks for all. Sort of like here, where a commie author could express similar sentiments for Che, etc. as the “better” one.
Nevertheless, being further “progressed” along the socialist path than Americans, this euro trash probably speaks for a larger percentage of his own country than he would here.
Some should remember that many of the fit and smarter hard working ones left the home island to pursue the American Dream. Relatives remaining shouldn’t pissoff their cousins for politics, it’s bad enough for religion. We may suddenly dislike returning as Ancestry tourists, and could spend our money elsewhere.
Been to Ireland four times, spent a wad of cash, and headed back in the fall. Even will have the covid19 vax documents at the ready. Parochial country, with great whiskeys and Guinness.
There is absolutely NOTHING like an irish COMMUNIST. Sheer self destructive lunatics who drink and fight as a genetic trait. The IRA murdered Adm.Lord Louis Mountbatten— because he was a Battenberg. Think of that.
Che Guevara was a psychopathic killer who loved shooting children-— children- in the head, blowing their brains out. Imagine the idiotic irish postal service issuing a stamp in a child murderer’s likeness. Incredible.
This is a bunch of random unrelated stuff about Presidents with Irish heritage and then out of the blue “I hate republicans so their not really Irish. The End.”
Exactly.
A giant pile of steaming journalism.
Please do not post gibberish!
The author is actually mocking Irishmen who think that way.
Yes, strange.
And, equally baffling, this guy refers to Buden as a “devout” Catholic.
There’s a book by famed author Leon Iris and his wife, titled, “Ireland, a Terrible Beauty”. It was on our coffee table when I was growing up.
On some page it says “no Irish are more Irish “ than the O’Malleys of county Mayo, andd among them was the famous female warrior pirate Grace O’Malley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_O%27Malley
My daughter’s name is Grace O’Malley.
Leon Uris not Leon Iris. I really really hate autocorrect. It even autocorrected NOW.
I think everyone should read the article again and note the sarcastic tone, subtle as it is.
The author is a conservative Catholic, advocating against assisted suicide, euthanasia and abortion.
Finally! Someone else read it for what it is.
My family’s Irish connection is kind of transient. We had ancestors who were Scots or English, then were in Ireland for some years, then went to the colonies. This being in the 1600s and 1700s. I guess if I knew more UK history it would make more sense.
Half my family is very Irish and we’re all 100% Georgia Republicans.
“Oh my father is drunk and my uncle is drunk and my brother is drunk and cousin is drunk and my mother is drunk and the baby is drunk....”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPhckJEyU7U
“Maybe it’s because he was raised a Catholic, and is still devout — he attended mass on the day of his inauguration.”
I read that as devout to the surface rote of Catholicism, not as to the teachings about abortion, etc.
“devout to the surface rote of Catholicism”
a spot-on comment
could substitute most religions and state the same problem. There is a difference between going to church and being a Christian. All that may go to a church are not Christians, and perhaps related & because of that, many Christians that i know don’t go to a church.
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