Irish Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Part One)
By Padraig Mac Oscair
The cosy myth put forward by commentators that Ireland didn’t have a problem with far-right extremism was laid to rest by the riots in Dublin on 23 November 2023, after an anti-immigration protest accelerated into looting costing tens of millions. This represented the culmination of several years of anti-immigration activism in Ireland, most visibly represented by the #IrelandIsFull movement.
However, Ireland has never been immune to racist and fascist politics. Whilst the movements which defined the interwar period in Europe may have been relatively small here, they nevertheless did represent a distinctly Irish manifestation of classical fascism as defined by Robert Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism:
“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
In this article, the careers and ideas of three key figures in the history of Irish fascism prior to 2016 will be discussed so as to illuminate what efforts to adapt European fascist philosophies to an Irish context have looked like and how they have fared in their respective eras. The careers of Eoin O’Duffy and Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin represent the most visible attempts to create an Irish equivalent to Mussolini and Hitler’s movements, whereas the curious career of Justin Barrett illustrates the mental gymnastics involved in trying to adapt European neo-fascist ideas to a country with no fascist regime past to revive.
The Life and Thought of Eoin O’Duffy
Politics in much of Europe during the 1930s was characterised by intense partisan feeling which occasionally erupted into violence between differing groups. This was especially the case in Ireland, where the Civil War was still a recent memory. Animosity from many who had fought in the pro-Treaty forces towards Fianna Fáil and the wider republican movement led to an existing alumni association called the Army Comrades Association changing their name to the National Guard in 1933 before adopting the uniform which would give them the nickname by which they are much better known – “the Blueshirts”. The Blueshirts were a paramilitary force devoted to fighting the perceived threat of leftist and republican activism in Ireland alongside establishing a movement with much of the regalia, ritual and violent confrontation common to movements like the Brownshirts in Italy.
Their leader was a man named Eoin O’Duffy, a former Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, whose activism in the 1930s is best understood as an effort to create a distinctly Irish breed of the fascist movements coming to power across Europe. Historians have debated the extent to which the Blueshirts were actually a fascist movement, particularly following their absorption into the early Fine Gael party, foreshadowing how far-right movements have been co-opted and made irrelevant by mainstream conservative parties since. The movement may have had superficial similarities with fascist groups across Europe such as a preoccupation with “strong” leadership, a willingness to use violence against political enemies and a theatrical element characterised by uniforms and marches, but evidence suggests most of the rank-and-file were more interested in refighting the Civil War than transforming society.
This cannot be said of O’Duffy’s efforts after resigning as leader of the movement. Whilst often dismissed by historians, his short-lived National Corporate Party with its accompanying Greenshirts movement were a much clearer articulation of a political vision that sought to interpret fascism in an Irish context.
The party’s inaugural Ard Fhéis in 1935 saw O’Duffy advocate a form of corporatist government, which, whilst informed by his meetings with European fascists in his capacity as leader of the Blueshirts, would nevertheless have a distinctly Irish basis in vocational rather than party organisation. O’Duffy claimed this would better represent the different elements in society towards the common goal of building a unified Irish public within the Free State as a prelude to winning Irish unification. The ascent of O’Duffy to the standing of head of government was central to this vision, and party members weere to swear an oath of loyalty to O’Duffy as leader of the party. O’Duffy was so confident of the prospects of this new movement that he claimed a year would be enough for them to achieve power, before abolishing party politics in Ireland afterwards.
This wasn’t to be. The party’s short history was instead characterised by its publication of Anglophobic tracts that blamed the ongoing presence of foreign commercial interests in Ireland for the country’s economic woes before calling for the expulsion of foreigners from the state, alongside an effort to impose European anti-semitism by equating Jewish ownership of businesses with poor working conditions. The National Corporate Party never made it so far as to test O’Duffy’s boasts by contesting an election before dissolving following O’Duffy’s withdrawal from politics in favour of a life of irrelevance and alcoholism after his disastrous trip to fight on behalf of Franco’s forces in Spain. However, his activism, which developed from the pro-Treaty movement of the Civil War era, sought to develop an Irish nationalism which shed the egalitarian rhetoric of Irish republicanism in favour of a right-wing, xenophobic variant dedicated to the development of a strong nation unified towards a common goal. For O’Duffy, the work of 1916 would be completed by the establishment of a unified Irish public under a centrally planned economy and state directed against internal enemies such as leftist movements and external enemies such as Jewish or British business interests. This movement had more in common with European fascism, particularly that advocated by Mussolini, than anything previously recognised as Irish nationalist thought.
Whilst O’Duffy’s efforts to become the Irish Mussolini may have come to nothing by the outbreak of the Second World War, Irish fascism’s peak was still to come
The Life and Thought of Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin
On first glance, the prospects for anyone advocating a fascist dictatorship looked bleak in June 1945. Much of mainland Europe lay in ruins following the defeat of the Axis powers in the Second World War, and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps were now widely known. What remained of Hitler’s movement had either gone into hiding or begun frantically distancing themselves from their involvement with the regime. Surely, this was the worst possible time to be campaigning as a political party advocating the abolition of democracy and the creation of a fascist dictatorship.
Despite all of this, and centering their campaign on restoring a language which was only spoken by a tiny minority of the public, the Irish fascist party Altirí na hAiséirighe managed to win more local election seats than any Irish fascist party before or since in that month’s local elections. However, it would already be effectively defunct by the next local elections in 1950. This unlikely rise and sudden collapse are both due to Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin, a Belfast-born Irish language activist who renounced a civil service career to devote his life to the establishment of an Irish-language dictatorship with himself in control, a vision charted by his granddaughter in her aptly-titled biographical documentary Mó Seanathair – An Führer Gaelach?.
Ó Cuinneagáin, having resigned from the civil service after they declined to sponsor his Irish language studies in Ranafast, Co.Donegal, became involved with a cluster of pro-Axis activists in Dublin upon the outbreak of the war. Whilst most of these individuals and the groups involved achieved little of interest either intellectually or politically, Ó Cuinneagáin stood out for having developed a genuinely cohesive political project rooted in the restoration of Irish as the sole spoken language in the state alongside the development of a missionary Catholic state to re-assert Christianity across Europe much as in the age of St Colmcille. These views were first articulated in an unpublished 1940 essay, and would guide the next decade of Ó Cuinneagáin’s political activism within the Irish language movement and electoral politics.
Altirí na hAiséirighe emerged from a short-lived splinter group within Conradh na Gaeilge called Craobh na hÁiseirighe which was characterised by its extraordinary productivity (it managed to build a network of over a dozen branches comprising 1,600 members and to organise events of sufficient stature to be broadcast on Ráidió Éireann within less than two years of being founded) and deeply autocratic membership structure, with Ó Cuinneagáin humouring little dissent from his vision for the movement – namely, the revival of the Irish language with himself at the helm. The movement split after those members alienated by Ó Cuinneagáin’s autocratic leadership style and transparent political ambitions lost patience with him, with the political wing Altirí na hAiséirighe becoming a fully-fledged political party devoted to the restoration of the Irish language via the establishment of a 32-county Catholic theocracy.
Whilst O’Duffy’s political project can be identified as a direct attempt to recreate Mussolini’s ideas in an Irish context, Ó Cuinneagáin’s was visibly informed by Nazism and the efforts of Salazar in Portugal to establish a new Catholic social order. Altirí na hAiséirighe advocated a total overhaul of education and the economic system to favour Irish-speakers through positive discrimination and sanctions of the use of English. This was to culminate in a ban on the use of English within five years of taking power on the grounds only a monoglot Irish state could save the language and the people. This was to be accompanied by the prohibition of emigration and the reconquest of the six counties via a massive conscript army. These were seen by Ó Cuinneagáin as crucial to the revival of Ireland by purging of unacceptable influences on Irish society such as Anglophone culture and, perhaps betraying his European inspiration given Ireland’s minimal Jewish population and relatively minor tradition of anti-semitism (for example, the million-selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion had never been published in Ireland), Judaism.
These represent a radical departure from both previous Irish language revivalists and nationalist politics. Whilst the likes of Pádraig Mac Piaras may have placed the language question at the heart of Irish identity, they stopped short of advocating a full ban on the use of English or punishing Béarlóirí. The circumstances of Irish history had entailed that Irish nationalist movements, even at their most extreme, had embraced leaders such as Isaac Butt or Charles Stewart Parnell from Protestant backgrounds and largely avoided defining Irish identity in ethnic terms– indeed, even such a staunch Irish language advocate as Pádraig Mac Piaras’ father was British. By importing continental anti-semitism, Altirí na hÁiseirighe also incorporated a racial dimension to ideas of Irish identity which had previously been de-emphasised by Irish nationalist leaders.
Altirí na hAiséirighe managed to assemble a viable political party fairly quickly, and had an estimated 2,000 members by the fall of the Axis powers in mid-1945. Interestingly, they had a far higher proportion of female members than any other Irish political party of the era with as many as 20% of members being female by 1946, with many of these aged 18-23. This was despite their failure to establish an effective equivalent to Cumann na mBán, and having a political project which was anything but feminist. Perhaps this shows both the disillusionment many young women had with mainstream Irish political parties, as well as the disproportionately high rates of female emigration and limited prospects for women in society.
Altirí na hAiséirighe won an impressive nine seats in the 1945 local elections, despite events elsewhere. That a party with such a staunch position could poll so well despite everything (none of these seats were won in traditional Gaeltacht areas) reveals that Irish people were not allergic to explicitly fascist ideas which had been adapted to a local context. A combination of anti-English sentiment, militant political Catholicism and radical proposals to address national decline retained a degree of appeal to a section of the wider population who may have grown cynical of what democracy or republicanism could actually achieve after experiencing the poverty and stagnation that marked the decades after independence.
Altirí na hAiséirighe itself would split in October 1945 for much the same reasons as Craobh na hAiséirighe had, with members who had tired of Ó Cuinneagáin’s leadership style coming to feel the party and movement would fare better with a more compromising leader. Numerous branches and activists withdrew following a failed challenge to Ó Cuinneagáin’s leadership, often from politics entirely. The co-option of much of Altirí na hAiséirighe’s ideas on addressing social issues within mainstream Irish politics by Clann na Poblachta in 1946 made the party itself redundant to many voters who may have shared Ó Cuinneagáin’s Catholic faith and belief in the importance of the Irish language but not his contempt for democracy or antisemitism.
Ó Cuinneagáin himself was unrepentant about his positions for the rest of his life. He continued to self-publish his political opinions in what had been the party journal until 1975, and openly stated his admiration of Mussolini in an RTÉ interview in 1981. He had this in common with his Italian or German contemporaries such as the fascist intellectuals Julius Evola or Martin Heidegger.
The Thought and Career of Justin Barrett
Whilst classical fascism such as that advocated by Ó Cuinneagáin and O’Duffy may have been discredited by the experience of the Second World War, a neo-fascist movement exemplified by the likes of Britain’s National Front would emerge over coming decades. This was generally based on a revised version of ideas such as those of Hitler and Mussolini rooted more in ideas of a common European (white) race than racial differences between specific nationalities within Europe, alongside a commitment to rewriting history to present the Axis as being the real victims of the war.
These movements, with associated street violence, had become sufficiently prominent across Europe to spark a countermovement of anti-fascist action on the left. Ireland was no exception, with AFA Ireland launching in 1992 inspired by the experiences of Irish left wing activists who had witnessed the actions of their counterparts elsewhere.
Whilst there were numerous ill-fated efforts by European neo-fascist and racist groups such as Pegida to organise in Ireland, the career and political philosophy of Justin Barrett provides the most illuminating illustration of efforts to create a distinctly Irish form of what has been called by some ‘neo-fascism.
Justin Barrett began his political life on the Catholic far-right which emerged following the 1983 referendum which instated the Eighth Amendment as a member of a tiny group called Family Soldiarity which opposed contraception, gay rights, abortion and divorce. Following a number of dalliances with Young Fine Gael and student politics, Barrett emerged as a prominent member of the far-right anti-choice group Youth Defence in their campaigns against the Maastricht Treaty and the legalisation of divorce in the early 1990s, achieving a national profile after an arrest following a picket at Adelaide Hospital in Dublin in May 1998.
From such inauspicious beginnings, Barrett went on to become an anti-immigration activist who polled 10,977 votes as an independent candidate in the 2004 European elections after having been a prominent figure in the “No to Nice” campaign in 2002. He attempted to speak alongside Áine Ní Chonaill of Immigration Control Platform at an event entitled “Immigration Debate” in UCD in October 2004, before it was broken up by AFA members. His nascent political career wasn’t helped when journalists discovered his self-published 1998 book The National Way Forward during the 2002 Nice referendum campaign, shedding light on Barrett’s underlying political philosophy.
In The National Way Forward, Justin Barrett advocated a reconfiguration of the Irish state and constitution along the lines of Catholic doctrine so as to create a Catholic dictatorship, on the grounds that Ireland is unsuited to parliamentary democracy. The book argues that this is the only way to save Ireland from the scourge of liberalism and immorality brought about by (amongst other things) the EU, the X case, democracy and migration. In Barrett’s interpretation, the Catholic Church in Ireland was compliant in its own downfall by accepting the 1937 constitution and the principle of freedom of worship contained therein. Migration into Ireland, then a relatively new phenomenon, is presented as evidence of a liberal conspiracy to replace “all that is specifically Irish with something that is hybrid”. It’s not hard to see echoes of British National Party activists from the same era calling for the abolition of democracy and purging of foreign influence on society in Barrett’s fantasy of an Irish theocracy rooted in Catholic teaching.
Justin Barrett re-emerged from hiding in 2016 following a decade of inactivity with the foundation of the National Party, which announced itself to the world by advocating the introduction of racial profiling, a ban on Muslims entering the country and a prohibition on gay marriage. Curiously, the third of the party’s “nine fundamental principles” advocated placing “the nation” before the state in what can only be seen as an exclusionary definition of who fell within the Irish nation. This was borne out in 2019 when Barrett threatened to revoke Hazel Chu, who was born and raised in Ireland, of her Irish citizenship were he to attain power. The National Party contested the 2020 General Election in 10 constituencies, polling 0.2% of the national vote. To show this was no fluke, Justin Barrett ran himself in the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election and polled 176 votes.
Justin Barrett most recently made headlines following reports of gold being stolen from a party safe, and the disputed leadership of the party following claims from senior party figures that he was ousted as leader in a vote of no confidence in early 2023 – claims that Barrett strenuously denies as he contends that he is still party leader. Whatever ambitions Barrett may have had to being the dictator of a Catholic theocracy remain firmly aspirational at time of writing.
What made Barrett’s career stand out was that it represented part of a broader political project across Europe which it has been argued sought to revive historical forms of fascism. Barrett spoke alongside infamous white supremacists such as William Luther Pierce at gatherings of explicitly neo-fascist groups such as the German National Democratic Party of Germany and the Italian Forza Nueva for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s in his capacity as a member of Youth Defence. These groups sought to rehabilitate and revive their own countries fascist dictatorships of the 1930s and 1940s, with their contempt for liberal democracy and obsession with racial purity. The National Way Forward can therefore be read as Barrett’s effort to imagine what these politics would look like in an Irish context, in the absence of any such moment in Irish history to draw upon for inspiration.
The careers and ideas of Justin Barrett, Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin and Eoin O’Duffy show that there have been attempts at creating an Irish fascist tradition from the 1930s on, and that there has always been an interaction between Irish political activists and wider extreme-right currents. There have always been those attempting to introduce European and North American racial and antidemocratic politics to Ireland – whilst the three political projects profiled here may have been largely ineffectual, they represent stirrings of a tendency within right-wing Irish thought that has unfortunately come to fruition from 2016 onwards in the emergence of Irish post-fascist movements akin to those in Europe and the US. However, their background is a separate story which will be explored in the second part of this article.