“Ireland is the Ultimate Victim Nation” – Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O'Neill (0:02)

Island is in a bad way at the moment. Island's gone very woke, but on the Israel-Palestine issue, it has gone completely insane. There are so many interlocking crises in Ireland, and yet all that the establishment talks about is Israel. It's gone from organizing itself around the Catholic religion to organize itself around the woke religion, and there was no breathing space in between that.

Anti-Israel sentiment, I think, is a cancerous outgrowth of anti-Westernism.

Francis Foster (0:30)

Can we just acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is it's a class thing?

Brendan O'Neill (0:33)

Yeah, it's a class thing. We have a situation now in this country where the ruling class is, I think, quite suicidally destroying everything that makes Britain great.

Konstantin Kisin (0:47)

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Francis Foster (1:01)

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Konstantin Kisin (1:11)

Brendan O'Neill, welcome back to TRIGGERnometry.

Brendan O'Neill (1:14)

Pleasure to be here.

Konstantin Kisin (1:14)

We were just reminiscing. You were actually one of our first 10 guests in the entire history of the show, I think. Wow. Fair to say.

Brendan O'Neill (1:21)

I love that. That's good to hear.

Konstantin Kisin (1:23)

Yeah. And we've talked with you about all sorts of different things. But this time, there's something going on, that Francis and I have experienced and observed and whatever. There's something going on with Ireland and Irish people in the context of Israel and Gaza, partly, but also just more generally.

I don't know what it is. People assume because we are controversial, like we get people coming up to the street and screaming. It never happens. I've literally never had anyone say anything negative to me in public ever, except one time. And it was an Irish person who said, I used to love what you do, but then you've changed, man. And it turned out that not being wholly, massively pro-Palestine is, you know, you've violated some sort of sacred commitment that apparently I'd made.

Is it just Irish, a lot of Irish people think they're Palestinian? Is that what's going on here?

Brendan O'Neill (2:20)

Ireland is in a bad way at the moment. I say this as I'm a thoroughbred Mick.

I've done 23andMe. My whole history is just the west of Ireland. I'm about as Irish as it gets, even though I don't sound like I am.

So it pains me to say that Ireland has completely lost the plot, especially on this issue, on quite a few issues. Ireland's gone very woke, but on the Israel-Palestine issue, it has gone completely insane. And we've now reached a situation where the cultural establishment in Dublin defines itself by its hostility towards Israel. It defines itself by its opposition to the idea of Jewish sovereignty, the idea of a Jewish homeland. You will meet people in Dublin everywhere you go, who either wear the kaffir or wave the Palestinian flag, or openly say that it's time for the Jewish state to be wrapped up. You know, you've had your fun, pack it in, let's go back to just having a greater Palestine. That is a very common view amongst influential people in Dublin.

And they have become rabidly obsessed with this issue, to the exclusion of almost every other issue in the world. It's almost like Ireland has defined itself as being the anti-Israel state. And given that Israel is the Jewish homeland, that's a really problematic position for Ireland to be in, because it means it's effectively becoming increasingly anti-Jewish. And I think that's being played out in Ireland. We can see it in the invective that is used in Irish conversations, the insults that are leveled against Irish Jews. There aren't many Irish Jews. It is becoming a country that's falling under the spell of anti-Semitism. And that, I think, is awful.

Konstantin Kisin (4:07)

Well, I think it's really important to delineate these things. I think the discussion about Israeli behavior in Gaza and the West Bank has reached such fever pitch. I hear friends of mine, who I respect, conflating disagreements about military tactics with anti-Semitism. And I think that's a bad thing to do, an unwise thing to do, and actually not beneficial to people who want to defend Israel, if they choose to do that. But what I'm getting at is you see this with the Ed Sheeran controversy recently, and more broadly, I was curious, because perhaps it's an easy leap as an outsider to make, but I sort of go, you know, Ireland has a history of being oppressed by a greater neighbor power, committing some horrific atrocities. I mean, reading about Cromwell and all of these other stuff. And so you kind of go like Francis and I, we have experience with communism. So we are more attuned to that.