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The Journal
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Journal
How much do you know about the Irish heritage of these famous people?
GALWAY GIRL SINGER Ed Sheeran this week said he identifies culturally as Irish – despite being born and raised in England. While he was brought up in Suffolk, Sheeran has a large Irish family and said he would spend his holidays in the country as a child. Advertisement 'I class my culture as Irish. I think that's what I grew up with,' Sheeran told the latest episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast. After Sheeran's announcement that he identifies 'culturally' as Irish, we want to test your knowledge on the supposed Irishness of these famous figures: 'My dad is Irish,' remarked Sheeran on The Louis Theroux podcast. Where is his dad from? Alamy Stock Photo Cork Belfast Limerick Galway Former US president Barack Obama famously has Irish roots, but to where? Alamy Stock Photo Ballina, Co Mayo Moneygall, Co Offaly Carlingford, Co Louth Virginia, Co Cavan The DUP recently commissioned a report into the supposed Scots-Irish heritage of a US politician but came up short and found no connection. Who is the politician in question? Alamy Stock Photo Donald Trump Alamy Stock Photo Lindsey Graham Alamy Stock Photo Marco Rubio Alamy Stock Photo JD Vance Which famous celebrity loves to holiday in Ireland but this month said they have given up on their ambition to gain Irish citizenship? Alamy Stock Photo Kim Kardashian Alamy Stock Photo Jeremy Irons Alamy Stock Photo Sarah Jessica Parker Alamy Stock Photo Matt Damon While the above celebrity has given up their hopes of an Irish passport, Rosie O'Donnell said she is in the process of getting hers. Why did she move to Ireland? RTÉ For a new job To 'escape' Trump For the scenery She choose Ireland at random from a map Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski has grandmothers who are both from Ireland and her artist father has a farmhouse in Bantry, Co Cork. He has a book featuring drawings of which animals found in fields near his Bantry home? Alamy Stock Photo Cows Chickens Pigs Horses Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise previously said he can trace his Irish ancestry back to the ninth century and that research on his family showed they owned 'most' of a city at 'a certain point'? What was the city? Alamy Stock Photo Tipperary Galway Cork Dublin Former Sex Pistol John Lydon, once known as Johnny Rotten, has strong Cork roots. What did he say the 'local boys would slag me off for' when he visited during the summer as a child? Alamy Stock Photo His name His fashion sense His Cockney accent His music taste Conan O'Brien is of Irish descent, and what Irish drama did he appear in last year? Alamy Stock Photo Kin Hidden Assets Fair City Ros na Rún Irish-American Hollywood star John C. Reilly was honoured with an Oscar Wilde Award in February. What did he say makes Ireland 'great'? AER Guinness Its care to the most vulnerable The Music The storytelling Answer all the questions to see your result! RAY RYAN You scored out of ! Conan O'Brien Proven Irish bona fides Share your result: Share Tweet Alamy Stock Photo You scored out of ! John Ratajkowski You love quizzing as much as John loves cows Share your result: Share Tweet Mark Rode You scored out of ! Barack Obama Plaza Ireland's best pitstop Share your result: Share Tweet Alamy Stock Photo You scored out of ! JD Vance Needs more work Share your result: Share Tweet Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
The National
6 days ago
- Politics
- The National
A Scottish writer looks to James Joyce for answers on how to free
The text of Ulysses redefined Irish national identity and is the text of Ireland's national liberation, a book preoccupied with, even obsessed with, Irishness, the problems of raising national consciousness and the forging of a better Ireland. This might surprise readers unaware that Joyce was a nationalist. The theme of politics and Anglo-Irish relations has not been central to readings of the novel and this might be, as many critics claim, because the work was hijacked at an early stage by leading Modernists, who assumed that its Irishness was secondary to its Modernist aims. Later, post-Modernists redefined the novel as a 'guerilla text' attacking the discourses and regimes of colonial power. No coincidence, they said, that the gestation of the book between 1914 and 1921, parallels the gestation of the Irish Free State, and that it was launched the day after the signing of the Irish Treaty. READ MORE: 'Naked and Unashamed' cements Nan Shepherd's place in Scotland's literary canon On the same day, Joyce wrote a letter to Arthur Griffith congratulating him on the Treaty. This proves that Ulysses was always meant to have a political as well as cultural impact. Famously of course he was to spend most of his life abroad. He left Ireland but it never left him. We in Scotland urgently need to frame our national narrative in the context of our long march towards sovereignty. We need to redefine our national identity in this much more diverse 21st century and bring a new perspective of cultural change to the journey. Many are becoming aware of it, not least Believe in Scotland and a plethora of podcasters, culture groups and social media channels within the independence movement. Scotland needs to personify – to see itself in purposeful motion, as people, individuals, characters doing, achieving, empowering ourselves and our nation on its journey. And Joyce can help us, or at least, excellent examples found in his work can show the way. In Ivy Day In The Committee Rooms from his Dubliners collection, Joyce found a method of combining the personal and the political, the individual and the national. It's a telling little story and the only one in the collection overtly 'about' grassroots politics at the beginning of the 20th century. The story is set in Dublin, the committee room being of course a metaphor for Ireland itself with six characters, albeit all male, standing in to represent the nation as Joyce saw it – contentious, disunited, dissolute, over-sentimental, self-deluded and out for what they can get. It is satiric, a little jaundiced even in the wake of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the great leader who was surely and steadily building the foundations of an independent Ireland. Since Parnell's death, the nationalist cause had been stuck in a lethargy which has allowed the British to continue to rule and the status quo to be maintained. In my teens, I was a student friend of Alex Salmond and can't help seeing Salmond as our Parnell. There are definite parallels. In the committee room, we meet Old Jack the caretaker of the hall or hired room, subservient, self-effacing, careful not to extrude a personal view that might offend his employers, then enters the political agent, O'Connor, who we soon realise is doing nothing at all to promote his candidate, the publican Tierney who is paying him to promote his campaign to be elected to the local authority. Overtly concerned with when his money is coming – and constantly suspecting that he will not be paid – he impugns the character of Tierney, 'Tricky Dicky' and does not show much, if any support for him. READ MORE: Val McDermid to premiere new play exploring Christopher Marlowe's death His colleague Henchy seems to be worse that O'Connor in that as a paid agent, he does not support Tierney. He is a man who changes his mind at the drop of a hat, has no fixed views. The third character, Hynes, is clearly some sort of spy, possible for Tierney's rival Colgan. He is a shiftless character, desperate for money, yet it is his sentimental poem for Parnell which, read out to the company temporarily unites all. Father Leon, a priest or actor, is manifestly not religious, a poor deluded soul, who does not quite join the company or even enter the room, hovering in the doorway, apologetically, as if he is the soul of the dead killed in the various uprisings. The candidate himself, Tierney, does not appear though is referred to by all. O'Connor and Henchy suppose he is a nationalist but suspect that he will vote for the Address to King Edward on the King's visit despite that. The story mocks the heroic romantic nationalism of the past by portraying the shabby compromises and venality of activists who are anything but idealistic. There is agreement for the idea that previous times were better, '… them times. There was some life in it then', implying of course that there is no life now. This is another of Joyce's tropes of the living dead, or deadness-in-life, or political stasis, of all the stories in the collection. And Scotland is in exactly the same situation. Stuck. Unable to find a route forward to independence. Narrative is the key I have been engaged with our cause since my teens as an activist in city centre street meetings with the sound of Scotland Is Waking filling my ears from car speakers. I recall the camaraderie and my own zeal of canvassing and leafletting in early by-elections and the sense of a nation on the move, the heady thought of independence being winnable – and close. I've been an activist for more than 50 years including 10 as paid party media man, and a stint as local councillor, alongside my own literary career and its 20 book titles. I have always known that engaging in political struggle provides positive benefits for individuals. Humans need to engage with something deeper than the day-to-day details of existence, focus on something bigger than themselves to give their lives some sense of achievement. As Alasdair Gray said, we need to see ourselves in the pages of a novel to be able to live better lives. We need a story arc, from beginnings to a resolution that takes us to a better place. Narrative is the key and we need to know how to form it and refine it so that it parallels the common thinking and expressions of our people – embodies it and leads it, so that all willingly share in it. And from that early time, my thoughts as a young writer were engaged with the idea of what that narrative might look like, how to put the cause down on paper in fiction, to magnify it, personify it, explain it, make more of it, so that others would be inspired to take up our cause. READ MORE: Scots group becomes first multi-venue firm to gain prestigious B Corp certification The book that summed up for me then what I wanted to achieve was a Scottish novel, AJ Cronin's 1937 bestseller The Citadel. This highly readable and exciting character novel about a young Scotsman and his early career as a young married doctor successfully promoted a political campaigning aim – in Cronin's case creating widespread support for a national health service that led to early legislation. But writers write and publishers publish. Quite soon I began to realise how difficult the struggle had been for the writers of the 'Scottish Renaissance' in the early 1930s led by Hugh MacDiarmid and others, and how quickly the movement had been snuffed out in a variety of ways although of course, not before providing a head of steam for the early national movement, in particular the NPS and then the SNP. But the political movement in Scotland, unlike in Wales, swiftly dropped the wild-haired poets, and looked askance too at the bearded folkies of the 1960s, in favour of hard-headed politics and businessmen. Early leaders broke the essential connection between the artists and writers and the politicians. The movement became obsessed with economics, business, income, taxes and wealth. Important yes, but not as important as story. Story and narrative are the backbone of life and without it, life is mere existence. But writers need to make a living which is why so many of our writers are forced to use any political references in codified, oblique ways in their writing. Like others, I wrote novels that publishers would accept and didn't write the ones I wanted to write, because I needed to get published. The numerous organisations that support our cultural community, Creative Scotland, the Scottish Book Trust, Live Literature, etc are publicly funded bodies and keen not to rock the boat, or to vote themselves out of existence. One leading Scottish literary agent responded to my pitch of a political novel a few years back with an astonishing reply: 'No-one would want to read …' she said, 'brings back all the divisiveness of 2014 …' So, it was the biggest event in our history since 1707 and we writers are not supposed to write about it in case someone is offended? Despite this, for the last few years, I have been drafting and redrafting short and long-form fiction that combines the personal and the political, focusing especially on the diversity of our movement and the variety of issues individuals might have in daily lives that include some level of commitment to the cause. Some of the stories have been published in literary magazines. My story, We Are An Island appeared in Causeway/Cabhsair, the journal of Irish and Scottish writing. It focused on an elderly English couple and their dog moving to live on a remote island to remind us how much we have benefitted from inward migration and how it is possible for incomers to assimilate even in a Gaelic-speaking community if the will and the tolerance is there. The Galway Review published Greater Love Hath No Man in which the loss of Scots lives in British foreign wars is made apparent, when an intelligent young man, a YSI member, is seduced into the army and death at 19 in Afghanistan, like his great-grandfather before him. My story of the lost potential of Scotland's working class through addiction is the subject of Last Refuge published in Literally Stories. A series of four stories has now started to appear in the SNP's Independence magazine. In Hinterlands, published in March/April's issue, a veteran activist tries to convey to his son during a by-election the importance of remembering and recording even the tiniest details of the struggle. Everything must be remembered so that those who were not there cannot rewrite our story. In the May/June issue, TheWummin Inside, an 80-year-old woman takes a stand against moaners, regretting the missed opportunities of her generation, some of whom could have 'run a small country like Nicola'. More of the stories, some narrated by me, are set to appear on indy podcasts and websites and I hope the collection, Speaking For Ourselves/Unspeakable Things when published might prove something of an outlier that brings together a wider readership. Not every writer wants to get involved in a movement or a national group. Writers write for themselves, express individual concerns and everybody is different. But to me at least, under the influence of Joyce and others, creating and deploying characters that live and breathe within our movement can help to heal the divisiveness and discord of our attritional politics and let us look to bluer skies of opportunity and the potential to create better, fairer and more balanced lives for all in life, and on the page. Andrew Murray Scott is a writer and novelist: He writes a monthly culture column in the Scots Independent.
Irish Daily Mirror
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Daily Mirror
30 years since Riverdance blew our minds and our 'holy f**ks' still echo'
IT remains a flame that will never burn low for anybody gifted a ringside seat for its mighty, ecstatic, hot-blooded, jaw-dropping, spine-tingling, seven-minutes-of-wonderment unveiling. In truth, we were more than a little tipsy that night, yet even through that long-ago fug of alcohol, the wave of rapture that invaded the packed bar where we witnessed - stupefied, teary, a chorus of astonished "holy f***s" the only words we could summon - Riverdance being midwifed into the world remains as vivid three decades on as Michael Flatley's immaculately waxed chest. It felt like a detonation of some new Irishness, a marriage of ancient dance and modern expression, something liberating and fresh invading both the evening and the heart with its riveting beauty, mesmerising a global audience of some 300 million. Before writing this piece, to reassure myself my memory wasn't playing tricks, I re-watched Flatley and, first, Jean Butler thundering onto the stage at The Point Theatre on April 30th 1994, the interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest. It is gobsmacking, electrifying, primal, emotional, an authentic "wow" moment that retains all its capacity to fire a lovely cascade of shivers down the spinal chord. A cocktail of fiddles and bodhráns, the lead dancers owning the coliseum, alone under the klieg lights, a triumph of athletic movement, rhythmic tempo, exquisite balance and beguiling cadence. Master and Mistress of the universe. The urge then was to lock away the memory, retain it for the rest of time, the same compulsion that might overwhelm an art lover on encountering a renaissance master's brushstrokes hanging on the gallery walls of the Louvre. At that moment it felt unsurpassable. Perfect. Before it became a commercial behemoth - one watched live by more than 30 million people (five times the population of Ireland) at some 15,000 performances in 49 countries, selling over 10 million DVDs worldwide) - there was this. Just this. A seven minute slot. A transfixed house erupting in spontaneous, orgasmic acclaim. An 'is this really happening?' sense of disbelief and awe. And, as the camera pans to a breathless Flatley, giggling as he accepts the rapture of the audience, the vertigo of new possibilities opening dizzyingly before him, an impossibly youthful Gerry Ryan asking his audience a rhetorical question. "What about that, stunning music, amazing dancing, was that or was it not the most spectacular performance you have ever seen?" Few who had watched Flatley's feet move as if fired from the mouth of a howitzer were inclined to raise a dissenting voice. Looking at it now through the telescope of all those years, Ryan's words don't feel remotely contrived or rehearsed, but, rather an instinctive and visceral response to something irresistible. I was 25 years of age and Irish dancing was so far distant on the polar opposite side of the bandwidth to my interests that it might have existed on the dark side of the moon. And yet, like half the nation, I was entranced by the orchestra of sounds and the sway of elegant, angelic movement. Flatley and Butler had carried the night into another dimension. Our football team was in the long since vanished O'Dwyer's Bar on Dublin's Mount Street, celebrating a league title we had claimed that afternoon courtesy of our own exhibition of superior, Flatley-esque footwork (for some reason I still haven't figured we never toured the world, never had to fight off groupies, never made tens of millions, but, hey, them's the breaks). The Eurovision was on in the background. Nobody was too bothered. Then Bill Whelan's score exploded into life and it was like every living creature in that bustling tavern had been hypnotised. There was never a moment over the next 500 or so seconds when our attention was allowed veer from the TV screen. It was that good, that instantly stimulating, dance as mainlined narcotic, a mood-altering Celtic opiate. Sense of place played a significant role in the elemental ache of joy. It was one of the few times since Italia 90 four years earlier that I had felt that sudden surge - call it patriotism, call it a sense of belonging, call it pride in our heritage - that fills a room to the brim with something I can only describe as heartsoar. We embraced and emoted as we had at the end of the game a few hours earlier. I think there might even have been an eruption of the dreaded Oles. It was a slightly self-conscious way of trying to mask the fact that we were all on the verge of sobbing. It really was that powerful. There we were, a group whose preferred music ranged from The Jam to Bowie to Ska to The Stones, incontinent with emotion because of something we might have scoffed at ten minutes earlier. We were in our native city, yet for some reason the lyric that best describes how I felt in that moment comes from U2's A Sort of Homecoming. "For tonight, at last/I am coming home/I am coming home." So many of those Eurovision interval slots tend to be twee and insecure, but here was an exhibition of rip-roaring Irish self-confidence. A visual, aural, comfortable-in-its-skin feast of excellence. A year later, Riverdance went on the road, and it is that 30th anniversary landmark that was celebrated this week at The Gaiety and at various afterparties that ran long into the night. A confession: I have never been to the full show and never felt an urgent need. In some perverse way, I find the vast global ATM - churning out dollars and yen and all the currencies of the world - into which it has transformed, slightly off-putting. But, we'll always have O'Dwyer's. The emotions awakened by that seismic seven minute rumble in 1994 were sufficiently pure to last a hundred lifetimes. Its innocence; the bone-shaking delight of Flatley hot-footing across the floor with manic, charismatic glee; Butler's effortless elegance and natural-born class; the blur of feet; the way the music hit you beneath the rib cage; the astonishment as we observed the birth of something magical and, the way it made us all all remains gloriously evocative. Ireland would win the Eurovision that night - back then, as invincible as a team co-managed by Jim Gavin and John Kiely, we almost always won - courtesy of Charlie McGettigan and Paul Harrington performing Rock 'n' Roll Kids. Harrington watched the interval act from backstage and still recalls how the arena convulsed. "That night," he says, "felt like the beginning of the roar of the Celtic Tiger and I was right at the epicentre." Riverdance became a synonym for excellence, for a slightly mythical Irish form of self-expression, a way of articulating a cultural moment that triggered a wash of reverence. Liam Griffin, the messianic and erudite Wexford manager who led the county to a first All-Ireland title for 28 years in 1996, lovingly depicted hurling as the "Riverdance of sport." His poetic description was both arresting and apt. Here were two uniquely Irish forms of cultural expression, both dances, one using feet, the other a sliotar and a wand of ash, each seeming to eloquently express a powerful sense of Irishness. In their liquid movement, their natural flow, Cian Lynch or Patrick Horgan or TJ Reid might well be riverdancing. A great hurling match is both a spectacle and a feeling. It finds your gut. It lifts you to a place of brighter light, this tumultuous choir of stick and ball and galloping athletes. At its best, it dresses itself in a cloak of myth. As Flatley and Butler did all those years ago. On Anna Livia's banks, they danced their dance and the ancient river was not alone in nodding its damp, splashing head in approval, in understanding it had witnessed the shifting of Irish art to the highest ground.
Irish Examiner
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Séamas O'Reilly: Many of the tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border
You might be expecting me, a topical columnist, to give you, the schoolchildren of Ireland, a timely pep talk about the Leaving Cert exams you've just started, perhaps with a stirring tale from my own experience. Sadly, I can't do that because I never did the Leaving Cert. I was raised in Derry, and thus the British school system, so I did A-levels. They are, I'm sure, similar enough to the Leaving Cert that much of my advice would still be relevant, but still different enough that it wouldn't really make much sense to apply them directly to the exams you're sitting now. Such are the slightly odd contradictions of being raised in Northern Ireland and discovering, over many years, that many of the full-fat tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border. I should be clear up-front that I've never felt any neurosis about this. It would, I suppose, take a lot for someone named Séamas O'Reilly to gain a complex about being insufficiently Irish. Sometimes, however, these complexes are thrust in front of me. Rarely, however, in London, where few locals know, or care, the difference between north and south. Here, it's mostly had a simplifying effect, where I might as well be from Tallaght, Togher, or Twomileborris, if they had any clue where those places were. No, here it's my status as an undercover Brit that surprises people, and has even granted me the opportunity to shock unsuspecting Londoners with my deep knowledge of BBC radio comedy, or British cultural products of our shared yesteryear. More deliciously still, it's also allowed me to correct them when they've called me an immigrant, usually with the attendant undertone that I should complain less about my gracious hosts. When, this week, the Telegraph printed a rabidly scaremongering report that 'White British people will be a minority in 40 years', they clarified this cohort as 'the white British share of the population — defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent'. Leaving aside how garbled that formulation is — there are millions of non-white Brits who meet that definition perfectly — it carried with it a parallel consequence. I myself do not have an immigrant parent. In fact, every single pale and freckled ancestor of mine since 1800, Irish farmers to a soul, was born and raised in something called the United Kingdom. This is true for a large number of Irish people in the North. And since the late Prince Philip was himself a Greek immigrant, it gives me great pleasure to point out that they'd settled on a definition of 'White British' which includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles III. The only people who've ever questioned my Irishness — to my face — are other Irish people, admittedly rarely, and almost always in the form of gentle ribbing from the sort of pub comedians who call their straight-haired friend 'Curly'. The type who're fond of hearing me say 'Derry' and asking, reflexively, whether I mean 'Londonderry'. In the time-honoured tradition of any Derry person who's encountered this comment — oh, five or six million times in their life — I simply laugh it off and say I've heard that one before. Similarly, if some irrepressible wit asks a Derry person whether we're in the IRA, we'll tell them that's quite an offensive stereotype, while also peppering the rest of our conversation with vague, disconcerting comments designed to imply that we might indeed be members of a paramilitary organisation and that they should, therefore, stop talking to us. For the most part, I regard my British birth certificate and UK-system schooling as a mundane quirk of my fascinating personal biography. I am, in fact, confident enough in my identity that tabulating concrete differences between the North and South has simply become something of a hobby. The Leaving Cert is one such mystery. I gather that it involves every student in Ireland taking tests in about 760 subjects, crammed into the same time I was given to learn four. And that you must take Irish throughout the entirety of your schooling, so that you can emerge from 13 straight years of daily instruction in the language, cursing the fact you never got a chance to learn it. I know, vaguely, that some part of this learning involves a book about — by? — a woman named Peig, and that the very mention of her name inspires tens of thousands of Irish people my age to speak in tones of awe, nostalgia, mockery and reverence, always in English. Of course, almost all facets of the Irish school system are exotic to me. I feel that no finer term has ever been coined for small children than 'senior infants' but I've no idea what age it could possibly apply to. I know that there is such a thing as a transition year, but not what that means, precisely, still less what it's for. I know that summer holidays are different, namely that they're longer than what we get up North. I primarily know this because I grew up on the border and suffered the cruel indignity of marching off to school each June, in full sight of my friends eight feet away in Donegal, who seemed to have summer holidays that lasted about eight months of the year. I was told, perhaps erroneously, that this period of glorious leisure stems from the days when kids were expected to be at home on the farm, and the school calendar augmented so as to enable the nation-sustaining pyramid of child labour this demanded. I saw no sign of this in the few kids I'd spy from the bus window as I was conveyed to class, idling on deck chairs and inflating beach balls in the driving rain. Know that you have this glorious reward in your near future, if you're worried about the exams you've just begun. I hope the few you've started have already gone well. Take solace. Be unafraid. By my count, there's just 740 more to go. Read More Colm O'Regan: Cleaning the house can both spark joy and cause a panic
The Journal
03-06-2025
- General
- The Journal
'Remigration': The far right's plan to expel non-white people from Europe
WHITE NATIONALISTS ACROSS Europe have for more than a decade promoted a policy called 'remigration', which despite its innocuous-sounding name is a plan to expel non-white people from the continent. Now, far-right activists and fringe political parties in Ireland are joining that chorus of extremists. In doing so, they are continuing to take inspiration from anti-immigration movements abroad and attempting to introduce their talking points into Irish politics. On 17 May, members of the far-right National Party attended a 'Remigration Summit' in Italy, and at an anti-immigration rally in Dublin city centre on 26 April, they marched down O'Connell Street chanting: 'Save the nation, remigration!' The National Party's only elected representative, Patrick Quinlan of Fingal County Council, repeated the call in a speech he made at the Customs House on the same day. 'Ireland belongs to the Irish people. We must start a policy of mass remigration,' Quinlan told a crowd of thousands gathered along the quays who chanted: 'Get them out! Get them out!' 'We'll shut the borders, we'll house the people, we'll rekindle our ancestors' divine fire,' Quinlan said. The party's youth wing also turned up selling the same message – the mass expulsion of immigrants and those who do not fit their definition of Irishness. Quinlan is not the only Irish politician to call for 'remigration'. Dublin City Councillor Gavin Pepper did so last year on social media , while complaining about crimes committed by Muslims in Ireland. Gavin Pepper and Patrick Quinlan were contacted by The Journal and offered an opportunity to respond. And at the summit in Italy, National Party member John McLoughlin said that while his party does not advocate violence, when 'our people reach breaking point, you most certainly won't be able to depend on the likes of me or any other political leaders here to hold them back'. Opponents of 'remigration', he said, should think twice because 'it's not our last hope to save ourselves, it's their last hope'. The Journal sought to contact John McLoughlin via social media and the National Party, but received no response by the time of publication. Those on the far-right fringe in Ireland are following the lead of more established anti-immigration parties (and right-wing extremist groups) elsewhere in Europe, who have made mainstreaming 'remigration' their goal. In the last year or so, they've begun to see some success. It's great to have young men stepping up, Fair play John and well done on representing the party. — Cllr. Patrick Quinlan (@PQuinlanNP) May 25, 2025 What does 'remigration' mean? Those who call for 'remigration' want to see non-white people expelled from Europe en masse, regardless of their citizenship, legal status or place of birth. This, according to those who support the idea, can be done forcibly or through incentivising people to leave a country voluntarily. The term 'remigration' has long been used in academia to describe people returning to their countries of origin voluntarily, like refugees returning to their home countries after World War II, for example. More recently, the word has been hijacked by supporters of Identitarianism - a pan-European, ethnonationalist movement that began in France in the 2000s. Remigration is the only ticket to make Europe European again! 👉🏻 Get yours now (in the comments below) and join us in that fight on Saturday the 17th of May in Milano, 🇮🇹 Let's make history together ✈️ ! — Remigration Summit 26 (@resum25) March 24, 2025 Identitarians are racial segregationists. They oppose multiculturalism, globalisation and immigration in general, all of which they see as existential threats to the white populations and national cultures of Europe. Like other far-right groups, they are particularly concerned with demonising Muslims and often try to stoke fears of 'Islamisation'. In a 2019 report , the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a think tank focused on combatting extremist ideologies – described 'remigration' as 'essentially a non-violent form of ethnic cleansing'. A general election poster erected by a grouping of far-right parties, including the National Party Telegram - The irish People Telegram - The irish People If 'remigration' is the goal of white nationalists, the animating fear behind it is the 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory , which casts foreigners – especially Arabs – as an invading force marshalled by global elites whose objective is to wipe out white people. The 'Great Replacement' theory featured on general election posters erected last year by a grouping of far-right Irish parties that included the National Party, the Irish People party and Ireland First. It also came up in the speech delivered by the Nationals Party's John McLoughlin in Italy, when he talked about 'ethnic replacement', casting out 'the invader' and referred to asylum seeker accommodation buildings as 'plantation centres'. He compared British control of the six counties in the north to how 'Germany lost Frankfurt to Turkey, or France lost Paris to Algeria'. As is typical with proponents of the theory, which originated in France, McLoughlin inverted the real history of the French invading and colonising Algeria. He also said those who oppose 'remigration' aim to deny its supporters 'the very heritage of our ancestors, carved in stone and soil'. During the speech, McLoughlin made repeated references to soil, and the phrase 'stone and soil' has echoes of the Nazi slogan 'blood and soil'. He also said the National Party stands for 'excellence over equality'. National Party members represented Ireland today at the Remigration Summit 2025 in Milan. Many thanks to the conference organisers for hosting such a thoroughly well-run event despite interference from multiple state governments and their leftist foot soldiers. Remigration is… — The National Party | An Páirtí Náisiúnta (@NationalPartyIE) May 17, 2025 As Quinlan and McLoughlin did in their speeches, Irish adherents to the theory cast their project as one of liberation, and resistance to the 'invasion' and 'plantation' of Ireland. They do so using language that invokes the Irish struggle against British rule and colonialism. Quinlan said in his speech that Ireland has lost 'that holy fire that blazed in our patriot dead'. Advertisement 'They were able to conquer tyranny because of that fire,' he said. Elsewhere in Europe, white nationalists call for a new 'Reconquista', a reference to the campaign by Christian kingdoms to retake land conquered by Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula centuries ago. Anti-immigration protesters gather at the Customs House in Dublin. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Who has called for 'remigration'? 'Remigration' has been promoted by far-right political parties and extremist groups in a number of European countries over the last ten years or so. More recently, it's found expression in Canada, Australia and, most notably, in the United States. Those who promote the idea aim to bring it into mainstream political discourse, which was the purpose of the ' Remigration Summit' that took place in Italy on 17 May. In 2024 the vision of Remigration became the hope of our entire continent. In 2025 we will organize the first Remigration Summit: in May we will gather activists, journalists and politicians to unite our ideas, reach and influence. If we work together, Remigration is inevitable. — Remigration Summit 26 (@resum25) January 1, 2025 The most prominent exponent of the idea in the European context has been the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came second in this year's federal election with just over 20% of the vote. The AfD has been officially labelled a right-wing extremist group by Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and one of its members has been convicted for using banned Nazi-era slogans . The party also has documented ties with neo-Nazi groups. The BfV said the AfD aims 'to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, subject them to unconstitutional discrimination, and thus assign them a legally devalued status'. Ahead of this year's election, AfD leader Alice Weidel endorsed the idea of 'remigration' at a party conference, where she talked about 'large-scale repatriations'. 'And I have to be honest with you, if it's going to be called remigration, then that's what it's going to be: remigration,' she said, making a U-turn on a topic that had brought intense scrutiny upon her party only a year previous. AfD leader Alice Weidel gives a speech at a party conference in Riesa, Germany. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo In 2024, the policy was deemed too extreme by another major player in far-right European politics, Marine Le Pen's National Rally party in France, after a report by Correctiv exposed a secret meeting between AfD members, neo-Nazis and like-minded businesspeople, at which 'remigration' was the main talking point. Reports of the meeting led to massive demonstrations across Germany. National Rally, which itself has Nazi-sympathising roots , and the AfD have since broken off their alliance in the EU Parliament. Another far-right French politician, Éric Zemmour, has called for a ministry of 'remigration' to be established. In Austria, the idea has been promoted by the leader of the Freedom Party (FPO), Herbert Kickl. The party laid out plans to create 'Fortress Austria' ahead of parliamentary elections in 2024, in which it won around 29% of the vote. The FPO has also called for the EU to have a 'remigration commissioner' . FPO leader Herbert Kickl at a party meeting in Vosendorf, Austria. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo In Sweden, 'remigration' is government policy, although it does not involve forcing people to leave the country. Sweden does not strip people of their citizenship or refugee status, unlike the more extreme ideas promoted elsewhere in Europe. The Swedish government incentivises people to leave voluntarily by offering them money, something Denmark also does. And then there is the case of the United States since Donald Trump won the presidency for a second time. There, the term has become more common since the 2024 election campaign, when Trump himself used it in a Truth Social post attacking his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. Trump wrote: 'As President I will immediately end the migrant invasion of America. We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala's illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).' US President Donald Trump's Truth Social post about immigration Source: Truth Social While Trump did effectively freeze all refugee resettlement on his first day in office, he also signed an executive order intended to provide white South Africans asylum status. He has also said white people in South Africa are being subjected to 'genocide', a common myth among white nationalists. Since coming to power, the Trump administration has been expelling people from the US under dubious pretexts, some of whom have a right to reside in the country and others who are in fact American citizens . The US president's use of the term 'remigration' was celebrated by those in Europe who have sought to mainstream it, including the well-known Austrian white nationalist Martin Sellner , who hailed it as a 'victory'. 'Remigration has had a massive conceptual career,' Sellner wrote on X. 'Born in France, popularised in German-speaking countries, and now a buzzword from Sweden to the USA!' Last week, the US State Department sent a plan to congress that would transform the government agency that oversees immigration into an 'Office of Remigration'. Implementing 'remigration' as envisioned by extremists like Martin Sellner would involve a state either revoking or breaking its own laws around citizenship. It would also mean withdrawing from international treaties that guarantee people the right to seek asylum. This is why Germany's AfD has been labeled a right-wing extremist organisation, because its intention is to violate the country's constitution and deny citizens their most fundamental rights. Need more clarity and context on how migration is being discussed in Ireland? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online. Visit Knowledge Bank The Journal's FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network's Code of Principles. You can read it here . For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader's Guide here . You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here . Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... It is vital that we surface facts from noise. 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