3. The strained logic of this argument collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. Let’s apply it laterally: the IRA flourished under the Crown therefore this is evidence that there was no political repression? 
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4. To deny “cultural repression” and then list Anglophone elites in a lamentable attempt at a rebuttal.
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5. To omit that our population halved in the 19th century (due to famine, poverty, & migration) and the subsequent cumulative collapse in the number of Irish speakers, who were predominately the rural poor, hit hardest by serial misgovernance in the Metropole.
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I’m going to leave it there but I can’t end this thread without mentioning that he also claims that the British Empire was “from 1807...consistently about anti-slavery.”
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This is either sheer ignorance or a calculated denial of how the British slavocracies brutally suppressed slave revolts in Barbados (1816), Demerara (1823) and Jamaica (1831). They involved summary executions, massacres, beheadings and gibbetting people alive in public squares.
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A connection here is that the 21st Royal North British Fusiliers, the regiment that played a central role in suppressing the revolt in Demerara, also took part in putting down Robert Emmet's rebellion in Ireland in 1803.
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The disingenuousness at play here has no floor. Just take a look at this false equivalence. By decontextualising just one method Biggar seeks to erase the raw function and purpose of imperialism, which is to control and exploit others for the material benefit of the home nation.pic.twitter.com/avJBrmjR8B
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These arguments may seem almost like gibberish but they are insidious, especially if one is not familiar with the history. The aim is to take the position of the victim, while purporting to be presenting some much needed “balance”, and then openly defending imperialism.
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Biggar: “...whatever narrative we own, we have a moral duty to admit data that disturb it.” Ok. Before and After the Great Famine (population density per 100 acres, 1841-1851) https://www.rte.ie/history/post-famine/2020/1116/1178465-before-and-after-the-famine-an-interactive-map/ …pic.twitter.com/A8uKuhOvx2
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Whig Chancellor Sir Charles Wood: “Now financially, my course is very easy. I have no more money and therefore I cannot give it...Where the people refused to work or sow, they must starve, as indeed I fear must be the case in many parts.” (August 1847)
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The British government spent approx. £7m on Irish Famine Relief. £20m on Slaveowner Compensation. £70m on the Crimean War.
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Unlike the compensation paid to slaveowners the British Government saddled Ireland with the debt of about half of the money they spent on Irish Famine Relief, as if it was a loan. This debt burden was abolished in 1853 in return for the introduction of the income tax regime.
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So instead of capital investment and overthrowing landlordism in a country that has just experienced one million deaths, millions emigrating, economic collapse and cultural/social destruction, the priority was debt extraction.
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The “leading moral theologian” who justifies one million casualties as imperial powers threw their people into the grinder to fight over six miles of land but denies the legitimacy of an insurrection that led to the establishment of an independent state.
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Tom Kettle: “England goes to fight for liberty in Europe, but Junkerdom in Ireland." (1916)
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"We revile Holocaust deniers but continue to argue points with Empire nostalgics as if their position falls within the pale of reason and ethical respectability." -
@PriyaSatia, Time’s Monster.Show this thread -
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End of conversation
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