A Gaelic Kibbutzim?: Fennell's 'Iosrael in Iarchonnachta' Movement (Fennellism, pt. 2)

In the late 1960s Desmond Fennell and a wide group of Gaeilgeoirí moved to Conamara, in attempt to launch a radical Gaelic Revolution.

Iarchonnacht 1985

‘Fill arís ar do chuid, Nigh d’intinn is nigh, Do theanga a chuaigh ceangailte i gcomhréiribh’’ — Fill Arís ó Seán Ó Ríordáin.

‘I believe it is our Gaelic past which, though the Irish race does not recognise it just at present, is really at the bottom of the Irish heart, and prevents us becoming citizens of the Empire, as, I think, can be easily proved.’ — The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland (1892) by Douglas Hyde.

‘Sé troigh sé a bhí an damhán alla, Nuair a dhéanadh screá dó anuas faoin talamh

Bhuail sé a chos in aghaidh an bhalla, Agus bhris sé a dhroim’ — An Damhán Alla.

As the life and works of philosopher Desmond Fennell continue to be appreciated by younger generations of dissident Gaels, I think it is about time a substantive analysis of Fennell’s Gaelic activist era was undertaken. While many recent retrospectives on the thought of Fennell focus on his later turn toward explicit pessimism, the case can be made that his earlier activism in the Irish-Language movement should be taken as equally valuable to today’s critics of Dublin’s Neoliberal regime.

There is a plethora of criticisms of Irish and Western decline, but what many doomsdayists lack are concrete visions for how to reverse from our current malaise towards a progressive future. The Fennell-led movement of Iarchonnacht 1985 provides just that, Iarchonnacht simply being the name for the ancient kingdom in today’s area of Conamara.

In the late 1960s Gaeilgeoirí were looking at the possible extinction of the teanga dúchasach of the country within twenty years — the year ‘1985’ being that fated year. With the Anglicising force of global Liberalism, emanating from Dublin, there seemed to be no autonomy or space for the ‘backward’ and ‘traditional’ Gaeltacht in the future Ireland. The solution, in Fennell’s eyes, was a radical movement of ethnic revival — modelled after the (non-militaristic) cultural aspects of Zionist Kibbutzim. Gaeilgeoirí from across the country moved to the Gaeltacht to build-up a sovereign, autonomous resistance movement to save not just the language, but the Gaeltacht itself.

While their full ambitions were not wholly realised, and the Gaeltacht and language are today under more threat than ever, the movement did see the creation of Radió na Gaeltachta, Údarás na Gaeltachta and the beginning of Oireachtas na Gaeilge being hosted outside the Pale. Along with these victories, I believe the intellectual core of Fennell’s movement demonstrates what a pro-active, ethnically conscious liberal movement looks like.

Starting off, it's worth noting how Fennell viewed the centrality of the Irish language cause ‘at the heart’ of the Independence era. This was a major reason for Fennell’s attachment to Gaelic activism, as he saw it as providing the necessary Humanistic element to Irish Nationalism: ‘To the dream image which illuminated the Gaelic way of life, the League added the rational and cogent humanism of Hyde and others, showing by reasonable argument the desirable life which the restoration would restore to the Irish’.¹

Unfortunately, Fennell felt that we are kept back from truly embracing the Irish language cause as our Gaelic heritage is often viewed as an impediment to living a progressive modern life. For many of us, being an active Gaeilgeoir ‘would not only be inferior to, but the very opposite of that “modern”, “urban”, “sophisticated”, “enlightened” and “non-native-Irish” life that we predominantly desire’.²

Demonstrating his earnestness, Fennel took this the aim of the re-Gaelicisation of Ireland into his own hands when he and his wife Mary decided to migrate over to Maoinis, an isolated island parish of Cárna, a famous region of the Gaeltacht, in Conamara. Upon arrival, Fennell observed in Maoinis many of the predictable fatal symptoms of managed decline in a neglected traditional community: ‘community life had disintegrated: households lived their own lives; individualism was the dominant mode’.³

If any area required a socio-cultural revolution – the 1960s Gaeltacht did. For Fennell, the foundational stumbling block for communities such as these was their psychologically imbibed inferiority complex, in which native Gaeilgeoirí reinforced their own cultural defeatism, based on a skewed colonial mentality of themselves:

‘The greatest power was the people’s image of their life and that was a depressive image which falsely portrayed many desirable things – including “real” life – as possible elsewhere and for others, but impossible “for us here” (and even impossible “for us, as individuals, elsewhere, except by becoming other than we are”)’.⁴

Knowing that the transformation of the old mentality of doomerism would only be defeated once the people of Conamara (and the Gaeltacht more generally) were presented with an alternative image of their lives, Fennell began taking an active part in building a more proactive civil society network in Maoinis.

As a worthy lesson for dissidents today in cultural organising as a precedent to political change, Fennell did the hard-work of building up rapport in the local community by actively founding new democratic parish councils in the local church, as well as contributing to the creation of the migration scheme ‘Iarchonnacht 1985’. This activism was all generated to the central goal of a ‘New Israel in Iarchonnacht’ - namely, a Gaelic variation of the template set by the early Kibbutz Zionist movement, which successfully managed to reinstall a Hebrew-speaking, Jewish identitarian power-structure in the long-Arab dominated areas of Palestine.

The programme of the Gaelic Revolution

The 1972 pamphlet Iarchonnacht Began is a collection of essays, articles and letters written during the early years of this new revitalised Gaeltacht movement, and is a vital insight into the ideological currents of the movement. Fennel opens off the pamphlet explaining the need for this more radical form of Gaelic activism, as the Irish-language cause has fundamentally failed for the process of 75 years. He offers a dire choice: either Gaeilgeoirí abandon the language struggle, or they take the revival serious, which would entail instituting an ‘Iosrael nua’ approach – meaning mass migration of Gaeilgeoirí from across the country to Conamara and the building up of a native Gaeltacht economy.

This would require a whole new Gaeltacht Development Authority as well as mass hiring of thousands of new workers in respective fields. A ‘state of emergency’ would be announced to save the Gaeltacht, and the radical new reshaping of the Gaelteacht more resemble the formation of a whole new nation as opposed to a regional development scheme:

‘The increasing requirements of electric power are supplied by Ireland’s first atomic energy plant. Preference in new jobs and in regard to residence permits is given strictly to Irish-speakers. … Co-Operatives in agriculture, fisheries and industry become the rule rather than the exception. The Church plays its part by developing a liturgy of life and work, so that Connemara hymn tunes, production feasts and liturgical dances become the done thing in Ireland and abroad.’⁵

The plan for this scheme was controversial, even within Gaeilgeoir circles. As Fennell noted, it did not chime with the modern obsession with limitless growth as it ‘was not the quickest way’ of ‘increasing our G.N.P. and our personal incomes’ but instead it was ‘honour, integrity, high adventure and undying fame among men’.⁶ Despite some of the Marxist influences on the movement (which will be discussed later in the essay), there was always a localist, communitarian strand to Fennell’s ‘Gaelic Kibbuzism’. The elder Gaeilgeoir writer Tarlach Ó hUid took particular issue with this use of early Zionism as a template (perhaps owing to guilt over his disavowed dissident iliberal past⁷ – arguing for a more institutional, Dublin-led approach.

Propaganda letters handed out during this period explicitly state the more radical, communitarian approach of the movement, distinct from the traditional big-tent approach: ‘is mian linn go mbeidh pobal iarchonnacht mar phobal eithneach’ (we wish that the Iarchonnacht community will be an ethnic community).⁸ While I will discuss the more ethnocentric influences of the movement’s philosophy later on in this essay, for now it is worth simply emphasising the conception of the pobal (community) for these Gaeilgeoirí was highly specific, and non-systematic or institutionalist.

Fennel highlights these aims of the movement as ‘striking a decisive blow against that system of monopolistic centralism’ and alludes to the more pre-modern, radical core [my emphasis added]: ‘It will be leading all Irishmen towards a new and very ancient dimension of freedom : that of communities controlling their own affairs directly in a community of communities’.⁹

This emphasis on evoking the ‘very ancient dimension of freedom’ could inspire an essay on to itself, but there are some immediate examples which are worthy of mentioning. As a rhetorical frame there is remarkable similarity with the phrasing of the ‘States Party’ during the early years of the Dutch Republic, which triumphed a reactionary nationalist variant of Dutch Liberalism. Its core aim was advocating for the Ware Vrijheid (the "True Freedom") which was ancient and exclusivist in nature, solely understood and passed down by the Nordic tribes of early Holland onto the aristocratic regenten of the modern day.¹⁰

Both this Dutch notion of communal freedom, as well as Fennell’s may ultimately owe their origin to Aristotle’s distinction between the negative freedom (‘live-and-let-live’) from civil authorities – free to indulge in temptations – and the freedom of national autonomy (which ironically derives from temperance and order). Here, freedom is only achieved by a self-sufficient community:

‘In point of self-sufficiency the individual is surpassed by the family and the family by the state, and in principle a state is fully realized only when it comes to pass that the community of numbers is self-sufficing’¹¹

The relevance of this for the Iarchonnacht movement is that the leading ideologists, regardless of their intellectual baggage, clearly delineated the movement as advocating this form of structural, communal sovereignty, or autonomy, as opposed to the oft-encountered ‘freedom’ of cosmopolitan individualists (to partake in lives of indulgence and vanity). This type of revolutionary movement could only be birthed in the depths of the rural periphery – as Cuban and Chinese socialism did – far-from the all-encompassing imperial cities. In an eerily prescient article written in 1969 Fennell denounced the ‘frithréabhlóideach’ (counter-revolutionary) nature of urban liberal revolutions:

‘Féach, "tarraingt siar" go callánach, daoine atá ag "diúltú urrama" do "na húdaráis" agus "ag déanamh agóide" i gcoinne seo nó siúd agus ag "cáineadh" chuile rud. Éist le Duibhlinn! Tá áit sa gceannchathair chaipitlíoch do na daoine seo mar atá áit don bhfreasúra sa bparlaimind bhuirgéiseach. Déantar go minic. Ní bheadh ollmheáin chumarsáide na ceannchathrach beo gan iad. Is samplaí steillebheathacha iad den "saoirse" a chuireann an cheannchathair ar fáil. Agus dá bhrí sin go díreach tá siad frithréabhlóideach.’

(Look, noisy "withdrawal", people who are "rejecting respect" for "the authorities" and "protesting" against this or that and "condemning" everything. Listen to Duhlinn! There is a place in the capitalist capital for these people as there is a place for the opposition in the bourgeois parliament. It is often done. The capital's mass media would not survive without them. They are living examples of the "freedom" that the capital city offers. And therefore precisely they are counter-revolutionary.)¹²

Some may read this denunciation of self-serving urban ‘activist-revolutionism’ as contradictory, as Fennell himself was a convinced Maoist during this era, but that would be to misunderstand traditional Marxism. Much of the non-Western Marxism of this period had retained the traditional opposition to the urban lumpenproletariat revolution of vagabonds and perverts owing from Marx’s denunciation of the 1848 Revolutions.

Iliberal Gaelic Resistance

While the 1968 student revolutions played a role in turning toward a more culturally oriented Marxism, there were still remnants of that iliberal critique within intellectual spaces. One classic example would be Régis Debray, who went through a remarkably similar intellectual journey as Fennell, originating as a major influence on Castroism before turning to iliberal nationalism in later life.¹³

In the Irish tradition, this iliberal critique of urban revolution, whether in Gaeilgeoir circles or otherwise, was perhaps best expressed famously by James Connolly, in regards to hobbyists in the socialist movement, who want to discuss everything but community and class-politics:

‘In the first place, I have long been of the opinion that the Socialist movement elsewhere was to a great extent hampered by the presence in its ranks of faddists and cranks, who were in the movement, not for the cause of Socialism, but because they thought they saw in it a means of ventilating their theories on such questions as sex, religion, vaccination, vegetarianism, etc.’¹⁴

For Fennell’s Gaelic revolution, what was required was a material and spiritual revolution, in rebellion against these ideals of the atomizing modern state. To be a Gaelic revolutionary one must rid themselves of the Dublin-London imperial mindset, of ní féidir, lacking the self-confidence to forge our own, independent, national culture and future. To paraphrase Spencer, if the speech were to be Irish, the mind must needs be Irish also.

A small example of the impact of this ethno-cultural revivalism was the innocent transgression of his children against Anglicisation when Fennell and his wife ‘heard through the open door of the boys’ bedroom that ‘they were talking—very normal—but that they were talking Irish.’¹⁵ In elaborating the emanating outlook required for the ‘New Israel’ in Iarchonnacht, Fennell looked to his fellow UCD academic, Augustine Martin, who highlighted a new-found form of militant cultural resistance by Gaeilgeoirí as the essential component of the budding generation.

This was to be ‘the last ditch’ against total cultural assimilation by Anglo-Americanism, requiring an internal psychological revolution within each Gael: ‘The people of Irish-speaking Ireland must change from objects into subjects—turn themselves inside out. The first sign of this happening was in the anger of the young men who objected to the Teach Furbo affair’.¹⁶ The affair referenced here was a riotious protest which broke out in Connemara over the lack of RTÉ programmes as Gaeilge, prior to the creation of TG4 and Radió na Gaeltachta, two achievements the radicalism of this period can no doubt claim a role in creating.

The radicalism of Fennell and other dissident Gaels’ language activism came to the fore when he collaborated with Seosaimh Ó Cuaig among others in the Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta (‘Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement’). Based on the revolutionary principles of Castroism and Maoism (the latter influencing Fennell to rename Maoinis ‘Mao-Inis’, meaning ‘Mao-Island’), the movement ushered in a younger generation of dissident Gaels, willing to be imprisoned for the cause of Gaelicism as well openly funding an illegal counter-cultural network, such as Saor-Raidió Chonamara (‘Free Radio Connemara’).

Always the globally-conscious-nationalist in his outlook, Fennell felt that the Gaeltacht rights movement was embedded in the ‘spirit of 1968’ which started with the student protests in the continent of the same year: ‘In France, as elsewhere in the Western world, there was a sharp loss of faith in the “centre” and a corresponding shift of faith to the periphery… The Gaeltacht itself was being moved the same spirit’.¹⁷

Despite these modernist and progressive undertones, Fennell viewed the movement as announcing a direct memetic war with the forces of Irish Liberalism:

‘Since the foundation of the state, the Dublin establishment had been resolutely centralist and centralising, and consumerist liberalism now have this resolution extra force. A pluralist Ireland, that is to say, an Ireland in which various communities shaped their lives as they saw fit, was anathema to the liberals. What we called Gaeltacht self-government they smeared as apartheid.’¹⁸

In some sense, the bureaucratic Dublin Liberals were not entirely wrong. Regardless of the progressive or radical ideological colouring, the Gaelic radicalism of the late 1960s period was an inherent rejection of the homogenising machine of globalist Liberalism. The Gaeilgeoirí of this period asserted the special significance of preserving and reviving our Gaelic customs, language and heritage (which itself was heavily traditional and unblemished by modernity) over the GDP, modernisation and meritocracy.

For them, saving our native identity was an existential matter because without our ethnos – our ethnic autonomy as well as cultural and linguistic flourishing – there would be no ‘Ireland’ worth contributing to. The minority-led project of Gaelicism was hierarchically privileged, above the base Anglocentric nihilism of modern Ireland. In this sense the Language Freedom Movement was partially correct in identifying the iliberal tendency of Gaelic activism, as exemplified by the riots inspired by Máirtín Ó Cadhain at one of their meetings.

The ethnic autonomy of Gaelicism

Although seemingly pedantic, the adopted use of Gaelic instead of ‘Irish’ by Fennell during this period is illustrative of the iliberal ontology of Gaelicism, contradicting the tabula rasa approach to culture and nationhood. Fennell acknowledges ‘It was around this time that I began to call it Gaelic, habitually, rather than Irish’ as this set ‘the purpose of indicating, verbally, that in modern times “Gaelic” and “Irish” are in fact two distinct realities, with things Gaelic constituting only a part of what “Irish” means’.¹⁹

The significance of this distinction lies in its ethnic specificity. It contradicts the modern, Westphalian conception of citizenship which is conferred onto any individual, purely based on their obedience to the sovereign laws of the bureaucracy as well as a vague geographical linkage. Instead, the re-emphasis of Gaelic reminds the world that while anyone (theoretically) can become a working resident beholden to a transient nation-state on this island (making them an ‘Irish citizen’), no material or legal arrangement can make a Gall a Gael.

In this understanding, ‘Irish’ can and does encapsulate our Anglo-Irish heritage, referring to great men such as Berkeley and Yeats, as well as Ulster Protestants such as CS Lewis and Henry Joy McCracken – but these figures cannot be given the title ‘Gaels’. To be a Gael not only means to labhair as Gaeilge, or to play Gaelic sports or dance in Gaelic fashion – one can practice all of these things and be no closer to a Gael than a ‘weeb’ is to being Japanese. No, to be Gaelic is to be all of these things combined and then some – simply put, it is an ethnic identity, not something which can be bought or sold.

So rooted was the ethnic identity of the Gaels of Maoinis that not only the Gaelic-speaking Fennell family, but even people who had lived there for multiple generations, were considered to be strainséirí by the general population:

‘[Upon being asked “Were you regarded as strangers?” Fennell replied:] ‘We were absolutely strainséirí, which was a social category in a place like Maoinis, a social category which doesn't necessarily imply hostility, but it's a special group. And I mean, there were families there who were two generations there but they were still strainséirí, you know, because your ancestry is also remembered.’²⁰

What is interesting is that despite being clearly otherised, Fennell seems to cite this as another reason for his love of the land of Maoinis and Conamara more generally. I believe this owes to the fact that despite the seemingly insular nature of these homogeneous communities, which would certainly remind a tourist of their foreignness, they were totally at peace with those who were different, whether from a separate parish or God-forbid from ‘the mini-imperial city’ of Dublin.²¹

In this sense it is the forces of Liberalism, modernity and modernisation which require homogenisation and cannot tolerate the genuine diversity of people and individuals deeply embedded in their own ancestral customs and heritages. As oileáin poet Máirtín Ó Direáin bemoans, modernity has sacked us of our ancestral linkages: ‘I measc na bplód gan ainm, Gan “Cé dhár díobh é” ar a mbéal, Ná fios mo shloinne acu.’ (Among the nameless crowd, Without “From whom are you descended?” on their lips, They don’t know my last name.)²²

Ironically, communitarian rootedness, so often smeared as a prejudicial and closed-off, is the way of being which truly recognises each individual's unique value. Even the strainséir, if he does not belong in the area in which he currently resides, has his tuath or ‘home’ simply somewhere else. In this view, all people, regardless of their current context, have a proper home and place of belonging, which is suggested by their namesake. From this orientation toward the world, no person can be a cog, a slave or a unit, all individuals are representatives of their own familial soul, a testament to the lived victory of ‘personhood’ and the Human, over the uncaring laws of Decay. The common greeting of Conamara alludes to this:

‘In Connemara, north along the coastline from Co. Kerry, local people don't ask you to vouch for your existential beingness as they do in the south. Rather than asking Nach tú? ('Isn't it yourself?'), they ask Cé dhár díobh thú? ('Who are you of?'), and it's up to the speaker to position themselves in the world in a manner that makes sense to the questioner. If, for example, you were to pose me that question, I would say that I am a descendant of Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, the last Gaelic poet.’²³

While a seemingly small example, this helps explain the value Fennell witnessed in autonomous, self-governing traditional communities, away from the homogenising power-centers of Dublin and Belfast. He further saw the value in a form of con-federated localism when in 1974 President of Sinn Féin Ruairí Ó Brádaigh came back from a conference in Trieste and gave Fennell a host of literature from Breton Nationalists, particularly from Yves Person and Yann Fouéré among others. Here, Fennell was introduced to the theories of Identitarian separatism, which proposed a de-federated future ‘Europe of 100 Flags’, which would take on the shape of mediaeval Christendom. Interestingly, these ideas went on to become foundational influences on the development of the philosophy of pluralistic ethno-federalism.

Gaelicism as neo-medievalism

It's worth noting how similar the Breton vision of a return to the medieval Christendom is with what Fennell had already written several years previous, published in his Iarchonnacht Began pamphlet discussed earlier. In contrasting the original ideas of the Conradh na Gaeilge movement with what it had become by the mid-20th Century, Fennell identified a clear break in favour of atomistic individualism, as opposed to the medieval ethnicism which the movement started with (being more concerned with dúchas agus rudaí eithneach):

'I bhfoclóir an Chonartha chiallaigh "náisiún" pobal, mar a chiallaigh sé sa Meánaois agus ar feadh tréimhse ina dhiadh. Ach i bhfoclóir an náisiúnachas stáit sin a bhain úsáid as an gConradh agus ar ghéil an Conradh dó, chiallaigh "náisiún" rud i bhfad níos lú ná pobal. Chiallaigh sé slua indibhidí ag feidhmiú mar shaoránaigh is mar shaothraitheoirí faoi cheannas a gcumhacht stáit féin. B'shin an chiall a bhí faighte ag an bhfocal ó réabhlóid na fraince i leith. Is fíor gur theastaigh ón náisiúnachas seo, mar a theastaigh ón gconradh, daoine briste a athbheochan; ach ní trí pobal a dhéanamh den slua ach trí cumhacht a bhaint amach don líon indibhidí a chomhdhéan é.'

(In the dictionary of the [Gaelic] League "nation" meant a community, as it meant in the Middle Ages and for a period after it. But in the vocabulary of that state nationalism that used the League and to which the League surrendered, "nation" meant something much less than a community. It meant a multitude of individuals functioning as citizens and laborers under the command of their own state power. That was the meaning the word had acquired since the French revolution. It is true that this nationalism wanted, as the treaty wanted, to revive broken people; but not by making a community out of the crowd but by achieving power for the number of individuals that make it up.)²⁴

This statement above all informs the reader of the intellectual core of the Iarchonnacht 1985 movement, as lead by Desmond Fennell. The Gaeilgeoirí of this period, while coming from a vast array of socio-political perspectives, all believed in the Gaelic revolution as a cultural rebellion of the native, ethnic, Gaels. There were members of the movement who were not of Gaelic heritage (the aforementioned Yann Fouéré comes to mind), but at its core, it was an attempt to awaken a rooted, ethnic spirit in the people of the Gaeltacht, as against the globalising forces of Dublin and modernity, and of course the corrosive effects of alien Anglicisation.

Perhaps the simplest representation of what this Gaelicism looks like in practice is the above image of the ‘holiest place in Cárna parish’ — Séipéal Mhic Dara (Saint Macdara’s Church). Located on Cruach na Cara (Saint Macdara’s Island), every 16th of July the Church is the site of one of the oldest and most distinctive Gaelic Catholic holy days. Since the 6th Century, Gaels have gone out to the island to have themselves and their boats (particularly the native Galway hookers) blessed after a mass devoted to patron saint of the local fishermen. To his great dismay, when Fennell first arrived in Cárna he found the Church in a ‘semi-ruinous’ state. Through sheer persistence, Fennell and his Gaelicists successfully pressured the Monuments Commission to restore this ancient symbol of medieval Gaeldom, which in turn inspired a spirit of local revivalism:

‘The completion of the work was made the occasion for a three-day festival centring on the saint’s day in July 1976. The race of three or four hookers marked the beginning of a great revival of interest in all classes of old Conamara venues every summer. Subsequently, in 1982, when a new set of standard Irish postal stamps was issued, celebrating Irish architecture, the restored church was featured on the 29p and 30p stamps.’²⁵

While it may seem like a trivial example, in my view the proactive restoration of such an iconic symbol of our Gaelic ethnic heritage encapsulates the traditionalist-activist approach dissidents must embark on in order to revive our nation. We cannot be passive doomsdayists — if we want a spiritual revolution in this country, we must rebuild the soul of Ireland, both theoretically and literally. Only by showing the Irish nation — including ourselves — the alternative vision of who and what we truly are (and could be), will we come a step closer to an Éire saor agus Gaelach.

For today’s Gaelicsists, Iarchonnacht 1985 should be studied as a template for cultural resistance in this country — so that one day the Gaeltacht will be saved, and we will have our own Gaelic Iosrael in Iarchonnacht.

Bibliography

Fennell, Desmond.1969. Iarchonnacht Began. IARCHONNACHTA 1985, Conamara.

Fennell, Desmond. 1972. Build The Third Republic. Foilseacháin Mhaoinse, Maoinis.

Fennell, Desmond. 1985. Beyond Nationalism: The Struggle against Provinciality in the Modern World. Ward River Press Ltd., Swords.

Fennell, Desmond. 2017. About Being Normal: My Life In Abnormal Circumstances. Somerville Pres Ltd, Cork.

1. About Being Normal, p. 74.

2. Ibid, p. 75.

3. Ibid, p. 131.

4. Ibid.

5. Iarchonnacht Began, p. 8.

6. Ibid, p. 9.

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarlach_%C3%93_hUid#Membership_of_the_IRA)

8. Iarchonnacht Began, p. 45.

9. Ibid, p.44.

10. For an excellent article on this topic, see Alexander-Davey’s NATIONHOOD AND CONSTITUTIONALISM IN THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, 2017, published in History of Political Thought.

11. Aristotle, The Politics, [1260b] [27]: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:2

12. Iarchonnacht Began, p. 47.

13. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/rgis-debray-radical-conservative

14. Connolly, James. Wages & Other Things: https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1904/condel/conrep.htm

15. About Being Normal, p. 80.

16. Ibid, p. 77.

17. Beyond Nationalism, p. 130.

18. Ibid, p. 143.

19. About Being Normal, p. 92

20. Miriam Meets...... Desmond Fennell and his daughter Natasha. https://www.digitalpodcast.com/feeds/34693-rte-miriam-meets-podcast?page=12

21. Iarchonnacht, p. 31. f

22. Deireadh Ré.

23. Magan, Manchán. Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape, 5. Who Are You Of?.

24. Iarchonnacht Began, p. 19.

25. About Being Normal, p. 83.