From Romance to Regret
The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History, by Mateo Jarquin, The University of North Carolina Press, 336 pp, $29.95, ISBN: 978-1469678498 Nicaragua Must Survive: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in the Global Cold War, by Eline Van Ommen, University of California Press, 312 pp, £25, ISBN: 978-0520390768 Sandinistas: A Moral History, by Robert J Sierakowski, University […]
It’s My Party
On the wall near my home in Berlin, someone has sprayed a thoughtful observation: ‘Machen ist wie wollen, nur krasser’ – Doing is like wanting, just crazier. That could be the new political motto of Sahra Wagenknecht, Germany’s most polarising politician of the left. Wagenknecht entered politics in 1990 and now, at fifty-five, is German […]
Myths About Migration
This year an unprecedented number of elections are taking place around the world. At or near the top of the agenda in many of them is immigration. Hardly any other issue has a more polarising impact. Fear, suspicion and ignorance fill the spaces around it. Xenophobic falsehoods are being widely disseminated. The arrival in Europe […]
Attack, attack, attack
During his tenure as president, Donald Trump used his office to grant executive clemency to more than 200 individuals charged or convicted of federal criminal offences. That may seem like a lot, but it is fewer than many of his predecessors: Bill Clinton, for example, pardoned more than twice that number. However, Trump’s use of […]
Literary / Capital: Dublin
At St Stephen’s Green in 2024, sandwich-snatching seagulls, mangled-footed pigeons, office workers and the growing numbers of Dublin’s tented population comingle on a weekday lunchtime. The twenty-seven-acre park was originally built in 1680 on the outskirts of a city that was, according to a 1635 city assembly, ‘groweing very populous’. The opening of Grafton Street […]
Beyond Defiance
A People Under Siege: The Unionists of Northern Ireland, from Partition to Brexit and Beyond, by Aaron Edwards, Merrion Press, 360 pp, €19.99, ISBN: 978-1785372995 The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798, by Claire Mitchell, Beyond the Pale Books, 256 pp, £15, ISBN: 978-1914318191 As the social and political ground shifts in […]
Rage for Profit
There was a drumbeat for RTÉ blood-letting coursing through Irish newspapers in the latter part of 2023, a heady staccato of accusations in bold headlines: bad management and weak governance at the national broadcaster, secret pay deals, scandalous spending, hidden slush funds … debacle, furore, fiasco, farce! This was probably the worst emergency to have […]
The Trump Enigma
Here we go again. For the third consecutive presidential election, US voters are likely to face a choice between a moderate career politician and an angry demagogue for whom lying and gaslighting are not just nasty political tactics but governing principles and reflexive personal traits. The result, the polls tell us, could go either way. […]
Hatred’s Underground Streams
How fast is the influence of the far right in Ireland growing? This question has been on the agenda of public discussion since the assertion of the Garda Commissioner in May 2023 that the far right has failed to grow in Ireland, bucking trends in other European countries. ‘Across Europe,’ he said, ‘we have seen […]
A Bodyguard of Lies
Stakeknife’s Dirty War: The Inside Story of Scappaticci, the IRA’s Nutting Squad, and the British Spooks who ran the War, by Richard O’Rawe, Merrion Press, 254 pp, €18.99, ISBN: 978-1785374470 The Padre: The True Story of the Irish Priest who armed the IRA with Gaddafi’s Money, by Jennifer O’Leary, Merrion Press, 256 pp, €18.99, ISBN: […]