Make money doing the work you believe in
I really enjoyed this conversation with Andy Ngo and we covered a lot of ground. There were two things I did not cover that are worth adding.
There is a wide diversity among immigrants here, that right now risks being tarred with the same Boriswave/Migrant Hotel dweller, brush. For example, near where I live in North Belfast is a staunch, very Loyalist (read: right-wing), poor, post-industrial neighbourhood called Tigers Bay. Lots of unemployment, history of anti-Catholic, paramilitary activity. Soon after I moved here, I noticed that the only people out on Sunday mornings were black Africans, on their way on to the multiple small denomination Protestant churches in the area. There were no attacks on immigrants in that area, and that is worth noting. Belfast has seen waves of foreigners arrive here for decades: Italians, Indians, Chinese, Filipinos. Some of them experienced harassment and abuse at first, but they have been part and parcel of life here for a long time. As far as I know, none of them were put out of their homes last week either. Across the UK & Ireland, the open borders policy is doing profound damage to a society that was for the most part welcoming.
When Andy asked me why working class communities here were pushing back in an aggressive and organised fashion, while in England we have not seen that, I did not think to mention that these communities, during the Troubles, were policed by their own paramilitary groups. They functioned outside the law — paramilitaries would carry out punishment beatings, executions, and kick people out of their homes on pain of death, for a variety of crimes. Dealing, paedophilia, burglary, joy-riding, etc. So yes, there is still a much more visible traditional masculinity here, the Irish are still comfortable with the ‘hard man’ trope. But these communities also have an institutional memory of taking the law into their own hands.
