Some Advantages of Irish Nationalism

2,600 words

This talk was delivered at the Irish National Party Summer Conference on July 4th, 2026. I want to thank everyone who made this event possible.

This is my first visit to Ireland. I didn’t come to see the Cliffs of Moher, the Guinness Storehouse, the Book of Kells, the Ring of Kerry, or the Blarney Stone. I came to see the Irish National Party. I came to listen and learn from you, because in recent years, I’ve been very impressed by the Irish resistance to the Great Replacement.

But to listen and learn, I must speak. It is the price of admission. I’ve decided to do something dangerous. I’m going to talk about Irish nationalism. But don’t worry, even though I’m an American, I don’t think that watching a movie about Michael Collins makes me an expert on your politics. I simply wish to speak as an outsider about what looks to me like eight enviable advantages of Irish nationalism.

Ethnic nationalism is a very simple idea. The world will be a better place if each and every people has the right to its own sovereign homeland, where they can pursue their own way of life free from outside interference. Thus if you are losing your homeland to replacement migration, your duty is simple. You must close your borders and remigrate the colonists. Ireland is for the Irish. The invaders must go.

Stated this way, ethnic nationalism is a universal ideology. I believe this is completely defensible. Even though nationalist movements will be as different as their nations, the basic rationale for national self-determination is the same for all of them.

A simple, morally defensible message is best when we have small numbers, slim resources, and are fighting an uphill battle against powerful enemies. But still, many nationalist movements insist on increasing their burdens by linking national self-determination to extraneous concerns. Because of your history, however, Irish nationalists have fewer such temptations.

Point 1: Ireland Never Had an Empire.

As an ethnonationalist, I am an opponent of imperialism. Just because I am an American, I don’t defend American imperialism, although that’s the first reflex of a patriot. But ethnic nationalists in many white countries succumb to that reflex. I guess they call us reactionaries for a reason.

But that’s a danger.

First of all, imperialism is nothing to celebrate. It causes a host of political, cultural, and demographic problems. Every empire is created by leaders who are willing to kill a few of their own people to take the lands of strangers. Once an empire is established, it typically elevates collaborators among the conquered, who eventually fuse with the elite of the conquerors and then lord it over the common people who think the empire is “theirs.” Thus even at their height, empires allow the culture and genes of the conquered to alter the conquerors.

Ruling an empire is like riding a tiger. It’s perfectly safe. You must simply maintain control of the tiger, forever. But, since nothing lasts forever, sometimes the tiger ends up riding you. Thus Britain and France are now drowning in the Afro-Asiatic backwash of their empires. Increasingly, these invaders are dropping the pretense of “enriching” their former masters and admitting that they come for plunder and vengeance.

Second, imperialism causes intellectual problems as well. Many nationalists feel the need to defend bygone empires for two reasons. First, they feel national pride and nostalgia for them. Second, since guilty feelings about past empires lower white resistance to race replacement, shouldn’t we argue that empires were actually good things? (A better response is simply to say: Two wrongs don’t make a right. If imperialism is bad, then so is reverse imperialism.)

Defending imperialism is bad because it undermines our own case for self-determination. Beyond that, it is a barrier to international cooperation between White Nationalists.

There are two basic defenses of empire on the Right.

The first is that “might is right.” But if might is right, on what grounds can we complain about being subjugated and replaced in our own homelands? After all, the Left and the migrants have the whip hand now.

Imagine trying to enlist the sympathy of outside parties by chronicling the migrant rape gangs, then ending with, “But after all, might is right.” It is a strange doctrine for tiny, beleaguered minorities to espouse.

The second defense is that empires may have denied the self-determination of various peoples, but think of the comforts they provided: law and order, railways, canals, steamships, running water, flush toilets, vaccinations, longer lives, etc.

Imagine upholding such a value system and then arguing that your countrymen need to risk life and limb—or merely higher prices—for national self-determination.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s Against Imperialism here.

Nostalgia for empire also creates awkward moments when English nationalists wish to cooperate with Irish nationalists, German nationalists with Polish nationalists, etc. When Hitler ravaged Poland, it may have been evil, but it wasn’t pointless. At least he envisioned some benefit for Germany. But I don’t see how verbally defending such policies today brings any benefit to any white nation. It is just pointless, self-indulgent, self-defeating behavior.

Not only was Ireland never an empire, Ireland spent centuries trying to get out of the British empire. I think this is a great advantage for Irish nationalists today.

First, you see our struggle more clearly: it is anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. Today, every white nation is subjugated by an imperial global system. Every migrant is a colonist of that empire.

Second, a legacy of empire corrupts patriotism. Americans and Russians love their homeland conditionally, because it is great and powerful. The true patriot loves his homeland unconditionally. Be it ever so humble, he loves it just because it is his own.

Third, having fought to free yourselves from the British empire, the Irish should also have some immunity to “might is right” arguments. Eight centuries of foreign domination did not extinguish the sense that there is something evil about being ruled by foreigners for their interests at your expense.

Fourth, the lack of an empire deprives Ireland’s Third-World colonizers of the excuses used in Britain and France. They aren’t from your former colonies. You don’t owe them reparations for anything.

Yes, they are still here. Yes, they are still coming. But they aren’t coming because they have good arguments. Like locusts, they don’t need arguments. They come simply to take what is yours.

The arguments are meant for you, to get you to drop your defenses. But without appeals to colonialism and reparations, it is much harder for them to legitimize their presence in Ireland, which makes it easier for you to argue for their removal.

Indeed, for Irish nationalists, the anti-colonial arguments work for you, not against you.

Point Two: Ireland Was Never “A Nation of Immigrants.”

In America, we are told that we can’t have borders because we are “a nation of immigrants.” Spelled out fully, the “nation of immigrants” argument is: Because America was settled by very similar peoples from Europe (many of whom struggled against assimilation), America should open its borders to very different peoples from around the world (and not assimilate them, because that is contrary to the spirit of multiculturalism). What could possibly go wrong? This is a dumb argument, just on the face of it.

If anti-whites wish to justify the Third-World colonization of Ireland by reference to past episodes of white immigration, the only thing they can point to is the Ulster Plantation, the hostile act of a foreign empire to dispossess the Irish of their homeland. This is why it is brilliant to refer to today’s Third-World colonists as a new imperial “plantation.”

Anti-whites will say just about anything to justify the destruction of white nations. Since Ireland was never a “nation of immigrants,” some people argue for immigration because Ireland was in fact a “nation of emigrants.” The world welcomed Irish immigrants, so out of fairness, the Irish should welcome the world.

Let’s set aside the facts that many Irish emigrants were little more than slaves, and that they were not exactly welcome in the New World. The main problem with this argument is that the Irish of today are not the people who emigrated. They are the people who stayed in their homeland. Thus you are being told that, because your ancestors chose to remain in your homeland, justice requires that you now give it away. It’s almost cute—or it would be if it weren’t evil

Point Three: Ireland Knows Diversity Is Not a Strength.

Unlike America, it was never possible to depict Ireland as having always been a diverse, multicultural salad bowl. Within the lifetimes of many in this room, the main form of diversity in Ireland was between two genetically and culturally almost identical European peoples who hated each other enough to plant bombs in one another’s neighborhoods. Even a tiny amount of diversity gave rise to a host of troubles.

There is no depth of dishonesty and absurdity to which our enemies will not sink, but for me, the worst are politicians who piously eulogize the ancient tribal conflicts of the very similar peoples of the British Isles, then cheerfully welcome in Somalis and Pakistanis, because diversity is strength.

Point Four: Ireland’s Ethnic Identity Is Strong.

It is much easier to advocate ethnic nationalism in a society with a strong sense of ethnic identity. Redefining a nation in terms of “culture” and “values” only becomes tempting once one has thrown away the unity of blood.

Because Ireland has never had to assimilate large numbers of immigrants until recently, there’s never been much pressure to synthesize a fake Irish civic nationalism based on “values” like openness and tolerance, which mean openness to and tolerance of being replaced in one’s homeland.

Your people have a higher-than-average immunity to such nonsense, and that’s another advantage for Irish nationalism. In America, I can’t even convince White Nationalists that Americans constitute a distinct ethnic group.

Point Five: Ireland Has a Living Revolutionary Nationalist Tradition.

The most insidious argument for empire is the same one offered for globalization today: the loss of sovereignty will promote prosperity and peace. Everybody wants prosperity and peace. Only idealists and patriots prize national sovereignty over Last Man comforts. I think Irish nationalists have some advantages here too.

First of all, the proper response to the bourgeois argument is that those who sacrifice sovereignty for peace and plenty will end up with none of them in the end. In truth, the Great Replacement does not make us richer and more secure but the exact opposite. The swiftness of Ireland’s colonization and decline makes it easier for Irish nationalists to make this argument.

Second, only a little more than a century ago, Ireland was freed by men who put national sovereignty above comfort, security, and even life itself. This prodigious blood sacrifice has not been forgotten. You are much closer to your heroic revolutionary moment than we Americans, who are celebrating the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence today. That too is an advantage for Irish nationalists.

Point Six: Ireland Doesn’t Have a Monarchy or Pretenders to a Throne.

Another advantage is your republicanism. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” he was simply affirming the republican principle that there is no hereditary right to rule. Jefferson did not think that heredity was unimportant. Nor did he think that all men were equally capable of ruling. But he rejected the idea that heredity was a reliable way to ensure that the best men rule. I agree with this.

Hereditary rule is wrong about two central issues of political philosophy: the nature of sovereignty and the nature of aristocracy, i.e., rule by the best.

Hereditary rule descends, ultimately, from the idea that a land and its people are simply property that can be passed on by inheritance. This is obviously incompatible with the classical idea of popular sovereignty. You can’t be sovereign if you are property: someone’s inheritance, someone’s dowry, someone’s source of revenue.

But can’t we reconcile monarchy with popular sovereignty? Not hereditary monarchy. Popular sovereignty means that the common good of the people is the highest law, the principle of political legitimacy.

If you take the common good seriously, then political office should be based on merit. But in a society of millions, how likely is it that the best man for any office is the firstborn son of the incumbent? And if he is, he deserves the job because of his qualifications, not his heredity. Any society that promotes based on merit will always have an advantage over those that promote based on heredity. That’s true in politics as well as business.

This isn’t necessarily an argument for abolishing ancient institutions. But it is an argument for depoliticizing them as much as possible: in effect, putting them in a museum. And indeed, most monarchies today are constitutional, meaning subject to popular sovereignty, and largely ceremonial.

Hereditary monarchy and aristocracy are glittering but empty simulacra of genuine aristocracy. Imagine feeling the need to defend the House of Windsor. You are lucky to be free of such baggage. I hope you build a genuinely aristocratic republic. You can begin by attracting the best people in your society to the Irish National Party. I think you are off to a good start.

Point Seven: Ireland Is Part of the Anglosphere.

As in Ukraine, Ireland’s colonizers imposed a foreign language. I fully understand the desire to decolonize one’s language. When Israel was founded, Hebrew was nobody’s mother tongue. They literally brought it back from the dead. If things had gone slightly differently a century ago, you all might be speaking Gaelic, and I would be looking very, very confused.

But English is your mother tongue, and even though you might regard it more as your evil-stepmother tongue, there are some consolations.

Speaking English makes it easier for you to communicate to the world at large. It makes it easier for the world to follow events in Ireland. It makes it easier for you to communicate and cooperate with nationalists in other countries. I have noticed that Nationalists in larger European nations like France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, are more linguistically insular than nationalists from small nations that have widely adopted English as the new lingua franca. Finally, English connects you to the world-wide Irish diaspora, most of whose ancestors left before Ireland became independent. These are advantages for Irish nationalists.

Yes, speaking only Gaelic would impede the influx of bad ideas and migrants. But such problems would persist if English remained your second language.

Point Eight: Ireland Has a Diaspora & Sympathizers Around the Globe.

There’s a strange phenomenon on the American Right that I call “telescopic ethnonationalism.” Americans like Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk seem to believe that America is a proposition nation, or at least they are unwilling to challenge that dogma. But they will defend ethnonationalist arguments for white people overseas: for South Africans, for Germans, for Irishmen.

If Elon Musk is willing to affirm Irish nationalism, just imagine what Irish Americans might be willing to do for you. Irish-American attachment to the old country is probably exceeded only by Jewish-American attachment to Israel. Irish nationalism has been fostered by the Irish diaspora since the nineteenth century. I hope you are benefiting from it today.

As globalism breaks down and ethnonationalism struggles to be born in America, I hope that Americans will sublimate some of their frustrated nationalist sentiments into support for the Irish cause. In a sense, that’s what I’m doing here today. I wish you the best. You are an inspiration to us all.