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Double Standards on Detention: Belarus and Ireland

Leave a Comment / Foreign Affairs, Forward /

What should be bizarre to any political commentator or follower in Ireland is why elected representatives here have little to nothing to say about the Special Criminal Court. Why do they not reach out to Republican political prisoners convicted under questionable standards and attempt to help them? I think that the answer is relatively simple. Maintaining double standards is a regular theme among representatives of the ruling class, so whilst many of our own elected representatives have a lot to say about what is happening in Belarus and the justice system there, they remain silent about events here.

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The Lion, The Bitch, and Leftist Men

Leave a Comment / Contributions & News, Forward /

“This “White Knight” syndrome that runs rampant throughout leftist spaces is ridiculous and it needs to stop. Women and misogyny-affected people have come to expect misogyny from the right, yet when it comes from the left, from men they trust and call comrades, it is a painful reminder of how patriarchy and internalised misogyny is virtually inescapable”.

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Boycott Puma; Boycott Israeli Apartheid

Leave a Comment / Culture & Sports, Foreign Affairs, Forward /

“We encourage fans of local clubs to support the BDS call and boycott any of the clubs merchandise which is sponsored or supplied by Puma to put pressure on their local clubs to cut ties with the Israeli apartheid. It is the least we can do while the Israeli occupation and slaughter continues in Palestine, even when it is not reported by the news.”

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¡No Pasarán!

Leave a Comment / Forward, History & Theory /

85 years ago today a war began that would result in the working men and women of the world leaving the comfort of their homes and travelling to the Iberian Peninsula where many sacrificed their lives in the fight to uphold the ideals of the Second Spanish Republic. The Spanish Civil War is often described as a warm-up for the Second World War; this is not only disingenuous but completely false. The conflict deserves its own place in history as a worker’s struggle, of solidarity and sacrifice against a foe whose interests lay at the antipode from that our class.

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Sinophobia: Red Scares and Yellow Peril

1 Comment / Contributions & News, Forward /

The rise of racist attacks against East Asians in the West is not due to individual hatred or fringe populists like Donald Trump. In reality, this rise in racism is due to centuries of white supremacist ideology, which is perpetuated by Western hegemony and its imperialist interests. Reading this article, one may take away that only the far-right is to worry about, but when you look at how the majority of leftists, centrists, and centre-right individuals perpetuate these ideas about China, especially through the media, it is clear that liberals enable and accentuate the fascist narratives around China.

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An Argument for Socialist-Republicanism

Leave a Comment / Forward, History & Theory /

“In Ireland, one cannot have socialism without republicanism. The socialist-republican cause is both the cause of labour and the cause of country. The liberation of the working people of this Island can only be achieved through anti-imperialism and active class struggle. But first we must analyse what is to be done, understand the flaws in non-republican socialism and pseudo-republicanism.”

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Reviewing Orange is the New Black

Leave a Comment / Culture & Sports, Forward /

“Although Orange is the New Black is gripping, for a while, it paints a grim picture using humorous sub plots, stories, and characters of a prison system entirely unfit for purpose… Anybody who views the series should take the funny sections of the series with a pinch of salt, because what it really shows is an unrelenting anti-working-class industry that thrives from the locking up, starving and punishing of millions of non-violent offenders in a vicious cycle of violence and re-incarceration.”

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Selling Sickness: Capitalism and Health (Part II)

Leave a Comment / Contributions & News, Forward, History & Theory /

“Capitalism has had a transformative effect on our society’s approach to health. To say that health is an unchanging aspect of all cultures or historical epochs is simply not true. For example, there is a lot to be said about how capitalism fosters and promotes physical health. Under capitalism, it is usually done for purely individualistic aesthetic purposes. In the hands of companies, these become powerful ideological forces which grant advertisers a worrying degree of influence over us, as they can essentially control the images we think we should have of ourselves. Health becomes almost domineering and transforms into its opposite, a sickness. Women are still generally promoted as sex objects for consumption and men are also presented by companies in the same narrow manner.”

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Women: Takers of Shit

Leave a Comment / Contributions & News, Forward, History & Theory /

“Have you ever heard of the “Warm Bath Theory”? It was an idea published by Talcott Parsons, a sociologist who created this idea that the nuclear family prevents its adult members from behaving in dysfunctional ways and encourages them to conform to social norms. The warm bath theory suggests that a man could come home from a stressful day at work and relax into his family/wife, like a warm bath, relieving his stress.

However, as communists, we know that this theory is outdated and quite frankly, full of shit. Fran Ansley, a Marxist-Feminist rephrased it as women being “takers of shit”, in other words when men come home and try to relieve their stress from working in a capitalist system, they do so by taking their frustrations out on their wives.”

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