Interesting how the statue of Russell has no links whatsoever to the slave trade but the euphoria of statue dropping is promoting some political point scoring from Mr. Leo Varadkar and Cllr Ray McAdam (who recently failed in his playground idea for Croppie’s Acre)

Let’s see how hypocrisy overwhelms much of Irish political history and shouldn’t be abused by politicians as seen this week. Sean Russell, a veteran of the 1916 Rising and War of Independence, was already noted for his previous missions of gun running. In 1926, he and Gerald Boland (later FF Minister for Justice) went to the Soviet Union to gather arms and was to report back to Sean Lemass (later Taoiseach). Russell once supported De Valera, but within a few years Dev washed his hands of the IRA upon gaining power. Russell became Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Republican Army in the late 1930s. Following the example set by the IRB for the 1916 Rising, Russell cemented links with German intelligence at the start of WW2 to see how it would benefit Irish independence. No plans were made and nothing came from it. Upon returning home to Ireland aboard a U-boat, Russell died from a suspected burst ulcer.

Russell was noted for staying “I am not a Nazi. I’m not even pro-German. I am an Irishman fighting for the independence of Ireland.”

Today his statue gets vandalised with swastika graffiti as if he had been a member of the SS or had committed war crimes. So why is Varadkar using this statue as an unpopular political weapon? At Easter, we saw him bow his head in “honour” to the leaders of 1916, which includes Roger Casement, who had also interacted with German intelligence between 1914-16 and actually nearly succeeded in landing arms and ammunition. Today, a statue is nearly complete for dedication for Casement in Dublin, for actually doing more than Russell. This is where history has been manipulated. Casement is legitimate in the eyes of the Irish political establishment now. Russell, however, is not.

Here is some more hypocrisy and irony. On June 8th, a FG councillor, Jim O’Leary, defiantly defended his twitter comments of love and adoration for images of 1930s Blueshirt rallies, with the Nazi salute evident. The party of course refused to comment. They want to remind people that the Blueshirts were harmless as the establishment’s version of history tells us.

Charles Flanagan TD added his own particular poor taste to the issues and protests happening across the world. Instead of posting something positive, he chose to share an image of several black men who as he claims were murdered by “Irish Republican terrorists“. A disgraceful and insensitive posting from our so called Minister of Justice who should show more sensitivity towards our peace process. His disgraceful use of the post would incite that they were killed simply because of their skin colour with no frontal recognition to the fact that they had been British soldiers, killed during the troubles.

I think it’s time the “leaders” of this country do something more constructive in uniting the people of Ireland instead of causing divisions.