Anti-Americanism is Essential for Anti-Globalism

In August of last year Shannon Airport closed temporarily on account of a fire on an US chartered carrier flying American military personnel to the Middle East. The closure was a stark reminder of the continued presence of American personnel at the airport, and the fact that while we may not like using the term, Shannon Airport is effectively an occupied airport not entirely under Irish jurisdiction. Shannon is the modern day equivalent of the Treaty Ports of the early Free State, only with duty-free shopping and a more ambivalent Irish population.

In the post-9/11 era, the 26-county state fearing an impact to trade has obsequiously yielded to the American State Department, allowing usage of the airport by the American military shuttling troops to the Middle East. The Irish State has even performed security details for the flights, turning a blind eye to potential torture renditions and scuttling the State’s claims to be neutral.

While it is a traditional bête noire of the ragtag anti-war Irish left, the foreign military presence at Shannon is of natural concern for rightists as well. For as long as America has the ability to maintain military garrisons across Europe (Ireland included), nationalism will never fully take control of respective state governments. 

Do not be put off by the illusions of elections, like those of the former Eastern Bloc; so long as the American military and security state with all its appendages remain on European soil, the continent will continue to stumble towards increasing liberal malaise. 

Until such a point, global American military presence becomes untenable either through its costs to the American treasury or a new bout of isolationism, nationalism at a state level will not take real effect. 

When Orban or Salvini attempt to implement patriotic programmes of migration control and national renewal, they must do so with one eye on potentially being ousted by the vast NGO and media complex operating under the thumb of Washington.

America is not a positive force in the world. It is not a beacon of Christian civilisation. It is a rather degraded anti-cultural hegemon seeking to maintain its projection over the world and further reshape it in its image. 

Perhaps this has its origins in the anti-Christian radicalism of Thomas Paine, which provided the philosophical bedrock of the fledgling United States, perhaps it is simply inherent in being a global hegemon. 

Regardless, heading into the new decade America is evidently the backbone of the modern phenomenon known as globalism.

In the Cold War epoch, America while evidently sliding into the abyss could define itself against the communistic and Asiatic East. Now thirty years after the Cold War and twenty years of blundering quagmire conflict in the Middle East the mask has firmly slipped. 

Trump has added a brief nativist veneer to the globalist enterprise that is America, but this global hegemon is a greater threat to European civilisation than any jihadist, in fact the rise of Islamism is tied to the machinations of the American security state and cosy relationship to Gulf autocracies.

America is not a Christian theocracy under the thumb of a militaristic white nationalist as oft repeated since the Trump victory in 2016. In actual fact the United States is sooner to embargo nations that infringe upon LGBT rights than those that actually persecute Christians. The military, political and corporate power of the USA is geared towards propagating liberalism globally, transforming the entirety of the planet into a soulless Californian shopping mall indifferent to whether its opponents are European nationalists or Iranian Muslims.

While the British maintained a military presence at Lough Swilly and other Treaty ports they were regarded as military occupations. So acclimatised are we to American cultural and political hegemony we do not bat an eyelid as foreign troops under the banner of the stars and stripes pass through Irish soil. When this period of history is written decades hence Ireland like most of Western Europe will rightly be deemed as nothing more than American satellite states akin to the Warsaw Pact countries under Soviet influence.

De Valera secured Irish neutrality by forcing a British withdrawal in 1939 saving the State from the vicissitudes of the Second World War, a budding anti-globalist movement in 2020s can only safeguard national sovereignty by throwing off the American yoke.

In many respects while equally an affront to Ireland’s future, the EU is a relative paper tiger in comparison to Washington, though that tiger is envious of the power held by Washington over its dominions. The European Union is only haphazardly trying to cobble together a unified military and diplomatic policy, all the while Washington bestrides the globe.

The nearby rural towns and villages to Shannon that have and will play host to Direct Provision centres peopled by those displaced by American foreig policy and NATO wars are a stark reminder of the pernicious effects of American imperialism and how it impacts those close to home. 

Ireland has and will not benefit from the aggression towards Iran as well as the mass displacement of people that will result. The geopolitical scars of Iraq, Libya and Syrian Civil War have had a destabilising effect on the European Continent, and a war with Iran could potentially reorder the political status quo.

Members of the conservative and nationalist right have an unfortunate Pavlovian response to attempts to extirpate American troops out of Shannon. While the political outfits that campaign against American presence in Shannon herald from the dysgenic dregs of Marxism Inc. the underlying point remains.

The continued American presence in Shannon and its tacit support by the State is a national embarrassment and a signifier to the extent to which our local elites have abdicated the basic function of running a sovereign nation.

Ireland, if it is to be a free nation, cannot endure any further American military occupation in Shannon than it can of a continued membership to an increasingly federalised European Union. Europe and the world generally cannot escape from ever encroaching liberalism unless the main engine of liberalism globally, namely America, resigns from being a global policeman. While causing chaos in the short to medium term this will be the only avenue by which liberalism is halted.

Globalism in Ireland is a tripartite system, operating through Brussels, international capitalism and Anglo-American military and cultural might. To challenge globalism in its entirety all three must be tackled simultaneously with a supporting ideology that is antagonistic to all three.