#119 - John Waters - Ireland's Moral Revolution And The Crisis Of Authority

John Waters is an Irish journalist, author, and columnist known for his work with Hot Press, The Irish Times, and The Irish Independent. He has written on social and political issues, specialising in father's rights and cultural critiques. 

Ireland changed faster than almost any country in the West. The question now is whether the Irish still recognise the nation they live in. In this episode of Thinking Class, we discuss the moral, cultural and demographic transformation of Ireland over the course of John Waters' lifetime.

We explore the Ireland of his youth — ethnically and culturally homogeneous, Catholic, rule-bound, often austere, but also warm, coherent and recognisable — and contrast it with the globalised, post-Catholic, media-managed Ireland of today.

We think out loud about:

• the collapse of the old moral order
• the rise of a new elite class
• the decline of journalism and honest public speech
• the Enoch Burke case and the Irish judiciary
• immigration, demographic change and public silence
• Ireland as an economic zone rather than a nation
• the relationship between Ireland, Britain and the wider West

John Waters is one of Ireland’s most distinctive dissident voices. A former mainstream journalist, he has spent decades chronicling the moral and institutional transformation of Ireland and reflecting on what that change means for ordinary people, national identity and the future of democracy.

This is a conversation about Ireland and about what happens when a country forgets how to tell the truth about itself.

Links

• Visit John Waters website: https://www.johnwaters.ie/
• Read John Waters Unchained: https://johnwaters.substack.com/

About Thinking Class:

Thinking Class is an independent forum for long-form inquiry examining the political, cultural and civilisational questions shaping England, Britain and the West.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, legal scholars, economists, theologians, politicians, and public intellectuals.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, democracy, identity, inheritance, institutional continuity and social change.

New episodes every week.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam, and today I'm joined by John Waters. John is an Irish journalist, author, and columnist, known for his work with Hot Press, the Irish Times, and the Irish Independent. He now is an independent journalist and is the author of his own substack, John Waters Unchained. He has written on social and political issues over the years, specializing in fathers' rights and cultural critique in Ireland and the West. Today we reflect on one of the most traumatic cultural transformations in modern Europe, the moral revolution in Ireland. We think out loud about the collapse of religious authority, the role of the media and ruling class, referendums that have reshaped the country, and how Ireland moved from a culturally Catholic society to something very different within a single generation. We ask what happens when a nation's moral consensus dissolves? Can identity survive elite realignment? And what does Ireland's experience tell the rest of the Western world? This is a conversation about memory, culture and continuity. If you value serious long form conversation on the political, cultural and institutional questions shaping England, Britain and the West, subscribe wherever you listen and consider supporting the project via Substack. Enjoy the show, classmates, and now for John Waters. Thank you so much, John. Delighted to be here. Well, it's my pleasure to have you on the show. I think what we're going to discuss today is of paramount importance, perhaps not just for your own country of Ireland, but it maybe even as an apocryphal tale for the West in general. But your country has undergone one of the most rapid cultural and demographic transformations in the Western world. And in the space of a generation, the country has changed in its social and cultural mores, its politics and demographically its people. It appears to be a new nation. The question is whether the Irish people recognise themselves in a seemingly new national identity, and whether Ireland's democracy, and indeed Ireland, can withstand such rapid transformation. And you, John, I would say, have lived through this entire arc. You are certainly a dissident critic of the the new Ireland, and I don't think there are many who have uh chronicled the moral and institutional shifts as closely as you have. So perhaps we begin with a a biographic biographical element, John. Maybe you could describe the island in which you you grew up in.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Er Well, yeah, I was born in the West of Ireland in in a contigroscommon and uh in 1955, and and I grew up into that, and it was a you know uh um a fairly basic uh upbringing, uh unusual in some respects. I've written quite a bit about it, uh not a mainstream kind of way. My father was a quite a an eccentric man, uh, but highly intelligent. He drove uh a mail car, which was like a a stagecoach in in West of Ireland uh because he carried m mm mails, uh uh newspapers, uh passengers, day old chicks, whatever. Uh and uh uh he kind of had a way uh a very interesting outlook on life. He was very kind of stoical and literally almost and and uh uh he wasn't materialistic and uh he didn't want us to be materialistic. In fact, he didn't allow us to be. So I kind of grew up I I also was very was ill as a child, so I I spent most of my the first ten years of my life at home, uh for which I was very thankful uh reading, and and that kind of gave me a different, I think, perspective on reality as I grew in, because I I tended not to join mobs or gangs and and I tended to just stand back and watch and listen. And that kind of has stood to me uh and has I think is responsible, rightly or wrongly, good or bad of it, to for my being on the periphery now, uh, you know, uh of things. But nevertheless, I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing. Uh Ireland uh you know was they say, I mean, you the different voices tell it differently, you know, it was a intensely Catholic country, yes, ostensibly. Uh I I would dispute it to the extent that I don't think it was a very profound form of Catholicism. It was quite rule-based, it was social rather than spiritual in many respects. Uh, and uh but it was still a very intense cultural experience uh uh growing up. And I I I liked it very much. I liked the warmth of it. You know, the church, the church was the only building in the town that you could, other than your home or I my home that I could walk into uh freely and and sit down or kneel down or whatever I please, walk around. Uh that was very important, and it was a very beautiful building as well, which is more than I could say for our home, perhaps. But you know, you know, that and that gave me an intense sense of, you know, the other place, you know, something else. There's a place beyond. And and I still have that, you know, although obviously it's it's somewhat diluted with all kinds of so-called intellectual or rational kind of understandings, which I'm trying to sort out for a new book I'm writing, which I hope to finish uh by before the end of the year, which is about what you might call the the the constructed implausibility of uh God in a sense in culture. That that to to to I want to prove that actually the the idea that that God is implausible or preposterous is itself a construct of our culture and that we can actually dismantle it and restore our sense of the mystery in our culture if we think to go about it in the right way. So uh but in recent years, you know, uh taking up the point of your question, really, uh Ireland has gone off the charts in terms of I think a kind of a virtue signalling uh episode, really, more than anything else. Um that that it's like it was proffered the idea that if it could if it could take all except certain things, it would then become modern and could regard itself as sophisticated and enlightened and so on. So gay marriage, abortion, all these things were the boxes that needed to be ticked. And people, you know, they just I I don't think people there was no such thing as a passionate embracing of those things, in my view. It was purely for effect, it was purely because they were partly bullied, partly cajoled, partly bribed into actually accepting these things. Uh there was very little debate, constructive debate, because the media has been I was a journalist until 10 years ago, mainstream, uh, and at that point I began to realise that the media was that journalism had died, that journalism, that profession which was within the media as a kind of a software, which had a high level of integrity and principles and conventions, which you know, rules, as it were, are a con almost a constitution of journalism, that that was being scrapped and that everything anything went now. And I left journalism then. But Ireland really, I would say, you know, you could use words like deranged, unhinged. Um there aren't they're not even that adequate, John. You know, I mean I think that's one of the things we've seen in the last decade or so that the words that we used, uh we've been misusing them because we threw them around in a very frivolous way. We would say, Oh, you know, the country's gone mad. Well, it hadn't really at the time, you know, but now it has. And now we don't have a word to substitute for the word mad to actually make it make the point, communicate the point of how seriously mad it has become. Uh so that's kind of that's my rough sketch of of Ireland, and you know, we'll probably touch on various aspects of that as we go along.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

You mentioned a few things there, threads perhaps worth pulling on with regards to the unravelling of the old ways in Ireland. So there was the the the Catholic inflected conservatism that was naturally there. I suppose Ireland has always been known as a people rooted to the land mythology, indeed, but beyond uh Catholicism. Uh and there's been a social homogeneity as well, uh apart from the the northeast of of the island, of course.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

And uh and an ethnic and an ethnic ethnic homogeneity also, you know, for what it's worked. I mean, you know, there's been attempted to be many of our politicians now seek to say that we were never a homogenous people, we were extraordinarily homogenous, and the the science, so to speak, if we can use that term, bears that out. That apart from the dilution through you know the visits of the Vikings and the Norman Normans, you know, many, many moons ago, uh, we were a singular people. And you know, when I look at my own father's people and my mother's people and the very in their different locations, you know, my father's particularly, but I did a documentary about it about 15 years ago. Uh and you know, for for literally generations, they never left the square mile in which they left. And and they intermarried and they mixed and so on, their families and so on. So, you know, this there's so many lies being told now about the past of Ireland uh that it's almost impossible to to have a discussion about it because uh with anybody because they're all all of their thinking has been contaminated by these lies.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Well I think later on we'll probably pick up on the scale of the demographic transformation that's taken place as well as the uh cultural uh and political attitudes of the various leadership classes that you have in any country, but perhaps we could uh stick briefly on the biographical aspect uh uh uh with regards to your own intellectual arc. So I have read in your writings that you were once uh you once considered yourself part of the left wing, it was rather um gauche to be so, and then um and then it started to change for you, and you it's not that you became part of the right, but realized that you were effectively a a dissident toward the establishment. At what point did things start to change for you that did you decide that you didn't want to be on that left-wing anti-establishment train anymore?

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, well, I mean, I get just important to make the point, I I don't really hold with these labels anymore left and right, but I you know they're useful in in a certain sense, just as a loose kind of grammar of of descriptive self-description. But yes, um when I was a teenager and young man, I would have considered myself um leftish, you know, in a very soft way, not an ideological way. I wasn't huge into Marx or anything like that. I just it was almost that sense of uh that that leftism seemed to be certainly in the West, like a kind of a more compassionate way of looking at the world, you know, it was about looking to the the the most vulnerable, you know, the the the excluded and so on. That kind of thinking. And I I mean I I I flattered myself that that suited my personality, you know. And I I I I be I I did that for a long time, and uh um uh and then I had a few experiences when I I became a journalist, and I still continued. I worked with a music paper, Hot Press, which was the Irish equivalent of the new musical express, you know. It was a very good paper in its beginnings, uh, and I was right, I wrote for it for for a number of years. That got me into journalism. I probably wouldn't have got in any other way because I didn't have any education formal or or uh or qualifications. Uh, but I did succeed in getting in, and and uh I started to change the paper then myself within, insofar as I'm using whatever influence I had to push a political angle into the paper, you know, because it hadn't didn't have that. And and we successfully did that. So um but uh certain experiences then uh changed my mind. Uh I began to I had there one of the things was I I stopped drinking, and as a as a necessary part of that, I went into Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a spiritual program. Actually, it's a psychological program, disguised as a spiritual program in my view, but it's very good, very effective. And they introduced you back to the idea of God as you understand him. And and I reluctantly went into this at first, but having not much choice, I decided to pursue it, and that really opened my eyes again to that I had written I'd walked away from from Catholicism and from religion in general, and it sort of made me see the world in a different way and see myself in a different way. So that was one thing that happened. Uh I went to Prague in in 1990 uh after the revolution. Uh, I'd been reading a lot about it and following the writings of Vaslav Havel, and uh I found, you know, met people there that you know I would have arguments with them about leftism and whatever, you know, and communism, and thinking trying to persuade them idiotically. I was trying to persuade them that you know socialism is not such a bad thing, you know, you maybe you need to reconsider or something of idiotic like that. And uh there was the no no. Uh so I'll I'll come back maybe later on because I I I think you have a question at the end which may protect to that. And uh then I had a child in rather unusual circumstances and and in quite prod, let's say, circumstances, and um I very soon discovered that as a father I had absolutely zero rights. And immediately I thought, John, well, it's okay because I'm mixing with all of these enlightened, tolerant, progressive people. And when I tell them this, they're gonna be furious. They're gonna say, Come on, John, let's go and sort this out. Yeah? So I went and said, Let's say, hey, what's going on? Fathers have no rights. And they said, Shut up, shut up. Shut up. We don't want to hear any of this stuff. Ah and that's when I really began to think if they're wrong about this, if they cannot see that there's you know, you cannot you know, that equality and fairness and justice are indivisible concepts, if they're anything. And if they can't see that, then they could very possibly be wrong about everything else as well. And that's when I started to investigate all of these things really intensely. Uh religion, faith, uh uh, you know, culture, ideology, and so on. And I my journalism, uh I was at that point uh more or less had joined the mainstream of Irish journalism, and I started right out of that then from various angles in the coming years, which got me immediately into terrible trouble with my editors and my colleagues in the Irish Times, which is a highly uh you know, the kind of guardian of Ireland called Help Us, and it's a terrible newspaper now, it's it's just as disgusting as is the guardian, frankly, uh, with all due respect and to uh all concern, but it's just disgusting. And uh so uh uh that was my I, you know, that was my my baptism of fire, and and I I you know and it's interesting, John, that actually I realize in retrospect that having given up the drink was a critical element because if I'd still been drinking, I would not have survived in that independent channel that I had gone into because the pub was a very much a policing department for journalists in particular because they spend a lot of time there, certainly they did back then, and they tend to knock the edges off you off each other, and that's part of the whole conformation kind of conf uh conforming process of the journalistic profession.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

That's that's fascinating. The I I dare say that a similar thing happened to be a very brief uh personal anecdote, is I uh have been in the corporate world for some time, uh, and there was a time when I lived in London for a few years, and my trajectory was I'm probably just going to climb the greasy pole, maybe I'll go and work internationally, all the rest of it. I moved around a lot from my native Northumberland, and it wasn't until the first lockdown was imposed and I found myself deciding I'll I'll go I'll go back home, uh, even though I'd never had any intention to stay very long before I knew it, I was back, and I realized that actually things were much more agreeable in my in my home part of the country uh for many reasons. I'm I'm a bit of a provincial at heart, but I started to see lots of things clearly, both with with regards to the cultural and social changes, but also to understand myself, my own my own people, my own history, which I'd felt pretty detached from before. And uh and because you could work remotely, I was no longer part of the corporate scene. So even though I've always be had this dissident part to me, is you obviously can't help but be shaped by those around you. And me being in and around the corporate office all of the time, I wasn't particularly happy with the progressive inflection being thrown all over internal policies. There wasn't a great deal you could do about it, and you typically chose not to speak up. But actually, as soon as you removed yourself from that, you could find the space for independence. So I totally see where you're coming from with that. And um I I think you've you've you've dropped some interesting breadcrumbs to follow there with regards to um the the the island's youth. So you were once a part of it and were put once a part of a certain movement within that, and your own life experience has moved you away from it, and now Ireland having changed so much, perhaps we can contrast the Ireland of your youth with the island of today culturally and politically. Do you think that ordinary Irish people mourn the loss of the old island, or is that confined to a minority of people like you?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

They tend not to s to admit it in in conversation, because it has been implanted on their brains that the past was a very dark place. You know, I I noticed this first, you know, when I went into the Irish Times in the uh 1990s, in the early 1990s, and then the scapegoat was the 1950s. And I wrote a little bit around that, you know, the demonization of the past, you know, um the the de the you know the defamation of the past. Uh but it was somewhat on that on my behalf because I hadn't been there really. I was born, but I didn't really I don't didn't remember much about the part of the 50s that I was in. But I really talked to people and they would say no, it's you know, they would laugh it off, uh, older people who were probably long gone now. But then a few years later I noticed that the same process was being now being applied to the 1980s, and that they were being the 1980s were being smeared as well, but I and I had been there, so I was in a position to say, actually, that's not true. The 1980s in Ireland was let me just catch it, there was a lot of economic problems. There were, you know, the the we had a growing national debt, pathetic compared to what it is now, of course, and nobody talks about it at all, it was nondescript, really. Uh, but then it was quite a serious thing, and and I mean I was a journalist, I was writing about that, and you know, I even advocated uh the repudiation of the national debt, you know, as as on one occasion on TV, and that's still being played uh um from time to time. Um but uh I remember the time uh still as an intensely beautiful time in Ireland, very peaceful, very you know uh culturally very rich, you know, all the music that came out of the Ireland that time, U2, bands like that, you know, and Sinead O'Connor and uh you know that then also playwriting, you know, the theatre was very rich at that time, and there were lots of alternative theatre sprouting up all over the place, and you know, everything about it was absolutely beautiful, and also the alternative media that I got into. I wouldn't have got into journalism in through the mainstream in a million years, but to Hot Press and in Dublin magazine and the McGill, and eventually I became editor of both in Dublin and McGill later on, and so there was an intensely important part of my life, and and I so I could remember, and I had the documentation and all the back issues to say, well, this is this is what happened, and this is what it was like, and you know, they would pick the media would pick on little details and smear it in this you know, some church thing. Censorship, for example, was a great uh one of the great instruments they would use. And here's the beautiful irony of this, John, you know, that they talk about censorship in the 1940s and the 50s, oh, at a very dark time, you know, John McGarrin, a great novelist, had a book banned because it was a reference to masturbation on page one. My goodness, my goodness, you know, and they're still shaking their heads about it. But the same people now, when they talk about censorship in the modern moment, the Digital Services Act, what's the name of your one over there? They they public what is the uh the Online Safety Act. Online Safety Act. They're good at all that. That's fine kind of censorship. You see, there's good censorship, John, and there's bad censorship. And it's all got to do with whether you agree with it or not, or whether you think it's in the interest of your ideology and your lifestyle and your income or not. And what's has been constructed in the modern moment is that these people are being incentivized incentivised to retain certain views of reality by the injection of fake money, in effect.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Thinking a little bit about how the political class has changed over time, so if we think about the the Irish Free State settlement and its legacy, in your estimation, uh how how would you say the Irish political class has evolved in character and outlook since then? And uh what what do you think um uh it has been responsible for with regards to the legacy of the Irish Free State?

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Well, I I think politics has undergone a radical transformation in the past 20 to 30 years. I mean, I wrote a book, my first book was called Diving at the Crossroads, which was kind of like a quasi-novel based in reality, uh, which is about politics and my father and and the relationship between them. He wasn't involved in politics, but he was very interested in politics, and so it's it's a it's kind of a novelistic account of that. And uh, you know, the the the politics that I depict in that book are utterly different now to what is now in place. And and what it has what it is down to in is uh fundamentally it is down to the the the devolving upwards of power. That you know what happens if you look back on the figures that we had in power in that time in politics. There's a guy called Sean Lamas who had been involved in the 1916 rising, a very intelligent man, very dynamic, very charismatic. Various others, Scary Fitzgerald, Charlie Hoffey, there these people there were cifras, they're particularly against Hoffey, there was controversy. He was part of that whole scapegoating of the 1980s thing. And uh, you know, that the but now you look at the figures in politics and they're completely like you say, What? What? No, he's he you think that guy, no, he he's the janitor, right? No, he's the pri Deputy Prime Minister. Okay. You see? Or it's just incredible. Idiots. Unspeakable idiots. And this is to do with the devolution of power upwards, because you see, really the kind of people I'm talking about who just who were in politics then would never now go into politics because you don't have Panny power. You just carry out instructions. Obedience is the primary characteristic, and the secondary characteristic is stupidity. And and and as a result of that, that's what you have. And so the politics they have still have the same kind of suits on, but that's the only significant comparison that you can make. Uh they're absolutely and they have zero uh this is never they've lot they are willing to sell every principle, is another thing related to that. Because you see, the point is if you're a totally inadequate person who might, in a naturalistic world, end up as the janitor i in the House of Parliament, that will be about your level. And you end up as teacher, prime minister. Well, you know, you know why you've got there. So you need you have to remember at all times why you got there and why how what it will take for you to stay there. So one of the things you won't be doing is coming up with any radical personal visionary ideas about the future of your country or talking about patriotism or or historical unless you're twisting the facts of the history, you'll not mention history. Uh and so on. So that's kind of what what the radical change I'd see in politics. It it looks the same, ostensibly it's the same. They drive around in big cars, they wave at the people. Not that the people wave back, they don't. Uh but um that's that's that's that's the fundamental thing I would say.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

And and and moving from the government to the judiciary, I I know you've written about this topic, and it is a topic which found itself in the British press uh several times, and it was about the case of Enoch Burke, who is a teacher who refused to use um a transgender child's uh preferred pronouns, and um off he went into the judicial system to um give account of why this was. And I think in total he ended up spending and uh he spent 600 days in prison at various points and has been through many different hearings. Um and you have picked apart the inconsistencies within the various different judicial rulings. Um I suppose my question, John, is how instructive is the Enoch Burke case in understanding the mindset of contemporary Irish elites and how far they've moved from the way things used to be done and the old moral order? Very much.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Uh I think it's a very emblematic case, uh John, because um in the first instance, I mean, you just think going back over the decades, you know, play I often do this and place myself in the 1980s, in the nineteen seventies, in my and and think, would this have been possible then? Of course not. You know, in the 70s and eighties, you know, in the 1980s people were, you know, in high judging about the Birmingham VI and the Guildford IV. I mean, the idea of injustice was very close to people's understanding and the potential. And the idea that judges could be be recruited, you know, in Ireland that didn't seem possible actually at the time. But people like Lord Denning, you know, who was in many ways a great judge, but was self-admittedly biased in that particular in the Bremen M6 case. He said that even if they basically what he said was, even if they were innocent, letting them out would call would be so disruptive for the system because it would reveal that the level of corruption and crookedness had been such that this appalling vista could not be allowed to, you know. So now in in Ireland we have the same thing, and everybody is good with that as well. Mostly. They just they they they you see the whole thing worked on a kind of a group think that started with the school, which without a particular version, which the judges all accepted and handed on, they co-opted it in turn. Something like 15, 16, 17 judges over the period of three and a half years. Um and and here we are like now I'll come to us, there's a slight tink of light coming, I think. But the the extraordinary thing is that the people, the reporting that you see, again, because of the purchasing of the media, there is no straight reporting anymore of anything. It's all ideological, it's all narrative-based. So if the government wants you know Burke to go down or to be discredited or to be smeared, then that's what will happen, uh, of course, the of the newspapers or the media. And that's happened. And but the story, the true facts have never come out. And and the true facts are astonishing when you start thinking, for example, I mean, it's not known at all, not even in Ireland, that the parents of the boy in question had nothing to do with this. It was entirely driven by the school. And that's something which came into Ireland, which became possible as a result of a change to the Constitution in 2012, which I fought not on this issue because I didn't there was no way we could have anticipated this. But this basically took rights from parents and allegedly given to children, but actually the state took them on behalf of the children. So now a child uh a child, a teenager, can go to the school, uh, say, I want to change my gender, and they will do everything they can to help him or her, uh, and they will not tell the parents. And this is the kind of monstrous stuff that this is only one detail of it, like. But also there's all kinds of things, you know, uh, in this case, like the way that they they they the courts have colluded to to to to support the school in uh suppressing evidence. There's a video that Enoch has been looking to have ventilated for this video, by the way, the school claim is a speech he made in a church at a service, a religious service, in which he very brief, he just said why he took the position he did. And they claim that he was abusive and to the headmistress and so on and so on, and uh Pauline and so on. Um but they want to they won't uh hand it over. Enoch, who supposed to be indicted in this, says let's see it. This kind of thing. And so really it's it's quite a shocking uh uh situation. I mean, this is the the issue that uh Gord Jordan Peterson came became famous on, if you remember. You know, the compelled speech in Canada, and he stood and said, No, I'm not doing it. Enoch, he didn't spend a day or an hour in prison. Enoch Burke has spent, as you say, almost 100-600 days behind bars. It's the most absolutely appalling thing I've seen in my country in my lifetime. And yet it has been normalized on the basis that he had committed contempt of court, and that is he says, it is all this kind of evasion. Oh, it's about contempt of court, it's not about transgenderism, it's not about his constitutional rights, it's not about this, it's not about that, it's about contempt of rights. And I say, Yes, but when a court behaves contemptibly what can you do? Now uh the there is one, as I say, chink of of of light uh which I alone have seen. I just detect in the uh behavior and this words of a the latest judge to take on this case. His name is uh Cregan, Judge Creegan. And he has made very interesting, he said that in the there's a hearing coming up on uh February the 20th, and uh the judge has said that Enoch has made very substantial arguments uh uh uh in relation to some things, some of the aspects that I've mentioned. And my hopeful suspicion is that he has seen through it. Now he was actually the most vituperative of all the judges against Enoch in the recent past. He was the most recent judge to take on the case, and he has said some appalling things about Enoch, calling them all kinds of a liar and a stalker and that, because of course Enoch goes back to the school because he insists that he was not properly dismissed and he shouldn't be definitely dismissed, and he's quite entitled to show up for his job, and that's and if he doesn't do that, he will be admitting that there's some basis to his dismissal. So this is this is how the so-called contempt comes in. But I I I have this suspicion that this judge now has awakened to to the group tank and may actually do something startling in this case, in this hearing. I may be completely wrong. I have often been wrong about such things, and indeed it is a highly risky a risky thing to sort of uh invest some s from faith in the establishment at any level in Ireland now, but that's my my my hope and f and and maybe even um belief.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Well, either way, it feels as though there's a reckoning of sorts to be had amongst the people and those who rule over them, at least those who are looking closely, because uh if he is not acquitted, then people will say corrupt establishment. If he is it and if he is acquitted, uh I mean presumably it won't come with a full-throated apology, but everyone will then know that he was unjustly held. And uh so once the details of the case come out or people are reminded of them, they will wonder out loud, can they can they trust the law in the hands of these people? But uh not for one minute am I suggesting there's going to be some kind of revolt on the streets of Ireland, but either way, whatever happens No, but I think it would be a solitary it would be a solitary moment at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

I think that that people might look again and might actually start listening then to the very few voices that are telling the truth about this case, uh myself included, uh, because you see the problem is we're on the margins and we no matter what we write or say, you know, we have to be realistic and understand that it's only heard or seen by a tiny minority of the population. And people are closed-minded, they just don't want to hear. You know this as well, that John, but they don't want to hear certain things. Uh they don't want to hear about them. And that tells me that they actually already know the truth, but simply don't want to hear it. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah, it would require swallowing pride. And uh, I suppose given that the um establishment, the previous establishment which once held moral authority over Ireland, though not without its its own um foibles to say the least, is that at the very centre of that faith in which it promulgated, it was about cautioning against pride and uh and and trying to promote humility, and having cleared away all of that structure, it appears that we have uh we have built our lives on on pride and hubris in certain areas, and uh do not want to admit when we're wrong or when we might have underestimated or overestimated um things, our own capabilities, uh our own ability to see um clearly, and that we we we know that we are in the right, the right side of history, all of those um those those uh old sayings which are constantly churned over. And I suppose one topic to segue into that the governing classes of Ireland and many others in the West, including uh m my own here in in Great Britain, is um is that of of immigration. Uh dissent is not particularly welcomed, and usually it is uh packaged as coming from a place of bigotry and hatred. To set the scene with what's going on in Ireland so people can understand the demographic transformation that's taken place there, is that I think in 2015, so just over 10 years ago, the population was around four and a half million people. Uh as with everywhere else in the West, the Irish people aren't having as much as many children as they used to. Um, but despite that being the case, and despite there being a much older demographic, uh, you know, the the percentage of people in the over 65s is increasing, the population is now one million more than it was. And that's probably at the lower bounds, because all statistics are of a downward bias, because we don't count everything. And it doesn't count all of the um the illegal uh arrivals that are currently um taking up space either in tent cities in Dublin, which people can go and find uh on the internet, or um the various encampments that are being quite literally built into the ground in various parts of the country and that are are bases uh from which um newly arrived migrants awaiting documentation or having been granted asylum can live and go out to work from. So with all of this change, we've gone from an ethnically homogenous, socially homogenous nation to one that is now globalized. There are diasporas from all over the world there. Uh in in Britain, uh the way we couch these conversations is in terms of com social cohesion and community relations. How would you say the relations are between the established Irish community and the newer diasporas developing?

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Well, first of all, I would say that those figures are only approximately as uh correct or useful because I mean, for example, I'm pretty certain that um there's one factor that has not been incorporated into the figures that that you mentioned there, John, which is that over the past decade as well the government has issued citizenship to something like a quarter of a million people. They are counted essentially as Irish in all of statistical gathering that goes on. So it's actually much worse. I believe that actually uh the the population, the the non-national population of Ireland now is something like one third. Thirty-three, thirty, thirty-five percent. That's from a standing start thirty years ago.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Uh yeah, it was about zero percent, but it was close to zero percent about thirty years ago.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

I think it was about two percent, two point five percent. That would be a lot of English people, a lot of you know, uh uh continental people from Germany and so pl who settled here in the 70s because they liked the music or something, you know, that kind of thing. Uh you know, but uh yeah, that's the thing, you know, and and uh uh you know the as regards the the the relationship, well you see if we had had organic uh intake of migrants uh over the years in accordance with our own needs and accordance with our culture and on the terms that you know they m must uh uh integrate into our culture and that they don't bring their own cultures and foist them upon us and insist that we stand ours down in order to accommodate theirs, uh, then you know this could have been quite harmonious. I mean, the Irish people are not in any way, you know, uh uh hostile to outsiders in that sense. And and this idea that they're racist is absolutely absurd and ridiculous. And any person that I've spoken to who is reasonable who is not in some way involved in in in ideologically or in financially or in in actually having the other answer, that's to what they will tell you. And um but the the of course again, it's important to remember, as with so many things, that this is not organic anymore. This is like a an orchestrated plantation of Ireland. And there's no question about it, like because if you look at the it's not just the inflows, it's to look at what's happening to the internal demographic, it's absolutely disintegrating because the the financial circumstances the economic circumstances are constructed in such a way that young Irish people can no longer, as for 150 years they've been done, they've had to leave. So in the same way years we will have maybe 120,000 foreigners come in, we will have 60,000 Irish people meeting them at the airport as they arrive, these 60,000 on their way to places like uh Canada or Australia. And that's because they can't buy houses in their own. They can't afford on the kind of income that they can earn and which they will need to to to funds to fund a house of their own and to start a home and start a family and do the things that are, you know, the expectation of all peoples in all world all countries in the world, that's denied them. And the incomers are subsidized to the hilt, like they're given free houses, they're they're given huge much more income, social welfare uh uh than the than the natives. Uh you know, it's it's incredible. And that's again, I say it's very important to stress that this is not generosity, this is actually arising from a particular fact of this moment globally, which is that we are in what I call the supernova period of the currencies, of the dollar, the the euro, and indeed the pound sterling. That these the they are in danger of imminent collapse, have been for some time. But this is now has been a m it's a managed landing in order to bring down the currencies and then restart the whole system with a central bank digital currency. But in that period, the supernova period, all the existing currencies are now in a state whereby they can inject unlimited amounts of cash into whatever they want without any additional consequences from the crash, more or less. They can manage the crash even with a huge burden of debt and even and they've been accumulating this debt, but this money has been useful as used only for destructive purposes, insofar as the existing countries of the West are concerned. They are it's about taking down our civilization. And this is a very important thing for people to understand that uh you the money that they're getting now is the is is is real money insofar as you can spend it today, you can buy something. But it's not real money in any longer term sense because that currency will end in within, for all intents and purposes, probably within months now, uh, but certainly within a year or two. And so this is the situation that we are actually looking, it's incredible, and I know it's it's actually very hard for people to understand. Why would the authorities that we trusted to run our countries want to take them down? Well, because the nature of power has changed also. The nature of power changed one evening or one night, one in the one witching hour in in in the spring of 2020, when with a ping, the merest ping uh in the in the n in the night, the the power that had hitherto uh been going upwards, bottom-up power, the people's power, however imperfectly, however ineffectively, however inefficiently, however inadequately, had been coming upwards, you know. And then that was turned off and the power started to come down from the very top of the pyramid of power, uh, which was the richest, most powerful, most ambitious, most acquisitive, avaricious uh people on the planet. And they now call the shots via the system that we thought or think still think some of us uh is ours, that represents us. It doesn't represent us. And they're remaking the entire world in accordance with their own vision, so called, of the future, which doesn't really include the people of the West. So our Western countries are are are are are uh allocated for disposal and being to be replaced. You see, it's in Ireland's case it's like so now that where that hits the ground in Ireland is something like this that you know the most of the Irish people still have this recalcitrant uh belief in their history, in their their memories, in their culture, in their faith, maybe uh some of them anyway, uh and uh they have a thing called patriotism and a thing called affection and and you know veneration for their their history and their land, their homeland. But the authorities the people who actually are doing this look askance at that. The last thing they want is people going around the place singing national anthems and waiting tricolors and whatnot. This is a business now, you see. And they're going to do the things that will maximise their profit and their control to the to the to the greatest extent. And that's essentially where we've what what's going on in Ireland. And in Ireland is I I write about a lot about Ireland, and I think some people think, oh, I don't want to hear about Ireland. I don't write about Ireland about Ireland, I write about it as an emblem of what's happening in the world, because it is a really good one, because you know we we have been targeted for all kinds of reasons, in because of our attachment to the faith for so long and our late attachment to it, and comparatively because of our intense period of revolutionary zeal of a hundred and odd years ago, you know, which was the first uh you know, the first rising up against the British Empire, really, uh and and so on. Um all these factors are being are are are in play in the the desire really to make an example of Ireland. I believe that's what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Well, there's certainly there's certainly no doubt that uh a cultural and moral revolution has taken place, and alongside that Ireland has become an economic zone ultimately. It has uh it is it has become the plaything of um many uh multinational institutions. Um and I think yeah, I read this many years ago, probably about five years ago at this point, so likely higher, but because of the number of those tech firms you have uh on your soil, at least uh with regards to their data centres, and of course they they use Ireland for tax purposes with the low corporation tax rates, something like 75% of all Ireland's energy is just servicing the data centres of these internet companies, which is which is remarkable. And I think about when I lived in London, I visited Dublin again. This was this was a while ago, and I remember having moved to London thinking, yeah, it's as eye-wateringly expensive as everyone says it is. But I was totally taken aback when I arrived in Dublin and found that my money didn't go even as far as it did in London, um, which is again remarkable for a a largely agrarian country and uh obviously a city uh much smaller, but it it just goes to show what happens when international capital moves in that way and you go through the demographic transformation you have. I mean, something like 3% of the population arriving every year, at least, as you say.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

Yes, and and you see the the the the foreign direct investment policy, which was the the the the headline economic policy of Irish governments for the last sixty years, has been an absolute disaster. It has basically eradicated Ireland as an actual culture and and and and homeland for people, uh, because it is now just an outcrop of rock in the Atlantic on which business happens. And all of the consideration the only considerations to be considered are the welfare of the business communities, the business, the corporations that are on this island. And uh that's disastrous for for for the Irish people, and in all kinds of ways that you can see, for example, a lot of the immigration that we saw, we there's a lot of talk about illegal immigration, but a lot of it was actually in a certain sense legal, because what actually happened was that multinationals came to Ireland on the promise initially that they would provide employment. That was the that was the whole point of it, from the Irish point of view. That was what was in that was our skin in the game. And but what you find is that most of these Muslimists now import all their labour or most of it. Uh a friend of mine who was a tailor uh um uh had a woman in his shop one day uh from she said she was working in Google and he's a nosy kind of guy, so he asked her, Well, uh what um proportion of your staff down there are human resources, uh are Irish, and she said 5%. Uh so this is a complete, you know, uh uh betrayal of the the the deal that was supposedly struck, whereby Ireland being unable, as it were, theoretically, and nobody ever tried this uh to survive on its own lights, had imported all these uh companies to to allow it to survive. But now it's not about Ireland's survival, it's about the survival of the business uh enterprises uh that occur uh and the money making that occurs on the on the rock that is now Ireland. I mean one of the great patriots of Ireland in the past, uh uh Wolf Tone, or T uh Wolf Tone, I think it was, yes. Uh no, Thomas Davis, uh he said that uh Ireland, this Ireland of ours is no sandbank. It's an ancient land honoured into antiquity for its valour, its piety and its suffering. Well I'm sorry, Thomas, but it now is a sandbank with a big dollar sign on this on the front of it.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

It is a depressing conclusion, but it is what it appears from the outside. And as an Englishman in Britain, having seen very similar things happen to my own country over a longer period of time, uh I would I would um reluctantly agree. And that's that's a uh a good time to start talking about Ireland's relationship both with with Britain now. Uh obviously it is no uh it is it is no secret that um Ireland became a republic having um won freedom from the rule of London. Uh it was hard fought. Uh our histories overlap over many centuries. Uh and um I suppose as you would expect with all of that history, it usually sits in people's minds and it still comes to the fore and conversation and all of those things. On the other side, Ireland became part of the European Union, and you've talked about how Ireland has become this sandbank of business, uh, that the the deal has been betrayed, the Irish people haven't been um helped in this way. And yet, from the outside looking in, Ireland has spent so long freeing itself from British rule and now is uh seems to be a very enthusiastic partner with the European Union, which goes off and signs deals with India to allow lots and lots of Indians to arrive and take place uh places in universities and jobs and give good visas, and they can just move around the European Union and uh and have obviously become very cosy the leadership class with big business. Um I suppose the question that I have is how how do how do the Irish people think of the British now? Because when there was all of this electric current that took place following um uh various flashpoints um over recent years, there was uh I remember seeing a point in Belfast where um there was there were two protests. There was one on one side, which had um there were there were Palestine flags, there were other flags, European Union flags, whatever, but on the other side there were there were British and trickle ore flags, and people are actually holding them together, saying, Well, these are the the flags of this island, um and w we care about the demographic transformation, we're having the island taken away from us. And so I I'm wondering, uh do do the British still come up as the the the enemy in conversation and starting to to shift toward others because of the change? Because I suppose having won that freedom, as you've mentioned, the land is now um is is now sat upon by others who did not go through that historical struggle. What's the general sense of those international relations?

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Um well in answering that I would have to first of all pencil in this the fact that we are as in apart from the nature of our governance, we we are also uh the conversation that occurs collectively is corrupted by virtue of the purchasing of the media. So, you know, there's no discussion over many aspects of things. You know, that people are afraid to talk about certain things because in case they'd be called names or demonized by their neighbours or even their family and so on. That goes for COVID, it goes for immigration, it goes for lots of things. So so the the we're in there's a a a retardation of the conversation. Uh you know, that that it is not not it doesn't in any way represent what is real. Uh but I think at the same time I can talk a little bit about uh the shifts or whatever that have have occurred. First of all, I I I think there's a there's a school of thought that holds that we never got our independence from Britain. You know, that that under the under the in a subterranean way it it it uh continued and still continues at some level, and that the City of London, in a certain sense, if not the royal family, but continues to rule Ireland financially and so on. And I think there's something in that, but I I can't say precisely what, it's it's because of course we did you know join the EU, as you say. But uh uh the idea, you see, uh the the idea that we are at enmity with the with the English or the British is is is it's kind of a moot point really. I know there's there's a kind of a a humorous almost uh thing to that. I mean, for example, when I was growing up, like if if if if the English team were playing in soccer in any game, we would be supporting the other team, regardless of what who they were. You see, that's but that's anyone but England. Yeah, that's that kind of thing. But uh at the same time, we were delighted when the 1966, when the English team won the World Cup, we suddenly, for a brief period, started to celebrate their their their victory. It's it's weird. It's not as what it seems, and you must remember too, John, that you know, we are steeped in English culture. You know, in fact, we are more steeped in English culture than English are steeped in our culture. Varble. Because we were watching it all the time. We have been for years in the television and you know, on the radio, Radio 4, and Radio 2, you know, Terry Wogan and all that stuff. And and also like the when I was a child, the reading material, like the comics, you know, all the the the dandy, the hotspur, the Hornet, Bunty Judy, Junan's schoolfriend, all these and and then the writers, you know, that that we read, Inid Blyton, uh, you know, uh Richmond Crompton, uh Captain W.E. Johns, you know, these are the writers that we as as children read. So, you know, whereas, you know, there's a very great there has been a great passion about Irish culture and the language and trying to save the language and so on, which is deeply unsuccessful, it has to be admitted. There was at the same time this parallel culture, which was, you know, Shakespeare and and etc. So it's not straightforward, you know, we're not one or the other. And and and we you know there's a great affection for England in in many respects in Ireland. I mean, you know, I people Irish people feel at home in London in a strange way that they shouldn't, you know, if you listen to the literal, if you take literally the historical uh analysis. So uh and of course, yes, but you see, the there is a very dark side to that relationship, uh, for certain. But it's not between the English people and the Irish people or the British people and the Irish people. It's it's between the the government of Britain in those periods. It's the the figures. And again, we're in it, it's very kind of an uh analogous to what's happening now, these figures on high, issuing their diktats down. There's no real difference. And I think people have an understanding of that insofar as they they know the facts that are of what's happening now, which is limited. So uh the European Union then has become a totalitarian entity. Uh you know, i it's quite extraordinary. Uh there's no question about it. Like they're just they're obsessed with stopping people talking about everything. And this is becoming more and more punitive. And of course, in Britain the same thing is happening with star with the Star More Stasi, arresting people left, right, and centre for thinking something, even without opening their mouths, like some if somebody stands outside an abortion clinic moving their lips in the van. You know, i i it it's it's it's absolutely, isn't it, John? Isn't it absolutely unbelievable when you actually drill into the detail of this, what's happening? But again, equally unbelievable is the fact that most people, and I I know this from personal experience of going out, because I've been going out into the world now, and I've been I've taken on a master's degree in in a local college here in the West. And you know, it's amazing. It's I you know, it's amazing to see the silence that's that surrounds certain topics in public. People just don't talk about them. And so this is I call it the mutism. Uh uh it's uh there's a more extreme version of that which I call lockjaw, uh uh which is a total silence. But in general, people will talk about, say, the COVID thing, and they say they'll talk, they'll throw out this term during the pandemic. And uh they will then work their way around the question. And you can never read their position. Very rarely, anyway. You'll you'll see the ones who are total covidiots or whatever. But in general, you do you can't tell. So we're living in I call it a pseudo-reality. I've written about it in my book, uh, which came out earlier in the year, uh, The Abolition of Reality. Uh a lot about I've written a lot about this condition and the effect of propaganda, the effect of group thinking our cultures, uh uh, you know, uh all of the things that are now threatening us. And uh, you know, the European Union is right there in that. But again, I would say, John, I I I I I'm open to contradiction on this, but I do believe that the people who run the European Union are no more autonomous than the leaders, the so-called leaders of Ireland or Britain, than Starmer. I mean, Arthur Vandelier is just another messenger. Uh, on behalf of those on high.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Well, I mean, there's certain there is certainly no doubt that whatever you you what what whichever way you cut it, that uh c corporate lobbyists and all the rest of it are just just run rife and you get lots of um lots of these things that are pushed put out as policy. Dress up in, as you talked about, the language of compassion, doing the right thing, global good, but profit is is usually at the heart of it. Um John, uh you've been very generous with your time, but before I let you go, I'll ask one question that I ask all of my guests, and that question is, what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life? Perhaps it was a a moral absolute, maybe it was something smaller than that, and what was it that made you think differently?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Well, I think we've touched on it before, in relation to my wearying leftwards, you know, when I was a young man, uh uh and then I started. No, I don't call I I I absolutely abominate I uh you know, I have this I retain one of the if I retain nothing else about my from my period as a leftist in my head anyway, it's the repugnance of the word right. Uh paradoxically, I I I cannot in any way identify with it. I hear people on on the same side as me, allegedly, talking about themselves as right-wingers. I shudder at the idea. You know? It's a strange thing. I mean, and and that's very interesting thing. I've talked about this. You remember Akimaken, uh one of my great heroes in political life and and indeed literary life is Vaslav Havel, uh, who became president of Czech Slovakia in 1989 and and continued for about 15 years. And uh he you know, he was once asked after after the Velvet Revolution, he was interviewed by the spectator, and he was asked about his politics and the the paradox that you know he as a left-winger, as a as a as as he as a a a Bohemian literally and otherwise, he was from Bohemia, uh, but also he was that kind of like refugee from the 60s, you know, loved the Velvet Underground, which is where the Velvet thing came from, Lod John Lennon and so on. He he um he was asked the question about that in the context that you know you've taken down communism and and you know, you so you've that makes you a right-winger. This is the implicit the undertow of the question, it wasn't necessarily explicitly. What what exactly is your uh what are your what what are you? What are your politics? And he he just placed his hand on his heart and he said, My heart is on the left and in a weird way, John, you know, I mean I changed my mind about that. I I moved from that, but I my heart is still on the left, in the sense that I do still at some absolutely visceral level believe that there's something that ties the culture of rock and roll, which I wrote about, and and and and I I shudder again about the word socialism, but that's the only kind of word that I think fits. That those kind of you know, collectivism, I I know they're dangerous, but I I have that affection for I cannot feel affection for right-wing ideas, or even for conservative ideas in the I hate the word. I I I like I prefer to think that it's about normality, it's about what is reasonable. It's common sense that we don't need these labels, uh, and that uh they're actually damaging. I mean, what's really going on now, people are talking an awful lot about uh you know, fascism on one side, or one side accuses the other side of being fascist, the other side accuses them of being communists. And and and you know, in certain moments you can see how these strains are working their way in, but they're being pushed in. And in my view, I I think of them as softwares that are being used by the powers in order but to divide people further and also to draw them in further, you know, that this is my ideology. I want the IY identify with this, you know. I'm a woke person, therefore I'm a communist or whatever. They wouldn't necessarily say that, but that kind of thing. And uh so I I think all this is a babble. What's really happening is nothing to do with, like, let's put it like this. The way I put it like this, Larry Fenck, who is the chairman, CEO of Black Rock, the biggest asset management company in the world, he's also now head of the World Economic Forum, a very deeply sinister organization. He is the front of house man for this whole operation, in my in my view. I want to tell you something one thing about Larry Fink. I don't know a lot about him personally, but I do know this. Larry Fenck is not a communist. Take my word for it. He's not a communist.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

Well, on that cryptic note, John, uh, we we shall we shall uh hear where we can find you on the internet for those who want to follow your work. And you released a book earlier on in the year, as you mentioned. What else can we expect from you? Uh yes, actually the book was last year.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

Uh uh I've I'm mixing my ears up. Uh 25, The Abolition of Reality, uh, a first draft of the end of history. It's it's a kind of a a diary, in a certain sense, of everything that happened in those the last five, six years. Um I I'm on uh on Substack at uh John Motors.substack.com. John Motors Unchained is my handle uh Unchained. And that same handle you can find me now. I have set up a YouTube channel uh where I do podcasts uh every couple of weeks and invite people in like you do. And uh so so maybe you'll come one of the time in one of the days and we'll have uh continue the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

That'll be great. I'll look forward to it. Uh John Waters, thanks so much for joining me and good luck with all of your endeavours. Thank you, John. Real pleasure. Thank you. My pleasure