Last week I was contacted by a CNN journalist about a recent Ron DeSantis appointee who has previously endorsed “Irish slaves” disinformation in an anti-Critical Race Theory broadcast. You can read this report here. Below are the expanded versions of the answers I sent back to help support their work…

Honouring the Black Abolitionists who lectured in Limerick City in the mid-nineteenth century The transatlantic alliance of dedicated anti-slavery activists who sought to abolish racial slavery in the United States culminated at a local level in Limerick with the visit of a series of leading Black abolitionists to the Independent…

On the 27 August 2019 the Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris marked the 400th anniversary of the first recorded importation of enslaved Africans to Virginia by calling for a reckoning with her country’s “history of slavery and institutional racism.” Two days later the frequent Fox News contributor and right…

In 2015 I launched a volunteer collaborative project which sought to collate (and map) a comprehensive record of white mob violence that collectively punished African American communities across the United States. Framed by racism, segregation and white supremacism, these violent incidents cover almost every aspect of American society. Housing, military…

I recently found this interesting account of slaves being brought to 1830s Ireland by their Irish owner in the Harvard Law School Caselaw Access Project database. This history was disclosed during an important piece of case law that arose in 1850 which included a judgement of implied manumission and a…

“Mulatto Jack” was an Irishman kidnapped in Ireland and sold into perpetual slavery in Antigua. Sixteen years later he was imprisoned as a suspect during a slave conspiracy in 1736. — What does his plight tell us about Ireland’s historical relationship with the Black Atlantic? In October 1736 a cadre of enslaved people in Antigua allegedly planned to free the colony’s slave population by overthrowing the British slavocracy that had enchattled and exploited tens of thousands of people for over a century at that point. This was to be achieved by blowing up Governor William…

Their white nationalist strategy to deter non-white migration and naturalisation, for the benefit of the Republican Party, is identical. A relatively overlooked aspect of the El Paso terrorist’s white nationalist manifesto was his specific rationalisation of violence against the Hispanic population vis-á-vis strengthening the Republican party’s future election prospects in the state of Texas and nationwide. This is notable as it is a mirror image of the ethno-nationalist strategy…

The Haitian “zombie” folklore and mythology entered white American cultural consciousness during the 1920s-30s, that is, during the U.S. occupation of Haiti. At the same time that U.S. officers were subjecting poor Haitians to forced labour schemes (they reintroduced the corvée system), Haitian culture was being sensationalised, distorted and commodified…

If you wish to support my work, you can make a donation here. There are many substantive critiques of Nagle’s reactionary anti-immigration article out there (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) but I want to take a closer look at her use and abuse…