An Introduction to the Works of Desmond Fennell (Fennellism pt. 0)

The following first appeared on the Substack ‘Creeve Rua’ and is syndicated with the permission of the author.

The relevance of Desmond Fennell for Ireland in 2024

I look forward to the day when this will no longer be regarded as eccentric Fennellism for the simple reason that it has become as commonplace throughout Ireland as the repetitive orthodox thinking now is.’ from ‘Nice People & Rednecks’.1

The work of Desmond Fennell is continuing to be re-discussed and appreciated by increasingly younger generations of dissident Gaels, hoping to find answers to how Ireland has come to its current hollowed out, cultureless predicament — as well finding useful answers to how we can grow out of this.

Thankfully, Fennell gives pretty exhaustive answers to virtually every topic under the sun, which is I why I thought it would be helpful to produce a concise introduction to the thought of Fennell, in its general chronological order for anyone who is just getting accustomed to his momentous body of work.

For a young person interested in counter-cultural ideas, Fennell’s oeuvre has something for everyone: on the Catholic critique of modernity, the role of building alternative national culture-blocs, sketching out what a truly independent united Ireland would look like, delineating the excesses of the Irish Neoliberal elite and finally tackling 21st century degeneration of the West head-on.

This essay will simply act as a brief Fennell reader to the uninitiated, but I will be following it up with several essays this week on specific areas of his thought — with the first releasing tonight — where I will cover what could be referred to as ‘Fennellism’.

Early years as a Catholic critic of modernity (1955-1968)

Main works during this period:

Continental and Oceanic Catholicism (1955)
Mainly in Wonder (1959)
The Changing Face of Catholic Ireland (1968)

‘The Swedish government was nominally socialist but people sometimes spoke of Sweden's guiding ideology as “liberal”. I was dismayed that Liberalism' could evolve into this. It was only years later, when it ruled the West, that I came to hear of “left-liberalism” or the neo-liberalism called by its American propagators plain “liberalism”.’2

In his earliest years, Fennell developed a Catholic critique of modern secularised Liberalism — proving those who think he was a ‘liberal mugged by reality’ are mistaken, as these points mirror the traditionalist analysis he would have later on.

Taking influence from Desmond Williams and Douglas Gageby, Fennell synthesised this Catholic analysis with what he perceived to be the ‘Humanism’ of the Irish Republican tradition.

As he travelled in East Germany as well as highly progressive 60s Sweden, Fennell identified the shallowness of technocratic modern society, with a the recent radical history of Ireland being a potential bastion of meaning against modern malaise.

‘It was for the sake of this dehumanisation of the Irish that the rebels rose against the British state in Ireland, in pursuit of a free and sovereign Irish state. Like everyone in Europe at that time, the insurgents regarded such a state as the necessary environment for human beings to realise themselves.’ from ‘The Humanism of 1916’ (1966).3

Radical period as a Maoist Gaeilgeoir (1968-1972)

Main works during this period:

Iarchonnacht Began (1969)
A New Nationalism for the New Ireland (1972)
Build the Third Republic (1972)

‘I modernised the spelling of the island where I lived from Muighinis to “Maoinis” which retained the world's sound and meaning (“Flat Island”), but which could be read, playfully, as Mao-inis (Mao Island).’ from ‘The View From Maoinis’ (1985).4

Particularly after the year 1968, Fennell began to take influence from radical Maoism, as well as the more nationalistic aspects of Castroism, as a potential alternative political strategy for reviving the Gaeltacht and Irish language more generally.

Fennell began to see the Gaeltacht civil rights movement as part of a wider breakaway from the central power-structures of major urban capitals, toward the rural peripheries.

At this point, Fennell developed a type of localism, based on cultural and ethnic autonomy in small ‘communities of communities’ — based on the influence of E.F. Schumacher and Yann Fouéré, as well as other con-federalist thinkers at the time.

‘The idea [was] Gaeilgeoirí moving from Dublin and elsewhere to the “Gaelic frontier” in the West to found a “new Israel”, possibly in kibbutz form.’ from ‘The View From Maoinis’ (1985).5

Sketching out Éire Nua (1972-1985)

Main works during this period:

Sketches of the New Ireland (1973)
Cuireadh chun na Tríú Réabhlóide (1984)
The State of the Nation: Ireland since the 60s (1983)
Beyond Nationalism: The Struggle against Provincialism in the Modern World (1985)

As the Troubles raged on, Fennell began to forge direct ties with Provisional Republican leaders such as Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Daithí Ó Conaill, especially in regard to the ‘Éire Nua’ philosophy.

‘Fennell had proposed self-government for Northern Ireland under the joint control of London and Dublin. His work caught the attention of Ó Brádaigh and O’Connell, and they invited him to the Monaghan convention [Sinn Féin Éire Nua convention, 1972.] Fennell became an important non-Republican resource.’6

At this point, Fennell argued that the struggle of the Catholic community in the North could only be solved through a recognition of ethnic difference of the two separate peoples — rejecting a monocultural / tabula rasa approach.

Publishing his magnum opus, Beyond Nationalism, Fennell sought to redefine Irish nationalism as a nationalism of small communities, a type of radical confederalism based on the Swiss canton model as well as Yugoslavia.

‘To sat that the inhabitants of Northern Ireland are “all Irishmen” gets us nowhere. It sounds good, but it stops short of throwing light on the real situation. The inhabitants if the neighbouring island are “all British”, but the Scots, the English and the Welsh are distinct historic peoples. In Northern Ireland, there are two different peoples there: the Irish (or Northern) Catholics and the Ulster Protestants.’ from ‘Towards A Peace in the North’.7

Haughey-era and the Sunday Press (1985-1995)

Main works during this period:

Nice People & Rednecks: Ireland in the 1980s (1986)
Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: Why Seamus Heaney Is No.1 (1991)
Heresy: The Battle of Ideas in Modern Ireland (1993)

‘The Nice People are the Dublin liberal middle class and their allies and supporters throughout the country. The Rednecks are everyone else, but especially Fianna Fáil under Charles Haughey, the great majority of Catholics and their bishops, all Catholic organisations, the IRA and GAA, Sinn Féin, and the Fine Gael dissidents who frustrate Garrett FitzGerald's good intentions.’8

During the 80s Fennell became famous as a columnist in the best selling Irish paper at the time, the Sunday Press, and became the intellectual face of Irish Nationalism.

He staked a large defence of the cultural legitimacy of the majority of Haughey voters, as well as the Catholic electoral victories against abortion and divorce.

For Fennell, the 1980s was a struggle between the D4 neoliberal establishment, and the nationalist working class.

‘The agenda of consumer capitalism has been advanced in Ireland by the mentality known as Dublin 4, which Fennell described as “a powerful social group with a characteristic mentality and agenda…Dublin 4 backs Ireland's membership of the European Union; seeks to free Ireland from the grip of nationalist history and of Catholicism; is specially hostile to the populism of Fianna Fáil”’.9

Later life as a prophet of western civilization’s doom (1995-2021)

Main works during this period:

Uncertain Dawn: Hiroshima and the Beginning of Postwestern Civilisation (1996)
The Postwestern Condition: Between Chaos and Civilisation (1999)
About Being Normal (2017)

‘The Big State which the left-liberals (calling themselves simply “liberals”) created reached its apogee with the manufacture of at the atomic bomb, the use of this weapon against two Japanese cities, and the official justification of the resulting massacres. This justification of massacre signalled to the liberals that the state they had worked to create was likely to approve of those elements of their programme that rejected other code rules of European civilisation.’ from The Staggered End of European Civilisation (2010).10

Coming full circle, Fennell began a return to travel writing in the 1990s, first A Connacht Journey and then travelling the cultural ruins of America — as well as the literal ruins of East Germany.

He came to the position that Western Civilisation had fundamentally been defeated in the 20th Century, with the bombing of Hiroshima representing its departure, and ushering in a new, non-Christian Age.

With his final few works, Fennell detailed his pessimistic critique of the future Europe, colonised by American non-Christian elites (what he called ‘Amerope’), which will potentially outdo the tyranny of the Soviet sphere.

‘Perhaps, unknown to us, something like de Tocqueville's vision has come to pass and this is how liberal democracy is today - a sort of soft totalitarianism. If that is the case, and the docility of the Ameropean peoples does suggest it, then the neo-liberal regime can endure, if not forever, then longer than its Russian socialist counterpart managed to do.’ from ‘Can the Neo-liberal Regime Endure?’ (2015)11

Footnotes

1

Fennell, Nice People & Rednecks, xvii.

2

About Behaving Normally, p. 46.

3

About Being Normal, p. 70.

4

About Being Normal, p. 86.

5

About Being Normal, p. 85.

6