That adage, “please read other books” about Harry Potter fans has a new dimension now. I have specific recommendations. Harry Potter fans need to pick up Tim Pat Coogan’s The Troubles or Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing. Hell, you can stream Daniel Day-Lewis in In the Name of the Father or watch Derry Girls. Anything really, to get caught up on an essential plot point of 20th century history.
Why? A tweet pointing out that the Irish character Seamus Finnigan constantly exploding is informing a lot of people, for the very first time, about the existence of the Irish Republican Army and some pretty offensive Irish stereotypes.
The quote tweets on this were many variations of “No fucking way Irish people have a terrorist stereotype,” and “J.K. Rowling so racist I’m learning about stereotypes I never even knew about.” It’s kind of incredible, to think that something that seems ubiquitous to so many is entirely unheard of to others. No matter your opinion on the IRA and their methods, it was understood that there was a general awareness about the 40-year conflict between the Irish Republican Army and the British Empire. Maybe you didn’t know that there were 22 car bombs exploded in Belfast on a single Friday in 1972, or that the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998. But surely you had the vaguest understanding that the IRA existed.
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But something people forget about when it comes to posting is that some people were born in 2007. And like, all of those people are on the internet. The number of 18-year-old Americans keeping up with the fight for a free and united Ireland? Not a lot.
It’s not that we can really blame young people. For all the access to information that’s available these days, public education has been suffering. Children have been left behind. There’s barely any civics lessons in this country, let alone 20th century history. So, this isn’t a call out, it’s a call in. Stop giving the deeply racist, transphobic and criminally irritating J.K. Rowling money, and pick up some new books.
For those just now learning about the IRA, I really do recommend some of Tim Pat Coogan’s work. You might find some interesting parallels to current predicaments. And to the truly youthful, if you simply google “IRA” you might get two results. Some for the Irish Republican Army, and some for Individual Retirement Account. You’re gonna want to open the Wikipedia pages for both.
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