Jim Goad writes:
Last week I was alerted by about a half-dozen friends to a story circulating about the “Myth of the ‘Irish slaves’” and how it was based on “a purposeful lie” spread by “Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, Neo-Confederates, and even Holocaust deniers.” If that sounds like the frothy, methinks-the-lady-doth-protest-too-much vituperations of a Southern Poverty Law Center press release, that’s exactly what it is. The article features an interview with a certain Liam Hogan—who is nothing more than an Irish librarian—in a frantic attempt to “debunk” this “myth.”
Hogan’s “refutation” consists of little more than character smears. When he wades shallowly into the factual realm, it’s only to prove that some dumb meme somewhere misidentified a picture of bedraggled white children as white Irish slaves. But by that reasoning, since rumors of human soap and human lampshades were proved to be false, that whole story falls apart…right? Otherwise, there is absolutely no refutation of the reams of documented evidence that not only did white slaves exist, they were often called slaves back then.
A must read.
(I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the idea of an “Irish librarian”…)
