| | Context is everything.
"Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government; it killed several people while a Conservative congress was being held and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was (attending). People forget," she said.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. About 3,700 died and tens of thousands of people were maimed in more than 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army guerrilla group, which caused most of the deaths, disarmed in 2005.
It is easy to condemn islamo-fascists and to ridicule a culture where women cover themselves, rather than uncover themselves. Here in Ann Arbor, I think it is pretty revealing (!) to see a nun and a muslim come out of a classroon together. Even the rosary was imported to Europe from islamic contacts. Yet, where on RoR or within Objectivism do we find ringing condemnations of Christianity, Catholicism and the terrorism carried out by Irish nationalists?
My daughter is bartender. She has a pretty good story about someone really from Ireland crying in his beer on St. Patrick's Day, surrounded by people who momentarily glorify an Irish ancestor... whether they actually have one or not. So, no one gets very far here in America condemning the IRA. Riverdance and Enya empower the IRA in America. Of course, it is easy to identify with their struggle against English imperialism, but the cases are no more consonant than the American and French revolutions. Colonial Americans wanted only their rights as Englishmen. Read the English Bill of Rights of 1688. What does the IRA want -- and how did they seek to achieve it?
For Objectivists, the IRA and Ireland should be perfect targest: torn between Marxists and Catholics. Nationalism is collectivism. I need say nothing here about Marxism. I point out, however, that the Palestinian situation is almost perfectly parallel, as "Arab nationalists" are divided between Marxism and Islam.
What kind of a nation is Ireland? "Abortion is effectively illegal in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland." (WIkipedia) So, basically, among other agenda items, the IRA killed 3700 people for the right to keep abortion illegal.
I do not think that the IRA is "worse" than Al Qaeda (except in the arithmetic of murder) but they are surely equivalent in mysticism, altruism, collectivism, and terrorism.
As for Lessing herself, I have no judgment. She was a Marxist, married to an East German diplomat, and dabbled with Sufism. That she is a mixed bag of contradictions (most of them bad) is not surprising since most people seem to be that. Yet, within that roil of internal denials are some gems.
What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 'Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.' Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.
– Doris Lessing, The New York Times, 25 July 1982
She also writes science fiction.
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