Ireland, it was said recently, is a great little country to do business in. It’s also a nice little country to live in as long as you are not concerned about the weather or obsessed with getting the washing dry. While we do have our share of odd balls and strange characters, we are, by and large relatively civilized. We generally tend to live and let live and we’re quick to give a helping hand to a neighbour when the need arises.
Now, you might think that this is the case everywhere else in the world but you would be wrong. There are certain people among us who seem hell bent on making life as difficult as possible for everybody else. I came across two such groups recently and their stupidity has left me completely bewildered.
The first one is called, ‘Return of Kings’. Its main man calls himself Roosh Vorek and he’s about thirty six years old and he has been widely criticized for allegedly promoting the legalisation of rape. Apparently he believes that rape should not be a problem if it takes place on private property but he has since stated that was a misinterpretation of what he actually said.
His website has some odd notions and he was, until recently, trying to spread the word of Roosh through a series of meetings across Europe. One of the proposed locations was Naas, Co. Kildare but there was so much outrage that he cancelled all the meetings. He feared for the safety of his people. He shares his ideas on how to seduce women while he promotes a male dominated world. Women, he believes, should be confined to the kitchen. As you can see, our Roosh is a real charmer.
According to his website, ‘men who live in modern Western liberal democracies under the influence of third wave feminism have a distorted view of reality’. But don’t worry about your distorted view because he goes on to say, ’Thanks to ROK and the neo-masculinity movement, we can share truths and observations about women, self, and society, waking up disillusioned men more rapidly and in greater numbers’. So at least salvation is at hand.
Or is it? Before you start to relax let’s take a look at the second group, The Ku Klux Klan. I saw a member of this outfit giving an interview recently and it was quite bizarre. Even though he wasn’t wearing his bed sheets or a pointy hat he still came across as a complete idiot. He was suggesting that Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps were very accommodating and had swimming pools and saunas and that the naughty Jews had made up the stories of the Holocaust. He said it never happened. The sad thing is that he really seemed to believe it.
Well, I visited both of these camps a few years ago and while I saw lots of unpleasant things I would have to say that I didn’t see the remains of any swimming pools. In fact, I didn’t see anything that vaguely resembled a recreation area but then maybe these naughty Jews had hidden all the evidence.
According to the Ku Klux Klan, The Knights Party USA, website, ‘the Christian way of love and law and order and love of family and nation is the way forward’. I find it a little difficult to equate the KKK with any form of Christianity given their history of hatred and violence. Their attitude towards black people, immigrants, gays, lesbians and Jews is well documented. They’re also fond of awarding themselves fancy but ridiculous titles like Imperial Wizard and Exalted Cyclops which to me conjures up an image of some nutter with an eye in the middle of his forehead.
But they are far from being comical characters and at one time they must have frightened the life and soul out of many decent people. They are famed for their lynchings and for tarring and feathering their victims and for using extreme violence. The sight of a large group of masked men on horseback carrying burning crosses must have been fairly intimidating back in the day and it would appear that they are still around.
So what do we do about them? Well as far as the Return of Kings is concerned, the best way to deal with them is to forget you ever heard the name. They are guys with serious issues hiding their identities behind a computer screen. I’m not sure how far they believe they can really progress with this nonsense but the best way to defeat them is to reduce the number of hits to their website to a dribble. Ignoring the muppets is the best way to achieve that.
As for the Ku Klux Klan, well they’re a different story. They have been in existence since the mid eighteen hundreds and they still have a certain following. Even though their numbers have decreased dramatically since the sixties there will always be a certain element of American society who will follow their cause but it would seem that they are a dying breed.
So while we occasionally complain about the weather in our little corner of the world, we should look at the positives. We will never have the Ku Klux Klan in Ireland and I’ll tell you why. They wouldn’t be able to keep their torches burning in the rain. And as well as that, as every Irish mammy knows, there’s no drying out there for those sheets. So unless the KKK are prepared to go marauding in the nip carrying soggy torches it’s unlikely we’ll ever see them over here.