Irish President Michael D Higgins has sharply criticized British imperialism and the “feigned amnesia” of academics and journalists who refuse to address its legacy.
Writing in The Guardian, Higgins accuses unnamed academic and media organizations of turning a blind eye to the devastating impact of colonialism, not just in Ireland but around the world.
“A feigned amnesia around the uncomfortable aspects of our shared history will not help us forge a better future together,” he says, contrasting British forgetfulness with Ireland’s views of its war of independence and partition a century ago.
Ignoring the “ shadows of our shared past ” is part of a greater reluctance to engage with the imperial legacy, says Higgins, who holds a largely ceremonial post. His article comes in the run-up to a seminar on imperialism that he will be organizing on February 25.
“I am struck with disgust,” he says, “in both academic and journalistic reports to criticize the empire and imperialism. Openness and commitment to a criticism of nationalism seems greater. And while it has been vital to our For purposes in Ireland to investigate nationalism, doing the same is equally important to imperialism and has a meaning well beyond British / Irish relations. “
The article represents a targeted intervention by a head of state who promoted reconciliation between Great Britain and Ireland, visited the Queen and acknowledged that Irish Republicans committed atrocities during and after the War of Independence.
In 2014, Higgins delivered an Irish president’s first speech to the UK Parliament. In a speech last December, he urged the Irish people not to stereotype the British for Brexit and its destabilizing impact on Northern Ireland.
In his Guardian op-ed piece, Higgins, a socialist, poet and former sociology teacher, focuses on British and European imperialism, echoing last year’s Black Lives Matter protests that led to the removal and renaming of monuments related keep up with slavery and colonialism.
Imperial powers are using a mask of modernity for cultural oppression, economic exploitation, expropriation and domination, Higgins says. “Those on the receiving end of imperialist adventurism were denied cultural freedom of choice, believed incapable of doing so, and responsible for violence against the ‘modernizing’ forces directed against them.”
British imperialists did not recognize the Irish as equals, he says. “At its core, imperialism involves making a number of claims that are invoked to justify its assumptions and practices – including the inherent violence. One such claim is the assumption of culture superiority. “