Arthur Griffith

Arthur Griffith (Irish: Art Ó Gríobhtha; March 31, 1871 – August 12, 1922) was the founder of Sinn Fein, which became the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. Griffith's opposition to British domination was based on his rejection of the legality of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 although the treaty had been signed voluntarily between the two kingdoms. Elected to the parliament in 1918, he was also responsible for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which set up the Irish Free State.[1]

Antisemitism

Despite Griffith's role in Ireland's achievement of independence, he was known for his antisemitism. As an editor of the United Irishman, Griffith took an "anti-Dreyfusard" line by writing in 1899 to defend the conviction of "the Jew traitor" Dreyfus. He accused the Dublin press of being "almost all Jew rags" and decrying[2]

Fifty other rags like those which have nothing behind them but the forty or fifty thousand Jewish usurers and pick-pockets in each country and which no decent Christian ever reads except holding his nose as a precaution against nausea.

Other editorials in Griffith's United Irishman that year expressed concern about a conspiracy in which "the Jew capitalist has got a grip on the lying Press of Civilization from Vienna to New York and further". It concluded that "we know that all Jews are pretty sure to be traitors if they get the chance."[2] In late 1899, the United Irishman published an article by Griffith stating:[3]

I have in former years often declared that the Three Evil Influences of the century were the Pirate, the Freemason, and the Jew.

The antisemitism found in the pages of the United Irishman during Griffth's editorial tenure has been credited with shaping various aspects of James Joyce's Ulysses, especially in the "Cyclops" episode.[2][4] In 1904, a piece in the paper voiced support for the Limerick boycott, a boycott of Jewish businesses in Limerick organised by a local priest, by declaring:

the Jew in Limerick has not been boycotted because he is a Jew, but because he is a usurer.

Griffith ignored the fact that the Jews of Limerick had little or no involvement in moneylending or similar practices.[5][6] The United Irishman also published articles by Oliver St. John Gogarty that contained antisemitic sentiments, which were common among Irish Catholics.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Frederick, Robert (2005). 100 Great Leaders. India. ISBN 0-7554-3390-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2
  3. ↑ Keogh, Dermot (1998). Jews in Twentieth-century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-semitism and the Holocaust. Cork University Press. p. 22. ISBN 1-85918-150-3.
  4. ↑ Davison, Neil R. (1995). ""Cyclops," Sinn Féin, and "The Jew": An Historical Reconsideration". Journal of Modern Literature. 19 (2): 245–257. ISSN 0022-281X. JSTOR 3831591.
  5. ↑ Kenny, Colum (20 January 2020). The Enigma of Arthur Griffith: 'Father of Us All'. Ireland: Irish Academic Press. p. 36. ISBN 9781785373145.
  6. ↑ McGee, Owen (2015). Arthur Griffith. Merrion Press. p. 409 (fn 62). ISBN 978-1-78537-009-0.
  7. ↑ Kenny, Colum (2016). "Arthur Griffith: More Zionist than Anti-Semite". History Ireland. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2019.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.