Jim Allister made me spit my drink out when he called Sinn Fein "West Brits" for relying on the UK government to pass the Irish Language Act. It shows you that the state of Loyalism is like a real life version of an internet conspiracy rabbit hole. Let's hope they keep digging for Ireland's, and all our sanity's sake!
I took a look at Jim Allister's social media just for the lolz and on his Facebook he linked to
this article.
Modern nationalism adopted the late 18th century ideas of German Romanticism, which rejected the Enlightenment ideals on which the United Irish and modern Unionism are founded (science, reason, industry, liberal-democracy, internationalism and cosmopolitanism). It regarded all modern progress and development as corrupt and corrupting of the ‘true’ Ireland, which they defined as Roman Catholic, peasant-farmer and above all — Gaelic speaking. Language, ie Gaelic, was of prime importance, to establish linguistic, economic, political, social and cultural barriers to the outside world (Sinn Fein — ourselves alone) and to attack an English speaking culture that championed the Enlightenment and its values.
Economically Gaelic is useless and functional to only a small number of self-indulgent activists who will make an highly (tax payer) subsidised living out of translations no one really needs. Unionists should stress the richness and success of their shared cultural heritage within the UK, not least in science (where English is the universal language) and the arts (where all the great ‘Irish’ names wrote in English).
This isn't a dog whistle, this is a dog megaphone.
(Also, I hate being a grammar nazi, but if you want to extoll the virtues of English over dirty peasant Gaelic, you should perhaps know that it's "a highly", not "an highly")
