Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins has severely criticized British imperialism and the “feigned amnesia” of academics and journalists who refuse to talk about his legacy.
Writing in the Guardian, Higgins accuses unidentified academic and media organizations of turning a blind eye to the devastating impact of colonialism not only in Ireland, but around the world.
“Fake 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 reflections on its war of independence and division a century ago.
Ignoring the “shadows cast by our shared past” is part of a broader reluctance to engage with the imperial legacy, says Higgins, who holds a largely ceremonial role. His article precedes a seminar on imperialism that he will host on February 25.
“I am impressed by an aversion,” he says, “in academic and journalistic reports to criticize empire and imperialism. The openness and engagement in a critique of nationalism seems greater. And while it was vital for our purposes in Ireland to examine nationalism, doing the same for imperialism is just as important and has a meaning far beyond British / Irish relations ”.
The article represents a timely intervention by a head of state who promoted reconciliation between 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 British parliament. In a speech last December, he urged the Irish not to stereotype the British because of Brexit and its destabilizing impact on Northern Ireland.
In his Guardian article, Higgins, a socialist, a poet and a former sociology professor, aims at British and European imperialism, echoing last year’s Black Lives Matter protests that led to the removal and renaming of monuments linked to slavery and colonialism.
Imperial powers wear a mask of modernity for cultural suppression, economic exploitation, expropriation and domination, says Higgins. “Those who received imperialist adventurism were denied cultural agency, presumed to be incapable, and responsible for violence against the ‘modernizing’ forces directed at them.”
British imperialists did not recognize the Irish as equals, he says. “In essence, imperialism involves making a series of demands that are invoked to justify its assumptions and practices – including its inherent violence. One such claim is the assumption of culture’s superiority. “