Very shortly, a politician from a Government party will tell us that, to show we are not a nation of racists, we should vote Yes to the Amsterdam Treaty. The idea that Irish racism might disgrace us in a Europe itself built on the bones of the world's dispossessed would be laughable were it not so obscene, but neither of these qualities will be sufficient to prevent it being uttered repeatedly before summer's arrival. Such hypocrisy is an inevitable element now of our "Europeanness".
The "Europe" in question is, of course, the European Union, which is defined by its exclusiveness and desire to homogenise. It is neither accident nor contradiction that, in a conglomerate professing deep belief in the ideals of tolerance, coexistence and diversity, the primary, if unspoken, impulse is to keep others out.
The EU is a club, and clubs are essentially about exclusion. The fundamentally illiberal impulse of the EU can be observed in its obsessive attempts to control even the most minute aspects of the lives of its own subjects and its ludicrous attempts to persuade the world that it is on the side of tolerance and morality on the strength of 50 years of suppressing and denying its own dark forces.
This Europe of ours still seeks, above all, to expand only on its own terms and to persuade the world of the irrefutability of its logic and ambitions. This was once called colonialism.
But this latter-day model is well served by the cant of its educated liberals, who seek to fudge their own histories to make possible their own ascent to the high tables of power in the new Kingdom of Mammon.
The present emphasis on eliminating racism from Europe is disingenuous and self-serving. From a position of total world domination, the power of the white man is diminishing rapidly. Today little more than 10 per cent of the world population is white, giving the white man a strong vested interest in eliminating the conditions which enabled him to get where he is.
Much of the liberal obsession with opposing and eliminating racism is simply another way of denying others the means to develop a competing identity. By continually lamenting the rise of racism, the white man implies that this is something that has emerged despite his liberalism rather than because of it.
To suggest someone's colour should be a problem, most liberal-minded people would agree, is a dangerous nonsense. Yet these same people have no difficulty advocating the notion that a strong belief in one's own cultural identity is itself an expression of racism.
In Ireland we have been subjected to the fatuous idea that the desire for a strong sense of nationhood of our own is at the root of Irish racism. In other words, in order to become less racist, more pluralist and enlightened, we need to loosen our grip on our own identity.
Racism, however, arises not out of patriotism, but out of the abuse of patriotism. Many of the difficulties we relate to race and nationalism are the result of the denial or suppression of race and nationalism. When you instruct people to surrender their differences, they naturally refuse. Cultural transactions, like transactions of any kind, function correctly only when there is equality. A proper exchange does not occur unless both parties can bring to the deal a belief in their own respective claims and a strength based on that belief.
FOR 25 years, our relationship with what we call "Europe" could be characterised as the surrendering of our independence and ethnicity in return for money. At the core of the transaction was the belief that to become more "European" meant to become correspondingly less "Irish". If this is not racism at full throttle, then the word is meaningless.
The problem with most of our attempts to deal with the phenomenon of what is called "racism" is that they begin by attempting to deny the validity of what is called race. Sentiments like "What colour is God's skin?" and "All God's people have a place in the choir" seem at first sight to be admirable. But their virtue is itself only skin-deep, for they distract us from the true core of racism, which resides in the desire to subjugate.
Similarly, bland exhortations to show how "European" we are lead to a negation of the very qualities that might allow us to take our proper place in Europe. How can I be "international" if I surrender my nationhood?
The problem of racism is not to do with race, but with the appropriation of race as an instrument of domination. The idea that racism has any other basis does not merit a moment's deliberation. And yet we are constantly attempting to "disprove" the legitimacy of racist ideas.
In 1967 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation announced to a breathless world that "racist doctrines lack any scientific basis whatever". In this report UNESCO sought to define racism as the false claim that there is a scientific basis for arranging groups hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics "that are immutable and innate".
The notion of a "scientific basis" for hatred is unworthy of consideration: to dwell upon the rationalisations of the racist is to play his game. Moreover, the tendency to dwell on this logic has led us to focus on the dance rather than the dancer, which is precisely the intention behind it.
One reason for our continuing efforts to "disprove" the racist idea is that, because we could not deal with the enormity of the Holocaust, we devoted ourselves to seeking new "knowledge" which might, by implication, save us from having to confront our own dark centres.
Claiming to hate what racism revealed, humanity engaged in an elaborate attempt to refute the logic of those who had brought us to the depths of inhumanity. Studies were carried out which triumphantly debunked the rantings of a madman. There was not, after all, any scientific basis for racism. Hallelujah! If only we had known that before.
The problem is that, thus educated, we proceeded to deny the validity of racial characteristics and differences, as though these of themselves were actually the problem, and delivered ourselves back into the arms of that from which we sought to escape. Like a lazy cleaner sweeping the dust under a carpet, we told ourselves we were all brothers and sisters under our skins. Maybe. But we are also different from one another, and these differences are what make it interesting and rewarding to be alive.
Those who hate or seek to exploit hatred will never be short of an angle. If skin-colour does not persuade, then eye-colour will, or size or shape or accent or manners or the tendency to cling to the primal notion that to have grown under an Irish sky might actually mean something.