Sir, - William Hunt (August 4th) needs to learn more about fascism before he uses that term to smear people who have aroused his disapproval.
Simple insurrectionism is not fascism, even for a nationalist cause, if the nation concerned is oppressed. People of all political persuasions have risen in minority insurrections. It is true, too, that the most notorious (and most powerful) fascist parties, those of Italy and Germany came to power by manipulating the constitution, rather than by extra-constitutional armed force. If we accept the Hunt criteria for measuring fascism, we would have to conclude that, despite their own protestations, Hitler and Mussolini were not fascists, while Pearse and James Connolly were.
It is not as if the Easter Rising were aimed against a state power that was fully democratic, even by normal standards.
1. Ireland was still effectively a colony of Britain.
2. Its MPs were returned to the imperial parliament on a franchise restricted to male heads of households.
3. The life of the ruling parliament had been prolonged beyond its normal time by the said parliament itself.
4. The majority of Ireland's elected representatives had exceeded the mandate on which they were elected by their support for the war, which they justified by all manner of prevarications. In the case of Redmond and the constitutional nationalists, the Rising did do their followers some service in exposing the hollowness of many of their claims.
It might be added that many of these lies anticipated the future propaganda machine of Hitler and Goebbels in their blatancy. However, this does not make Redmond a fascist. The hawks on both sides were doing as he did.
Finally, as fascism means, indeed exalts in, war and killing, it is worth looking at this aspect of the record of Pearse and his heirs. Certainly, even today, the overall head-count of the Republican armed struggles since 1916 is far lower than the conservative estimate of 10,000 nationalist Irishmen killed in the first World War after answering Redmond's appeals.
It could well be argued that so far from Pearse and his allies being fascists, their rebellion was against precisely those forces that would come to be an integral part of the fascist ideology. - Yours etc.,
D.R. O'Connor Lysaght, Clanawley Road, Dublin 5.