How the Irish Became White Supremacists

by Sean O' Dubhghaill

Overview

This volume provides a critical analysis of Irish literature and the timely appraisal of contemporary developments in which ideas about Irishness have been constructed, exploited, and racialized. Exploring race, exceptionalism, and white supremacy, this book aims to start a conversation about the ways in which the idea of what it means to be ‘Irish’ has been constructed, reified, and commodified and the role that Irish Studies, and academia in general, plays in this. Dismantling the notion of Irishness, this text examines contemporary developments in Ireland relating to asylum seekers and ‘non-nationals’ in contemporary literary works, exploring a phenomenon that structures and creates power disparities. This volume will be an essential resource for academics interested in understanding current developments in Irish society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040678350
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/29/2025
Series:	Routledge Studies in Irish Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192

About the Author

Sean O’ Dubhghaill is a Professor of International Relations at the Brussels School of Governance. He published An Anthropology of the Irish in Belgium: Belonging, Identity and Community in 2020.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Hostility and Hospitality

1.1. Afrophobia and Hibernophobia are not new: What is ‘group threat theory’?

1.2. The Contact Hypothesis and structural violence: How racial prejudice wanes as estrangement does

1.3. Host/Guest

1.4. Ireland’s full: When hospitality runs out

Chapter 2: Suspect Communities and Hibernophobia

2.1. Suspect Communities

2.2. Similar behaviours, different levels of suspicion

2.3. On the receiving end of suspicion: On auto-ethnography

2.4. All suspicions are imagined unequally

2.5. Imagined communities versus suspect communities are equivalent to an imagined community versus a community imagined

Chapter 3: Multiculturalism, populism and xenophobia

3.1. To oppose immigration

3.2. What multiculturalism needs to succeed

3.3. What kinds of policies does multiculturalism entertain?

3.4. No fences make good neighbours: Resolving conflict

3.5. Populism, or division is normal and natural

3.6. Irexit, or lies that populists need to be true

3.7. When is it rational to be xenophobic?

Chapter 4: Diaspora Policy

4.1. The Irish diaspora is a great resource

4.2. Identity and business

4.3. The risk to Irish studies

Chapter 5: Leuven and the reinvention of Ireland

5.1. The Irish diaspora and enterprise

5.2. The fire in Leuven

Chapter 6: Re-visiting how the Irish became White (supremacists)

6.1. Difference and Prophet Song

6.2. The Irish became White

6.3. On the impossibility of studying the Irish

6.4. No one gives a damn about the Irish

Chapter 7: Believe in Dublin. Believe in Ireland