I was recently reading the diary of Seán Ó Ríordáin who referred several times over the course of the early months of 1940 to the long since forgotten war between the Soviet Union and Finland.
The Red Army had invaded Finland in November 1939 with the approval of the Nazis through the secret protocols of the Stalin-Hitler Pact which also underlay the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states and the joint Soviet-Nazi partition of Poland.
Ó Ríordáin refers to German threats to intervene on the side of the Soviets should Britain and France provide military assistance to the Finns, who incidentally humiliated the ramshackle Red Army that only recovered with massive American aid and slavery after 1941.
It is a timely reminder that at a crucial time in world history that the two great totalitarian powers were allies.
It is hardly surprising then that people in the part of Europe that was devastated by the reds and the Nazis ought to take umbrage when idiots in the shires flaunt the symbols of that tyranny.
The hammer and sickle is no more acceptable to Poles or Finns or Lithuanians or Estonians or Latvians than the Swastika – nor ought either be regarded any differently by any decent human being.
The hammer and sickle flag that was waved among the group of people attempting to prevent a peaceful ‘Let Women Speak’ rally in Dublin on Saturday is the official flag of the Communist Party of Ireland.
The CPI over its different manifestations since 1921 was an unwavering supporter of Communist tyranny. It currently appears to be approving of the once reviled Chinese Communist Party, and recently sent a delegation there.
Although small, it has been quite influential and its members have at various times occupied leading positions through their infiltration of the Labour Party, the IRA and Sinn Féin.
Members or former members or secret members of the CPI have continued to exercise that influence particularly within Sinn Féin, which appears to share the CPI admiration of Chinese totalitarianism – both for practical rather than ideological reasons, possibly.
One wonders, however, if the comrades are aware that in the Soviet Union, not only was transvestism something that would guarantee a chap in a fabulous frock at the very least a visit to the labour camps, but that homosexuality was illegal under Article 121 of the Soviet Criminal Code.
At the same time as openly gay men in Ireland were feted as public intellectuals, tens of thousands of gay men were worked to death, starved, raped and murdered in the Gulag.
No prizes for guessing which state the Irish reds regard as a homophobic horror show, and which they venerate and hope to revive.
