Thread: Remembering the greatest revolutionary this island has produced: #JamesConmolly joined and led the #EasterUprising against British colonialism in Ireland.

#Connolly was a radical anti colonial socialist, born in Edinburgh but of Irish heritage. The 1916 Irish uprising against the British was an attempt at overthrowing colonialism while the Brits were caught up in an inter imperialist world war.

Lenin instructed that no one should join in the imperialist First World War, instead turn it into a civil war against their own imperialist ruling classes. That’s what #Lenin and the #Bolsheviks did in 1917. Many denounced the Bolsheviks as putschists.

Many ‘socialists’ who feared a revolutionary war against imperialism also denounced the #EasterRising as a ‘putsch’ as it wasn’t a classical mass uprising, but social revolutions are different and complex from each other. This is what Lenin argued.

Lenin attacked those who denounced the #IrishRising: “Whoever calls such a rebellion a “putsch” is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon.”

Connolly spent decades before 1916 being a marginal radical socialist organiser in Scotland, USA & Ireland. Getting a few dozen votes while standing in elections. as revolutionary openings emerged he had the temerity, courage, ideological sharpness to make a historic difference.

That’s a central lesson, when there is a core revolutionary force and community as there was in Ireland, if the objective conditions are correct that force can make an enormous historic contribution to socialist liberation against colonial capitalism.

The First World War killed millions in a dispute between colonialists for colonies. Only the #EasterRising & Bolsheviks strategically challenged this colonial massacre.

#Lenin explains how important the Irish rising was: “A blow delivered against tile power of the English #imperialist #bourgeoisie by a rebellion in #Ireland is a hundred times more significant politically than a blow of equal force delivered in #Asia or in #Africa.”

Perhaps the most important revolutionary analysis to #EasterUprising was by #Lenin in this piece. So important to read and reflect on the entire article: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm

As you can read in that article the case of the #EasterUprising was fundamental to the GLOBAL #anticolonial struggle and as such was an important gateway and historic contribution to humanity’s liberation. It’s as important as #Haiti 1804, #Russia 1917, #China 1949, #India 1947.

In sharp contrast today we don’t have masses of people involved in many mass struggles like you did in Ireland and Russia during the First World War. They built those orgs through courageous life death struggles. We don’t have the condition of ppls or connected struggles today.

Shortly before October 1917 Lenin was convinced that despite all the mass suffering death & grinding poverty of the Russian masses during world war, that revolution was a dead cause. A few months later he and Bolsheviks have state power.

#EasterRising was narrowly successful however it directly leads + acted as a historic catalyst to more revolutionary wars against British colonialism & the liberation of the country except the still occupied 6 counties & left us revolutionary inspiration and lessons for eternity.

Both cases of Irish and Russian revolutionaries, both had decades long orgs that were armed, developing a mass base, developing revolutionary ideologies: these were the bases of the revolutionary victories that were to be achieved. We have nothing of the sort today.

What did #JamesConnolly think of the brit working class? He thought of them as tools of British colonial policy: “This is his best quote. Bit long though
“we are sick of those who tell us that we must not blame the British people for the crimes of their rulers against Ireland...

.. We do blame them... they support the system of society which makes it profitable for one nation to connive at the subjection of another nation they are responsible for every crime committed to maintain that subjection.” ( #Connolly) Nothing has changed in our opinions.

#WinstonChurchill, the notorious and outright filthy Brit genocidal racist leader, sent in a Brit colonial deathsquad called the Black & Tans to terrorise and murder Irish people in 1920. This made Irish people hate the Brits even more.

The Irish are still today some of the most militantly and sophisticated anti colonial peoples on the planet. Their story is far from over, as Ireland is still occupied by Brit colonials and their United Ireland is still yet to be achieved. Their day will come. #Tiocfaidhárlá