Sinn Féin, socialists and “McSheeneys”: representations of Jews in early twentieth-century Ireland

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ABSTRACTDuring the decades immediately prior to the creation of an independent Irish state in 1922, nationalists and socialists in Ireland struggled to reconcile their progressive principles with challenges posed by the arrival of an increasing number of Jewish immigrants. This article examines how at that time the press, both mainstream and agitational, occasionally gave public expression to anti-Semitic prejudices, stereotypes and outright hostility. Such discourses are contextualized within a framework in which Irish political leaders and others had earlier asserted that Ireland was the only country in the world that could not be charged with persecuting the Jews. I suggest that some representations of Jews in the media prior to independence foreshadowed and help to explain the context of later official Irish policies towards Jewish refugees.