On 12/9/25, the town of Plymouth Massachusetts held a meeting of its central governing body; the board of selectmen. At this particular meeting the topic of ICE activity in the town and forming an official policy on it was brought up and locals were invited to comment. What followed was a barrage of despicable hatred and idiotic xenophobia which came as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about the town of Plymouth and about Plymouth County. Plymouth County is an extremely privileged area, insulated from contact with generally anyone who doesn’t have gobs of generational wealth. These people make up the core of the powerbase for Trump and American fascism. Enraged by the display of hatred, Séamus Ó Roibeárd (sé/é/he/him/él) immediately began drafting a speech to deride them all at the next month’s selectboard meeting (1/6/26) where the topic would again be put on the agenda. While still scathing, the speech was cut short due to a time limit of 3 minutes and so Séamus decided that he couldn’t let these yokels off that easily. The rest of his intended speech was then converted into this article to be published locally as an opinion editorial.
On Tuesday, (06 01) The Plymouth Town Selectboard held a meeting to discuss town policy regarding ICE terrorists kidnapping residents. My testimony seemed to have touched a few nerves, as was intended, but was unfortunately cut off for time just before the good parts!
Hopefully here I can bring some clarifications, response to feedback, and even expand on the subject beyond what I anticipated would’ve been possible in person!
Concerns from the People
First let’s start with feedback and then we’ll move on to the topic of immigration, because you all had interesting responses and some misconceptions that I want to correct.
The most hurtful and biting critique I received the next day in facebook comments was people calling me a liberal. This was so hurtful because it’s not only false, but also terribly rude. In fact, I’d rather be called an outright slur than be called a liberal. I’m a communist. specifically an anarchist-communist. I hate liberals more than you do and for more rational and technical reasons than petty teamsports. You’re now scoffing at the screen, “Anarcho-communism is an oxymoron!” No, actually. Statist-communism is. Communism is the world-order of stateless, classless, and post-monetary society where the division of labor is dissolved and all are able to meet their needs and flourish. It’s star trek minus the federation’s political structure.
Leninism is a bourgeois deviation from communism with an elitist and frankly liberal conception of revolution, power dynamics, and organization of labor. Lenin’s basic premise was that the unwashed masses were too stupid to know how to do the very jobs they’d been doing for years to feed their families and only his party of “professional revolutionaries” could make the revolution and without them no one would know how to do anything. Leninism is the ideology of rich kids who recognize the barbarism of our modern way of life and want to feel like they fight for justice, but still want to preserve their privilege.
Anarchism on the other hand, recognizes the potential and natural gregarity of humans. Our ancestors invented societies so that they would stand to survive better by working together and providing for the collective good. Something recent generations seem to have forgotten. And those same ancestors invented a vast myriad of societies all organized in such different ways that when you take the time to so much as scratch the anthropological surface, you realize what we’re capable of as a species. The future needs to be by the people, for the people, and its rules imposed from within not without! I’m an anarchist because I know what who we are, who we were, and who we can be. I am an anarchist because everyone needs to have ultimate say in how their life is run and not delegate that to some moron in a corner office. We are our brothers’ keepers. With great freedom must also come great responsibility.
Moving on, Andy Carr wrote in and he asks “How in the hell does the guy in the mask see a [expletive] thing[?] His glasses look [like] the ones they bring to school and have you put on to see what being drunk looks like.” Thank you for your interest, Andy! I can assure you it’s not easy to fix it so that my glasses don’t fog up, even this far into the plague. But somehow I manage. As for the size of my glasses, my grandmother used to say “’every man has his fancy’ said Nancy as she kissed the cow!” But to clarify that means to each their own. You don’t like these frames but I did when I saw them, so that’s that.
A few more people wrote in about my mask. I woke up that morning not feeling well, but I was determined to say my piece. I wore the mask because I didn’t want to risk spreading what I had. So I did it for you. PTO doesn’t grow on trees after all (yet)!
Tim Whelan wrote in saying “The circus clown with the mask on, the one who called everybody he didn’t like rotten names, he seemed ‘nice’.” Thank you, Tim, not just for the compliment at the end but also for your attention to detail (noticing my chaos space marine “Trans people existing does nothing negative to your life you crybaby [expletive]” shirt) and for not calling me a liberal. Circus clown isn’t exactly what I’d like but it’s in a much better direction! Truth be told, I’d enjoy insults with as much creativity and comedy as possible. I love to laugh!
Our next point of critique came the night of the meeting instead of as a next-day write-in. The man in… eccentric attire (cowboy hat and d.o.g.e shirt) came out into the hall after his segment and criticized me for my treatment of Tiny Tim Shawbrook. Specifically, he implied that I was a coward or dishonorable or something (wasn’t very clear about it) because I not only didn’t know that Tim was present in the room and was therefore intending to slander him behind his back instead of to his face. This is an excellent point, and I’m glad it was brought up! Now I will fully confess that I did not know that Timmy was present and that I was fully surprised when David Golden called him up after me. However, I will not accept such accusations of cowardice or adjacent impropriety, firstly because I simply don’t care for such things, but also because it’s not accurate. If someone needs to be lambasted, I don’t care whether or not they’re present. In fact, learning that Timmy was there to hear my belated festivus gripes was something that really pleased me! I’m very grateful that he was there to hear it himself and slap me on my shoulder-blade like a good sport! Had I recognized Timmy in the crowd, I would’ve addressed him even more directly!
ICE and why their supporters suck
Before continuing on to “the good part” as I’ve previously called it, I want to recapitulate my speech at the podium and recontextualize it to expand a bit further. The majority of the arguments presented in favor of mass deportation and brutality of immigrants by ICE are fundamentally the same. That these people have violated the law and are therefore either dangerous people who need to be excised, or that they must face punishment for the act of crossing an imaginary line (also known as a border). Tim Shawbrook even went so far as to imply that the fact that ICE possesses an administrative (not judicial) warrant for someone’s capture and deportation is itself a crime that the person in question committed. All of these positions hold the law to be a sacred thing that shan’t be violated or else a massive moral debt will be incurred! Setting aside the double standards for agents of the state, The law is treated as if it’s some sort of stone-hewn fact or fundamental force of the universe there for humans to discover. These arguments hinge on treating laws as if god itself wrote the tax and penal codes of the empire, and brought them down to us via capital hill.
Such fallacious stances are known as legalism. Where the law not only dictates punishment and rules, but also moral character and the worthiness of an individual to be treated with empathy and humanity.
Lies and Why We Believe Them
Legalism is an infantile and harmful position of pure bile. We as humans created the laws and we have the power and right to change them, dispose of them, or outright ignore them when they cease to serve our needs. If the law were truly so morally clear and unquestionable, would we not still have institutions of chattel race-based slavery? Instead, abolitionists and rebel slaves defied the law because it was protecting an evil practice. Likewise we would revile Dr. King, and el-hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X). Many in this country have also been mislead to revile the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense even though following the law was a hallmark of their activities. Huey Newton spitefully studied the law with intense scrutiny so that he could outline his compliance with it to the police and inform others of their rights!
Yes perhaps some people who came to this land have done terrible things, there is a non-zero probability of that so I won’t deny it. However, that does not mean all such people are also guilty or that due process should not be followed (they deserve a trial). Timmy Shawbrook was so keen to proclaim that the existence of an ICE detainer notice was in and of itself due process. Past and present tense! Due process without legal representation? Without a trial before a jury? Idiotic and dangerous. Ultimately, the law is a childish game of pretend with adult consequences. A lie that some among us use as a measurement of someone else’s humanity, or to justify dehumanizing them for the color of their skin or their native language. To justify ethnic cleansing and lebensraum.
The same can be said of the borders themselves: they are lies imposed by rich morons in ivory towers onto peoples they deemed lesser than themselves. Imaginary lines on a map upon which more lies are built. The people being tormented and vanished by ICE did not land on plymouth rock! Plymouth rock landed on them!
One of my favorite ways to really demonstrate this is with a quote by Terry Pratchett about how we learn to believe “little lies” as kids so that we will believe the aforementioned “big lies” as adults:
“’TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET-‘ Death waved a hand. ‘AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.’”
As children we learn to believe the “little lies” like god, santa claus, or the tooth fairy, all so that as adults we’re willing and ready to believe the “big lies” like legal migration status, gender binary, tax brackets, borders, authority, liberalism, capitalism, fascism, crime, etc.
Concern for border security in “plymouth” massachusetts —a border created out of thin air— is not only ludicrous but gravely insulting. So very few of us are from this continent. The only non-immigrants of any variety in this town are the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe and their relations who might visit from near and far. They who gracefully took in the Saxon castaways as if they’d found a brood of abandoned pups and were oh so kindly repaid with plagues, butchery, and chains! Only they have any license to truly dictate such a policy yet they don’t seem to share the xenophobia of Cromwell’s sons, even in this current day as their rightful conservation land on Hedges Pond Road, a rare ecosystem and a burial place for ancestors of the tribe, is being ripped asunder for the sole purpose of GREED!
Páistí Na hÉireann? Ní Cheapaim É…
So very many in this town and county (myself included) can trace their lineage to the green pastures of Ireland. Yet there are so few Gaels to be found!
An bhfuil aon gaeilgeoirí ansin ar an gCruinniú (seachas mé fein)? bheinn ionadh orm dá mba ea.
True children of eireann rebuke imperialism, border policing, and colonial barbarism, because that’s what drove our ancestors to this hither shore where they were met with racial hatred that is now so callously directed at others. Signs on hiring shops that said “irish need not apply” or being harrassed by cops to the point that their carts came to be known as “paddywagons,” to give yous a couple examples.
Déir sibh gur “Gael-méiriceánacha” sibh ach ní mbeadh sibhse gaeil dá mba maith libhse iad, na oifigigh inimirceacha!
Irish-Americans are a joke, no more earnestly irish than a plastic caricature that in past generations would’ve been used as a hate-filled gag by our germanic neighbors and colonizers. We are a joke because we’ve traded solidarity and shared humanity for whiteness and privilege. We took up jobs as cops, breaking strikes and kicking down our black and brown brethren as agents of the empire, for the hopes that we’d be accepted as part of the so-called master race. This is a deep mark of shame that the town of plymouth exemplifies. You fail to learn from our songs and from tales of rebellion against the saxons, so allow me to show you with the explicit words of Séamus Ó Conghaile, better known in english as James Connolly, one of the martyrs of 1916’s Easter Rising:
“Perhaps no race on Earth… has absorbed more heterogenous elements into itself and at the same time given out moreof the best of its blood to [others] as the irish.
All races are mixed more or less; a pure race does not exist… But the irish, to whom our capitalist politicians are forever preaching an aggressive insularity… can count as cousins and blood brothers practically all the nations [of the world]. We have received and we have given the best and the worst.
Let no irishman throw a stone at the foreigner; He may hit his own clansman. Let no foreigner revile the irish; He may be vilifying his own stock.”
Frankly, you all and your behavior disgust me. I accuse you of worse than betraying your possible irish heritage, or believing in petty lies and abstractions as a means to preserve your privileges. Ní hea, I accuse you of something worse but inclusive of white supremacy, of which you are also guilty. I accuse you, the residents of “plymouth, Massachusetts” of anti-human activity. Of betraying your own humanity and the humanity of others around you. Your actions are pathologically diseased and they defy everything about our species that makes us great and everything about us that can make us even better.
Even down to how you engage with your own thoughts, using chat gpt to draft heinous tweets in the midst of the selectboard meeting. It would be bad enough to write such filth yourself, with your own mind, your own fingers, and your own contempt for your kindred. But it’s an added crime to outsource your idiocy and evil to a machine, to refuse outright to engage with the world. To refuse to experience it, to take in new ideas and new perspectives so that you may grow and change as a person. If there were a god I’d hope it would take pity on you, because I won’t.
I Award You No Points…
In the time between the Selectboard meeting and publication of this article, ICE across the empire has become stunningly more brazen with the heinous bodily harm they deal out to people. Blinded one person, beaten several others, executed one woman for attempting to flee the scene, and tossed a flashbang grenade into a family vehicle, putting all of the very young children in the hospital with critical injuries. At this time, it is unknown if those children will survive or what the lifelong consequences will be for them. Others have been sexually assaulted, have vanished without a trace (no not deported), and been sold into prison slave labor. Citizens and immigrants alike. By and large people guilty of no crime except trying to survive in a barbaric world.
Those who’ve proclaimed their support for ICE have a choice before them: Accept the reality of what ICE is, the depravity of it all, and at the very very least rescind their support. The alternative? Continue to lionize the barbarians at the gate, further their public support for blatant white supremacy and anti human tyranny, and accept their monstrous role in this historic moment. You must either work against ICE and in the name of freedom, or be guilty of pushing us closer to cataclysm and extinction as a tool of the ruling caste.
Go dtaga deireadh le Meiriceá. Go hifreann le ICE. Saoirse don Phalaistín.
Saoirse do gach duine! Ná faighigí aon amhain in ár ndiaidh!
Séamus Ó Roibeárd
Séamus is an irish-american anarchist living in rightful wampanoag homelands. He organizes with/within the Northeast Anarchist Union and his local community to build a future worth living in.
