Sir,—I am an Irish American. My great-grandfather, Samuel Munce, was born in Ireland in 1858 and came to live in the States in 1888. I am also a new subscriber to History Ireland. As a lover of history, I was very excited to sit down this morning and begin to read my very first issue. However, it was disappointing to discover your editorial on the first page with your not-so-original title, ‘If it quacks like a duck …’, along with your linking the ‘Pro-Axis and racist elections of June 1945’ (your words [Actually, not my words if you check—Ed.]) with your personal opinion of what you refer to as ‘today’s far right phenomenon in Ireland’. I was highly offended that you would waste the ink and precious magazine space (not to mention my time) abusing your readers with your personal view of Irish politics. I am a regular reader of the Irish Times and other Irish-based news publications and I have to filter out plenty of opinion-based articles that are disguised as news in order to get what little factual information I can. I thought your magazine would be above that sort of thing. You are most certainly free to express your opinions about politics and then attempt to couch them with a historical spin in order to justify your need to ‘express’, but I do not appreciate it and will terminate my subscription if you feel compelled to do it again (or if I discover a political point of view in the historical articles in your magazine).
If you have to write something to kick off each issue, then get creative, man. It’s history, for crying out loud. Stay in your lane! Being the editor of any hard-copy publication in today’s digital world is a privilege, and you should act like it by not offending at least half of your potential readership. You don’t think half your readership might be offended? The recent referendum that caused the resignation of your Leo Varadkar with 74% voting against gender-neutralising the Irish Constitution proves my point very well. Like many people who get paid in publishing, you have forgotten what your job is.—Yours etc.,
KELVIN D. ANGLE
Reno, Nevada, USA