Biden condemns ‘demagogues and reactionaries’
THE US would have preferred a Remain vote, US Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday.
In a wide-ranging speech at Dublin Castle, Mr Biden launched a scathing attack on ‘reactionary politicians and demagogues peddling xenophobia, nationalism and isolationism’.
And he said the US wanted to continue growing economic ties with the European Union, which he described as ‘already the largest economic relationship in the world’. He added: ‘Of course, yesterday a majority of the British people voted to leave the European Union, and as long-standing friends of the United Kingdom, the United States respects their decision,’ he said.
‘[It is] not how we would have preferred it to be. But we respect their position.’
The Vice President, who has been in Ireland since Tuesday evening, said relations with the UK and the EU were indispensable to US economic and national security.
‘So as the leadership in London and Brussels determines what this new relationship will look like, we will continue to work with our partners to navigate a new road ahead while continuing to promote stability, security and prosperity around the world,’ he said.
But he attacked a lurch to extremes by politicians in Europe and the US.
Quoting WB Yeats, he said ‘all has changed, changed utterly – a terrible beauty has been born’ around the globe.
‘In the past 15 years, all has
‘Why in the hell did my family leave?’
changed in the world,’ he said.
‘We’ve seen more change and challenges and opportunities than any time since World War Two and maybe before.’
Mr Biden said mass migration, war, terrorism, infectious diseases, climate change, economic unease and anxiety had given rise to an inevitable human reaction – frustration and anger.
‘All this provides fertile terrain for reactionary politicians and demagogues peddling xenophobia, nationalism and isolationism,’ he said.
‘We see it in Europe, we see in other parts of the world and we see it in my home country, where some politicians find it convenient to scapegoat immigrants instead of welcoming them, to play to our fears rather than, as Abraham Lincoln said, appeal to our better angels.’
Mr Biden criticised those who were wanted to ‘divide us based on religion or ethnicity, rather than unite us in our common humanity, build walls instead of bridges’. ‘It is un-American what we have been seeing,’ he added.
‘It is not who we have become. It is not who we are.’
Referring to Dublin Castle as a once ‘symbolic centre of British occupation and oppression of Ireland’, he said it served as a reminder that people everywhere share the same basic desire to ‘breathe free, to be able to express themselves, to follow their own North Star’.
On a lighter note, Mr Biden told the 2,000-strong crowd, waving both Irish and American flags, that the more he saw of Ireland, the more he wondered why his ancestors left.
Mr Biden spoke of the wonderful atmosphere at a musical event he attended this week in Westport when news filtered through that Ireland had beaten Italy.
He said: ‘The longer I am here, the more I wonder why in the hell did my relatives leave. You’re an incredible country.’
He also thanked Taoiseach Enda Kenny for being a true friend – and joked: ‘The Taoiseach is going to be happy when I go home, he has been spending about 24/7 with me.’
Mr Biden also touched on his Irish-American heritage, close relations between the two countries and Ireland’s leading role in promoting gay rights with the marriage equality referendum of 2015.
The Chieftains, singer-songwriter Mundy and Irish language band Seo Linn played at the event, for which there was a major security operation.
In a separate engagement at Trinity College, Mr Biden received an honorary doctorate from Mary Robinson, the Trinity chancellor, as well as a gold medal from the university’s Philosophical Society.
His return to Dublin follows two days in Co. Mayo, where he kept his promise to play a round of golf in Ireland. Mr Biden’s ancestral connections with Co. Mayo have been traced back as far as the late 1700s.
His great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt lived in Ballina and great-great-grandfather Owen Finnegan, the Cooley peninsula in Co. Louth. Both left Ireland during the Great Famine.
A trip to Co Louth today is due to take in sites with ancestral links, while Newgrange is also on the agenda.