Tags
An Open Letter to Brendan O’Neill of The Spectator
Sir Afilonius Rex and the Editorial Team
Brussels, The European Union, 3rd December 2025
Brendan O’Neill claims that Dublin City Council’s proposal to rename Herzog Park amounts to “erasing Jewish history.” He argues that removing Chaim Herzog’s name is like scrubbing a Jew’s name from a public space. Herzog was a Belfast-born Jew who later became Israel’s sixth president. He suggests this action is antisemitic. He presents the renaming as a disturbing and targeted act rather than a routine administrative decision.
Here is a response from some leading associates of goodstrat.com
Brendan, this isn’t an argument — it’s a tantrum dressed as a thinkpiece. You’ve exaggerated a local municipal naming decision. This is mundane administrative housekeeping. It generally ranks somewhere between “fixing a pothole” and “ordering new park benches.” You’ve inflated it into an existential pogrom. Dublin City Council could be renaming the park after a retired groundskeeper. They might also name it after a local poet or a stray cat that achieved spiritual enlightenment. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. You’ve already decided it’s antisemitism because it fits the melodrama you want to play in your head.
This is not “erasing Jewish history.” This is not “scrubbing the name of a Jew.” This is a council making a decision about a park name in a city. In this city, 99% of people couldn’t tell you who Herzog was even if you bribed them with crisps. Municipal renamings happen constantly. Streets, parks, libraries, community centres — they get rebranded, reassigned, relocated, repurposed. That’s politics, not persecution.
But instead of doing the basic work — asking what the rationale was, who proposed it, whether there was a consultation, whether there were objections, whether alternative commemorations are being considered — you leapt straight to the nuclear button:
“Tell me that isn’t anti-Semitism.”
Oh, I’ll tell you: it isn’t. It’s not even close. In fact, it’s so far from antisemitism that framing it that way is insulting. It insults Jews. It insults people who actually experience real antisemitism. It insults anyone with a functioning frontal lobe.
Weaponising the “victim card” every time a government body does something you dislike is not brave. It’s not moral. It’s not principled. It’s lazy, manipulative special pleading. It cheapens real harm. It transforms actual bigotry, the kind that ruins lives, into a rhetorical toy. You can use it whenever you need to juice your latest column.
It’s also a spectacularly convenient way to avoid engaging with the real issue. Some people might simply not want a Dublin park named after an Israeli president. Not because he was Jewish. Because… brace yourself, he was a political figure in a country whose politics are now a lightning rod for controversy. If Ireland renamed a Ronald Reagan playground, would you shriek that Dublin hates Baptists? If they removed a Churchill plaque, would you accuse them of anti-British racism? Of course not. Because you know how ridiculous that is.
But here, you saw a cheap chance to flatten nuance. You erased context and implied, without evidence, that an entire city council is acting out of bigotry.
Hear me out. It is possible that a naming decision relating to an Israeli statesman might be influenced by Israel’s political reality. Its policies. Its wars. Its global reputation. Its controversies. That’s how the public sphere works. Ireland is not required to keep a park named after a foreign president forever. It does not have to do this just to prove it thinks nice thoughts about Jewish people.
If you want to argue that renaming the park is wrong, argue that. Make the case. Fine. But smearing the whole thing with the convenient varnish of “anti-Semitism!” every time something doesn’t go your way looks less like vigilance. It resembles journalistic cosplay. It’s the kind where you pretend you’re the last moral sentinel standing between civilisation and the abyss. In reality, you’re just yelling at a Parks Committee agenda item.
Real antisemitism exists. It’s rising. It’s dangerous. And the sad irony is that cheap stunts like this make it harder to fight. Because when you cry wolf at every administrative reshuffle, people stop listening when the wolf actually shows up.
This isn’t bravery. It’s not solidarity. It’s not insight.
It’s just theatrics — and bad ones at that.
Thanks for reading.
Prologue
The Spectator has a documented history that includes episodes of coverage and editorial stance that many consider anti‑Irish, particularly in the context of unionism, Home Rule, and certain post‑Brexit or identity‑related controversies.
GOOD STRATEGY 