The Irish People and the American Presidency

Abstract

ABSTRACT Irish People was a New York-based newspaper with the single mission of supporting Catholics in Northern Ireland as they faced discrimination from the British-controlled Ulster government. While Irish American magazines promoted a romantic view of Ireland that encouraged tourism to the Republic of Ireland, Irish People reported on political and social conflict. This article examines Irish People’s role as a propaganda newspaper that targeted the American presidencies of the 1980s and 1990s. While it was mostly a “white propaganda” operation—truthful and overt propaganda—that reported British offenses and applied pressure on the American government to intervene, some of the money the newspaper helped to raise for Northern Irish charities may have gone to the Irish Republican Army.