Although the phrase “history is written by the victors” was attributed to Winston Churchill, it was spoken in several different languages before that. In fact, the most infamous use of that phrase in World War II did not come from Churchill, but rather from the German named Göring who reportedly said at Nuremberg, “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.” This was at least the phrase spoken by the actor playing Göring in the movie titled The Reportand it’s believed to be historically accurate.
In no other case of history is this phrase more true than the alleged Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1850. While it is true there was a minor potato famine in Ireland during that time, the bigger issue is what happened on top of that famine, namely, that the English forcibly stole nearly all of the other crops belonging to the Irish in the mid 19th century. This included not only fruits and vegetables, but their livestock, dairy and nearly all their provisions and supplies.
That British government commanded over 100,000 soldiers to remove the Irish food and bring it to England. This was genocide by starvation. One of the motives was the fact that the English were Protestant and the Irish were Catholic. In total, the English killed 5 million Irish, which was half the population of the Green Isle in 1840. As we will see later, this may comprise 5 million red martyrs for the Catholic Church.
Even growing up an Irish-American, I did not know the English had anything to do with the death of my ancestors 175 years ago. In fact, I would have labeled my own title above nothing but a fantastical conspiracy theory of history just a few years ago.
But here’s what changed in my life: Earlier this year, I tried reading a big hardcover book on the potato famine titled The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham Smith. I told my friend Jack about my new book, thinking he would be impressed. (Jack is an Irishman a little older than me. He is a landman from Texas, currently residing in Mississippi.)
Jack wasn’t impressed. He texted me back that the alleged “potato famine” was a lie of recent history. He then sent me a long article on Substack titled Ireland 1845-1850: The Perfect Holocaust and Who Kept It Perfect. Although I usually don’t read links people send me, I decided to give this one a shot.
The Substack article was phenomenal and it is the shorter version of a book by the same name, Ireland 1845-1850: The Perfect Holocaust and Who Kept It Perfect found here for free online. The author is Mr. Christopher Fogarty, a 90 year old man born in Ireland currently living in Chicago. Jack actually knows Chris and gave me his phone number. I hope to interview him one day on my podcast on this very topic.
Before describing the basics of the article and book, let me say that Mr. Fogarty heavily sourced every single accusation he made against the English. The above-linked article describes the expansive research in his book:
The evidence Fogarty presents reads like a prosecutor’s case file. He names every British regiment involved, tracking their movements through Ireland’s 32 counties via National Archives records. He identifies General Sir Edward Blakeney as the Commander-in-Chief who orchestrated this operation from before 1845 through 1851 – a man Queen Victoria honored with the Order of the Bath in 1849 as he neared completion of his genocidal mission. The book reproduces shipping records from The London Times showing “whole fleets of provisions continually arriving from the land of starvation to the ports of wealth.” Most damning are the British military’s own Ordnance Survey maps from 1824-1846, which marked every grain mill, brewery, distillery, and food processing facility across Ireland – thousands of locations producing food while people died of hunger directly outside their doors. Lord Clarendon’s letter to Prime Minister Russell accidentally confirms everything: the country would be “tranquil” if not for British troops’ “harassing duty of escorting provisions.” This wasn’t crop failure. It was systematic extraction enforced by 100,000 armed personnel including army, militia, constabulary, coast guard, and navy.
Yes, Fogarty provides mountains of evidence that the English purposely starved the Irish in the 19th century. He even used the National Archives of the UK and articles from The London Times to prove this. The article continues about what really happened in 19th century history:
Between 1845 and 1850, the British government murdered approximately five million Irish people – half the population – in what they’ve convinced the world was a natural famine. Here’s what really happened: only the potato crop failed, while Ireland continued producing massive amounts of grain, cattle, dairy, and other foods. But Britain deployed 67 army regiments, about 100,000 armed men total, to remove all this food at gunpoint for export to England while the producers starved. The British Commander-in-Chief, General Blakeney, actually received a knighthood from Queen Victoria for successfully completing this genocide. They covered it up by blaming the Irish for “depending on one crop” and got historians to repeat the lie for 170 years. The evidence is overwhelming – British military records show which regiments removed food from which counties, shipping records document the food arriving in English ports, and mass graves exist in virtually every Irish townland. Yet every Irish history book still calls it a “famine” rather than genocide. It’s like teaching the Holocaust as a “Jewish housing shortage.” The cover-up continues because admitting the truth would require Britain to acknowledge one of history’s greatest crimes and fundamentally change how we understand colonialism.
As I have written before, my mother’s four grandparents came from Ireland. How could I not know the true history of my own Donnelly and Kenny clans? Read again the line I quoted from Nuremberg at the beginning of the article: “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.” The English claimed in all their history books (including the ones we read in Catholic grade schools here in the USA) that the alleged “potato famine” was due to the stupidity of the Irish.
Yes, the history books, even that confused one called The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham Smith (that I mentioned above) holds that the crops failed around 1845 because the Irish were so sadly inept in their feeble attempts at farming and housekeeping. Yet even The Great Hunger was forced to mention some of the British garrisons mysteriously taking boatloads and boatloads of provisions away. Few know this. In fact, so rampant is this brainwashing of recent history that some Irish actually began to believe they were racially inferior due to causing their own alleged food famine!
As I wrote at the beginning of this article, it is believed that the English killed 5 million Irish in the 19th century because of the Catholic faith. If you read the above article or book, you may come to the conclusion (as I did) that this would be martyrdom for Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. Thus, it might be fair to say millions of lay Irish families died for the faith as well as thousands of priests and hundreds of bishops. This was not a white martyrdom, but a red martyrdom. All holy martyrs of Ireland, pray for us!
However, some of the Catholic hierarchy capitulated with the English in order to save their own hides. Weak Irish bishops executed such disgusting self-preservation under pretext of peace and obedience. Sound familiar to anything currently happening in the current Church crisis? The article briefly describes some of the Irish clergy’s deal making with a devil:
The Catholic Church hierarchy’s role was complex and often collaborative with British authority, prioritizing institutional preservation over protecting their starving flock. Many bishops and senior clergy actively discouraged resistance to food removal, preaching submission to authority and acceptance of suffering as God’s will. They condemned secret societies and physical resistance, threatening excommunication for those who participated in agrarian violence. The hierarchy’s opposition to revolutionary movements like the Young Irelanders and later the Fenians effectively divided and weakened Irish resistance. When the Home Rule movement emerged, influential newspapers under clerical influence began declaring that while Home Rule was just, it was “inopportune,” undermining political efforts for Irish self-determination.
May God extend His mercy to them (both the capitulators of yore and those of today) because history will not.
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