Forget the parades of visiting dignitaries for St. Patrick’s Day the best thing about March 17 this year was a pub with no beer that banned the Irish.

The best thing about St. Patrick’s Day 2018 was not the big parades or the visiting dignitaries or the artistic extravaganzas.

It was a pub with no beer or entry for the Irish. Brilliant.

A pop-up pub was set up along the route of Detroit’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade last weekend - with the intent of refusing Irish entry.

It is worth watching the video as the “bouncer” blocks any Irish from entering.

It was all part of an elaborate history lesson beautifully timed by a very talented advertising creative director called Dan Margulis.

Margulis was making the key point that everyone loves the Irish in 2018 but go back a century and a half and we were monkeys, drunks, filthy vermin you name it.

We were murdered, burnt alive (Louisville Know-Nothing riots 1855) refused employment used as cannon fodder and much more.

We came from the original "shithole" country after the Famine.

Can you imagine Donald Trump’s reaction if 20,000 Irish a month were pouring into East Coast cities many spreading contagion and disease?

The Donald would have a naval blockade around Ireland with orders to sink every ship on sight if it ever happened.

The point beautifully made by Margulis is that the Irish climbed out of the gutter and ended up in the White House.

"No Irish": This fake pub in Detroit made a political point superbly.

"No Irish": This fake pub in Detroit made a political point superbly.

Mostly Latino Dreamers are waiting for the same opportunity today, yet I will hear again and again that the Irish came here legally unlike a poor dreamer brought here as a child with no say in the matter.

Sure, the Irish came legally and died from dysentery, cholera, fever starvation and other conditions when they weren’t running in fear of their lives from Know-Nothing hordes.

Margulis, the creator of the experiment, was saying “remember that, don’t be so hasty to condemn others”.

"On a day when everyone is proclaiming solidarity with an immigrant group ... we wanted them to feel what it was like to be treated like an Irish immigrant … years ago in this country, and hopefully that would get them to think about the way we treat current immigrant groups," said Margulis, who works for Doner, a major advertising agency.

On St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish. And everyone trying to get into the No Irish Pub will be treated like an Irish Immigrant.

Posted by No Irish Pub on Friday, 16 March 2018

As expected, many people got angry.

Margulis said: "People were outraged, and they didn't understand how someone could be so racist."

"There were few people who got extremely angry and wanted to fight, and they diffused that."

He said: "Our goal wasn't to make people mad. It was to make people think.”

Make us think he certainly did on St. Patrick’s Day 2018.

Let’s thank him for that.

Read more: Short film reveals the terrible history of No Irish Need Apply