“All tender and effeminate notions must be stilled by a cold and single-blooded passion.”
In the Belfast Telegraph, Eilis O’Hanlon has written an impressively controlled piece of writing on how Sinn Fein and its wider Republican movement (the organisation formerly known as the IRA) have managed to subordinate the natural bonds of human feeling to the furtherance of ‘the cause’. A dissenting scion of the Cahill family, she begins with her experience of going to her mother’s funeral last Autumn in the literal and metaphorical heart of Republican west Belfast:
Most of those individuals who attended my mother’s wake had heard the same stories and scandals that I had and more besides — because I moved away from republican Belfast physically and psychologically and politically a long time ago, and they stayed right in the heart of it. They knew better than I did the myriad ways in which the authority figures they respected and held up as icons of political virtue had turned a blind eye to appalling abuses — yet they remained true to the republican faith.Including the woman who has now spoken so painfully of what happened to her, who has been keen to stress her continuing loyalty to the republican movement. Knowing all they did, they still bought into the myth of the republican family, even when they could see that the republican family tree was rotten to the core, and when it was clear that certain people in that family tree had a special branch all of their own, where they were protected from the consequences of their worst actions.
They could internalise the things they knew, and then kind of not know them any more, in order not to let anything damage the struggle.
She sees clear roots in the Russian anarchists of an earlier age:
Sergey Nechayev, the 19th century Russian nihilist, who wrote his Catechism of the Revolutionary as a blueprint for the destruction of society, described such a man best: “All the tender and effeminate emotions of kinship, friendship, love, gratitude, and even honour, must be stilled in him by a cold and single-blooded passion.”
As it happens, we know that the bond of kinship does survive, because Adams, as the evidence now seems incontrovertible, treated his brother Liam differently from any other person in west Belfast who had been accused of the abuse of his own child; and he was also prepared to continue to publicly eulogise their father, despite now admitting that the man was a sadistic brute and sexual predator who abused some of his own children.
Even so, Nechayev’s words still ring chillingly true. The only ultimate love is for the revolution; the necessities of struggle transcend all other considerations. Adams could eulogise monsters because the eulogies served a cause which needed to sentimentalise where it came from in order to justify what it was doing. In that way, he was no different from the community he represented. He was the same, only more so
And finally:
Terrorists, like sexual abusers, like doing unspeakable things to human flesh. It’s just that politics gives one side of the same perverted coin a convenient excuse. It’s certainly no coincidence that so many women get turned on by violent men, or that other violent men rally round to hush up their crimes.
Islamic suicide bombers take this diseased sexuality to its ultimate conclusion by turning their very bodies into weapons.
In retrospect, it’s a pity that the IRA’s heroes didn’t have the courage of their convictions to adopt the same methods themselves, because then there would have been fewer of them around to rape women and children, and fewer to cover up for their abusive comrades afterwards.
But then the IRA always were cowards. They didn’t mind who died for the cause, just so long as it wasn’t them. What’s emerging now is only scratching the surface of their vicious collective history.
As the Catholic Church found out before them, once the floodgates open, there’s no closing them again.
I blame the Catholic Church, specifically the Jesuit Berrigan brothers, who made us believe all the H Blockers were straight out of the Hollywood set of The Informer. It turns out a lot of them were dross and some, like Gibney and Skelly, were gay (ie homosexual predators).
The IRA needed all the cannon fodder they could get. If a guy was into kiddies or his comrades’ rear ends, what matter if he would serve with Wilson, Finucane and the other wets of the PIRA.
Paddy
Whilst to a large extent I agree with you about the responsibility of the Catholic church, I disagree with everything else.
This is the danger the whole republican movement is facing. It is outrageous to claim all were abusers or all knew of abuse happening.
Homosexual predator – because you are gay, are you serious Paddy. Thats DUP talk, moral judgement.
Why on earth does it matter if someone is gay or straight?
What has that got to do with child abuse or rape?
If this is ‘whataboutery’ I dont like it.
#
I blame the Catholic Church, specifically the Jesuit Berrigan brothers, who made us believe all the H Blockers were straight out of the Hollywood set of The Informer. It turns out a lot of them were dross and some, like Gibney and Skelly, were gay (ie homosexual predators).
The IRA needed all the cannon fodder they could get. If a guy was into kiddies or his comrades’ rear ends, what matter if he would serve with Wilson, Finucane and the other wets of the PIRA.
Posted by Paddy on Jan 27, 2010 @ 03:26 PM
What a statement, my o my ?
I am not attacking the Catholic Church, merely joining in with the chorus who blame them for everything. My point about the Berrigans is they said the H Block prisoners were good and morally upright. I am sure Fox and McGuigan of the Cappagh Gun Club were, and many of the South Armagh crowd. But to say all the Provo prisoners would have benn angels were in not for the Troubles is to live in reality.
I find Sam McCrory, Johnny Adair’s right hand man, offensive. That british gays now embrace him does not make him lesB of a sectarian killer in my eyes.
One of the things historically wrong with being a homosecual is it left you open to bribery and manipulation. Ask Kilby, McClean, Blunt, Gibney.
Not all homosexuals are angels either. Skelly certainly isn’t.
Pip he’s a DUP supporter pretending his name is Paddy, knows Skelly and Gibney, a loyalist and a republican, two reason why he knows of them ! Let him roast in the fires of hell and suffer eternal damnation an all that.
One of the things historically wrong with being a homosecual is it left you open to bribery and manipulation. Ask Kilby, McClean, Blunt, Gibney.
Not all homosexuals are angels either. Skelly certainly isn’t.
Posted by Paddy on Jan 27, 2010 @ 03:55 PM
Yeah Paddy right, Of the hundreds of thousands of gays all over the world, we will stigmatise them as being sexual predators, because of 5 people who you claim can support your thesis. Your just a bigot.
O’Hanlon’s article is asinine. The propaganda behind suggesting sexual perversion as a motive for terrorism is to create the impression that there could be no political – or indeed rational – explanation for why such groups would use violence against the state – that their actions are so inexplicable being devoid of any legitimate cause, rationale or method that they could only arise as outworking of some dysfunctional mental process or disturbing psychosexual dynamic and not as the result of the actions of an oppressive state.
The spurious (and that word seems so inadequate) link between terrorism and sexual perversion proffered in the article is that both involve contact – typically harmful – with human flesh. Gee, so does war and contact sport.
It’s a bit like Shin Bet trying to develop the thesis that 911 was an anti-gay demonstration since the twin towers are two phallic symbols – clearly erected in an act of sinful mutual fellatio – and the planes symbolise the AIDS virus or other foreign body that infects the perverts, destroying them.
In fact, I think I might write such an article for the Independent.
Paddy
I am sure there are just as many sadists and abusive predators among the gay community as among the straight, (relative to numbers of course) but as far as I know none are accused of abusing children or raping anyone in the current cases.
As for the various ‘Brothers’ all of them are so completely discredited – by comparison the H block prisoners did indeed appear to be good and morally upright.
This is about the outstanding allegations of child abuse and rape, lets keep it there, its bad enough.
“It’s a bit like Shin Bet trying to develop the thesis that 911 was an anti-gay demonstration since the twin towers are two phallic symbols – clearly erected in an act of sinful mutual fellatio – and the planes symbolise the AIDS virus or other foreign body that infects the perverts, destroying them.”
You might be on to something there.
Tacapall: You label me a bigot for saying I don’t like one of the most prolific sectarian killers of the entire Troubles.
David Trimble hit it when he aksed Gerry Adams to call of his dirty, squalid war. Dirty and squlid it was.
And, if the british Legion and their American equivalents are to believed, lots of squaddies and ex squaddies are not dinner party material.
A large proportion of the Belfast and Derry Provos were sickos. In Gun rule, what else can you expect? Like the mafia sodiers, may of these were used (and abused) by wiser men, the so called godfathers.
Isn’t it odd how the IRSP/INLA, for example have been written out of the H Block hunger strike narrative. To the (perverted) vistor, the spoils and all that.
You are right, the media has failed on this story-to report on how the RUC/PSNI completely and utterly failed on this.
“This is about the outstanding allegations of child abuse and rape, lets keep it there, its bad enough.”
It is also about the betrayal of the vulnerable, of manipulating and abusing people, all of which was central to the “armed struggle”.
Paddy
I agree with you it is about the betrayal of vulnerable people with no where to run for help.
But you must not confuse the betrayed with willing accomplices.
I stopped supporting the IRA after the murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, her children orphaned by someone who clearly cared nothing for children, except as an example of horror.
How lucky for me I was far away, with no young children to worry about. If I had lived there then, do you imagine I would have gone to the police and put my children at additional risk. I would have toed the line, and protected my family as best I could, thats what most would do and there is no shame in that.
Ms O’Hanlons piece shows the pressure and the struggle.
Tacapall
This was child rape. It was covered up.
What does that say about the Party and SF voters?
And its not the only case. One girl was even refused permission to get counselling in case it might leak out. This was a vile cover up as bad as the Irish bishops
” Cowards don’t die on hunger strike”
….in this case fools do. Didn’t 4 of them die when a deal was on the table that they weren’t told about?
This is nasty and beneath reason.
The hunger strikers died because they believed in the cause and the cause was good. Good men died for a good cause and left a few rotten apples to poison the barrel.
It was just a few and they will be caught. It is not for those with evidently other axes to grind to gloat, they have their own horror stories and those stories will be told, hopefully in court.
Let the people who gave their lives rest in peace, because one thing is sure, they were braver by far than you or I.
Well that’s always the way. It only take a few bad apples to give all terrorists a bad name.
Why did the INLA hunger strikers die? So Sinn Feiners could prosper by helping to run the 6 counties? They were used by selfish, self seekers like Gerry and Liam Adams, and by Joe Cahill, O’Hanlon’s uncle and an Adams muppet.
That’s a case of cowards riding on the backs of a few principled but misguided souls for a free ride to glory at their expense. The overwhelming majority of that incarcerated ilk did not volunteer to starve to death. And it’s just as well since all they died for was for Her Majesty’s government to pay Martin a ministerial pension.
I suspect that it is the case that the Shinners did not act to remove sex offenders from their ranks because it was the policy of the leadership to allow those members to be compromised and thereby controlled by the security services, and that is the same reason why that leadership appointed members of the security services to run their internal security department.
Tacapall: You label me a bigot for saying I don’t like one of the most prolific sectarian killers of the entire Troubles.
Thats not what I posted about Paddy – Gibney and Skelly, were gay (ie homosexual predators).
Homosexual predators ! Now what then did you exactly mean by this statement, Are gays different in the sense that they are more ruthless killing machines or what are you saying. To me your just a bigot, or someone who’s uncomfortable with his own sexuality. Or of course a religious fanatic.
Jimmy-Sands and Paddy
So we castigate the dead? Is that it, is that all some of us are good for?
Leave the dead be. It is not for a couple of ‘armchair warriors’ to call them names.
If, in the end they were betrayed, well so were a lot of people, including loyalists who dont seem to me to have much to crow about.
I tell you this, the day I have to put my faith in a cuckold and a money grubbing, sex hungry harridan, thats the day I give up.
“So we castigate the dead? Is that it, is that all some of us are good for?”
So Fred West is a nice guy now that he has shuffled off his mortal coil?
“So we castigate the dead?”
I consider it more of an attack on necrophilia.
Alias
Be warned, I have run out of cigarettes, again.
If you are daring to compare the likes of Bobby Sands with the likes of Fred West???
WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT WITH SOAP!!!
I suspect that it is the case that the Shinners did not act to remove sex offenders from their ranks because it was the policy of the leadership to allow those members to be compromised and thereby controlled by the security services, and that is the same reason why that leadership appointed members of the security services to run their internal security department.
Posted by Alias on Jan 27, 2010 @ 06:51 PM
What does this say about the British Government then Alias, implication in the murder of their own soldiers, policemens and citizens, in fact they therefore, planned the murders, got their agents to carry them out, give crocodile tears at their funerals. Perfidious Albion, why would all right thinking people want people like that to rule over them or lecture them about democracy.
Jimmy-Sands
Necrophilia – erotic attraction to a corpse.
You realise the above says more about supporters of unionism than it does about respect for the dead.
No pippakin, I’m afraid that one went right over my head.
Taca, you appear have bought into the narrative that imperialism was all about bringing civilisation and Christianity to the natives of far-flung (and nearby) places. I generally had the view that it wasn’t and that any soldiers who died in such adventurism were of little concern to their paymasters. You’ll see the same tears shed for soldiers in Iraq, but what did the British state care about the legality of that enterprise?
Jimmy-Sands
Of course it did.
Alias
Dont confuse the soldier and the state. A soldier goes where he is sent and does what he is told, the people doing the telling and the sending, they are the state.
We should not blame the soldier for his task, we should put Tony Blair on trial at the Hague.
Pipakin: why can you not see links to West and the hunger strikers? Many deaths are linked to them?
granni trixie
I am taking your question seriously.
Is there a Fred West freedom fighter, either loyalist or republican?
If not then are we talking of the Fred West who sadistically murdered several girls in Gloucester?
And are we talking of hunger strikers who put themselves to a slow and painful death for the cause they believed in?
It does not matter if we disagree with their cause, we may think their deaths prolonged and exacerbated the violence, we may even think it gave some the platform they needed to catapult themselves to fame.
I dont believe we should compare such men with a sadistic pervert who murdered for pleasure. The hunger strikers gave their lives to the cause they believed in, and I believe we should respect them for that.
I do not respect the HSs. They were off their heads. Deaths followed their acts. They were used by SF. And for what?
“The hunger strikers gave their lives to the cause they believed in, and I believe we should respect them for that. ”
So did the 9/11 hijackers. Do I have to respect them too? How about Jim Jones and his own deluded martyrs in Guyana? Are the Heaven’s Gate cult worthy of our approbation?
The willingness to top yourself for a stupid idea is greatly overrated in my view.
granni trixie
I agree their cause and their possible legacy have been abused. The hunger strikers were lied to and mislead by their ‘fellow activists’. It makes no difference. Romantic fools? maybe, but I am reluctant to belittle their faith in their cause, when to do so serves no purpose.
Everything since their deaths has been done by others. We have no way of knowing if they would have agreed with any of it.
Jimmy-Sands
The difference is the only people the hunger strikers actually killed by their own actions was themselves.
I find it hard to believe anyone could compare the hunger strikers to Fred West. Its offensive. blame the PIRA, the IRA, Sinn Fein, but dont blame the people who were tricked and had no way of knowing what would follow their deaths.
“The difference is the only people the hunger strikers actually killed by their own actions was themselves. ”
That’ll certainly come as a surprise to the families of Francis Hughes’ victims.
Cynic2, you wrote: “She’s an outsider. Doesn’t know North Belfast so her views are invalid.”
Actually, her family are from the Antrim Road in North Belfast (after they were burnt out of their previous home near Carlisle Circus).
You also said: “For people who treat you with such contempt in feeding you lie after lie to cover it up.”
My point entirely. Eilis O’Hanlon has previously written pieces that contained demonstrable factual inaccuracies, in particular some pieces she wrote about events or people in North Belfast (hence my comment). Didn’t someone once say that truth is the first victim in a war? Her previous contributions have then fed people ‘lies’ (to paraphrase you), or, misremembered unhappenings, if you want to be parliamentary about it. As everyone that writes on here knows, words are not meaningless, empty scribblings – they have a power that is too easily mis-used. What she has written, particularly in the Sunday Independent has coloured peoples opinions and fed their prejudices about Northern Ireland. So I don’t see her as some benign observer reporting from the sidelines, she has been an active participant in the broader discourse around the troubles.
“WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT WITH SOAP!!!” – pippakin
I was responding to your use of [i]de mortuis nil nisi bonum[/i] as a tool to censor criticism of the actions of the dead.
In contrast to a culture of not speaking ill of the dead, Jewish law has [i]lashon hara[/i] which makes it mandatory to speak ill of the dead (or the living) in some situations where a greater good is served by such speech or harm is done by silence.
I don’t think that a bad person (and these folks were members of vicious sectarian murder gangs) is made into a good person by displaying a willingness to sacrifice his own life for some criminal project.
Now lest you think they died for Old Mother Ireland, you should acquaint yourself with what their actual demands were: nothing other than selfish interests aimed at making their stay in Her Majesty’s hotel more pleasant by upgrading it from a no-star to a one-star minimum establishment – the right to sit on their arses all day and not do any work; the right to wear snazzy clothing, and other ‘fundamental principles’ such as the right to regular visits and goods from outside, etc.
I have a lot of respect for anyone who would subject himself to that kind or ordeal and would suppose that they are a breed apart, but you could also make the case that they were manipulated into that situation without any real grasp of how they were overreacting to what was a trivial complaint, and that their failure to grasp that reality is evidence of a psychosis.
Certainly if these folks actually believed that their sectarian murder campaign would cause the British state to renounce its claim to the territory of Northern Ireland and the British nation within that region to renounce its right to self-determination then they had an extremely tenuous grip on reality. If they didn’t believe that then on what grounds did they justify their actions? These folks got a huge kick out of what they were engaged in.
In reality, it was the Irish state and not the British state which renounced its claim to the territory of Northern Ireland and it was the Irish nation in that region who renounced its right to self-determination and not the British nation as a direct result of their murder campaign. The law of unintended consequences? Unintended by the Hunger Strikers perhaps…
These folks are not worthy of your heroic veneration. If you want heroes up there, then go find them among those who learned to walk with artificial limbs or learned to cope with years of facial reconstruction surgery.
Alias
I think the hunger strikers were misguided fools taken advantage of by cynical liars and manipulators.
If we cannot persuade the majority of people in the north to want to be Irish, we have to ask ourselves what are we doing wrong, not try to kill off the opposition. Killing loses hearts, minds and votes.
However, none of the above, detracts from the fact that these foolish people gave up their own lives for their cause.
Such acts have nothing to do with sadistic perverts like Fred West. Who knows what the hunger strikers would have made of their lives, we know what Fred West made of his.
Alias your belittlement of the Hunger strikers who sacrificed their lives has revealed your colonialist thinking, that this was a sectarian war and Britain was here mearly to separate the warring factions. Thankfully the opinions of people like yourself are not endorsed by the majority of the rest of the people in this world who have an understanding of the root cause of the problems that have been inflicted on Ireland for generations. Below is a brief tract of Bobby Sand’s journal from his first days on hunger strike.
I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.
I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.
Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.
Hardly the rantings of someone with a psychotic disorder. In fact one has to admire not only their bravery, but their integrity, a virtue not many of their adversaries possess.
“That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.”
Nothing to do with the furniture shop then?
You’re quite articulate Jimmy, Im sure you’re familiar with the term “Cause and effect”
In June 1972, the family were intimidated out of their home in Doonbeg Drive, Rathcoole and moved into the newly built Twinbrook estate on the fringe of nationalist West Belfast. Bernadette again recalled: We had suffered intimidation for about eighteen months before we were actually put out. We had always been used to having Protestant friends. Bobby had gone around with Catholics and Protestants, but it ended when everything erupted, that the friends he went about with for years were the same ones who helped to put his family out of their home.
Well obviously anyone experiencing that would conclude that the solution was to blow up a furniture shop. Is that the argument?
Well Jimmy cause and effect goes from the start to the finish, you go from the middle to the finish, let me make it clearer.
Plantations in 16th and 17th century Ireland were the confiscation of land by the Government of England and the colonisation of this land with settlers from England and Scotland.
The Plantations were established throughout the country by the confiscation of lands occupied by Gaelic clans and Hiberno-Norman dynasties, but principally in the provinces of Munster and Ulster. The lands were then granted by Crown authority to colonists (“planters”) from Britain. This process began during the reign of Henry VIII and continued under Mary I and Elizabeth I. It was accelerated under James I, Charles I and Cromwell.
The early plantations in the 16th century tended to be based on small “exemplary” colonies. The later plantations were based on mass confiscations of land from Irish landowners and the subsequent importation of large numbers of settlers from England, Scotland and Wales.
The final official plantations took place under Oliver Cromwell’s English Commonwealth during the 1650s, when thousands of Parliamentarian soldiers were settled in Ireland. Outside of the plantations, significant migration into Ireland continued well into the 18th century, from both Britain and continental Europe.
The plantations changed the demography of Ireland by creating large communities with a British and Protestant identity. These communities effectively opposed the interests of the earlier inhabitants, who had an Irish and Roman Catholic identity.[1] The physical and economic nature of Irish society was also changed, as new concepts of ownership, trade and credit were introduced. These changes led to the creation of a British Protestant ruling class, which secured the authority of Crown government in Ireland during the 17th century.
Do you get it now ! It cant be any clearer.
Jimmy-Sands
The issue was to persuade the Catholics of the area that the Brits were really against them, and it worked.
Tacapall
Now, now, you know we dont refer to torture anymore. we call it ‘enhanced interrogation or even coerced interrogation’ and anyone with an IQ thanks god they were in prisons run by the Brits and not some now notorious others.
The issue was to persuade the Catholics of the area that the Brits were really against them, and it worked.
Posted by pippakin on Jan 28, 2010 @ 02:53 PM
Cant work out what or who you’re talking about here.
as for your last paragraph, sanctimonious bullshit.
Pipakin:Around the time of the HS |I was visiting a local school for children with disabilities. There I saw bravery – embracing life and making the most of what they have.
The cult of the HS is a bad example,particuarly to young ones who we should be deflecting away from suicide to other ways of resolving problems.
Tacapall: see above.
Indeed granni trixie refer you to post 11