Musings elsewhere: “Sanctimonious distaste for the supposedly ‘outlying’ views of the ‘extremists’ mask the fact that both parties are as much a part of the endless peace processing project as their forebears in the UUP and SDLP. The growth of the once fringe parties does not represent a polarisation of politics as much as it represents a total retreat from actual politics into a primarily cultural space where loud but meaningless sham battles function as proxies for the conflict of the past.”‘Right-thinking’ people tend to view the DUP and Sinn Féin as equal and opposite. Supporters, of course, say this untrue – the DUP didn’t have an armed wing and Sinn Féin is significantly more socially liberal. Whatever. That’s not my point. What I am interested in is two things:
– The presentation of the DUP and Sinn Féin as ‘extremists’ is demonstrably untrue and covers the parties massive moves
– It seeks invalidate the votes of an awful lot of people and does nothing to try and change these voters minds
Traditional Unionist Voice, meanwhile, is regularly denounced as neanderthal, but is it not just, well, traditionally unionist? On the republican side, I recently watched some éirígí videos on Youtube and was surprised at how old-fashioned they were. Not in terms of production values, but in how they presented their case.
Amid all the talk of sectarianism, real though it is, appears to be a snobbish distaste for people and not much in the way of attempts to change their minds through genuine political argument.
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