The banality of paramilitaries as the dumb and dangerous riot in Ballymena.
In Northern Ireland I believe we are normalising and becoming worryingly desensitised to the insidious and persistent existence of paramilitaries on our streets, in our communities and in our cities. The political theorist Hannah Ardent wrote about the banality of evil and how horrific acts were neither radical nor charged with meaning and were often done to control people and many of the acts associated were banal and presented as such. This term is useful when looking at paramilitaries and their actions in …