We are already living in a united Ireland - its just that republicans haven’t realised it yet. In his latest Fearless Flying Column, contentious political commentator, Dr John Coulter, suggested that nationalists’ rewriting of history has unleashed a literary war on the Union.

Former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams may have been a few years out with his pontificating that there would be a united Ireland by 2016 (two years ago!) to mark the centenary of the doomed Dublin Easter Rising.

But the Sinn Fein propagandists have realised the merits of a new tactic to ‘bash the Brits’, and they have borrowed it from their forefathers’ pussy-footing with Hitler’s Nazis during the Second World War.

The IRA of the 1940s wanted to take advantage of the United Kingdom’s dilemma in trying to defeat Nazi Germany, when the UK stood alone against Hitler’s legions with France defeated and the United States not yet in the war prior to the disaster at Pearl Harbour.

The IRA operated a simple philosophy - Britain’s misfortune is Ireland’s opportunity. It was the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, who coined the maxim - tell a lie often enough, and the people will believe it!

For 30 years, the IRA’s terrorist shot and bombed the pro-Union community. After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the republican movement embarked on a cultural war against the pro-Union community, targeting parades, bonfires and anything which represented the pro-Union identity.

Now phase three of this republican agenda is being unleashed - the literary war against the pro-Union community through the art of rewriting history with the central theme - a united Ireland is inevitable so you Unionists might as well face that reality!

In this literary war, revision of legacy issues will be foremost, especially focusing on the deaths of IRA terrorists. That revisionism tactic will be to use any legacy funding to reach a conclusion which will move from the ‘they could have been arrested’ to ‘they were summarily executed by the British state’.

This revisionism by republicans will be used to both justify IRA murders as well as condemn the killings of republicans by British security forces - and every murder committed by loyalists was assisted by acts of collusion from the British state.

While IRA atrocities, such as the La Mon massacre and the Kingsmill massacre, are currently being placated with lip-service and lame-duck condemnation, the republican concept of ‘the long war’ means republicans waiting for a number of years until many who suffered in those attacks have passed away or are too elderly to object - then we will see a propaganda campaign to justify the need by republicans to attack a collie dog dinner at La Mon and butcher 10 Protestant workers as they returned home.

Republicans will have already used this revisionist tactic to justify their atrocities during the Irish Civil War in the 1920 - especially with the centenary of that inter-republican bloodbath approaching in two years’ time.

No doubt to the fore will be the fact that more than 70 IRA members - who opposed the Treaty - were executed by the pro-Treaty Free State forces, many with trial and even some tied to a land mine which exploded. Could the revisionist bandwagon roll on so much that all IRA terrorists executed during that civil war will be given a posthumous pardon and compensation paid to their descendants, as well as gaining a formal apology from the Taoiseach of the day?

Every gain or concession gained from the British Government, either through the expected Direct Rule, a restored Stormont Executive, or evenly a politically boosted British Irish Intergovernmental Conference, particularly if Direct Rule heralds in same-sex marriage for Northern Ireland, more liberal abortion legislation, a stand-alone Irish Language Act, and tougher defamation laws - moves which will leave Northern Ireland society resembling the pluralist and secular society which has developed south of the Irish border.

Sinn Fein’s revisionist and literary war will aim to try and get the British Government to formally apologise for the deaths of IRA terrorists in shoot-outs with the security forces. The key fight in this campaign will focus on the Loughgall ambush in the late 1980s when eight IRA terrorists from the East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out by the SAS.

Under the revisionist scheme, republicans will work towards a scheme whereby the British Government issues a statement admitting that the eight IRA terrorists shot dead were murdered, formally apologises for their deaths and pays substantial compensation to the families of the eight.

Win the Loughgall case, and republicans will systemically work their way through many other incidents in which republicans died campaigning for a similar outcome. In turn, the murders of members of the security forces will be justified and the victims demonised. Civilian deaths will be explained away as collateral damage.

The ultimate long-term aim is to convince the pro-Union community that they are no longer in the UK and they might as well accept the reality that they are in a united Ireland in all but a political name.

The key flaw in republicans’ propaganda campaign is - what happens if a section of the pro-Union community post Brexit starts to push the agenda that the only way for the Republic to survive economically is to negotiate a closer Union with the UK, especially if support for the Scottish National Party continues to ebb north of the English border and the chance for a second independence referendum rapidly evaporates.

While this is the flaw in republican revisionist thinking and strategy, it also contains a major Achilles’ Heel. What happens if a small group of loyalists decide to begin a terror war - not against Catholics in Northern Ireland, but against economic and political targets in the South?

Skeptics will clearly suggest that loyalism as it currently exists does not possess the stomach for a new terror campaign. But that is to assume that such dissident loyalists will come from the existing groups, such as the UVF, UDA, Red Hand Commando and the LVF.

What Sinn Fein revisionists seem to have overlooked is that a new generation of loyalist exists for whom the Good Friday Agreement and the 1994 ceasefire by the Combined Loyalist Military Command are merely statistics in history books.

Indeed, what republicanism also seems to be forgetting the changing nature of terrorism, with the pace being set by the ‘lone wolf’ tactic adopted by Islamic radicals.

It would only take a handful of loyalist fanatics to bring Dublin to its political knees within a fortnight. The days of Ulster Third Force and Ulster Resistance prancing around the streets of Ulster are long gone. Terror groups are no longer organised in platoons, companies and battalions, like the old Carsonsite UVF.

A small cell with access to Islamic-style arsenals could create havoc in the Republic. Such an analysis should not be dismissed as Right-wing sabre-rattling.

The massive question which republicans must urgently address - could nationalism push loyalism too far with its revisionist literary war against the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland?


John Coulter is a unionist political commentator and former Blanket columnist. 

John Coulter is also author of ‘An Sais Glas: (The Green Sash): The Road to National Republicanism’, which is available on Amazon Kindle.

Follow John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

Literary War Against Unionism

We are already living in a united Ireland - its just that republicans haven’t realised it yet. In his latest Fearless Flying Column, contentious political commentator, Dr John Coulter, suggested that nationalists’ rewriting of history has unleashed a literary war on the Union.

Former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams may have been a few years out with his pontificating that there would be a united Ireland by 2016 (two years ago!) to mark the centenary of the doomed Dublin Easter Rising.

But the Sinn Fein propagandists have realised the merits of a new tactic to ‘bash the Brits’, and they have borrowed it from their forefathers’ pussy-footing with Hitler’s Nazis during the Second World War.

The IRA of the 1940s wanted to take advantage of the United Kingdom’s dilemma in trying to defeat Nazi Germany, when the UK stood alone against Hitler’s legions with France defeated and the United States not yet in the war prior to the disaster at Pearl Harbour.

The IRA operated a simple philosophy - Britain’s misfortune is Ireland’s opportunity. It was the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, who coined the maxim - tell a lie often enough, and the people will believe it!

For 30 years, the IRA’s terrorist shot and bombed the pro-Union community. After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the republican movement embarked on a cultural war against the pro-Union community, targeting parades, bonfires and anything which represented the pro-Union identity.

Now phase three of this republican agenda is being unleashed - the literary war against the pro-Union community through the art of rewriting history with the central theme - a united Ireland is inevitable so you Unionists might as well face that reality!

In this literary war, revision of legacy issues will be foremost, especially focusing on the deaths of IRA terrorists. That revisionism tactic will be to use any legacy funding to reach a conclusion which will move from the ‘they could have been arrested’ to ‘they were summarily executed by the British state’.

This revisionism by republicans will be used to both justify IRA murders as well as condemn the killings of republicans by British security forces - and every murder committed by loyalists was assisted by acts of collusion from the British state.

While IRA atrocities, such as the La Mon massacre and the Kingsmill massacre, are currently being placated with lip-service and lame-duck condemnation, the republican concept of ‘the long war’ means republicans waiting for a number of years until many who suffered in those attacks have passed away or are too elderly to object - then we will see a propaganda campaign to justify the need by republicans to attack a collie dog dinner at La Mon and butcher 10 Protestant workers as they returned home.

Republicans will have already used this revisionist tactic to justify their atrocities during the Irish Civil War in the 1920 - especially with the centenary of that inter-republican bloodbath approaching in two years’ time.

No doubt to the fore will be the fact that more than 70 IRA members - who opposed the Treaty - were executed by the pro-Treaty Free State forces, many with trial and even some tied to a land mine which exploded. Could the revisionist bandwagon roll on so much that all IRA terrorists executed during that civil war will be given a posthumous pardon and compensation paid to their descendants, as well as gaining a formal apology from the Taoiseach of the day?

Every gain or concession gained from the British Government, either through the expected Direct Rule, a restored Stormont Executive, or evenly a politically boosted British Irish Intergovernmental Conference, particularly if Direct Rule heralds in same-sex marriage for Northern Ireland, more liberal abortion legislation, a stand-alone Irish Language Act, and tougher defamation laws - moves which will leave Northern Ireland society resembling the pluralist and secular society which has developed south of the Irish border.

Sinn Fein’s revisionist and literary war will aim to try and get the British Government to formally apologise for the deaths of IRA terrorists in shoot-outs with the security forces. The key fight in this campaign will focus on the Loughgall ambush in the late 1980s when eight IRA terrorists from the East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out by the SAS.

Under the revisionist scheme, republicans will work towards a scheme whereby the British Government issues a statement admitting that the eight IRA terrorists shot dead were murdered, formally apologises for their deaths and pays substantial compensation to the families of the eight.

Win the Loughgall case, and republicans will systemically work their way through many other incidents in which republicans died campaigning for a similar outcome. In turn, the murders of members of the security forces will be justified and the victims demonised. Civilian deaths will be explained away as collateral damage.

The ultimate long-term aim is to convince the pro-Union community that they are no longer in the UK and they might as well accept the reality that they are in a united Ireland in all but a political name.

The key flaw in republicans’ propaganda campaign is - what happens if a section of the pro-Union community post Brexit starts to push the agenda that the only way for the Republic to survive economically is to negotiate a closer Union with the UK, especially if support for the Scottish National Party continues to ebb north of the English border and the chance for a second independence referendum rapidly evaporates.

While this is the flaw in republican revisionist thinking and strategy, it also contains a major Achilles’ Heel. What happens if a small group of loyalists decide to begin a terror war - not against Catholics in Northern Ireland, but against economic and political targets in the South?

Skeptics will clearly suggest that loyalism as it currently exists does not possess the stomach for a new terror campaign. But that is to assume that such dissident loyalists will come from the existing groups, such as the UVF, UDA, Red Hand Commando and the LVF.

What Sinn Fein revisionists seem to have overlooked is that a new generation of loyalist exists for whom the Good Friday Agreement and the 1994 ceasefire by the Combined Loyalist Military Command are merely statistics in history books.

Indeed, what republicanism also seems to be forgetting the changing nature of terrorism, with the pace being set by the ‘lone wolf’ tactic adopted by Islamic radicals.

It would only take a handful of loyalist fanatics to bring Dublin to its political knees within a fortnight. The days of Ulster Third Force and Ulster Resistance prancing around the streets of Ulster are long gone. Terror groups are no longer organised in platoons, companies and battalions, like the old Carsonsite UVF.

A small cell with access to Islamic-style arsenals could create havoc in the Republic. Such an analysis should not be dismissed as Right-wing sabre-rattling.

The massive question which republicans must urgently address - could nationalism push loyalism too far with its revisionist literary war against the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland?


John Coulter is a unionist political commentator and former Blanket columnist. 

John Coulter is also author of ‘An Sais Glas: (The Green Sash): The Road to National Republicanism’, which is available on Amazon Kindle.

Follow John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

3 comments:

  1. The boul John should realise that if unionists terror groups raise their heads similarly like Islamic extremists then we can confidently assume mi5/6 has decided to 'raise their head' I.e ISIS is sponsored by NATO spooks- Operation Gladio continues......'strategy of tension'.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Such an analysis should not be dismissed as Right-wing sabre-rattling."

    If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks...I'm guessing it's not an eagle.

    "Dr" John's article is an exercise in revisionism itself. The armed Loyalist groupings existed solely in response to the IRA. Both of which are no longer in the position of acting as 'defenders' of their respective communities.

    A Northern Loyalist would struggle to find gripe with Dublin these days, given their adoption of Tory policies!

    ReplyDelete
  3. John's latest diatribe in his dreadful lying column is typical of the excuses for Irish Protestants refusing to join their fellow Irish men and women in an independent country. his statement that the Republic is in favour of same sex marriage and abortions ignores the fact the British State he think he lives in has the same liberal laws. They just don't apply in the colony.
    the threat of Protestant working class violence to prevent a United Ireland is as appalling as it is ridiculous. the fact is that if the British government democratically voted in to withdraw from Ireland completely, there is nothing the Unionists could do about it. they would have no say in the matter. they are mere imperialist lackeys. heir only reason for existence is to prevent Irish Unity. nothing else. grow up John.

    ReplyDelete