> Or, perhaps, I am reporting what they tell me, which is that the IRA have been a bunch of thugs for a long time.
>
> "Actual" means "person who lives in Ireland," as opposed to "non-actual," which means "person of Irish descent who lives in the United States and thinks he's Irish because his greatgrandmother came from Cork."
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
>
>
> Maybe it is just the kind of people you meet, Chris, or the vibe you give off that leads them to mask their views. Or perhaps, as your distinction between actual- and non- implies, you only hear what you want to.
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Chris is an impressionable fellow who, by his own admission, doesn't know much about Irish history, nor does he appear to think it important to know in order to arrive at his sweeping conclusions. In this case, he echoes the line of those who dispute that the Catholic communities in Northern Ireland regarded the IRA irregulars as their own and sheltered them against the Royal Ulster Constabulary, British Army, and Protestant Unionist militias.
It's commonplace for the police, military and other agents of repression to portray the armed guerrillas they're fighting as criminal gangs preying on their people with no connection to the ongoing popular struggles for independence or democratic rights which give rise to them, almost always in self-defence. To deny the popular roots of an insurgency, ruling classes and occupying armies necessarily depict those they are subjugating as innocent victims caught in a crossfire between the contending sides who would rather just be left alone. In this way, theirs becomes a civilizing mission to restore order to a grateful population. The ANC in South Africa, the FSLN in Algeria, the NLF in Vietnam, etc. were all, like the IRA, represented in this way until the end of these conflicts revealed the depth of their support among their peoples, without which they could not have survived against superior forces.
Chris, ever the gadfly, is a sucker for these right-wing narratives.