In last weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, prominence was given to a letter from Michael J Cummings, of Albany, New York. Cummings lists his ‘qualifications’ as being a member, National Board, Ancient Order of Hibernians; chairman, Freedom For All Ireland; member, National Board, Irish American Unity Conference.
For those not familiar with Leftist tactics and the IRA’s misuse of the English language, these organizations are what used to be called ‘Front Organizations’. As always with Leftist propaganda vehicles, the titles are a brazen distortion of the reality, so that ‘Hibernians’ is used to conjure up folksy tradition, ‘Freedom’ means that the people involved are out to destroy freedom by terror, and ‘Unity’ means the unity achieved when opponents have been silenced.
Cummings letter does the usual IRA apologist’s work of rewriting history so as to blame the victims. I suppose many Americans, with little knowledge of Northern Ireland and dependent on a lying Media Class for information, will swallow his garbage. The modern history of Ulster violence begins not with a British Army run amok against innocent civilians, but with a series of marches organised by revolutionary socialists keen to capitalize on the US civil rights movement of Dr. King. Behind the marchers were not only revolutionary socialists looking to create a revolutionary situation, but armed men of the IRA. There was never peaceful intent in the minds of the march organizers, though there may have been in some of those Catholics who marched. IRA gunmen, who had been active in Northern Ireland since the 1950’s, were Marxist revolutionaries, and although allowed to operate from Eire’s borders, had long been rejected in the Republic.
Whenever an episode in street violence is bestowed with a grand title that goes unchallenged into journalistic history, you can be sure that Leftists and the Media Class have found each other. Thus Cummings refers to “the Bloody Sunday massacre, the British Army response to the 1970’s peaceful civil rights protest”. The Sunday march he refers to was a very violent march intended to force a confrontation with British troops who were there to be neutral between two factions – Loyalist and Republican. When the troops came under gunfire from IRA members embedded in the marchers, they fired back, killing innocent marchers as well as the less innocent. This sorry event, the result of Leftist planning and British Government weakness, was turned into a propaganda vehicle that runs to this day, as Cummings letter proves. To read the rest of his letter, one would never conclude that thousands of innocent civilians (of all persuasions) as well as Ulster policemen and soldiers trying to keep the peace and UK politicians were murdered by the Leftist IRA and that the modern birth of terrorism as a political weapon began with these people. I have no doubt that with time, thanks to a Leftist rewriting of history and the collusion of a lying Media Class, Cummings’ version of Ulster events will go into the history books and the deliberate murder of protestants at prayer and little children in English shopping malls will be erased, just as Stalin erased whole peoples from history.
My reason for referring to Cummings’ letter is not Northern Ireland and the tragic sell-out of its majority population, however, but to point out that nothing much changes when we do not learn from history, and when we let the Media Class shape our politics.
Northern Ireland in the 1970’s was one of those places where the the Media Class and its Leftist allies used their newfound power to proclaim that black is white when they say so. The British Government, keen to appease the Media Class and the European chattering classes in general, turned its back on the people who were our friends and who were law abiding and instead adopted something approaching a neutral stance between our friends and our enemies. I say ‘something approaching’ deliberately, because the benefit of any doubt was always given to the enemy.
This has happened in Iraq and is continuing to happen, where the Allies have bent over backwards to please our dedicated enemy (the Sunni) and alienated the majority Shia who were our natural friends. Predictably, by not crushing the Sunni’s resistance to democracy at the beginning and instead allowing them to harbor the bombers and assassins who have ruthlessly slaughtered our Shia allies, we now have enemies on both sides of the religious divide. We continue to draw no distinctions between those who initiated the violence and those who now respond in self defence. This is not only morally wrong, but bad policy, too. No doubt there are many in the State Department who know this only too well, but then, they never wanted us to win in Iraq anyway. Bush has never been smart enough to know who his enemies were on this side of the world, so we should not be surprised that he makes the same mistake in Iraq.
Those on the Right who wish to understand the rise of modern terrorism, the role of Leftists in terror-style politics, the fruits of appeasement, and the emergence of the Media Class as the dominant power in politics, would do well to study the real facts of Ulster life from the 1970’s onwards. President Bush since taking office, has received the same Media/Leftist treatment that poor old Ian Paisley received all those years ago. Just as we are now invited by the Media to welcome Gerry Adams as a peacemaker and Paisley as the bad guy, so we will be invited to see Bush as the cause of all conflict and the Islamic militants as the good guys. Just wait and see! Those who write the news, make it!