The IRA's Heart of Darkness ~ Part 2

Legitimate Targets

In the first part of this blog, we looked at the IRA’s collaboration with the Nazi regime from the mid 1930s onwards. Eight decades later, despite everything we know about the IRA’s activities, followers of the Provisional IRA death cult still leap to the defence of former IRA leader Sean Russell, if anyone labels him as a Nazi collaborator. So let us judge Russell on the charge of collaboration, based on what is apparently PIRA’s own idea of collaboration.

During the recent conflict known as ‘the Troubles’, PIRA’s list of targets was not confined to police officers, soldiers, judges and politicians. The ever expanding list of so called “legitimate targets” would include people considered to be ‘collaborators’, such as: contractors doing building or maintenance work on police and military buildings; civilians making a living working as cleaners or in the canteens of their local police station; shop owners serving police officers; businesses that supplied goods or services to the police or military, and anyone else that PIRA deemed suitable for murdering. The brutal reality is that everyone was potentially a legitimate target, the only thing required was an excuse and if an excuse didn’t already exist, one could be conjured up.

Now let us look at Sean Russell. He was a leading member of the IRA and spent three months in Berlin, meeting with senior ranking Nazis, before being placed on a U-boat and sent home to assist in attacking a country that was the last hope for millions across Europe. The Germans had already invaded a number of countries and the Panzers were rolling across France whilst Russell was in Berlin, but that did not deter him. Although the pogrom against Jewish people was already underway, Kristallnacht for example having occurred in November 1938, the IRA looked the other way. The IRA were actively assisting Germany in time of war and they were willing to sacrifice everyone in occupied countries.

I would argue that if PIRA considered a civilian working in the canteen of a British military base, to be a collaborator, then by their rationale it is an unarguable fact the IRA were collaborating with the Nazis.

 

The Horror

Martin McGuinness joined the IRA in 1969. After two periods of imprisonment in the Republic of Ireland, related to terrorist offences, this senior member of PIRA’s Derry Brigade supposedly left the group in 1974. 

Martin McGuinness

                                             

The truth of course was that McGuinness continued in his terrorist career and in 1978 became PIRA’s Chief of Staff. Although he would step aside as Chief of Staff in the early 1980s to run in an election as a Sinn Fein candidate, he was still on the ruling Army Council and soon after became the Officer Commanding of PIRA’s ‘Northern Command’. He also remained a high profile member of Sinn Fein. During the Troubles, Sinn Fein was commonly referred to as “the political wing of the IRA” and it was viewed by many as being inextricably linked and subservient to its military wing, PIRA. McGuinness is an example of the overlap between the two wings.

It is unlikely you will find anyone in PIRA Sinn Fein who will accept all of this as fact. If I may paraphrase Martin McGuinness, they have their own interpretation of the past, in the same way they have their own interpretation for Sean Russell’s collaboration.

In his role as OC of Northern Command, McGuinness was regularly briefed on planned terrorist attacks and he authorised atrocities such as the bombing of Enniskillen’s war memorial on Remembrance Day in 1987. Three years later he also authorised the murder of Patsy Gillespie, a civilian chef in a military canteen. 

Patsy Gillespie

                                                               

In October 1990, PIRA terrorists chained Patsy Gillespie to the seat of a van containing a 1000lb bomb and forced him to drive towards a military border checkpoint in Coshquin, County Londonderry. It was one of three similar attacks that evening and this reveals coordination, a central controller in the form of Martin McGuinness.

As Patsy Gillespie neared the checkpoint, he courageously tried to get out of the vehicle to warn the soldiers but the terrorists had rigged the vehicle so that the bomb would detonate if the door was opened. Patsy Gillespie and five soldiers were murdered in a huge explosion. Martin McGuinness and his fellow PIRA terrorists viewed Patsy Gillespie as a collaborator, working for what they would call, “Crown forces”.

Coshquin

 

During an event in Oxford in 2013, whilst playing the role of peacemaker, McGuinness refused to condemn the murder of Patsy Gillespie. When an interviewer asked if the attack at Coshquin was anything other than cold-blooded murder, McGuinness replied: “Other people will have their own interpretation of that”. Ah, of course, their own interpretation about murders. Well, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, had his interpretation of the attack. He called it the work of Satan. That sounds about right.

McGuinness the “peacemaker” who had supposedly been on “a journey”, not only felt the Coshquin murders were justified, he saw Patsy Gillespie as a ‘collaborator’ who deserved to die and he had no regrets about authorising the attack. There was little if any dissent within PIRA Sinn Fein on this matter, indeed when McGuinness died a few years ago, many hailed him as a friend, a great leader and an inspiration. We can only wonder if they all concurred with their hero’s interpretation of the Coshquin bombing. 

Although the McGuinness “peacemaker” narrative has been pushed hard, he was really just a pragmatist who knew PIRA was being defeated in an intelligence war and that it was time for the leadership to cut a deal. There was no epiphany on the road to Damascus. No regrets about his complicity in mass murder, torture, the intentional targeting of civilians for murder, including children. It is hard not to view him as sitting somewhere on the psychopathic spectrum, but yet, as with his predecessors such as Sean Russell, the true believers within Irish Republicanism cope with their cognitive dissonance, by rationalising away awkward facts and embracing the reimagined and Disneyfied propaganda.

PIRA Sinn Fein members and supporters are heavily invested, psychologically, in their relationship with their cult. Despite any doubts that they may have had, they internalised the propaganda. They cannot afford to accept the truth about IRA terrorism as that would mean accepting their own complicity in mass murder. All those who supported violent Irish Republicanism during the Troubles and before, were enablers for killers satisfying a hate-filled bloodlust.

The IRA did not act alone. Others in society provided assistance to PIRA. Whatever form of support people gave, they have their own share of the blame for the horrors that occurred. It is therefore easier to sing rebel songs, attend IRA commemorations or funerals, and wallow in victimhood, rather than admit their own guilt, or repent for their sins. It doesn’t matter if it is something from 1990 or 1940, they have to believe the IRA mythology, the lies told by the cult’s leaders. If they allow themselves to doubt the validity of what the cult has been telling them over the years, their entire belief system could start to unravel.

 

The Niedermayer Family

As you may recall from the first instalment of this blog, in 2003 the PIRA Chief of Staff, Brian Keenan, spoke at a commemoration event for Sean Russell. Keenan praised Russell and called him a patriot, glossing over the problematic issue of Nazi collaboration.

As with Martin McGuinness, Keenan is also considered a hero within the PIRA cult. To any right minded person it is almost incomprehensible that degenerates such as this are held in high esteem, but when we look at the horrors that have been rationalised, it is easier to understand how the true believers within the PIRA cult, willingly fall into line with the narrative about Sean Russell.

One of Keenan’s many victims was Thomas Niedermayer, the director of a Grundig factory in Belfast and the West German honorary counsel in Northern Ireland. PIRA terrorists kidnapped Mr Niedermayer from his Belfast home in December 1973. His two young daughters witnessed the abduction. That was the last time they saw their father. In 1980, based upon information received, plain clothes police officers posing as workmen found Mr Niedermayer’s remains buried under a refuse dump. He had been bound and gagged and forensic examination revealed that he had received severe injuries to the head from a blunt instrument. Two members of PIRA were later imprisoned in relation to the murder. One of the killers said that their victim was buried face down so that, “he could dig himself deeper”.

Although Brian Keenan was never held to account in court for the murder, intelligence suggests he planned the kidnapping. Keenan was a former employee and union activist at the Grundig factory managed by Thomas Niedermayer.

The intention behind the kidnapping was to hold Mr Niedermayer hostage, in return for the release of two PIRA bombers named Dolours and Marian Price. A month earlier, the Price sisters had been imprisoned for their role in the March 1973 detonation of car bombs in London. Two out of four car bombs exploded, killing one person and injuring two hundred. Some people would say Brian Keenan had responsibility for controlling the bombing campaign in England. He had been the Quartermaster for PIRA’s Belfast Brigade in the early 1970s and had risen quickly to the role of Quartermaster General. The kidnapping of Thomas Niedermayer was his attempt to free some of his team, although it clearly didn’t go according to plan.

It’s also worth noting that another member of the PIRA gang, also convicted for his role in the bombings, was the then 19 year old Gerry Kelly, now a leading Sinn Fein MLA in Stormont and the party’s spokesman on policing.

 Gerry Kelly Under Arrest 

                                                               

Dolours Price claimed in 2010, that prior to her time in PIRA’s England department, she had been a member of a secret unit called ‘the Unknowns’. This unit was responsible for the abduction, murder and secret burials of the PIRA victims subsequently named ‘the disappeared’. Price also claimed that Gerry Adams commanded the Unknowns, but Adams has refuted this allegation. It is an interesting turn of events that as a result of PIRA’s attempt to free Dolours Price, Thomas Niedermayer became one of the ‘disappeared’. 

Dolours Price

                                                                 

The aftershock of Thomas Niedermayer’s murder continued to take its toll on his family for over two decades. In 1990, Thomas’ widow, Ingeborg, returned to Ireland and within a few days committed suicide by walking into the ocean. The following year their daughter Renate also committed suicide, as did their second daughter Gabrielle in 1996. A few years later, Gabrielle’s husband also committed suicide.

The  Normalisation of Mass Murder

In May 2008, following the death of Brian Keenan from cancer, men with interesting backstories such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness carried the coffin at his funeral. During an oration in West Belfast prior to cremation at Roselawn, Gerry Adams praised Keenan for his “pivotal” role in the peace process. Five years earlier, Keenan had stood in a Dublin park and called a Nazi collaborator a patriot. It’s the narrative that matters.

Also in attendance were other notables that the news media like to call “senior Republicans”, such as Pat Doherty, Sean Murray, Brian Gillen, Martin Ferris, Gerry Kelly and Bobby Storey. All were there to pay homage to a terrorist.

I suspect no-one present at Keenan’s funeral mentioned the Niedermayers and the horror Keenan visited upon the family. The truth tends to be the first thing that is jettisoned in the manufacture of PIRA mythology. It’s hard to extol the virtues of someone, whilst picturing one of their victims buried face down under a dump, or the victim’s family committing suicide, one by one.

It appears that no act of depravity is beyond rationalisation in the PIRA cult. Anything goes. The ends always justify the means.

The nearly three decades long campaign of terrorism has in recent years been reimagined by PIRA into a human rights struggle. Of course the true believers are fully on board with the narrative, despite the fact PIRA’s retrospectively designated human activists, murdered over 1700 people and injured thousands more; intentionally targeted civilians; ‘kneecapped’ and exiled teenagers; murdered and ‘disappeared’ victims; used torture; groomed and recruited child soldiers; covered up child abuse and rape by PIRA members and on and on and on...

Decades of conditioning and social learning within a corrupted sub-culture produced people who were morally adrift. An authoritarian secular political religion preached hate and condoned violence, warped values and social norms. Daily indoctrination based around a victim / oppressor narrative, beguiled unlawful souls, removing their natural restraint to savagely killing fellow human beings.

The arrival of a peace process did not result in retrospection and repentance. People are still in thrall to the death cult and its mythology. They talk of looking forward, moving on, but they are trapped by a bloody past, much of which is a lie. Many of them possibly sense that the past is a fabrication, but they all engage in a conspiracy of self-deception rather than face the horror of ‘disappearances’, ‘human bombs’, Nazi collaboration and all the rest

And into a community in which murder has been normalised and the criminal is idolised, another generation is born.

First part of this blog is available here.

 

 

 

 

 

The IRA's Heart of Darkness

“I tried to break the spell, the heavy, mute spell of wilderness that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the bush, towards the gleam of the fires, the throb of the drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.”

Joseph Conrad ~ Heart of Darkness

 

Into The Darkness

As the Nazis swept across Europe with Teutonic efficiency, Sean Russell was living the good life in Berlin. He was ensconced in a private villa, courtesy of Mein Fuhrer, with the status of diplomat and an Austrian aristocrat acting as his interpreter and chauffeur. Sean Russell was the IRA’s man in Berlin and a Nazi collaborator with a beguiled, unlawful soul.

Sean Russell

                                                                   

Eighty years later, Irish Republicans are still in deep denial about IRA collaboration with the Nazis. There has been a mass disconnect from reality. It’s hard to put a positive spin on Nazism, what with the occupation of numerous countries, a global military conflict and the Holocaust. The IRA command had leapt enthusiastically into bed with a totalitarian regime, but later when the Third Reich was in tatters, they opted for a damage limitation strategy, playing down their relationship with Mr Hitler. The IRA’s support base clung onto the propaganda and didn’t let go. Internalising a nonsensical narrative was better than accepting the disturbing, morally bankrupt truth.

Over the years any Irish Republican commentary on Sean Russell and his merry band of rosy cheeked IRA compatriots, has emphasised how un-Nazi they were. We are told their relationship with the Nazi regime was not, repeat NOT collaboration, no matter how much it might look, sound and smell like collaboration. The party line is that the IRA were not Nazis and that there were justifiable reasons for a non-collaborative, no strings attached relationship with Nazis.

An alternative perspective is that it’s irrelevant if Sean Russell or the rest of the IRA command were card carrying Nazis, or completely uninterested in European politics. They were seeking support from the Nazis and offering to help them in return with their invasion plans for Britain, whilst other countries were toppling like dominoes during the Blitzkrieg. This can only be described as collaboration, no matter how many coats of gloss you apply to the IRA’s reimagined past.

After the war, Sean Russell was considered so un-Nazi by the IRA’s true believers that in 1951 a statue was erected in his honour, in Dublin’s Fairview Park. A crowd of five thousand turned up for the statue’s grand unveiling. Throughout the decades, when the IRA and its cheerleaders have been forced to choose between awkward facts that show ’the boys’ in an unfavourable light, or a mythology so heavily sugar coated it should come with a health warning for diabetics, they’ve reached for mythology every time. 

In 2003, Mary Lou McDonald, the then Sinn Fein EU MEP candidate and now Sinn Fein president, spoke at a commemoration for the reimagined and Disneyfied Sean Russell. That would be the same Mary Lou who has been insisting more recently that Sinn Fein is just a normal political party. Sharing the platform that day with Mary Lou was Brian Keenan, who happened to be the Chief of Staff of the PIRA Army Council. Obviously Mary Lou was unaware of this, so we can only imagine her surprise if someone subsequently mentioned that fact to her.

Keenan of course praised Sean Russell and called him a patriot. As with all senior members of PIRA, when you have a catalogue of atrocities in your own past, it’s best not to set a precedent by critiquing other members of your death cult. It’s important for members of a terrorist group responsible for mass murder, maiming and wanton destruction, to circle the wagons and form a mutual appreciation society. There are reputations and an IRA mythology to protect, so you don’t dump on those who came before, and in later years the next generation of murderers will stand in front of microphones and eulogise you. 

Brian Keenan

                                                                    

The IRA Nazi Mating Dance

Now for some details about the collaboration that wasn’t really collaboration... apparently.

The IRA had their first direct talks with the Nazi regime in 1937, when the then Chief of Staff, Tom Barry, travelled to Germany to seek support for attacks against the British army in Northern Ireland. Barry’s plans were rejected the following year at an IRA convention when his successor, Sean Russell, put forward his own grand plan for an alliance with Germany.

Russell sought the help of his IRA comrade James O’Donovan, to produce a plan for a bombing campaign in England. An objective of the bomb attacks in English cities was to display the IRA’s capabilities to the Germans. What became known as the ‘S Plan’ was to be the IRA’s mating call to Berlin.

James O'Donovan

                                                                

In January 1939 O’Donovan sent a formal declaration of war by letter to the British Foreign Secretary. The letter included an ultimatum for the British military to withdraw from Northern Ireland within four days. The bombings that followed soon after had the desired effect on the Germans. Early in February 1939 an agent from the Abwehr (Military intelligence) named Oscar Pfaus, was dispatched to Ireland for talks with Russell and O’Donovan. Pfaus informed the two men that his superiors would be keen to meet IRA representatives and discuss assistance.

James O’Donovan set sail for Germany and held a series of meetings in Hamburg with his new best friends in the Abwehr, discussing IRA resources, capabilities and various issues of mutual interest. The Germans also set up a means of coded communication and provided contact details for Abwehr agents.

As no money was forthcoming from Germany, Sean Russell set off on a fundraising trip to America, meeting up with Joe McGarrity, the leader of Clan na Gael. It was through McGarrity that Russell had initially made contact with German intelligence. It was the prospect of financial and military assistance from Germany, that had earlier helped Russell secure the role of IRA Chief of Staff. Whilst Russell was in America, Stephen Hayes was appointed the new Chief of Staff.

In April 1939, O’Donovan returned to Hamburg for further discussions with the Abwehr, hoping to secure the promise of weapons and radios, but the only outcome from the trip was the setting up of a courier route.

In the middle of August 1939, two weeks before Germany invaded Poland, James O’Donovan was back in Hamburg for his third and final meeting with his Abwehr contacts. On this occasion O’Donovan stated that the IRA was seeking German support for the occupation of Northern Ireland. Whilst this was not ruled out by the Abwehr, they requested that the IRA focused for the time being on British military targets in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the UK. O’Donovan also requested weapons, ammunition and explosives, but these failed to materialise. Germans agents did however transport money to the IRA and a radio link was established.

In the closing days of August 1939, as Britain edged closer to war with Germany, the IRA continued to detonate bombs in England. On the 25^th August 1939, an IRA bicycle bomb exploded in Coventry, killing five people and injuring over seventy. Meanwhile in Dublin, the IRA stole truckloads of weapons and ammunition from the Irish army, but then managed to lose it all when police discovered where it was concealed. The Coventry bombing and Dublin arms theft led to the introduction of emergency powers in Ireland and the internment of IRA leaders.

It may be worth noting at this juncture that Northern Ireland was created in 1921 and virtually from the outset was under attack from the IRA. For now, I will leave it to readers to consider how IRA activity, including their plotting with Nazis and campaigns of terrorism, impacted not only on relations between Northern Ireland and its neighbour across the border, but also on relations between people living in Northern Ireland.

 

What Did You Do During The War?

In the summer of 1940, Sean Russell spent three months in Berlin having meetings with his German allies, including a conference in early August with the Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Admiral Canaris the head of the Abwehr and his deputy Erwin von Lahousen. Also present was Edmund Veesenmayer of the SS, who had previously been involved in the invasion plans for Czechoslovakia and Poland. In March 1940 Veesenmayer was given the responsibility for trying to move neutral Ireland into war against Britain. Veesenmayer was a specialist in what we now euphemistically call “regime change” and his presence at the meeting points to the intentions of the Nazis and the nature of their collaboration with the IRA. The ultimate goal was not merely the invasion of Northern Ireland, but the domination of the entire United Kingdom and the IRA were viewed as collaborators in this enterprise.

Edmund Veesenmayer

                                                              

Within a few days of the conference, Russell was on board a U-Boat, setting sail for Ireland. He was accompanied by Frank Ryan, a member of the IRA who had been captured by government forces whilst fighting in the Spanish Civil War. The Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris had secured his release in July 1940, to bolster IRA support for Germany. 

Frank Ryan

                                                                  

On the 14^th August, with the U-boat one hundred miles off the coast of Ireland, Sean Russell’s voyage home ended prematurely when he died as the result of a burst gastric ulcer. The German submariners buried Russell at sea and with that, his war was over. Frank Ryan returned to Germany and replaced Russell as the IRA’s contact with Germany. This was a peculiar turn of events, bearing in mind that Ryan had been on the anti-Fascist side in the Spanish Civil War, but as with Russell, he too willingly collaborated with the Nazis. 

Whilst the IRA and its supporters have been keen to portray the actions of Ryan, Russell, O’Donovan and the rest of the IRA as a tactical move rather than sympathy for Nazism, a July 1940 statement from the IRA, issued whilst Russell was still in Berlin, referred to the Nazis as, “friends and liberators of the Irish people”. The following month, the IRA was stating that with the help of their “victorious European allies”, Ireland would achieve absolute independence within the next few months”. Some IRA publications were also peddling anti-Semitic propaganda that claimed the Irish government was under the control of Jews and Freemasons, the “new owners of Ireland”.

 

In the next part of this blog, we will examine the IRA’s propaganda narrative regarding their collaboration with the Nazis, in the light of more recent events during the so called ‘Troubles'. We will compare the IRA narrative about their wartime collaboration, with the narrative used to justify and excuse Provisional IRA terrorism.

The second part is available here.

Sinn Fein's Dark Shadow Called PIRA

They Haven’t Gone Away You Know

It has been over twenty years since the signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and much has changed in Northern Ireland, but one constant has been the existence of a terrorist group called the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).  Whilst PIRA has certainly changed over the last couple of decades, a ceasefire and peace process did not signal its demise. As all systems do in order to survive, it adapted to change within its environment.

Although people who are euphemistically known in the news media as “senior republicans” (or senior terrorists to everyone except members or supporters of PIRA) have told us in recent years that PIRA had gone away, intelligence reports and a modicum of common sense say otherwise. The most recent intelligence assessment in November 2019 was that PIRA’s ruling ‘Army Council’ still exists, retains ‘oversight’ of Sinn Fein and there had been no change to the 2015 assessment on the relationship between PIRA and Sinn Fein.

The Dark Shadow

According to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, everyone has a ‘shadow’, often referred to as a ‘dark shadow’, that is an unconscious or unknown aspect of our personality. Jung believed that the shadow was perhaps linked to our dark, primitive animal instincts and that it personified everything that people refuse to acknowledge about themselves.

PIRA could be viewed as Sinn Fein’s dark shadow.

Throughout the so-called ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein was regularly referred to as “the political wing of the IRA”. Whilst membership of Sinn Fein did not necessitate membership of PIRA, there was overlap with members of PIRA in Sinn Fein and the “military wing” was the dominant partner in the relationship, controlling Sinn Fein. The organisational structure was helpfully spelled out in secret IRA documents that were seized by Irish police in the 1970s. This could hardly be called a surprise, as the same relationship existed as far back as the late 1940s. 

In 1949 IRA members were ordered to join Sinn Fein and the party recognised the supreme authority of the IRA Army Council. Sinn Fein would maintain the same abstentionist policy as its IRA masters, refusing to take seats in either the southern or northern parliaments. The IRA also refused to recognise that the southern state was the ”Republic of Ireland” and even today, the hard core within the PIRA Sinn Fein death cult have difficulty referring to the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland by their correct names. It was also around this time that the IRA leadership decided to avoid ‘military’ activity in the Republic of Ireland and focus it’s campaign of terrorism in Northern Ireland. This was partly due to the death of several Irish police officers (Gardi) in clashes with the IRA and the resentment that this created.

When the IRA split in 1969, followed soon after by a split in Sinn Fein, the breakup resulted in the same type of power structure within the new ‘provisional’ IRA and Sinn Fein.

Double Jobbing

A number of informed commentators have stated that throughout the recent ‘Troubles’ of the 1970s to 1990s, Sinn Fein was represented on the PIRA Army Council by one or more individuals. No-one in Sinn Fein rushed forward to admit their membership of a terrorist group, never mind admit being one of its leaders, but it’s safe to say that Martin McGuinness was one of those people. McGuinness of course twice served time in prison, south of the border, for IRA related activities, but he would later claim to have left the IRA around 1974. As with many things McGuinness said, his claim about leaving PIRA was a lie.

McGuinness would eventually become PIRA’s Chief of Staff in early 1978, although he would reluctantly have to give up that role when he stood for election to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982. All was not lost however, although no longer Chief of Staff, McGuinness retained his seat on the Army Council and he would later become the Officer Commanding (OC) of PIRA’s ‘Northern Command’. This in effect meant that whilst McGuinness was a high profile member of Sinn Fein, he was also on the ruling PIRA Army Council and in control of the day to day running of PIRA’s terrorist activity in Northern Command. Part of his role included the allocation of weapons and explosives that PIRA had acquired from Libya and this endeavour led to the murder of an alleged informer named Frank Hegarty, a murder in which McGuinness has been accused of having a personal involvement... but more of that perhaps in a later blog.

As OC of Northern Command, McGuinness was being regularly briefed on planned terrorist attacks and was authorising atrocities such as the 1987 Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen and the use of ‘proxy’ or ‘human bombs’ at border checkpoints in 1990, that the Roman Catholic Bishop Edward Daly described as the work of people who follow Satan. It’s worth noting at this juncture that the ‘Adjutant’ in the Northern Command, who was also complicit in multiple murders along with the dearly departed McGuinness, is still alive and apart from being a professional “senior republican”, somewhat amusingly dabbles in human rights activism and spinning conspiracy theories about the British security forces.

Through The Looking Glass

This is just a glimpse of what you will find if you step through the looking glass and enter the morally bankrupt world of militant Irish Republicanism. A place where there has been a reimagination of the past and a Disneyfication of terrorism to help the members and followers of a death cult rationalise their support for decades of mass murder, maiming and wanton destruction. A place where members of a political party prefer to engage in verbal gymnastics, rather than condemn murders committed by a terrorist group. A place where Sinn Fein claim to be a normal political party, but all right minded people can see its ever present dark shadow called PIRA.