I recently wrote a tongue in cheek article in response to one of the many black propaganda articles in Independent Newspapers which are obviously part of a wider media campaign to stop Sinn Fein achieving power.
Sunday Independent ‘journalist’ Eilis O’Hanlon was writing about the misuse of Twitter and Facebook but, in common with all establishment journalists, she just couldn’t help slipping into a rant about the activities of the great evil stalking the land.
My tongue in cheek article featured a recipe for cup cakes midway through which the writer slips into a rant against Sinn Fein in which it is claimed the IRA sent Gerry Adams back to 1939 in a time machine where he threatened Hitler with all kinds of sinister things if he didn’t invade Poland.
While writing the article I thought, maybe a bit strong using Hitler as a vehicle to get my point across but then I thought, sure what the hell, it’s obvious I’m doing tongue in cheek.
But, incredibly, I listened to establishment ‘journalist’ Olivia O’Leary deliver an essay yesterday (RTE Drivetime) in which she uses the same angle as I did with the crucial difference that she wasn’t doing tongue in cheek, she was deadly serious.
Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops and O’Leary obviously thought the event would serve as a great opportunity to link the Holocaust with Sinn Fein.
Her approach was deeply insulting to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust; it was ‘journalism’ at its most crude.
Right in the middle of her essay as she speaks of the horrors of the Nazi death camps she suddenly switches to what the republicans/Sinn Fein did during the Northern Ireland conflict. She selects one victim of the IRA and exploits his death and the suffering of his family to promote her propaganda agenda.
She makes no mention of any other organisation, political party or terrorist group involved in the NI conflict.
It’s blatantly obvious that she’s spouting propaganda, as she makes no attempt whatsoever to compare the Holocaust and the NI conflict by placing the events in any kind of context.
Indeed, to make any connection with the most horrific human outrage in history and the dirty little NI war, bad as it was for those directly involved, is in itself pathetic.
She ends by conflating Sinn Fein’s politics and past with the Holocaust. While rightly warning that the Holocaust must never be forgotten she also warns that people of her generation must defend the values of Irish democracy by making sure the youth of today never forget the role Sinn Fein played in the NI conflict.
As an introduction to her essay O’Leary recalled how she asked a really stupid question (her words) during the 1980 visit to Ireland of the then president of West Germany.
Still clearly embarrassed by the memory O’Leary admitted:
I didn’t do my job as a journalist properly.
Well, she’s still not doing her job as a journalist properly.
Her deliberate exploitation of the victims of the Holocaust as a propaganda device to attack Sinn Fein is disgusting in the extreme.
Copy to:
Drivetime
Olivia O’Leary
It’s worse than an appalling piece of journalism by O’Leary. It’s Holocaust denial.