Independent Newspapers can’t handle the truth regarding political violence

Decommission your tongue, Mr. Adams

This was the headline of a recent editorial in the Sunday Independent in which Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was taken to task for daring to make a favourable comparison between the violence of the 1916 rebels and those involved in the recent 1968-1998 conflict.

The editor didn’t spare the insults:

Mr. Adams should decommission his tongue preferably for a millennium or two.

The Sinn Fein leader has soared to new heights in self-delusion.

But it is the editor who’s occupying the heights of self-delusion when he tries to argue that the 1916 rebellion was:

Formally and massively endorsed (By the Irish people).

This, of course, is utter rubbish and is based on the ridiculous myth that the violence of 1916, War of Independence and the Civil War was all, in some magical way, different from the violence of the 1968 – 1998 conflict.

The editor goes on to ask:

Had Mr Adams been an IRA man and put himself forward as a car-bombing murderer, does he really believe he would have been handed a mandate?

When the 1916 rebels were being led away after surrendering they were spat upon by the people of Dublin for causing so much death and destruction.

So here’s the obvious retort:

Had Mr. Pearse been an violent rebel and put himself forward as a bringer of massive death and destruction, does he really believe he would have been handed a mandate?

And it is worth noting that the people of Ireland were generally content under British rule in the lead up to 1916 in stark contrast to Catholics/nationalists barely surviving under the exteme Unionist apartheid system prior to the 1968-1998 conflict.

In making the following quote the editor seems to be completely clueless about the obvious parallels between Sinn Fein’s rise to power in the aftermath of 1916 and the party’s current rise to power in the aftermath of the 2008 economic catastrophe.

Legitimacy was conferred on 1916 when Sinn Féin received its mandate in the 1918 general election. It was retrospective, but it was real. The election was the first democratic plebiscite to pass judgment on those events.

The course of today’s political events is an exact parallel with those of 1916.

Prior to 2008 Sinn Fein struggled to achieve significant political traction in the republic. Since 2008 they have become ever more popular principally because citizens are searching for an alternative to a political system that is corrupt to its core.

In other words, Sinn Fein received an overwhelming mandate as a direct result of the brutal response of the British government to the 1916 rising and now the party is receiving a similar democratic mandate as a result of the brutality inflicted on Irish citizens as a direct result of political corruption.

The editor ends with a quote about the truth.

You can rewrite history, but the truth is always the truth.

Indeed, the truth is always the truth. But it has been many years since
‘Independent’ Newspapers practiced truth.

Copy to:

Editor Sunday ‘Independent’