A Tangled Web

Fianna Fail Scrapes the Barrel



A couple of days after interfering Southern minister, Dimwit Ahern predicted the inclusion of Brownshirt fascism in a future Irish government, Ned O'Keeffe, a TD in Co Cork is in full agreement that Sinn Fein should be included as of right. We all know Fianna Fail prostrates itself in front of Southern nationalism as the 'republican party', so it's not surprising to hear certain individuals therein suggesting a parliamentary tango between the slightly repugnant face of Irish nationalism and the highly repugnant face of the same ideology.



In O'Keeffe's fantasy world, Sinn Fein 'have proved to be very efficient in Dail Eireann. They are a constitutional party working within the framework of the Constitution'. Yeah right, and Greta Garbo was an opium peddler from Macau!! I do remember something in the same document about one legitimate army. Oh how silly of me, to some republican dross, balaclava-sporting hoods embody a legitimate army.



I think what I find so distasteful is the willingness of some Irish parties to court Sinn Fein once the IRA is downgraded or disbanded. One could not imagine, say, the German Christian Democrats in the aftermath of 1945 turning round to the rump of the Nazi regime and saying 'well I think we can consider a partnership now Mr Hitler has shuffled off this mortal coil'. David Conradt in his book, The German Polity, states: 'Germany was to be denazified: all vestiges of the Nazi system were to be removed, its top Nazi and government officials tried as war criminals, and lesser party activists punished by fines and imprisonment'.



On a smaller scale this is exactly what America and its Allies seek to do in the contemporary 'war on terror'. Taking account of the reality that the only distinctions between Sinn Fein and the Nazis was their methods and sheer scale of human termination, I wonder why so many people in so-called 'constitutional nationalism' yearn to curry favour with a party which still poses a massive threat to the long-term stability of the entire island of Ireland.