The Disneyfication of Irish Republican Terrorism

At ‘Feile an Phoibal’ (the West Belfast republican festival) over the weekend the long suffering people of Northern Ireland were subjected to some of the most vile glorification of terrorism ever witnessed in our post GFA society.

The entire ‘festival’ became a tacky, tasteless and vulgar display of support for Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein.

Hamas/PLO style headbands were on sale. Grown men ran around in gawdy PIRA t-shirts, complete with the gaelic words “tiochfaidh ár la” in the shape of an assault rifle.

Perhaps worst of all was the mass, cult like chanting of the banal phrase “oh ah up the Ra”.

What does “up the Ra” mean? Is it a reference to an obscure rock band? Is it a chant in support of a football club with a bizarre nickname? Is it referring to the Egyptian sun god?

Spot the difference.

No. Believe it or not it is a chant sung in support of the most murderous, psychopathic and ruthless terrorist organisation that Europe has ever seen.

Of course, if you live in Ulster you already knew that. “Up the Ra” is an expression of support for the ‘IRA’, more specifically (since there have been more than a dozen different terror gangs of that name) the Provisional IRA.

How does an organisation which slaughtered hundreds of innocent people end up being referred to as “the Ra”?

The Ra did that. To one of their own community.

How does a group of murdering criminals, a group, which carried out stomach churning atrocities such as the Claudy bombing, Bloody Friday and the La Mon Hotel attack, come to be known by a childish, stupid nickname like “the Ra”?

One word. Disneyfication.

The Land of Make Believe

In the land of Irish nationalist make believe, members of “the Ra” were smiling, gentle, progressive socialists with large families and a love of small furry animals. Fun loving scamps who were forced to fight a war against the evil, imperialist Brits and their ‘planter colonist’ lackeys because until the Good Friday Agreement, Catholics in Northern Ireland were forbidden from voting, having jobs, attending university, speaking gaelic or playing hurley.

These warrior poets, who in their spare time helped old ladies across the street and rescued cats stuck in trees, waged a heroic guerilla campaign against the full might of the British Empire, armed only with a few assault rifles, home made mortars and a cheery sense of patriotism.

Thomas McElwee, “the Ra” man. His only crime was a sectarian fire-bomb attack in which a young mother was killed.

Can you detect a hint of sarcasm here? Well, I am being sarcastic and I am exaggerating, a little, but in essence this is what many Irish nationalist extremists actually believe.

As part of this Disneyfication, this child-like vision of the past, the term “Provisional IRA” seems out of place. Even the historically inaccurate and legitimising term “IRA” seems just a bit too serious, too grown up. Hence why nationalists/republicans have reduced the Provisional Irish Republican Army to “the Ra”.

You see “the Ra” sounds a bit more fun, a bit less serious. It trivialises the crimes of the Provo murder gangs, it minimises them. Would a smiling, cuddly group of “the Ra” members chain a Catholic man to the steering wheel of a van packed with explosives and force that innocent man to drive that payload of death and destruction to it’s destination under the threat that if he didn’t, they would murder his wife and children?

Patsy Gillespie, an ordinary family man, turned into a human bomb by “the Ra”.

Would the warrior poets of “the Ra” abduct, torture, murder and then secretly bury a widowed mother of ten young children?

What I’m getting at here is that the invention of the term “the Ra” and it’s subsequent widespread adoption by Irish nationalists is deliberate. It is part of the Disneyfication of violent republicanism. It is a calculated insult to the victims of the sectarian PIRA and it is a way to ‘soften’ and to romanticise a blood soaked terrorist organisation.

Mind Your Language

Of course, Irish nationalists will scream and wail that some people in the Unionist/Loyalist community use the term too. That is correct but it is merely a very small, unthinking minority who (occasionally) copy the terminology of radicalised Irish republicans.

Sandra Morris, burnt to death by “the Ra” at La Mon. Her husband Joseph survived despite horrific injuries.

It is also something which Loyalist activists, ourselves included, are educating people in our community about.

It is bad enough that some Loyalists and Unionists refer to the Provo murder gangs as “the IRA”, as if that organisation was the same as the original, almost equally as blood thirsty, IRA that fought during the Irish War of Independence. As if no splinter group, no breakaway faction had ever emerged from the foul ranks of Irish nationalist terrorism.

Bad enough that some people legitimise the Provisionals by erroneously referring to them as “the IRA”, thus giving PIRA/Sinn Fein sole ownership of a title that has been (and still is) claimed by a myriad of different Irish nationalist death squads, many of whom gleefully engaged in murderous feuds with each other at one time or another.

Little Eileen Kelly, aged just 6, killed in a feud between Provisional “the Ra” and Official “the Ra”.

Let me be perfectly clear; the Provisional IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The Official IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The Real IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The New IRA should never be referred to as “the IRA”. The Continuity IRA…….you get the picture.

Every single one of these criminal gangs is, in some way, a splinter group, a breakaway faction. Some times they are a breakaway faction of a breakaway faction. Calling them “the IRA” aggrandises them. It implies that “the IRA”, and by extension, Irish republicanism, is a united, monolithic entity, rather than the deeply divided, often antagonistic, sordid collection of murder gangs that it is in reality.

The infantile word games of Irish nationalism should be avoided by Loyalists at all costs.

A young Catholic woman tarred and feathered by Provisional “the Ra”. Her ‘crime’? She was engaged to a soldier.

We must be careful and considered with our language and our choice of words. Just as no Loyalist would ever refer to Northern Ireland as “da norf”, in the way that Irish nationalists do, we should also never legitimise their absurd Disneyfication of history by repeating their moronic slang and saying “the Ra”.

The Psychology of Terror

It is pertinent to note that this kind of linguistic infantilism occurs within other organised crime groups too. The Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, often refer to themselves as “the outfit”, or “the firm”, or even “the family”. Of course, the American media does not legitimise the Mafia by borrowing these euphemisms.

The Aryan Brotherhood, an American neo-Nazi prison gang (which uses explicitly Irish nationalist imagery) refers to itself as “the brotherhood”, or “the Shamrock”, or just “the rock”.

Some up and coming young psychologist should study this phenomenon. Is their an innate need for the members and supporters of these groups to soften, or to minimise, the sinister image of said groups by giving them less threatening ‘pet names’? If so, is this need a conscious or sub-conscious one?

Is there perhaps, some natural, sub-conscious aversion to the crimes of these vile criminal gangs that the human mind seeks to counter by attaching a less obvious, less loaded name to the organisation that they support? Just as Far-Right groups tend to avoid the labels of “national-socialist’ or ‘fascist’.

I have long argued that Irish nationalism should be studied from a psychological perspective. It is, and always has been, an extreme ideology, it’s adherents clearly and unequivocally radicalised.

Irish republican herd mentality at it’s bloody and horrific worst.

Part of that radicalisation is ‘group think’, wherein nationalists/republicans are induced to think along party lines from a very young age. Going against the thinking or behaviour of “the community” is actively discouraged. Another way to describe this phenomenon would be a herd mentality.

Obviously young nationalist extremists are comfortable chanting “up the Ra” as part of a large, drink and drug fuelled mob, but would they, for example, be comfortable to stand alone, or in a very small group, and chant “up the Claudy bombers” or “up the nutting squad”?

Would they spit in the face of PIRA/Sinn Fein victims literally rather than just figuratively?

Would they stand in front of a group of RUC widows and screech “up the Ra”?

John Proctor, a young RUC officer murdered by “the Ra” while visiting his wife and newborn son in hospital.

I don’t think they’d have the guts. I think that many of these indoctrinated youngsters are so utterly brainwashed that they barely even think when they are singing about the Provisional IRA or running around in green, white and gold headbands emblazoned with “up the Ra”.

But take them out of their sectarian bubble, take them away from the mentality of the baying mob, take them out of their intellectual ghetto (if that is possible) and I think you will find that they are a lot more reticent about their glorification of Provo baby killers.

Culture Wars

Thankfully, the Feile an Phoibal hate-fest is coming under extreme scrutiny and those who justify the abhorrent chants and sectarian singing are becoming ever more marginalised. This has not happened by accident.

For years, Irish nationalists/republicans have waged a culture war against the Loyalist and Unionist people. We have watched on while they have attacked every facet of our culture and traditions. We have studied their tactics, their propaganda.

The Omagh bombing. Carried out by maniacs who also claim the title of “the Ra”.

If it were not for their own Nazi-esque supremacist attitudes towards Loyalists they would have seen this coming. They did not. Loyalists were too stupid to wage a culture war of their own they said. Loyalists are mere subhumans they said. Loyalists just aren’t capable of copying Irish nationalist tactics they said. They were wrong, as always.

Sinn Fein revisionism and the Disneyfication of the Provisional IRA is now opposed like never before. Ordinary nationalists are being exposed to the real historical truth like never before and now the cultural counter-attack is entering a new phase.

Would the drunken & drugged up louts who attended Feile be comfortable singing “oh ah up the baby killers”?

The Loyalist community will never again tolerate the casual glorification and normalisation of Irish nationalist terrorism at publicly funded events. We will never again tolerate the squalid, repulsive and infantile Disneyfication of Provo murder gangs.

Sing “oh ah up the Ra” in your pubs, your GAA clubhouses and your shebeens. Sing all you want but we, Loyalists, are going to make damn sure that your sectarian sing-alongs never again receive a penny of public funding.

Consciously or sub-consciously sanitise and soften your sadistic, psychotic Provo heroes by calling them “the Ra”, but know this – we won’t indulge your fantasies. We will never let you forget what “the Ra” did to men, women, children and even babies. We will never accept your behaviour as normal. We will never allow radicalised extremists to dictate what is, or is not, culturally acceptable.

Þole Aȝe Umquhile Poustie