Comparing like with like is just not fair

Des Wilson:

How in the name of goodness could anybody in his right senses say our unionist regime was like the Nazis?

I mean, dammit, just think about it for a moment. How could anybody? Sure think what those Nazis really did and you'll see.

They:

Created a state in which one party and one party only could rule

They isolated one section of the people, blamed them for all their troubles and publicly and officially condemned them

They put this isolated section out of jobs and professions, hindered their education, made as many of them as they could live together in places where they could not interfere with the power of the regime

They kept power away from these people and made them obey laws they were forbidden to have any part in making

They made regular attacks or pogroms against the disfavoured minority and attacked their business places and drove them out, often taking over their premises

They drove people out of their homes

They ran campaigns against gay people

They ran campaigns against Travelling people

They held mass rallies with banners and war symbols and outriders and uniforms to show who was boss

They believed and taught that they belonged to a superior race and that other races and cultures were inferior

They inducted children into their political organisations with the promise of political and employment rewards

They believed they should have a vast empire and in it they should be rulers over subject peoples

They systematically humiliated their opponents, especially the scapegoated community by violent public speeches which roused many of the rest of the people

They systematically convinced decent people, including highly civilised German people, that they should take part in all this

Now, for goodness sake, how can you possibly compare our unionist friends to that? Good heavens, man, what are you thinking of? Yes, we all know you were ambushed, we all know it was a set-up, we all know the television cameras were there to witness one more blow against a reasoned peace settlement, but really, the unionists being like the Nazis? Have a sense of proportion, man, don't let your impatience get the better of you.

I mean, those notices around Belfast's walls saying 'Irish Go Home' and 'Fenians Out' cannot in any way be compared with what the Nazis put on their walls like 'Jews Out' and all that stuff. Like, we have only had hundreds of them and you really need millions to make a case. (In this instance it is not just the thought that counts, it's the numbers.) And that man – our unionist friends elected him – Seewrong or something, sure he was only one person when he said out loud that Catholics should be burned along with their priests. I mean if two million people had said it, then of course you might have a case too. But one?

You simply must also learn, dear good friend, that true things said by republicans or democrats or suchlike just once are evil and will be remembered forever in the church halls and episcopal and political drawing rooms but false things said by our preaching friends like the late Mr Seewrong or various present reverends will be treated as if they did not happen. Once you understand that you understand everything. Knowing it will come in useful as the campaign against you continues into the far future.

Nothing quite like making peace for making enemies.

By the way, could anybody remind us which of the close friends and colleagues of the late Adolf Hitler were invited to, and entertained in, the mansions of prominent unionist leaders just shortly before the Second World War? Ribbentrop was it, or Goering, or both? Can't remember now because we decently tend to forget things like that. Quite a bit of coming and going between the Nazis and our unionist friends in those times, what?

But as the man said, not a word about the pre-war.

And by the way, just suppose the hecklers got their way and brought a case to court alleging incitement arising out of the Fitzroy ambush, have you thought what that could mean? It could mean that for the first time since the unionists took power in the North and abused it, human rights people could discuss in open court all the abuses of the regime. Just think of that. Talk about good coming out of evil!

Letter: Comparison with the Nazis

Sir - I have no problem with Fr Reid's comparison of Ulster Protestants to Nazis when I take as my starting point the modern historical event called the Plantation of Ulster.

The more recent Nazi Plantation of Poland was a mirror image of those earlier events in Irish Catholic Ulster. Catholic Poles were likewise driven from their ancestral lands and replaced with settlers from the Nazi Reich.

The Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger coined the term siedlungspolitik (settlement policy) to indicate a practical dimension to the concept of Lebensraum [expansion]. Siedlungspolitik and Plantation are synonyms. The Nazi analogy is therefore entirely apposite.

Fr Reid further riposted to those baiting him that Ulster Catholics "had been treated like animals". It is a matter of record that a major Plantation beneficiary, a man named Blennerhasset, wrote to Britain inviting settlers to come to Ulster, where, in addition to free land, they could indulge in the sport of "shooting woodkerne", who were of course the unfortunate native Ulster Catholic refugees hiding in the hills and forests.

These attitudes and practices continued to the present day through the Penal Laws and the regular anti-Catholic pogroms of the 19th and 20th Centuries. In 1849, when millions if Irish were starving to death, the great Protestant historian Thomas Carlyle referred to the Catholic Irish as "deceptive human swine". Need I say more?

William Sharkey,
Alton, Hampshire,
England

Media's war against republicans far from over