the priest seems to have caused a storm and as i said that what i experianced and i thought that it was different in other parts of northern ireland and i was wrong here are a couple items from the belfast telegraph you can come to your own concullisions
Given that the Nuremburg Laws in 1936 prohibited Jews from working in their professions as doctors, as lawyers and as teachers, and from owning certain property, his comments again don't appear to reflect or mirror any discriminations experienced in Northern Ireland," she said
Just how can this be compared to Ulster?
TO wildly paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for one spokesperson of nationalism to lose the plot and call unionists Nazis may be regarded as a misfortune; for two spokespersons of nationalism to lose it and call unionists Nazis looks like a bit of a pattern emerging . . .
What the hell is going on in people's minds when they say these things?
Never mind what it tells us about what they think of their unionist neighbours, comments like those of Fr Alec Reid this week and Irish President Mary McAleese last January are a truly shocking insight into where they rate the crimes of the Nazis. And a truly disturbing reflection of the contempt they apparently feel for the suffering of Nazi victims.
Six million men, women and children coldly, systematically butchered in the most horrific act of genocide in the history of mankind. . . .
And that's regarded as being on a par with gerrymandering in Londonderry?
It's not primarily Protestants that Fr Reid needs to be apologising to for his crass remarks. It's Jews. And if he needs any reminder why, he should read the powerful words of Alex Benjamin on pages 24 and 25 in this paper today.
In his article Alex, who comes from a Jewish background, reveals that it's estimated that world-wide the number of people who bore the Benjamin name was decimated by almost half during the savage, bloody years of Nazi power.
It sort of puts a housing dispute in Strabane into perspective.
One of the arguments used in defence of Fr Reid this week was the line about how he had been provoked and that he came out with the Nazi jibe as a sort of unthinking knee-jerk.
This is fair enough up to a point - the point is, though, that when most of us knee-jerk in an unthinking sort of way, what we come out with tends to be what we really think.
And what has shocked so very many unionist people this week is not just the realisation that this is how Fr Reid thinks - but the suspicion that this might be how a much wider number of nationalists also think.
Fr Alec's strange follow-up comments when he said that he was sorry and that he believed unionists acted the way they did because of Partition, only compounds this belief.
His initial accusation was: "The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews."
The reality is that the "unionist community" (I assume he means people like me) did nothing of the sort.
The Sinn Fein spin on history seeks to align the experience of nationalists in Northern Ireland with just about every grievance, oppression, pogrom or, in the case of the Jews, wholesale genocide in history.
The fact is that, not only was the experience of nationalists in Northern Ireland light years away from the horror inflicted on the victims of the Nazis, it was also light years away from the terrible injustice of the Apartheid system in South Africa and even (it might interest a few American readers to note) light years away from the blatant discrimination practised against African Americans by the American government in the 1960s.
Yet all of these instances are routinely evoked by Sinn Fein as comparable. Sectarian discrimination did exist in Northern Ireland, but contrary to accepted wisdom it was not exclusively confined to one side. Or indeed to one side of the border. There were inequalities. But as I've pointed out in this column many, many times in the past, if a more accurate comparison with the experience of the nationalist working class in Northern Ireland is to be made, it's with the experience of the unionist working class.
Hundreds of thousands of us grew up in similar circumstances.
Nobody ever came to my father's council house door to assure him there was a job for him anytime just because he was Protestant. Nobody ever told my mother not to worry about her children's education because there would automatically be jobs for us all once we finished school. At no time was my family ever aware of any special privileges, advantages or state largesse that might come our way simply because we were Protestant.
We did not treat anyone "almost like animals", Fr Reid. Like our neighbours, both Catholic and Protestant, we got on with our own lives.
PERHAPS Fr Reid can explain this simple point. How is it that if the "unionist community" were treating their nationalist neighbours "almost like animals", we were all living in the same conditions? Surely if one section of the community had its jackboot on the throat of the other there would be what Tony might call "transparent and verifiable" evidence of advantage.
In Northern Ireland the great swathes of the Protestant working class are proof that somewhere along the line that spin about the unionist community being privileged oppressors doesn't really wash.
Along with hundreds of thousands in that community I was stunned and hurt by what Fr Reid, a man who has been built up as a paragon of peace, has had to say about us this week.
I accept, though, that this does not necessarily make him a bad person. I even feel a bit sorry for him.
His comments about unionists being like Nazis and about IRA bank raiders being "whiter than white" are verging on that pecularily local syndrome - Troubles Tourette's. In fact he's put his foot in his mouth so much this week, he could even be in the running as a new Orange Order spokesman.
And there may be a positive aspect to the row about his remarks.
We have in Northern Ireland two sides of a working class community which have been often cynically manipulated and set at each other's throat.
One side thinks they were badly kept down. The other side thinks they were equally kept down - and then demonised as the first side's oppressors.
Isn't it time we opened a debate about this so that the reality of both sides' experience could be expressed?
Wouldn't it be possible to do this in a way that involves plain speaking but avoids hyperbole, name calling and the trivialising of genocide?
Above all, one that avoids demonising an entire side of the community?
For where's the equality Fr Alec, when, to wildly misquote old Oscar again, all of us have been in the gutters - but only some are allowed to show the scars?
Given that the Nuremburg Laws in 1936 prohibited Jews from working in their professions as doctors, as lawyers and as teachers, and from owning certain property, his comments again don't appear to reflect or mirror any discriminations experienced in Northern Ireland," she said
Just how can this be compared to Ulster?
TO wildly paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for one spokesperson of nationalism to lose the plot and call unionists Nazis may be regarded as a misfortune; for two spokespersons of nationalism to lose it and call unionists Nazis looks like a bit of a pattern emerging . . .
What the hell is going on in people's minds when they say these things?
Never mind what it tells us about what they think of their unionist neighbours, comments like those of Fr Alec Reid this week and Irish President Mary McAleese last January are a truly shocking insight into where they rate the crimes of the Nazis. And a truly disturbing reflection of the contempt they apparently feel for the suffering of Nazi victims.
Six million men, women and children coldly, systematically butchered in the most horrific act of genocide in the history of mankind. . . .
And that's regarded as being on a par with gerrymandering in Londonderry?
It's not primarily Protestants that Fr Reid needs to be apologising to for his crass remarks. It's Jews. And if he needs any reminder why, he should read the powerful words of Alex Benjamin on pages 24 and 25 in this paper today.
In his article Alex, who comes from a Jewish background, reveals that it's estimated that world-wide the number of people who bore the Benjamin name was decimated by almost half during the savage, bloody years of Nazi power.
It sort of puts a housing dispute in Strabane into perspective.
One of the arguments used in defence of Fr Reid this week was the line about how he had been provoked and that he came out with the Nazi jibe as a sort of unthinking knee-jerk.
This is fair enough up to a point - the point is, though, that when most of us knee-jerk in an unthinking sort of way, what we come out with tends to be what we really think.
And what has shocked so very many unionist people this week is not just the realisation that this is how Fr Reid thinks - but the suspicion that this might be how a much wider number of nationalists also think.
Fr Alec's strange follow-up comments when he said that he was sorry and that he believed unionists acted the way they did because of Partition, only compounds this belief.
His initial accusation was: "The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews."
The reality is that the "unionist community" (I assume he means people like me) did nothing of the sort.
The Sinn Fein spin on history seeks to align the experience of nationalists in Northern Ireland with just about every grievance, oppression, pogrom or, in the case of the Jews, wholesale genocide in history.
The fact is that, not only was the experience of nationalists in Northern Ireland light years away from the horror inflicted on the victims of the Nazis, it was also light years away from the terrible injustice of the Apartheid system in South Africa and even (it might interest a few American readers to note) light years away from the blatant discrimination practised against African Americans by the American government in the 1960s.
Yet all of these instances are routinely evoked by Sinn Fein as comparable. Sectarian discrimination did exist in Northern Ireland, but contrary to accepted wisdom it was not exclusively confined to one side. Or indeed to one side of the border. There were inequalities. But as I've pointed out in this column many, many times in the past, if a more accurate comparison with the experience of the nationalist working class in Northern Ireland is to be made, it's with the experience of the unionist working class.
Hundreds of thousands of us grew up in similar circumstances.
Nobody ever came to my father's council house door to assure him there was a job for him anytime just because he was Protestant. Nobody ever told my mother not to worry about her children's education because there would automatically be jobs for us all once we finished school. At no time was my family ever aware of any special privileges, advantages or state largesse that might come our way simply because we were Protestant.
We did not treat anyone "almost like animals", Fr Reid. Like our neighbours, both Catholic and Protestant, we got on with our own lives.
PERHAPS Fr Reid can explain this simple point. How is it that if the "unionist community" were treating their nationalist neighbours "almost like animals", we were all living in the same conditions? Surely if one section of the community had its jackboot on the throat of the other there would be what Tony might call "transparent and verifiable" evidence of advantage.
In Northern Ireland the great swathes of the Protestant working class are proof that somewhere along the line that spin about the unionist community being privileged oppressors doesn't really wash.
Along with hundreds of thousands in that community I was stunned and hurt by what Fr Reid, a man who has been built up as a paragon of peace, has had to say about us this week.
I accept, though, that this does not necessarily make him a bad person. I even feel a bit sorry for him.
His comments about unionists being like Nazis and about IRA bank raiders being "whiter than white" are verging on that pecularily local syndrome - Troubles Tourette's. In fact he's put his foot in his mouth so much this week, he could even be in the running as a new Orange Order spokesman.
And there may be a positive aspect to the row about his remarks.
We have in Northern Ireland two sides of a working class community which have been often cynically manipulated and set at each other's throat.
One side thinks they were badly kept down. The other side thinks they were equally kept down - and then demonised as the first side's oppressors.
Isn't it time we opened a debate about this so that the reality of both sides' experience could be expressed?
Wouldn't it be possible to do this in a way that involves plain speaking but avoids hyperbole, name calling and the trivialising of genocide?
Above all, one that avoids demonising an entire side of the community?
For where's the equality Fr Alec, when, to wildly misquote old Oscar again, all of us have been in the gutters - but only some are allowed to show the scars?
posted by William at 10:16 PM
4 Comments:
The unionists are worse than Nazis. Jews willingly came to Europe uninvited and therefore must accept some of the responsibility for the mistreatment that they received. The Irish are indigenous to Ireland and therefore do not bear any blame for the oppression that they have sufferred at the hands of British colonists over the past centuries.
are you for real you must be a teenager after reading what you just said there is no other explanition as a adult would have more sence
Comparing like with like is just not fair
Media's war against republicans far from over
i read your things and what does that mean its another media veiw im going on real history in my time there was equal education equal housing and catholics were nt banned from becoming what they wanted they owned shops and so on fr reid was wrong and he even admitted he was .
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