balaclavas

So I had an argument with a Unionist about the IRA. This was in the context of the British use of police brutality at IRA funerals. He argued that the IRA were terrorists, and as such it was vital to disrupt all their activities, no matter how benign.

I challenged this, and he made an interesting reply. He argued that if they weren't terrorists, then they wouldn't be attending the funeral wearing balaclavas.

That's the distinction. What made it interesting.

It's not the bombs.

It's not the rifles.

It's not the civilians in the crossfire.

It wasn't the snipers in South Armagh.

It wasn't the Provos in Belfast.

Or even the molotovs in Derry.

No, it was the balaclavas.

Reason for this is because he wasn't talking like a person at this point. He was talking like a state. I wasn't addressing him, he left the picture the second we started discussing. It was his doctrine I addressed. The state speaking through him with ideas drilled into his mind since childhood.

And the state is fine with gunfire, burning, explosions, internment, torture and all kinds of brutality. The state looks the other way when Unionists would detonate pipe bombs targeting Catholic children. They don't care.

So we have the state. Internment camps, firing squads, press censorship, torture, sectarian violence, child abuse, you name it.

Then you have the IRA. They armed themselves and they fought back like a military. I won't pretend as though there is a good side in a war, but they had no internment camps, or press censorship for instance.

But they did wear balaclavas. So that's the terrorism. That's the dividing line that could be fabricated.

But I'd like to assert the following. If someone can't even attend a funeral without feeling compelled to hide their identity in an effort to avoid persecution, then whom, pray tell, is the real terrorist?

I'm writing about this now because the same pattern is being repeated all over the world, with several insurgent groups and resistance forces who are defending their homes from western occupation. From Palestine to Syria. I'm even talking about the Cubans, who drove out the Batista regime. About the Sandinistas and Zapatistas too. They're all in the habit of wearing balaclavas.

And in the words of Fidel Castro: History will absolve them.