Why do we the media – and sometimes politicians – call on selected people to condemn certain events and certain groups? Because to do so is to encourage hypocrisy and lies.
We used to have it here all the time. People who detested Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and other leading Sinn Féin politicians would repeatedly ask “Do you condemn Violent Act X or Violent Act Y?” When they didn’t get a prompt “Yes I do” the Sinn Féin politician in question was denounced as a fraud.
But consider the sequence of events. First there’s the selection of the person to be interrogated. There’s no point in asking someone from the Quaker community or the Unionist community if they condemn a violent republican act, because the answer will obviously be yes. So instead a figure is sought out who almost certainly has sympathies with violent republicanism.
But what makes anyone think that they’ll get a truthful answer? When someone charged with a serious crime is asked “How do you plead?”, we don’t normally expect them to say “Guilty”. Since that’s standard procedure in a court of law, why do we believe we’ll get frank responses outside it? If I have, as you suspect, few qualms about killing people, isn’t it odd you think I’d have qualms about lying over it?
Yesterday saw the British media ramping up calls for Jeremy Corbyn to condemn the IRA, an organisation which hasn’t existed for around fifteen years. Why? Because they suspect Jeremy Corbyn saw the conflict here as something that had to be ended, not sloganized over. How odd, given that his questioners believe he had sympathies with various violent organisations, that they’d attach such touching faith in his always telling the truth.
It’s really time the media were honest on this particular matter. Calls for condemnation are not so the general public may be enlightened. They are questions which have been asked in the hope of damaging the person being interrogated. Even worse, it is a political weapon masquerading as noble search for answers.
They want republicans to publicly condemn matters for several reasons. Firstly, they will use the condemnation to insert a wedge between the speaker and their fellow republicans and then it gives them something concrete to attempt to publicly disprove. Like the biggest mouth in the country with Corbyn this morning.
It is the objective of all the right wing elements in the UK to criminalise the republican opposition to the status quo. This is just another element of that criminalisation strategy this time carried out by the right wing media.
Just look at how these elements have dealt with those supporting the rights of the Palestinian people to get a flavour of what lies ahead.
I don’t agree with these orchestrated calls for public condemnations and/or apologies. They are usually partisan and out of context; and if not given spontaneously and instinctively by the person/organization, are probably insincere and disingenuous.
The IRA came into being because of the rottenness and repression of Protestant/Unionist governance in the N. Ireland state. For fifty years those in England with the power to do something, anything to improve matters did nothing.
Would anyone like to argue with this theory/contention/proposition …???
Sky news came to the assistance of Mrs Strong and Stable because she had to bin her manifesto mere days after announcing it – all too predictable.
Corbyn was spot on about the IRA and Iraq.
And all this from the people who supported Zola Budd.
Theresa May launched her Tory manifesto last week which threatened to steal school meals from children, steal the winter fuel allowance from pensioners, and steal the house from pensioners who took ill and needed social care before they died.
Naturally there was a serious reaction to these proposals, so the Tory tactic, diversionary action, kicked in with the help of the arch Tory Murdoch organisation by bringing up the old question of Jeremy Corbyn’s attitude to the IRA.
This was quickly picked up by our local Protestant unionist BBC presenters Stephen Nolan and William Crawley, who have totally ignored the fact that the IRA packed their bags and left the political/paramilitary scene years ago, but conscious of the fact that their hounding of Corbyn/IRA would impact negatively on Sinn Fein’s apparent progress.
So this is not ordinary journalism – it is unionist presenters taking a unionist line to improve the election results of the DUP and UUP.
Is this acceptable according to the BBC charter of impartiality?
Another of these presenters ,Mark Devenport managed to cover the Fermanagh Orange hall “blondegate ” story this morning without mentioning the fact that Arlene was present when the reverend made his “peroxide” comments.
Jude
Are you happy with the term ‘protestant unionist presenters’ in regard to Stephen Nolan and William Crawley.?
Well they are certainly not ‘catholic nationalist presenters’ are they?