Counter-Narratives

Richard Delevan [read here] has it exactly right. The dominant nationalist narrative in Ireland for more than a century has been a litany of oppression that portrayed Irish Catholics as the M.O.P.E. [Most Oppressed People Ever]. Accounts varied as to whether the oppression was based in racism, cultural differences, or class antagonisms, but always the Catholics were cast in the role of victims.

It was this sense of perpetual victimhood that bound diaspora communities together and fueled the excesses of nationalist movements since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By now that narrative has become so ingrained that it is almost reflexive, especially among Irish-Americans.

This narrative has long provided a legitimizing fiction for the IRA, which has fostered the myth that they are fighting to liberate the Catholics of the North. Maybe they were once, but that time has long passed. The McCartney sisters are now offering a powerful counter-narrative, one that far more accurately represents the reality of the IRA today.

In this counter-narrative the IRA [at least the Provos] are portrayed as common criminals; thugs who prey upon the very people they claim to protect. The spectacle of Robert McCartney's vicious murder, the intimidation of witnesses, the IRA's claim that they, not the civil authorities, have the right to dispense justice, all add up to a narrative of exploitation rather than heroic resistance. Should that narrative take hold, and it seems to be doing so, in Irish-American communities, the IRA will be delegitimized, its funding will continue to dry up, and it will be on the road to oblivion.