Ulster "Freedom" Fighters

This a an ex-UFF member speaking about his experience and his actions while he served the UFF.
They claim to be soldiers "defending" Ulster, they are just sectarian thugs...

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• UFF
• UDA
• ulster
• freedom
• fighters
• defense
• assocation
• loyalist
• loyalism
• loyalists

[propriono]

Peace between Christians...Islam is our enemy!

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 8) Finally, you conflate Ulster Protestants with southern Protestants: they weren't one homogeneous bloc. Ulster Protestants - including the UVF - were primarily Presbyterian and had a history - like their Catholic counterparts - of structured communal orginisation. Southern Protestants were Methodists and had no overt communal orginisation whatsoever.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 7) There was a relative decline in BOTH Catholic & Protestant populations from the 1860's, that precipitated solely for the protestant community in the years after 1918. There's a causal relation between the campaign of intimidation enacted by individual IRA units and the protestant exodus.

There is no evidence that the exodus was borne for political reasons; there's no evidence that Methodists in Ireland had overt prejudicial views against Catholics like in Ulster.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 6) Quite frankly, it's provincial to ignore the southern counties and look solely onto Ulster: the Catholic population of Ulster decreased merely by 2% after the war, the protestant population of Ireland decreased by 40%.

Carson or the UVF didn't create the sectarian dimension of the conflict (the Irish Volunteers were formed literally months after); that dimension created itself after the politicisation of the Irish Quesiton along ethno-religious lines.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 5) Testimony after testimony substantiates the view that protestants lived in constant fear with reprisals for RIC or Auxiliary actions a continues plague on protestant communities. Even after the Anglo-Irish Treaty protestants was still targeted in acts of supposed retribution, the April Massacre is a vivid example of that. CONT.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 4) The actions of individual IRA brigades had a bias against protestants: in Cork alone, over 75% of arson attacks against private property were directed against protestants; 36% of executed civilians were protestants when they made up only 7% of the population. In all, after the Civil War, the protestant population decreased by 40% whist the Catholic population fell by 2%. CONT.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 3) The revival of 'Irishness' or 'Gaelicness' that the likes of the IRB fostered was intrinsically nationalist (at the minimum) because the progress of history was based upon supposed British oppression - this was the narrative that they planted; the nationalist awakening was a Catholic awakening. CONT.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur 2) As I said below, the IRB the Volunteers / IRA weren't overtly sectarian: that was never part of the ethos of these orginisations. However, the consequences of the IRB and it's wedded influence to the Gaelic Revival or the Christan Brothers, was the development of an avowed religiosity that affirmed the idea that to be Catholic was to be a republican, whilst to be Protestant was to be a unionist. CONT.

[CharlesDilkes]

@mst3k4evur This is sloppy history: you're conflating men who have almost two centuries between them - deal with the matter at hand: the Anglo-Irish War. Protestant republicans were a minority: you can literally count them on one hand. But even if that wasn't the case, how does that affirm your idea that the conflict wasn't sectarian, or at least, that sectarianism wasn't a factor? The answer is that it clearly doesn't. CONT.

[mst3k4evur]

@CharlesDilkes

The blame lies in Ulster with Carson and his ilk, not the South. The decline may have been cause by a desire not to live in the obnoxious Catholic state but I believe the decline in Protestant population began back in the 1860's, well before militant Republicanism.