This was the mindset that led to the Provos. It’s also the same mindset that says parts of Lithuania and Poland are still Germany.
It’s the mindset of the dissos.
The mindset of the dissos at least has some perverse integrity - they recognise that Northern Ireland is still British. And therefore that’s their justification for blowing up Peadar Heffron and Ronan Kerr and for the Omagh bomb. The same mindset the Provos had for 27 years.
The other mindset - that of Sinn Fein now - is preferable in that it at least stopped the murdering when it did.
But it’s also filled with contradictions and dishonesties. It holds that murdering PSNI members now is wrong. But if it’s wrong now, how could it have been right to murder RUC members then? What’s the difference? Northern Ireland is still British. What’s the difference? Gerry Adams’s say so? Who is Gerry Adams or Michelle O’Neill or Mary Lou McDonald to say what was justified when and what is not justified now?
If Northern Ireland is still British, and it is, what was all the murder for? It was a total failure. It achieved nothing.
This is the central delusion at the heart of Sinn Fein still. It has to dress up three decades of failure, of nihilism, as “there was no alternative”. TINA. That was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite phrase.
But there was an alternative. Sinn Fein know this because that’s the alternative they’ve been pursuing since 1997, when their previous strategy failed once and for all.