David French of “The Dispatch” online newsletter wrote a highly perceptive article on January 12 wherein he identified the Capitol Insurrection of 1/6 as both the culmination of Donald Trump’s months-long effort to discredit the 2020 election and the public unmasking of an underground insurgency led by anti-government militias that had broken out into the open after years of clandestine activity and planning.
French argued that the “combination of terror and propaganda” highlighted by the Capitol Insurrection “has echoes of ‘The Troubles‘ in Northern Ireland, with the Trump White House and the GOP in the role of Sinn Fein, and the paramilitary ‘patriots’ in the role of the Irish Republican Army. The politicians produce the propaganda, and the paramilitaries produce the threats and violence”.
Making an analogy between the current U.S. political climate and Northern Ireland’s unrest of the 1970s and 80s is pretty ballsy, because anyone who pushes this analogy is basically saying that the U.S. is already in a state of civil war. It’s a testament to the times that no one, as far as I can tell, has called Mr. French out for asserting this parallel or has attacked the analogy as either wrong-headed or simply too dangerous to voice.
It’s also a testament to David French’s authorial daring of the past year. Last September, he published a book titled – of all things – “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation”. Even two months before the election some reviewers dismissed Mr. French as an attention-seeking alarmist. After the Capitol Insurrection, the chattering class isn’t quite so sure of its earlier characterization of Mr. French. His work is being met with a mixture of shocked silence and growing respect.
It’s because I believe David French’s arguments are worth examining that I decided to make them the topic of this post. The article in which he made US-Northern Ireland analogy is two months old, but I believe readers will agree that the issues raised are very much with us. Mr. Trump and his most violent supporters no longer lead the news, but remain feverishly active.
BELFAST ON THE POTOMAC?
As alarming as the Washington-as-Belfast analogy is to contemplate, it’s important that we take the time to do so calmly. If events take a further turn for the worse, the restoration of a properly functioning government and civil society will demand a clearer perception of reality, of where we are, and the forces at play both on and beneath the surface.
Like Northern Ireland in 1969 at the time The Troubles began, the U.S. is deeply divided and socially polarized, with outbreaks of political violence on the rise. Demographically, a 45%-55% split in U.S. society exists that is in some ways analogous to Northern Ireland back then, with a smaller, ostensibly more militant minority (the Catholics in N.A., the Republican base in the U.S.) holding a roughly 45% share of bodies and votes, and a slightly larger and – possibly – less restive majority (the Protestants in N.A., the Democratic base in the U.S.) holding steady at 55%.
Both groups have political representation. Both have rowdy, activist wings with a propensity to take to the streets. The larger group is more established at elite levels of society, while the smaller group feels marginalized and cut off from the institutional heights.
However, it is here – on the issue of institutional control – where David French’s analogy of the GOP-as-Sinn Fein breaks down. Because the major disconnect between the U.S. and Northern Ireland lies in how elite institutional power has been historically exercised.
In Northern Ireland, the Protestants held all the top jobs in civil government, business and law enforcement (police, prisons, the courts) prior to the Troubles and prior, indeed, to the signing of the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998. In America, by contrast, the Democratic and Republican Parties have alternated in power regularly over many decades and, until recently, most major societal institutions contained representatives loyal to both constituencies.
However, America has exhibited ominous signs of a growing split in the custodianship of institutional power since the late 1990s. Somewhere in the past ten years, that split may have reached a decisive turning point.
I would characterize the split as one of “guns versus butter”.
The police, prison guards, armed forces and much of the American judiciary are in Republican hands and have become more uniform in their political affiliations since the 1980s, with police and armed forces members reporting much more conservative political affiliations over time. By contrast, cultural and educational institutions, the entertainment industry, health care professionals and some sectors of corporate America have swung sharply to the left since 2010, and can now be said to be held in a kind of ongoing conservatorship by Democratic-leaning elements.
The heightened tribal polarization of the two parties and major institutions has exaggerated the split even further.
The acquisition of political power and media prominence by formerly marginalized groups since the 1960s – Black Americans, gays and lesbians, Native Americans, people identifying as transgender or queer, and a variety of new subcultures – and the increased attraction of these groups to the Democratic Party have created a seismic split between a once-majoritarian ‘monoculture’ (white, heterosexual, Christian, and nativist/conservative) and a partially institutionalized ‘counter-culture’ (rainbow-colored, non-religious or composed of religious minorities, and rather omnisexual) that threatens to erupt into outright civil war, much as Mr. French warns.
A New Culture appears to be rapidly muscling an Old Culture out of power, and elements of the Old Culture are reacting with intense distress.
THE ESTABLISHMENT VS. THE INSURGENTS
In this respect, the GOP-Old Culture in the U.S. with its continuing institutional power in the federal government, many state legislatures, and the military and police forces, more closely resembles the Protestant faction in North Ireland than it does Sinn Fein.
The GOP base still controls significant sectors of corporate America and maintains a deep presence in the military and police forces in much the same way Irish Protestants dominated corporations, the judiciary and the Royal Ulster Constabulary prior to 1998. During President Trump’s first two years in office, the GOP controlled all three major branches of the federal government. Yet again, this is similar to Protestant control of the levers of political power in Stormont Castle in 1969.
The Democratic Party and its affiliates, as the rising cultural and political force poised to displace the old establishment, are more similar to the Catholic faction in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s than they are to the Protestants. Like the Catholics at the start of the Troubles, their demographic prospects are improving and their demands for greater equity and representation are growing louder.
Catholic birth rates outstripped Protestant birthrates for decades before the Troubles began. Catholics had a tradition of activism to draw upon, similar to many ethnic and sexual minorities in the U.S.
What a number of historians of Northern Ireland, among them Tim Pat Coogan and Conor Cruise O’Brien, have pointed to as the fuse that lit the fire of the Troubles was the sense of growing challenge that the rising younger generation of Catholics and their growing activism posed to the entrenched power of Northern Ireland’s Protestant establishment in the late 1960s.
The young Catholic activists of the 60s looked to the U.S. Civil Rights and Indian Independence movements as their inspirations. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and its more radical offshoot, People’s Democracy, consciously modeled themselves along the lines of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
In October 1968 and January 1969, the Catholic organizations copied Dr. King’s marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama by staging marches that began in Belfast and ended in the town of Derry.
In the case of the January 1969 event, the march was never completed, as Protestant militia members – including off-duty members of the RUC – attacked the marchers with bats, clubs and stones at Burntollet Bridge, injuring many non-violent Catholic demonstrators and prematurely ending the march.
The attack at Burntollet Bridge radicalized several of the marchers, who joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA, or ‘Provos’) shortly thereafter. Northern Ireland soon descended into sectarian warfare.
THE TROUBLING ROLE OF DEMAGOGUES
The Protestant attack on the Catholic marchers at Burntollet Bridge was instigated by a firebrand Protestant minister-turned-politician whose name will be familiar to anyone who lived through those times: the Rev. Ian Paisley. A brief review of several of Rev. Paisley’s comments at the time of the Derry march is instructive:
“These civil rights activists might pretend they are peaceful protesters, but they are nothing but IRA men in disguise.”
“The Catholic scum breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin.”
“I would rather be British than be just.”
“Don’t cry to me if your homes are attacked. You’ll reap what you sow.”
As are the following passages excerpted from Patrick R. Keefe’s 2019 non-fiction monograph, ‘Say Nothing‘:
“A radical figure with a rabid following, Paisley was the son of a Baptist preacher. After training at a fringe evangelical college in Wales, he established his own, hard-line church. At 6 foot-4 inches, Paisley was a towering figure with squinty eyes and a jumble of teeth who would…lean over the pulpit, declaiming against ‘the monster of Romanism’.
The Vatican and Republic of Ireland were secretly in league, engineering a plot to overthrow the Northern Irish state, he argued. As Catholics accrued power and numbers, they would grow into a ‘tiger ready to tear its prey to pieces.'”
“He was a flamboyantly divisive figure, a maestro of incitement…a Pied Piper agitator who liked to lead his followers through Catholic neighborhoods, sparking riots wherever he went…It was Pailsey’s habit to whip a crowd into a violent lather and then recede from the scene before any actual stones were thrown.”
Sound familiar?
In whatever nation and whichever time they ply their trade of insults and incitement, demagogues all work by the same playbook: exploit grievance, whip up anger, engender fear, and escalate tensions. The names of the groups on each side don’t matter much, whether it’s Hindu vs. Muslim, Israeli vs. Palestinian, Protestant vs. Catholic, or nativist vs. immigrant. The behavior pattern of the demagogue is always the same.
Demagogues of one type or another are perpetually active in most societies, but during periods of low social tension and relative prosperity, there cries of incitement are heard by few. But during eras of rising polarization, social controversies and wealth inequality, we can count on demagogues to become more visible and numerous, and impresarios who have worked in one or the other field to move take a turn toward demagoguery (e.g. Donald Trump) because the market for incitement is on the upswing.
Much like the Rev. Paisley, Donald Trump spent five years inciting and ranting and stirring up grievances (both real and imagined) both in person and through his Twitter account before the explosion of January 6. He is hardly the only person to blame for the outcome, but his hand lit the spark to the kindling at a critical moment.
The parallels between the U.S. and Northern Ireland in this case are depressingly clear. Similar to Rev. Paisley, Mr. Trump scooted back to safety after haranguing his massed followers with the words “We are going to march down to the Capitol and fight like hell.” He preferred to watch the ensuing proceedings on television. How American!
AMERICAN DOESN’T HAVE A GERRY ADAMS…YET
In his occupation of supreme executive power carrying with it the ability to appoint top military brass and federal judges, President Trump never much resembled Gerry Adams. Adams has spent most of his political life outside the formal power structures, including a fair amount of time in prison, an environment that has so far eluded Trump (though we’ll see what his future holds as New York’s tax evasion case progresses).
Gerry Adams’ public persona has always been that of the intellectual activist: an ascetic practitioner of extreme politics quicker to jot down a manifesto or plot political strategy than to fire a rifle. His private persona has likewise been that of the ultimate movement insider. Adams is the man at the heart of the Sinn Fein machinery – the ghost in the machine, in fact. By contrast, Trump was never a conservative movement activist, and prior to 2009 had been a lifelong Democrat.
The closest the U.S. has had to a Gerry Adams is probably Alexander Hamilton back in the Revolutionary War era, when Hamilton alternated as an aide-de-camp to George Washington, prodigious author of political and economic plans, and battlefield soldier, before rising to the position of Treasury Secretary in the first U.S. administration. The U.S. government and army were truly “provisional” at that time, and the main enemy was the same as the IRAs: Great Britain.
We have not seen a figure like Hamilton since Hamilton himself fell in 1804. Perhaps we never will again. The emergence of someone with such talents on one political side or another would upset the balance, such as it is.
The key question for American’s near-term future remains: What will it take to shift the loyalty of several hold-out groups in the GOP-Old Culture power structure over to the New Culture? What would shift the U.S. high military command and major metropolitan police forces (and unions) decisively over to the Democrats?
Where the high command is concerned, the moment may already have come in the days after the Capital Insurrection. For other groups on the right, who can say? What will make or break the militias is the tolerance of state and local police forces and the military. Once the military and police decide they have had enough of these groups and their antics, their power will fade.
The question is, will that shift be apparent in 2021, or 2022? Or must America as a nation also go through the ‘Belfast Blues’ i.e. years of violent unrest led by armed groups colluding with politicians?
The next six months will provide an indication.
Until next time, I remain –
Greymantle
