Malachi O’Doherty: Republicans who call me Uncle Tom are a disgrace to their cause

Maybe they thought it was like how black rappers would use the N-word among themselves. He was a tayga; I was Tyga. What was there to complain about?

The same columnist drew on terms used in black culture when he also referred to me as Uncle Tom.

The context for this was that I attended a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Assembly with Lord Bew and Egan Harris to facilitate the Stormont boycott debate over the decommissioning impasse.

I think the same columnist and editor who submitted this for publication should have been guided by the Press Complaints Commission to see the wisdom of a sincere apology.

And this is now in my mind, because the example given at that time might have been a signal to those who now use these terms so easily that they disgrace themselves and their business by doing so.

Last week I recorded the Red Lines podcast with Claire Mitchell and Ben Collins discussing our books about the idea of ​​a united Ireland. Mark Carruthers moderated the discussion and aired part of it on The View.

I said that I was intrigued by the way Ben and Claire referred to their travels while reflecting on identity. I said I don’t have an inner conversation about identity. I have no questions about whether I am Irish.

I don’t need constitutional reform to strengthen my vulnerable sense of Irishness. I’m Irish. What to ask?

But there was a usual flurry of insults on Twitter. I’m a token Taig, a Catholic from the castle, a sapper, a defector and, as a columnist said years ago, an Uncle Tom.

All these terms are sectarian.

They arise from the idea that someone born into an Irish Catholic family, like myself, lives under a duty to represent the Irish cause for the unification of the island.

There is no such obligation. The republican democratic ideal is that people have the freedom of conscience to inform themselves and evaluate the political circumstances around them, and to decide for themselves what outcomes they prefer to support.

This doesn’t need to be explained to people who think they are Republicans.

And yet, to some, the improbability of someone like me asking honest and genuine questions about the validity of the Irish republican tradition is so implausible that they have to wonder whether I’m being paid by the British state or whether I’m inherently perverse. the opposite. They are incapable of thinking that I am expressing a considered opinion.

I think the Press Complaints Commission has missed an opportunity to identify one of our vices and make an authoritative statement about how despicable Catholic sectarianism is.

A Catholic who calls another Catholic Tyga or Uncle Tom is a sectarian because he seeks to limit the other’s freedom of thought. This is an imposition. It says you should know your place, boy. And it says that others decide for you what your place is, and that they have already done so.

And it offers a future in which those who have so limited your freedom of expression will shape the nation according to their vision.

Is it identity or sectarian politics. It sees the conflict not as a clash of ideas but as a clash of identities.

And if there is any hope of victory in the clash of identities, then people must stand their ground and hold strong.

A coup, a super, a castle castle and a Taig token threaten the Taigs’ future victory over the Prodams.

Likewise, Lundy threatens the Sales’ victory over the Tygas, so we are faced with the same insults, the same arrogance, that they have no right to think for themselves.

And we receive calls for trade union unity on the eve of every election.

Here’s an alternative idea.

Instead of trying to keep people in their denominational camps by insulting them when they leave them, why not try to win converts through division?

The failure of identity/sectarian politics is that it appeals more to your birth certificate than your intelligence.

Political movements grow through persuasion and conversion. So we had people whose families had voted Labor for generations and were won over by the Conservatives. Thousands of voters who never wanted an independent Scotland are now campaigning for it.

Even in the Republic, where politics has been ossified for decades in a civil war, Fine Gael opposing Fianna Fáil has broken down.

I’m not marking all of these specific changes, but I see them as evidence that political ideas are expanding and narrowing according to their appeal.

Those who decry me as a super and Catholic Castle should take heart from the fact that republican ideas can win over people like Ben and Claire.

Keep promoting your ideas and stop being bigoted.