Belfast and the poison of identity politics

By Thomas Lifson October 18, 2018

I spent yesterday in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a city that nearly destroyed itself thanks to the embrace of identity politics. For three decades of the late twentieth century, physically indistinguishable Irish people slaughtered each other using terrorism based on their tribal identity as Catholics or Protestants. Terror bombings of pubs were a common tactic, as were kidnappings and torture. It wasn't even a religious conflict, for the correct path to salvation or any religious doctrine at all was never a point of dispute. The Protestant terrorists identified as British and wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, while the Catholic terrorists wanted to unite with their cousins to the south in a United Ireland. Despite common Irishness and Christianity, people in large numbers felt justified in slaughtering strangers in the name vengeance for wrongs of the past................Read more